Category Archives: Transhuman News

EDINBURGH, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A postgraduate student team from the National Robotarium has been selected to compete in Amazons new global AI competition. The team will create an embodied agent or robot butler to help people around the home.

Amazons Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge asks teams to create help for a futuristic world that can understand natural language, interact with humans, and accomplish tasks.

The National Robotarium team is the only non-US group to pass the selection process, demonstrating its world-leading expertise in embodied conversational AI research and teaching.

The National Robotarium is part of the Data-Driven Innovation initiative and is supported by 21 million from the UK Government and 1.4 million from the Scottish Government.

Stewart Miller, CEO, National Robotarium said: To be the only team from any country in the world outside the USA to be selected for the Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge demonstrates the global significance and capabilities of the teams within the National Robotarium. Backed by the combined robotic and AI experience of Heriot-Watt and the University of Edinburgh, were demonstrating our ability to lead global development in AI, pushing the boundaries of whats possible in a domestic setting.

Professor Verena Rieser, Professor of Conversational AI, National Robotarium, is advising the student team. She said: The objective of Amazons latest Alexa Prize challenge perfectly aligns with the aims of the National Robotarium which is to use robotics and artificial intelligence research to help people, solve global challenges and work in partnership with industry. With AI technology and machine learning offering exciting opportunities to complement our daily lives, exploring how these innovations can be further embedded in our homes is a fantastic learning opportunity for our students.

Alessandro Suglia, postdoctoral research fellow in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, National Robotarium said: Our team will create a next-generation assistant capable of learning continuously. We will focus on natural language generation and reasoning, machine perception, navigation, manipulation and dialogue creation to further push the boundaries of AI through our research.

The SimBot Challenge includes a public benchmark asking teams to design a machine-learning model with language-guided visual navigation and task completion. Phase 2 asks teams to test their bots to respond to customer commands and multimodal sensor inputs from within a virtual world.

ENDS

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National Robotarium Student Team to Create a Futuristic AI Butler - Business Wire

Tesla has agreed to update the software on almost 54,000 of its cars because a recent Full Self-Driving software update allowed them to break road rules and roll through stop signs without coming to a full stop.

Its the latest sign that regulators are becoming increasingly fed up of the Elon Musk-led companys efforts to automate but not fully automate, as the features name misleadingly suggests driving on public roads.

Tesla agreed to the recall after having two meetings with officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, according to the Associated Press.

Following discussions with NHTSA about our concerns, Tesla has informed the agency that it will conduct a recall of the Rolling Stop feature as one of the functionalities of the Driving Profile in its Full Self Driving software, reads an NHTSA statement to The Verge. In a new software update, a Rolling Stop will no longer be possible.

Theres a good deal ofevidence that the companys FSD beta, currently being tested by select customers on public roads, isnt quite ready for prime time. Several videos have shown vehicles with the feature turned on swerving towards pedestrians.

Tesla recently introduced an Assertive mode for its FSD software, an option that would perform more frequent lane changes, will not exit passing lanes, and may perform rolling stops, according to official documentation.

According to the NHTSAs documents, the feature allowed vehicles to travel past Stop signs at up to 5.6 mph, given a certain number of criteria including no other moving cars, pedestrians, or bicyclists, nearby are met.

Road safety advocates were appalled.

What happens when FSD decides a child crossing the street is not relevant and fails to stop? Philip Koopman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told the AP. This is an unsafe behavior and should never have been put in vehicles.

Regulators, including the NHTSA, are increasingly becoming wary of Tesla and its self-driving features and the recall may point towards future interferences.

They keep pushing the bounds of safety to see what they can get away with, and theyve really been pushing a lot, Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the governors safety association, told the AP. Each time its just a little bit more egregious. Its good to see NHTSA is pushing back.

READ MORE: Tesla recall: Full Self-Driving software runs stop signs [AP]

More on FSD: Watch Elon Musk Promise Self-Driving Cars Next Year Every Year Since 2014

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Tesla Says It's Updating Self-Driving Cars to No Longer Break the Law - Futurism

It feels like only yesterday we mourned the loss of our dearly departed planet Pluto. So it was hard to imagine losing another beautiful solar system buddy but the good news is we dont have to, because the goofballs who tried to prove Jupiter doesnt exist are 100 percent wrong.

A meme has been circulating since 2021 that shows a soda can exploding in a vacuum. The claim seems to be that if a soda can cant survive space, theres no way a planet made of gas could hold together.

This simple experiment, in which a soda can exposed to a vacuum environment explodes, demonstrates the impossibility of the existence of a pressurized environment within a vacuum without the presence of a suitable container, reads the hopefully meme, spotted by USA Today.

Gaseous planets as NASA tells us cannot exist, the conspiracy concludes at the bottom.

Its worth asking whether the meme is facetious. The account that shared it, Flat Earth Research, is so over the top that its difficult to ignore the possibility.

At the same time, though, many commenters seem to be taking the meme seriously, and there certainly are many people who, for reasons that defy comprehension, still think the Earth is flat. So lets go there.

First of all, its pretty clear that gas giants do, in fact, exist. You can see several of them with the naked eye, for instance. And beyond our solar system, NASA currently reports more than 1,400 gas giant discoveries on its websiteand defines a gas giant as a large planet mostly composed of helium, hydrogen, or both. Like Jupiter and Saturn, these planets dont have hard surfaces and instead feature swirling gas around a solid core.

Likening a gas giant to a soda can is more than a little reductive, and its also why the experiment doesnt debunk NASAs research. Elise Knittle, an Earth and planetary sciences professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, told USA Today that aluminum cans are pressurized to hold in the fizz from the carbon dioxide. The strength of the can and outside atmospheric pressure hold the soda in the can, but when dropped into a vacuum the pressure differential is great that the can ruptures.

It takes a BIG object to have enough self-gravity to hold together, which planets have, but soda cans dont.

The gravity is so great from the planet that it counteracts the pressure gradient between outer space and the planet, Knittle told the pub.

Its also worth mentioning that, you know, our very own Sun is a giant ball of burning gas and seems to hold its shape just fine. Every star does the same.

Nice try, Jupiter-deniers, but were not falling for your tricks. Tell the government we want Pluto back, too.

More on our love affair with Jupiter: NASA Scientists Predict Settlements on Moons of Saturn, Jupiter

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Nitwits Claim Wrongly to Have Disproved the Existence of Jupiter - Futurism

Business Wire IndiaRight to Protein, ahead of India's third annual Protein Day celebration on 27th February, declares Food Futurism as the theme for 2022 as it takes ahead its mission to drive food and especially protein sufficiency in the country through awareness, advocacy, and action. Food Futurism as a conversation will bring together nutrition experts, food scientists, biologists, among others to help Indians better understand the basic science behind healthy nutrition and its role in food security and protein sufficiency.The pandemic highlighted the need to build back better sustainably. The effects of global warming on agriculture, the inequality in access to food have further necessitated a paradigm shift in how onethink about food. Emerging scientific innovations present us with a growing range of opportunities to transformthe food and agriculture structures to fulfill the vision of a hunger-free India. Therefore, through this educative initiative, this year, Right to Protein will be initiating informed discussions and dialogues about the role of science and how methods such as genetically engineered foods can have in achieving food security. The discussions will address genuine concerns, misperceptions, and GMO anxiety among other topics.Supporting the effort,Varun Deshpande, Managing Director of Good Food Institute India (GFI India) says, In the face of challenges like climate change and pandemics, India needs a more secure, sustainable, and just food system. Reimagining our protein supply is key to that future. Plant-based foods and other smart protein sources are a generational opportunity to align planetary health stewardship, public health resilience, and economic growth.But tobring delicious, sustainable protein onto plates across the country, we need to invest in science, develop talent, and bridgeknowledge gaps. We are glad to support Food Futurism as the theme of Protein Day 2022 to achieve these goals in service of a better future."Dr. Suresh Itapu, Nutraceutical Expert, Director - NutriTech India, Human Nutrition Consultant USSEC and Supporter of the Right To Protein initiativesaid, As with any stream of science, weve often looked at different nuances of food science with skepticism mainly due to lack of knowledge leading to confusion, overblown fears, and myths. For instance, our concern about GMOs stems from a lack of awareness of how genes function it is simply a production technique. I believe that Food Futurism as the theme for Protein Day 2022 will help address some of these apprehensions while enhancing our scientific understanding as we collectively deliver on our larger food security and sufficiency goals.Since the inception of Indias first Protein Day in 2020, Right To Protein is all set to complete a treble, where like-minded citizens, nutritionists, food industry experts, chefs, and brands will come together to raise awareness and take a step towards making India a protein sufficient country through food science.

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Food Futurism Set as the Theme for Protein Day, February 2022 - IndianWeb2.com

Vehant Technologies was formed in 2005 as an outcome of incubation from IIT-Delhi. It is the leading company that develops state-of-the-art security screening solutions, smart and safe city solutions and enterprise analytics solutions with their central focus on artificial intelligence/machine learning. Vehant was cofounded by Anoop Prabhu and Kapil Bardeja with five Professors of Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-D as founding mentors, forming the companys backbone in the academia and industry research group. The main motivation of Vehant is to develop indigenous products and solutions out of India in the areas of computer vision and image processing, especially in security and surveillance.

It was a strategic necessity for the country to have these security products, made in India, so Vehant kick-started its journey by designing anunder-vehicle scanning system, which was till then imported in the country. Over the years since its inception, the company has supplied and installed around 1000 units in India and 14 other countries. Vehant also added an AI-based automated number plate reading system, which got morphed into Trafficmon: Traffic enforcement and management system that is now being deployed in almost 42 smart cities across India. In 2015, the firm developed the X-Ray baggage scanner that grabbed 25% of the market share in the last 2 years and got successfully sold to airports as well.

Anoop G Prabhu is the Co-Founder and CTO of Vehant Technologies. Since his college days, he has had a keen interest in imaging and computer vision technologies. During an internship at the IBM Research Labs, Anoop worked on R&D problems in the multimedia and image processing space. Subsequently, he also worked on another short stint at Mobileyes Research Centre, which is a pioneer in camera-based driver assistance systems in Israel, and this is when Anoop firmed up his interest in building solutions in imaging and AI technology circle.

Talking about how it all started, i.e., in the early 2000s, Anoop mentions that the future of the global vehicle surveillance market seemed promising with opportunities in the passenger car and commercial vehicle industries where security became more important due to terror attacks, security threats, etc. And so, he states that the demand for high-end technology solutions, growing R&D, changes in the pattern of buying, economic growth, and spreading awareness towards vehicle safety fuelled the markets growth.

In such a case, Vehant identified security as one area which was gaining huge prominence. In 2005, he Co-Founded the company along with Kapil Bardeja (Co-Founder and CEO) to build ZenScan, which is the under-vehicle scanning system.

According to Anoop, some of the difficulties that he and his teammates faced during the journey were more or less similar to what most of the entrepreneurs faced while starting a venue. Apart from these, he mentions that the UVSS was a product that was focussed on the security of the high-profile establishments to which there wasnt a practically established demand for India and Anoop considers this to be one of the initial challenges which he had to tackle. Establishing a market for the same was a painstaking process, but it allowed the company to become a market leader in that space, adds Anoop. Recruiting the key R&D talent in the initial days was another big challenge for Anoop and his team when the AI/ML boom was yet to take off.

Anoop states that businesses across the globe have adopted technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics, the internet of things, big data, augmented reality, and more. Just about every industry and company will change because of these technologies and hence Anoop stresses the need of the leaders to understand and have conversations on taking technology-related decisions. The ability to understand what tech can do for an organization is essential, and leaders must continuously embrace new platforms and tech tools, claims Anoop.

According to him, every leader must consider to which disruptive innovation might influence their value chain and plan to respond to them or figure out whether they should use them in their business or not. Anoop pinpoints that they should understand their capabilities and limits to meet the outside dangers and opportunities of digitization.

He further articulates that business leaders must not only have to evolve quickly in this new and dynamic environment, but they also need to champion change throughout the organization to bridge the gap between old and new businesses and work realities.

Embarking on success and innovation, Anoop says, In my experience, one key aspect we always try to adhere to has been to choose techniques that lie somewhere in the middle of the wide AI/ML technology spectrum: they give us a good mix of accuracy, performance, and superlative value. We have seen this applicable in other areas as well including choice of imaging or computing hardware, UI/UX, etc. Another key advantage of this approach is that these are bound to be more robust than the most sophisticated ones or the latest kid on the block approach. Plus, its easier to find talent whove worked with these techniques or solutions.

Ultimately, Anoop opines that this approach provides more value to the customer and gives them more bang for the buck. He recounts how Vehant tries to use technology to stay one or two steps ahead of the competition so the company also has its flagship models, where it goes away from this philosophy and chooses more of the shinier, glittery building blocks.

Anoop always stands at the forefront of leveraging technologies. While talking about artificial intelligence, he clarifies that AI has offered Vehant many unprecedented opportunities to engage consumers in new and different ways. Today, the company has massive datasets at its fingertips as well as the extraordinary processing power to extract patterns, connections, and meaning from that data to get to the intent of consumers.

Anoop notes that AI is the buzzword of today and gets thrown around everywhere. He mentions that any serious solution or product offering today needs to have AI baked in to pass muster from customers, partners and technology experts alike. Having said that, Anoop expresses how experienced practitioners will understand that there are a wide variety of techniques ranging from the simplistic to the latest bleeding-edge deep neural networks that can be thrown at any given problem.

Disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence/ big data/ cloud computing, according to Anoop, are likely to play a major role in improving the quality of life of people, global economies, and business models of companies. As technology is evolving at a very fast pace, he says that the advancement is changing the way we work, live, and do business ushering us into the age of information.

Considering bigger developments, Anoop remarks that autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been in development for a while, however, they are expected to bring about several benefits including fewer road accidents, more efficient fuel consumption, and reduced traffic congestion. Lastly, he adds that healthcare is also seeing numerous possibilities of integrating AI into its existing systems.

Anoop remarks that Vehant intends to continue its position as a market leader in the UVSS range of products, to grow its market share to around 30% in the X-Ray business, and also to add new X-ray scanning use cases for people and vehicles. He adds that the company also wishes to expand to the South East Asian region for smart city business, add new use cases on smart city and private AI-based analytics space, and retain a 60% market share in the smart city portfolio. In the long term, Anoop says that Vehant aspires to be an 800-1000 crore Indian MNC with a diversified portfolio of India-made products in the Security, surveillance, and traffic management space across the world.

Every year, far more Millennials fail than succeed in entrepreneurship. But if you arent one of the lucky few, dont lose hope: Failure has transformed from a source of shame into a badge of honour, says Anoop He opines that they should create jobs of the future, not simply train for them as it will undoubtedly play a greater role in the years ahead. Anoop affirms that they should ask themselves the most important skills needed to succeed in the workforce of the future because what is trendy today may not be the same in the next few years since technology is evolving rapidly.

One should also keep the communication lines open, and you will set yourself up for more interesting work and a faster career progression in no time. Focus on end goals, and while everyone has favourites, do not be tied to only one technology tool or framework, concludes Anoop.

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Anoop G Prabhu: Spearheading Disruptive Technologies to Unravel Futuristic Solutions in the Security and Surveillance Sphere - Analytics Insight