‘What’s the weather like?’ Google is using AI to predict rain and sunny weather – Metro.co.uk

Its hoped that computers will do a better job than unreliable human weathermen and women (Image: PA)

Google has invented a new AI-powered weather prediction system which can accurately predict whether youre about to get soaked in a rain shower.

Its notoriously difficult to work out what the weathers going to do in a place like the UK thats cursed with a changeable climate.

Now Google has worked out a new to guess if the heavens are going to open imminently.

Jason Hickey, a senior software engineer at Google Research, wrote: The weather can affect a persons daily routine in both mundane and serious ways, and the precision of forecasting can strongly influence how they deal with it.

Weather predictions can inform people about whether they should take a different route to work, if they should reschedule the picnic planned for the weekend, or even if they need to evacuate their homes due to an approaching storm.

But making accurate weather predictions can be particularly challenging for localized storms or events that evolve on hourly timescales, such as thunderstorms.

In a paper called Machine Learning for Precipitation Nowcasting from Radar Images Google presented its research into the development of machine learning models which can work out if its going to rain.

It uses highly localized physics-free predictions that apply to the immediate future.

This means the computer is not trained to analyse raw physics to make its predictions, but instead uses data gathered by weather monitoring facilities.

Googles approach is cheaper than normal forecasting and is also more accurate and outperforms traditional models, even at these early stages of development.

The tech giant is evangelical about the benefits of AI and machine learning, but not everyone agrees.

Elon Musk is one of the worlds most famous doom-mongers and fears super-smart computers are destined to conquer the Earth and annihilate humanity.

He recently issued a warning about the dangers of denying the threat that super-intelligence poses to our species.

On Twitter, Musk responded to a tweet from the writer Robert McFarlane, who quoted a New York Times article and wrote: I wonder if the essence of climate denial among disbelieving Americansis an unwillingness to accept there is anything in this world so powerful it could overrule them.

Musk then replied: Same goes for digital superintelligence denial.

The subtext of this tweet suggests the rise of the machines is a threat comparable to the dangers of climate change.

Elons fears are shared by many experts most notably the late Stephen Hawking yet is quite out of step with some of the billionaire techno-optimists of Silicon Valley.

MORE: The probability of human extinction is frighteningly high, scientists calculate

Last year, it was claimed that Google founder Larry Pagedismissed Elons fears as speciesist during an argument at a Napa Valley party in 2015.

A top professor at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alleged the two tech moguls clashed in a long and spirited debate in the early hours of the morning.

In his book Life 3.0: Being Human In The Age of Artificial Intelligence,Max Tegmark wrote: [Pages] main concerns were that AI paranoia would delay the digital utopia and/or cause a military takeover of AI that would fall foul of Googles dont be evil slogan.

Elon kept pushing back and asked Larry to clarify details of his arguments, such as why he was so confident that digital life wouldnt destroy everything we care about.

At times, Larry accused Elon of being speciesist: treating certain life forms as inferior just because they were silicon-based rather than carbon-based.

Tegmark and Page were talking about a childrens book called The Day My Butt Went Psycho at the party before the two billionaires locked horns after cocktails.

The MIT professor said Page is a passionate supporter of digital utopianism, which holds that robots and AI are not a threat to the future of our species.

Larry [said] that digital life is the natural and desirable next step in the cosmic evolution and that if we let digital minds be free rather than try to stop or enslave them the outcome is almost certain to be good, he continued.

He argued that if life is ever going to spread throughout our galaxy, which he thought it should, then it would need to do so in digital form.

Elon Musk isnt alone in his fears about the development of artificial intelligence.

Last year, Professor Stephen Hawking said AI is likely to replace humans altogether and become a new form of life that will outperform our fleshy, flabby species.

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'What's the weather like?' Google is using AI to predict rain and sunny weather - Metro.co.uk