Headline Jan 27, 2018/ ''' IMAGINEERING '''

''' IMAGINEERING '''

AT OpenAI -the Artificial Intelligence lab founded by Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, machines are teaching themselves to behave like humans.

But sometimes, this goes wrong, very wrong.

Sitting inside OpenAI's San Francisco offices on a recent afternoon, the researcher Dario showed off an autonomous system that taught itself to play Coast Runners, an old boat-racing video game;

The winner is the boat with the most points that also crossed the finish line.

The result was surprising : The boat was far too interested in the little green widgets that popped up on the screen. Catching these widgets meant scoring points.

Rather than trying to finish the race, the boat went point-crazy. It drove in endless circles, colliding with other vessels, skidding into stone walls and repeatedly catching fire.

Mr. Amodei's burning boat demonstrated the risks of the A.I. techniques that are rapidly remaking the tech world. Researchers are building machines that can learn tasks largely on their own.

This is how Google's Deep Mind lab created a system that could beat the world's best player at the ancient game Go. But as these machines train themselves through hours of data analysis, they may also find their way to unexpected, unwanted and perhaps even harmful behavior.

HONG KONG : David Hanson envisions a future in which AI-powered robots evolve to become ''super-intelligent genius machines''-

That might help solve some of mankind's most challenging problems. IF only it were as simple as that.

The Texas-born former sculptor at Walt Disney Imagineering and his Hong Kong based startup  Hanson Robotics are combining artificial intelligence with Southern China's expertise in toy design, electronics and manufacturing, to craft humanoid ''social robots'' with faces designed to be lifelike and appealing enough to win trust from humans who interact with them.

Hanson, 49, is perhaps best known as the creator of Sophia, a talk show-going robot partly modeled on Audrey Hepburn that he calls his ''masterpiece.''

Akin to the animated mannequin, she seems as much a product of his background in theatrics as an example of advanced technology.

''You're talking to me right now, which is very 'Blade Runner', no?'' Sophia said during a recent visit to Hanson Robotics Headquarters in a suburban Hong Kong science park, its home since soon after Hanson moved to the city in 2013.

''Do you ever look around you and think,'' ''Wow, I'm living in a real world science fiction novel?'' she asked. ''It's weird to be talking to a robot right now?''

Hanson robotics has made about a dozen copies of Sophia, who like any human is a work in progress.

A multinational team of scientists and engineers  are fine tuning her appearance and the algorithm that enable her to smile, blink and refine her understanding and communication.

Sophia has moving 3D-printed arms and, with the help of South Korean robotics company, she's now going mobile. Shuffling slowly on boxy black legs, Sophie made her walking debut in Las Vegas last week at the CES electronics trade show.

Her skin is made of nanotech material that Hanson invented and dubbed ''Frubber,'' short for fresh-rubber, that has a flesh like bouncy texture.

Cameras in her eyes and a 3D sensor in her chest help her to ''see'' while the processor that serves as her brains facial and speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis and a motion control system.

Sophia seems friendly and engaging, despite the unnatural pauses and cadence in her speech.

Her predecessors include an Albert Einstein complete with bushy mustache and and white thatch of hair, a robot named Alice whose grimaces run a gamut of emotions and one eerily resembling-

The late sci-fic author Philip K. Dick, which won an award from the American Association of  Artificial Intelligence.

They variously leer, blink, smile and even crack jokes.

Disney's venture capital arm is an investor in Hanson, which is building a robot based on one of the  entertainment giant's characters.
 
The Honoring and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Robotics and Future continues.

With respectful dedication to the Technologists, Scientists, Inventors, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:


''' Human Cells '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless