Month: February 2018

It’s Dangerous When You Build Things You Klutz, but MIT’s Robots Will Save You

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MIT’s AutoSaw takes the risk and skill out of creating custom furniture, so that even you can do it without losing an unnecessary number of limbs Photo: MIT CSAILStand back, human! Remember when all furniture was custom made? Yeah, me neither. These days, it’s all about affordability through mass production. I’m as much of a fan of modernist Scandinavian design and cheap meatballs as anyone, but mass produced furniture is by definition a compromise: It’s sort of okay for everyone, which means it’s never exactly what you want. But custom made furniture that’s perfect for your space and style is expensive, because it takes a substantial amount of skill and equipment to produce. At MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which is presumably populated by researchers trying to afford furnishings for their overpriced and undersized Cambridge apartments, researchers have developed a system called AutoSaw that (nearly) solves the entire Continue reading It’s Dangerous When You Build Things You Klutz, but MIT’s Robots Will Save You→

Hacking the Brain With Adversarial Images

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Researchers from Google Brain show that adversarial images can trick both humans and computers, and the implications are scary Image: Google Brain In the image above, there’s a picture of a cat on the left. On the right, can you tell whether it’s a picture of the same cat, or a picture of a similar looking dog? The difference between the two pictures is that the one on the right has been tweaked a bit by an algorithm to make it difficult for a type of computer model called a convolutional neural network (CNN) to be able to tell what it really is. In this case, the CNN think it’s looking at a dog rather than a cat, but what’s remarkable is that most people think the same thing. This is an example of what’s called an adversarial image: an image specifically designed to fool neural networks into making an Continue reading Hacking the Brain With Adversarial Images→

MIT and SenseTime announce effort to advance artificial intelligence research

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MIT and SenseTime today announced that SenseTime, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, is joining MIT’s efforts to define the next frontier of human and machine intelligence. SenseTime was founded by MIT alumnus Xiao’ou Tang PhD ’96 and specializes in computer vision and deep learning technologies. The MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence aims to open up new avenues of discovery across MIT in areas such as computer vision, human-intelligence-inspired algorithms, medical imaging, and robotics; drive technological breakthroughs in AI that have the potential to confront some of the world’s greatest challenges; and empower MIT faculty and students to pursue interdisciplinary projects at the vanguard of intelligence research.  SenseTime is the first company to join a new Institute-wide initiative, the MIT Intelligence Quest, since its launch earlier this month. The MIT Intelligence Quest seeks to leverage the Institute’s strengths in brain and cognitive science and computer science to advance research into Continue reading MIT and SenseTime announce effort to advance artificial intelligence research→

Le National ne veut pas taxer les robots

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Les progrès de l’intelligence artificielle sont susceptibles de réorganiser de grands pans de l’économie et d’affecter le système fiscal, reconnaît le Conseil fédéral. Mais, selon le ministre des finances Ueli Maurer, taxer les robots reviendrait à taxer le capital et à entraver le développement de l’innovation … Plus de details

Alibaba et la NTU de Singapour lancent un institut de recherche sur les technologies d’intelligence …

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SINGAPOUR, 28 février (Xinhua) — Le groupe Alibaba, géant chinois du commerce électronique, et l’Université technologique de Nanyang (NTU) de Singapour ont signé mercredi un protocole d’entente marquant la création d’un institut de recherche sur les technologies d’intelligence artificielle (IA). Plus de details

Custom carpentry with help from robots

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Every year thousands of carpenters injure their hands and fingers doing dangerous tasks such as sawing. In an effort to minimize injury and let carpenters focus on design and other bigger-picture tasks, a team from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has created AutoSaw, a system that lets nonexperts customize different items that can then be constructed with the help of robots. Users can choose from a range of carpenter-designed templates for chairs, desks, and other furniture. The team says that AutoSaw could eventually be used for projects as large as a deck or a porch. “If you’re building a deck, you have to cut large sections of lumber to length, and that’s often done on site,” says CSAIL postdoc Jeffrey Lipton, who was a lead author on a related paper about the system. “Every time you put a hand near a blade, you’re at risk. To avoid Continue reading Custom carpentry with help from robots→