Video Friday: This NASA Robot Uses "Fishhook Grippers" to Climb Rock Walls

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videosVideo Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):ICRES 2019 – July 29-30, 2019 – London, U.K.DARPA SubT Tunnel Circuit – August 15-22, 2019 – Pittsburgh, Pa., USAIEEE Africon 2019 – Septembe

The moral panic following Raffaella Spone’s ‘deepfake’ video spread around the world. She talks for the first time about being the centre of a story in which nothing was as it seemed …Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light

Researchers find instances of systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing, pretending to be human and modifying behaviour in testsThey can outwit humans at board games, decode the structure of proteins and hold a passable conversation, but as AI systems have grown in sophistication so has their capacity for deception, scientists warn.The analysis, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers, identifies wide-ranging instances of AI systems double-crossing opponents, bluffing and pr

Fraudsters impersonated WPP’s CEO using a fake Whatsapp account, a voice clone and YouTube footage used in a virtual meetThe head of the world’s biggest advertising group was the target of an elaborate deepfake scam that involved an artificial intelligence voice clone. The CEO of WPP, Mark Read, detailed the attempted fraud in a recent email to leadership, warning others at the company to look out for calls claiming to be from top executives.Fraudsters created a WhatsApp account with

Critics say ChatGPT creator’s proposal to allow erotica, slurs and other adult content undermines its mission statementOpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is exploring whether users should be allowed to create artificial intelligence-generated pornography and other explicit content with its products.While the company stressed that its ban on deepfakes would continue to apply to adult material, campaigners suggested the proposal undermined its mission statement to produce “safe and be

Industry’s digital watermarking scheme will add to existing safeguards on TikTok’s own toolsTikTok will flag users who upload AI-generated content (AIGC) to the video-sharing site from other platforms, the company says, becoming the first major video site to automatically label such content for users to see.Content created using TikTok’s own AI tools is already automatically marked as such to viewers, and the company has required creators to manually add the same labels to thei

Fears ‘deadbots’ could cause psychological harm to their creators and users or digitally ‘haunt’ themDigital recreations of dead people are on the cusp of reality and urgently need regulation, AI ethicists have argued, warning “deadbots” could cause psychological harm to, and even “haunt”, their creators and users.Such services, which are already technically possible to create and legally permissible, could let users upload their conversations with

Challenge cited California state law that allows plaintiffs and defendants to remove judge they believe can’t grant impartial trialThe California judge presiding over Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, has removed himself from the case. Judge Ethan Schulman on Monday sustained a challenge from Musk’s lawyers, which cited a California state law that allows plaintiffs and defendants to remove a judge they believe cannot grant an impartial trial.The law, k

AlphaFold breakthrough may bolster work in fields from antibiotics and cancer therapy to resilient cropsResearchers have hailed another “leap forward” for artificial intelligence after Google DeepMind unveiled the latest version of its AlphaFold program, which can predict how proteins behave in the complex symphony of life.The breakthrough promises to shed fresh light on the biological machinery that underpins living organisms and drive breakthroughs in fields from antibiotics and ca

Paintings identified as fake using cutting-edge technology are ‘tip of the iceberg’ specialist Dr Carina Popovici saysA “Monet” and a “Renoir” are among up to 40 fake paintings that are being offered for sale on eBay, according to research by a leading expert.Dr Carina Popovici, a specialist in authenticating artwork, said she applied cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to pictures advertised on the online platform and was shocked to discover

Netflix’s hit show The Circle recently introduced an AI chatbot contestant, a potentially worrying sign of where we’re headingAccording to his profile, Max, a contestant on season six of the Netflix reality show The Circle, is 26 years old, brunette and into his Australian shepherd, Pippa. He is a veterinary intern from Pismo Beach, California, and a bit cheeky – “single, but my dog is taken”. He enters into the Circle chat, the fake social media service contestants

Program aims to help create better disability support plans to guide carers and support workers’ response to challenging behaviourGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastAustralian researchers hope a new AI-supported educational program will help reduce the use of restraints and seclusion on people with disability.The Promoting Positive Behaviour Support Practice program is designed to help practitioners create safer, respectful, constructive plans to guide

With large language models needing quality data, some publishers are offering theirs at a price while others are blocking accessOpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, knows that high-quality data matters in the artificial intelligence business – and news publishers have vast amounts of it.“It would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” the company said this year in a submission to the UK’s House of Lords, adding that limit

Victoria Shi is modelled on Rosalie Nombre, a singer and former contestant on Ukraine’s version of the reality show The BachelorUkraine on Wednesday presented an AI-generated spokesperson called Victoria who will make official statements on behalf of its foreign ministry.The ministry said it would “for the first time in history” use a digital spokesperson to read its statements, which will still be written by humans. Continue reading...

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCEICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPANRoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDSCybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICHEnjoy today’s videos! In this

Head coach Jon Lewis credits AI with helping draw Ashes‘It will help with borderline decisions in terms of selection’The England Women’s head coach, Jon Lewis, has revealed how he is using AI as a selection tool and credits the technology with helping his side draw last summer’s Ashes series.Lewis was first exposed to the work of London-based PSi when he took charge of the Women’s Premier League franchise UP Warriorz in India and now uses the company to bolster the

Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to read what had long been thought unreadableMore than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front-page news.Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the

Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to uncover lives of ancient philosophersMore than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of Classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front page news.Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the libr

In history, as in romance, beginnings matter – so what we do now will be crucial in shaping the futureIn these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War, as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued? Or, as I have found myself suggesting on occasion,

Music giant pulled content amid row over issues such as deepfake AI-generated music and artists’ compensationTikTok and Universal Music Group have reached a deal that will allow songs and artists from its labels including Olivia Rodrigo and Drake to return to the platform.The world’s largest music company began pulling content from TikTok in February after falling out with TikTok over issues including artist compensation and the use of artificial intelligence-generated music on the v

Challenger to market leader OpenAI says it wants to ‘meet users where they are’ and become part of users’ everyday lifeOpenAI’s ChatGPT is facing serious competition, as the company’s rival Anthropic brings its Claude chatbot to iPhones. Anthropic, led by a group of former OpenAI staff who quit over differences with chief executive Sam Altman, have a product that already beats ChatGPT on some measures of intelligence, and now wants to win over everyday users.“