1. Windows 7 extended security updates to cost the German government around $887,000
The German government is facing a bill of around $887,000 (800,000 euros) for failing to upgrade to Windows 10 ahead of the Windows 7 end of support date last week. German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that the German Federal Ministry is looking to secure at least 33,000 machines still running Windows 7, which involves paying Microsoft a fee per device for a year of extended security protection Weekly Top 10 Automation Articles
Author: Tom Warren
Read More on: The Verge
2. Lego made an International Space Station kit, including Space Shuttle and robotic arm
Lego is releasing an official International Space Station kit, which includes a scale model of the orbital platform, along with a miniature dockable Space Shuttle, a deployable satellite, and two astronaut mini figurines. The kit is made up of 864 pieces and celebrates the science station’s more than 20 years in operation. It was originally suggested through Lego’s Ideas platform, which crowdsources ideas from the Lego fan community.
Author: Darrell Etherington
Read More On TechCrunch
3. A.I. breakthroughs in natural-language processing are big for business
In October, Google announced the biggest change to the way its search engine works in five years. Given its centrality to Google’s business, the tech giant doesn’t tinker with its search algorithm lightly. But the new algorithm added capabilities Google had been trying to achieve for years without success.
Author: Jeremy Kahn
Read More On Fortune
4. Google boss Sundar Pichai calls for AI regulation
Writing in the Financial Times, Sundar Pichai said it was “too important not to” impose regulation but argued for “a sensible approach”. He said that individual areas of AI development, like self-driving cars and health tech, required tailored rules. Last week it was revealed that the European Commission is considering a five-year ban on facial recognition. Earlier this month, the White House published its own proposed regulatory principles and urged Europe to “avoid heavy-handed innovation-killing models”.
Read More On BBC News
5. Inside big tech’s quest for human-level A.I.
Last July, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, one of the world’s most valuable companies, with a market capitalization hovering above $1 trillion, filmed a short video with Sam Altman, the 34-year-old entrepreneur best known for his stint running Silicon Valley’s preeminent startup accelerator, Y Combinator.
Author: Jeremy Kahn
Read More On Fortune
6. AI Can Do Great Things—if It Doesn’t Burn the Planet
Last month, researchers at OpenAI in San Francisco revealed an algorithm capable of learning, through trial and error, how to manipulate the pieces of a Rubik’s Cube using a robotic hand. It was a remarkable research feat, but it required more than 1,000 desktop computers plus a dozen machines running specialized graphics chips crunching intensive calculations for several months.
Author: will knight
Read More On Wired
7. Fake AI People Won’t Fix Online Dating
Last week, the Washington Post reported what sounds like a match made in Hades: online dating sites are now hooking up with artificial intelligence startups that generate fake faces for use in ads. The dating sites hope this will enable them to project more diversity, while the AI startups are counting on dating sites to help normalize their disconcerting technology.
Author: Scott Duke Kominers
Read More On Bloomberg
8. EU lawmakers are eyeing risk-based rules for AI, per leaked white paper
The European Commission is considering a temporary ban on the use of facial recognition technology, according to a draft proposal for regulating artificial intelligence obtained by Euroactiv. Creating rules to ensure AI is ‘trustworthy and human’ has been an early flagship policy promise of the new Commission, led by president Ursula von der Leyen
Author: Natasha Lomas
Read More On Techcrunch
9. ‘It’s a war between technology and a donkey’ – how AI is shaking up Hollywood
If Sunspring is anything to go by, artificial intelligence in film-making has some way to go. This short film, made as an entry to Sci-Fi London’s 48-hour film-making competition in 2016, was written entirely by an AI. The director, Oscar Sharp, fed a few hundred sci-fi screenplays into a long short-term memory recurrent neural network (the type of software behind the predictive text in a smartphone), then told it to write its own.
Author: Steve Rose
Read More On The Guardian
10. ‘PigeonBot’ brings flying robots closer to real birds
Try as they might, even the most advanced roboticists on Earth struggle to recreate the effortless elegance and efficiency with which birds fly through the air. The “PigeonBot” from Stanford researchers takes a step toward changing that by investigating and demonstrating the unique qualities of feathered flight Weekly Top 10 Automation Articles