Category 21st Century Techniques

What is AI fiction?

Al fiction is a constantly evolving genre that gives us a peek into the potential umides and downsides of intelligent machines whether it is books written by humans with robots and Al as central characters or stories composed entirely by machine learning algorithms. Al fiction never fails to captivate readers and stimulate discussions about what is in store for technology in the future. Artificial intelligence hum long barn a popular topic in soner fiction from haar

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One recent devettipment in Al fiction is the merger of novels written retimly by artial de The first Al generated novel 1 the Road caine at in 2018 hased on data gathered by namically exhand ca on a road trip from New York to New Orleans it was moted by an operimental 2016 sort story co-written by Al and sapanese researchers troulated as The Day a Computer Visite a Novel which nearly won a literary prize. In the same year, Sunspring, an Al-authored screenplay, was placed in the top 10 at a London sci-fi film festival. In the first year of the pandemic, we got Pharmako-Al, a genre-bender philosophical book co-written by an Al and K. Allado-McDowell, founder of Google’s Artists and a machine intelligence programme, GPT-3. These experimental works of fiction represent an intriguing new avenue for Al fiction. With machine learning algorithms capable of generating coherent narratives and dialogue, it is possible that we may soon see a flood of novels, stories, and even movies written entirely by Al.

Science fiction (sci-fi) & Al

For generations, sci-fi has foreseen the pervasive influence of Al in our daily life. Its representation in mainstream media has played a pivotal role in shaping public opinions towards this technological advancement Films such as The Terminator and Ex Machina have helped to shape the cultural narrative around Al, with many people viewing intelligent machines as potential threats to human safety and autonomy. At the same time, this type of speculative fiction has also explored the more positive aspects of Al, from the helpful robots of Wall-E to the benevolent supercomputers of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As Al technology continues to evolve, it’s likely that all the good, bad, and ugly visions of intelligent machines will continue to be explored in fiction.

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A robot chef that learns from videos

You might not often think about it that way, but cooking is a difficult skill with a number of factors in play. Just ask a robot! While human beings can learn to cook through observation, the same cannot be done easily by a robot. Programming a robot that can make a variety of dishes is not only costly, but also time-consuming.

A group of researchers from the University of Cambridge have programmed their robotic chef with a cookbook – eight simple salad recipes. The robot was not only able to identify which recipe was being prepared after watching a video of a human demonstrating it, but was also then able to make it. The results were reported in the journal ‘IEEE Access.’

Simple salads

For this study, the researchers started off by devising eight simple salad recipes and then made videos of themselves making these. A publicly available neural network programmed to identify a range of different objects was then used to train the robot chef.

The robot watched 16 videos and was able to recognise the correct recipe 93% of the time (15 times out of 16), even though it detected only 83% of the actions of the human chef in the video. The robot was able to recognise that slight variations (portions or human error) were just that, and not a new recipe. It even recognised the demonstration of a new, ninth salad, added it to its cookbook and made it.

Hold it up for them

The researchers were amazed at the amount of nuance that the robot could grasp. For the robot to identify, the demonstrators had to hold up the fruit or vegetable so that the robot could see the whole fruit or vegetable, before it was chopped.

These videos, however, were nowhere like the food videos with fast cuts and visual effects that trend on social media. While these are too hard for a robot to follow at the moment, researchers believe that robot chefs will get better and faster at identifying ingredients in videos like those with time, thereby becoming capable of learning a range of recipes quickly.

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What is meaning of term ‘loT’?

IoT stands for Internet of Things. It describes the network of physical objects or things that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies to serve the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the internet. There are nearly 10 billion loT devices today, ranging from simple household devices to sophisticated industrial tools. This number is only expected to rise further, reaching over 20 billion by 2025.

The loT has become one of the most important technologies of the 21st century as it blurs the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, allowing them to cooperate better than ever before.

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How do barcodes work?

Barcodes- those simple labels with black stripes-have revolutionised the retail industry. The stripes printed on product packaging contain important information regarding the product. Each barcode is made of varying widths of bars and spaces between them. The barcodes can be decoded only through special devices such as a laser or optical scanner, the kind used at supermarkets. Barcodes enable easy and fast transaction as well as analysis of sales data stored in the computer.

The information contained in barcodes is called Symbology. As soon as a barcode is passed through a scanner, all information pertaining to the product is shown on a computer screen. Shopkeepers love this system because it enables easy and fast transaction as well as analysis of sales data (stored in the computer). This system has a very low margin of error during sale. Barcodes are also useful for manufacturers since a unique identity can be inserted for each box of products to help in packaging and transportation

These days other geometric patterns are used in place of the original parallel bars but they are all generally referred to as barcodes.

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What is a Companion distraction-free smartphone?

Companion is a distraction-free smartphone that has the basic functions of a smartphone, but is stripped of everything that could distract you. It can be worn as a necklace, clipped to belt loops, or wherever preferred. Its small, minimalist design features an E-ink display that won’t tempt users with notifications throughout the day. It has an earpiece and microphone for taking calls, a wide + ultra-wide camera lens with flash, and an air quality sensor. It has no ports, thus freeing up internal space and making the device more water resistant, and it is charged wirelessly. Companion is constructed from a bioplastic that is easily manufactured and disassembled for repair or dismantled at end-of-life. This helps create a closed loop system where plastic is recycled many times over without ending up in a landfill. The texture of the bioplastic mimics the slightly rough feel of pebbles, while the device curves at all angles mimicking the natural design of pebbles. The device’s colours feature a speckle pattern on top of soft hues that resemble the colours and patterns of naturally-found pebbles.

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HOW DO WE PERCEIVE HUMAN- LIKE ROBOTS?

Have you ever wondered how we may perceive human-like robots? According to new research, when robots engage with people and display human-like emotions, then people may perceive them as capable of thinking and acting on their own beliefs, rather than being driven by programs.

At a time when the tendency to attribute independent thought and intentional behaviour to robots hasn’t been fully understood, a group of researchers from the American Psychological Association came up with these experiments. Their results were published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior.

Intentional or mechanical?

Researchers examined how people perceived a human-like robot across three experiments that involved 119 participants. Participants completed a questionnaire before and after interacting with the iCub robot. Questions were typically images of the robot in different situations, asking the participants to identify if the robot’s motivation in each of these situations was intentional or mechanical.

The researchers remotely controlled iCub’s actions in the first two experiments. This meant that it greeted the participants, introduced itself. asked the participants for their names, and even maintained eye contact. Participants then watched three short video documentaries with the robot. which was programmed to respond with sounds and facial expressions.

The researchers programmed iCub to be more like a machine in the third experiment. This meant that it did not maintain eye contact, spoke only recorded sentences to the questionnaire before and after interacting with the iCub robot. Questions were typically images of the robot in different situations, asking the participants to identify if the robot’s motivation in each of these situations was intentional or mechanical.

The researchers remotely controlled iCub’s actions in the first two experiments. This meant that it greeted the participants, introduced itself. asked the participants for their names, and even maintained eye contact. Participants then watched three short video documentaries with the robot. which was programmed to respond with sounds and facial expressions.

The researchers programmed iCub to be more like a machine in the third experiment. This meant that it did not maintain eye contact, spoke only recorded sentences to the participants, and even its emotional reactions were replaced with beeps and repetitive movements of its parts.

Behaviour matters

The researchers were able to find that participants who watched videos with the human-like robot were more likely to rate the robot’s actions as intentional and not programmed, while those who interacted with the machine-like robot were not. This shows that human-like behaviour is important for robots to be perceived as an intentional agent by humans.

Researchers believe that this could play a part in the design of social robots of the future. According to them, the next step of research in this area is to determine contexts where social bonding and attribution of intentionality to robots proves beneficial for the well-being of humans.

Picture Credit : Google