Like it or loathe it, the robot revolution is now well underway and the futures described by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick are fast turning from science fiction into science fact. But should robots have rights? And will humanity ever reach a point where human and machine are treated the same?
There’s no shortage of dire warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence these days. Modern prophets, such as late physicist Stephen Hawking and investor Elon Musk, foretell the imminent decline of humanity. With the advent of artificial general intelligence and self-designed intelligent programs, new and more intelligent AI will appear, rapidly creating ever smarter machines that will, eventually, surpass us.
As of the third quarter of 2019, music streaming giant Spotify had 113 million paid subscribers worldwide — but it’s still missing some famous albums that many listeners feel they can’t live without. And in today’s digital world, it can be expensive and difficult to get a physical copy of those missing albums.
The video games industry is worth more than movies and music combined, with more than 2.5 billion players around the world. Freemium games have driven much of the success, ever since titles like Angry Birds, Farmville and Candy Crush emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Love them or hate them, smartphones have become ubiquitous in everyday life. And while they have many positive uses, people remain concerned about the potential negative harms of excessively using them – especially in children and teens
The nation’s second-largest health system, Ascension, has agreed to allow the software behemoth Google access to tens of millions of patient records. The partnership, called Project Nightingale, aims to improve how information is used for patient care. Specifically, Ascension and Google are trying to build tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, “to make health records more useful, more accessible and more searchable” for doctors.
Robotics is rapidly being transformed by advances in artificial intelligence. And the benefits are widespread: We are seeing safer vehicles with the ability to automatically brake in an emergency, robotic arms transforming factory lines that were once offshored and new robots that can do everything from shop for groceries to deliver prescription drugs to people who have trouble doing it themselves.
Some years ago, tired of scrolling through Netflix in search of something we hadn’t seen yet, I suggested to my partner that we play a video game instead. Not the gaming type, she wasn’t too keen on the idea, but I promised something where she didn’t have to “aimlessly collect things”. The game we played was Dear Esther, which is part of the burgeoning trend in “literary video games”
All over the world, the internet has provided extraordinary socioeconomic opportunities to businesses, governments, and individuals. But less developed countries…
Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, the final film in the epic Star Wars series, will hit the big screens on December 19. Science fiction in general – and Star Wars in particular – is a hugely popular genre, much because of the titillating possibility that the mind-blowing technology we see on screen could one day work.