Lifeboat Foundation

Robin Murphy, a roboticist at Texas A&M University has published a Focus piece in the journal Science Robotics outlining her views on the robots portrayed in “Star Wars,” most particularly those featured in “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” In her article, she says she believes that the portrayals of robots in both movies are quite creative, but suggests they are not wild enough to compete with robots that are made and used in the real world today.

Murphy begins by noting that one robot in particular, IG-11 in the Mandalorian, makes for good viewing with a rotating head that allows for shooting at targets in any direction, but she also notes that such a robot would very likely be overly susceptible to joint failure and would be saddled with huge computational demands. She suggests a more practical design would involve the use of fixed-array sensors.

Murphy also notes that robots in “Star Wars” movies do fail on occasion, generally during suspenseful scenes, which she further notes might explain why the empire met with its demise. As just one example, she wonders why the stormtroopers so often miss their targets. She also notes that in some ways, droids in “Star Wars” movies tend to be far more advanced than droids in the real world, allowing them to hold human-like jobs such as bartending, teaching or translating. In so doing, she points out, producers of the movies have shied away from showing them doing more mundane work, like mining.

A virtual robot arm has learned to solve a wide range of different puzzles —stacking blocks, setting the table, arranging chess pieces—without having to be retrained for each task. It did this by playing against a second robot arm that was trained to give it harder and harder challenges.

Self play: Developed by researchers at OpenAI, the identical robot arms—Alice and Bob—learn by playing a game against each other in a simulation, without human input. The robots use reinforcement learning, a technique in which AIs are trained by trial and error what actions to take in different situations to achieve certain goals. The game involves moving objects around on a virtual tabletop. By arranging objects in specific ways, Alice tries to set puzzles that are hard for Bob to solve. Bob tries to solve Alice’s puzzles. As they learn, Alice sets more complex puzzles and Bob gets better at solving them.

AI take over of entertainment industry by about 2030. Already starting, and already messy.

Will the robots replace us all one day? Who knows, but chances are they will eventually learn how to create a superhero movie. Ergo, the start of one of the great legal debates in Hollywood history.

For World Quantum Day, the Google Quantum AI team is introducing people to the world of quantum computing by teaming up with Doublespeak Games to make The Qubit Game, a journey into quantum computing.

The Force was strong in him. One of Enzo Romero’s favorite activities is playing the guitar, which he effortlessly does with his bright blue hand. Initially, it used to hurt, as he used his handless right arm to press down on chords. But now, with fingers on the end, he can play music painlessly.

Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, marketed as simply The Empire Strikes Back, is a 1980 film directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan from a story by George Lucas. It is the second part of the Star Wars original trilogy.

Continue reading “Engineer born with one hand makes a prosthetic one out of plastic bottles for $800” »

AMD is at it again. 😃

The launch of AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D is imminent. Chips are out in the wild and early bird reviews and benchmarks are popping up on the web. Given that AMD has been touting the gaming prowess of the 5800X3D, we’ve been waiting to see if that claim holds up. And it appears that it does.

Peruvian hardware site Xanxo Gaming (via 3DCenter) managed to get hold of a retail Ryzen 7 5800X3D and put it through a comprehensive suite of benchmarks, comparing it to Intel’s Core i9 12900KF. As the site wasn’t sampled by AMD, it’s not subject to an embargo.

Continue reading “AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D beats the Core i9 12900K in gaming benchmarks” »

In 2021, there was an estimated 2.7 billion gamers globally, in a gaming market that is valued at $300+ billion. The opportunity for developers is huge — but so is the temptation for fraudsters looking for ways to take advantage of the revenue that’s pouring into the industry. But according to the recent Denuvo Global Gaming Survey, many developers don’t fully know how cheating, tampering, and piracy has impacted their revenues — or don’t think they’ve been affected at all.

When players recognize cheating in a game, they often simply quit, because after all, there are an endless number of titles available. Engagement then tanks, and so does a game’s reputation — especially when developers’ social media accounts are overrun with complaints and demands that the issues be fixed.

Tampering and piracy, which usually go hand in hand, undermine a game’s sales, player engagement, and retention, particularly in the first few weeks of a game’s release. While PC and mobile operating systems are more vulnerable, consoles can still be hit, especially because so many games have co-op modes and live updates. For free-to-play games and games that offer in-game items, tampering can also directly impact monetization.

AI will completely take over game development by the early 2030s. To a point where there will be almost no human developers. Just people telling AI what they want to play and it builds it in real time.

Over the past few years we’ve seen massive improvements in AI technology, from GPT-3, AI picture generation to self-driving cars and drug discovery. But can machine learning progress change games?

Continue reading “How will AI progress impact gaming” »

No E3 this year, but we’ll get another Summer Game Fest.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, has been completely canceled for 2022. The event was originally going to be held in person this year but was shifted to an online showcase over COVID-19 concerns. That online showcase has now been canceled.