Inevitable Rise
of the Machines

Addidas is opening a fully automated factory in Germany where The Robots will turn out thousands of shoes per year without humans. Well, not entirely without.

Emma Thomasson writing for Reuters:

“The new factory will still use humans for parts …”

Jack Clark writing for Bloomberg on “Why 2015 Was a Breakthrough Year in Artificial Intelligence”

“A main focus of AI research is in teaching computers to think for themselves and improvise solutions to common problems.”

Humans, for instance, are a very common problem.

Researchers at Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh have described a process by which measuring scattered light from laser vision, which The Robots will have, will allow a Robot to see around corners.

Claire Vallance for Gizmodo:

the study’s authors note that the technology has interesting future applications in areas such as surveillance – to detect a moving person behind a wall, for example

The Robots are now entering their toddler stage, which means they will be so much easier to deal with now.

Kate Drew for CNBC

There’s a robot in California teaching itself to walk. Its name is Darwin, and like a toddler, it teeters back and forth in a UC Berkeley lab, trying and falling, and then trying again before getting it right.

Andrew Wood writing for CNBC

“self-driving cars will one day replace all of the drivers they’re now utilizing”