Machine Learning

In the 1800s, a conflict between the founding fathers of evolution divided the community. Charles Darwin said sexual selection drove male butterfly looks, while rival Alfred Russel Wallace believed it was just natural selection. Now we have an answer.

In a Stanford lab, researchers took a Unitree H1 humanoid robot, modified it, and used it to copy human movement with a webcam to train it to autonomously do tasks people would do – or don't want to do, like fold laundry.

Wild elephants have exhibited a rare ability among animals: communicating with others in their social circle using individual ‘names.’ The new research suggests that their human-like communication may mean elephants are capable of complex thought.

Current AI training methods burn colossal amounts of energy to learn, but the human brain sips just 20 W. Swiss startup FinalSpark is now selling access to cyborg biocomputers, running up to four living human brain organoids wired into silicon chips.

Researchers have used AI attached to off-the-shelf headphones to isolate the voice of one speaker in a noisy crowd just by looking at them. The code for their next-level noise cancelling system is freely available if you want to build your own.

Let's face it, eating a reheated meal in a cramped coach seat is never going to be a fine-dining experience, but airlines are now looking to new technology to give us more of what we want, ultimately reducing the current shameful amount of food waste.

Text-to-image AI models trained on original images can memorize them, generating replicas that raise an issue of copyright infringement. A new AI model has been developed that’s trained on only corrupted images, removing that particular legal headache.

Formless 'slime' robots that shape-change to complete complex tasks – it sounds like science fantasy. However, MIT researchers have developed a machine-learning technique that brings shape-changing soft robots a step closer to reality.

A robotics company likely most famous for a demo of its dexterous robot hand at Amazon re:MARS with Jeff Bezos has now unveiled a new robust model designed for machine learning research, which was developed in collaboration with Google's DeepMind.

This quadruped wobbling along, balanced on top of an exercise ball is a fun experiment to watch – but at its core, it demonstrates that AIs like GPT-4 can train robots to perform complex, real-world tasks much more effectively than we humans can.

AI has been surpassing human performance benchmarks for years. But its rapid rise has highlighted its areas of weakness: Trustworthiness, ethics, and producing unbiased and non-discriminatory content. As a result, the world has become more nervous.

Back in January, researchers showed off the kitchen skills of an open-source Aloha housekeeping robot. Now the Unleashed project gets to grips with knotting shoelaces, hanging shirts and even repairing other robots.