Free Republic

Sen. John McCain on Sunday blamed the airstrike that killed 22 people in an Afghan hospital run by the medical charity Doctors without Borders on the “fog of war” and the Obama administration’s withdraw of U.S. troops from the war zone. “We call it fog of war, unfortunately. And it’s a tragedy, and our thoughts and prayers go out to them,” Mr. McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot in the Vietnam War who now chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He said that the tragedy likely would have been avoided if U.S. troops...

Can you imagine having sex with a humanoid robot? Apparently, this will be the norm in a few short decades. Futurologist Dr Ian Pearson has released a report in which he predicts the future of sex. He released the report in partnership with Bondara, one of the UK's leading sex toy shops. Dr. Pearson makes the point that robotic sex toys - vibrators - have been in use for around a century, and that virtual reality porn is about to become mainstream.

They are yet to hit the shelves, but activists are already campaigning against the sale of so-called sex robots, which may be "harmful and contribute to inequalities in society." Several companies are developing robots that can be used as sexual substitutes for humans, leading to the launch of the "Campaign against sex robots" on Tuesday to highlight the potential dangers.

Researchers have discovered how to let bacteria control the movement and behavior of a robot, just like what the brain does to the human body. ... Scientists from Virginia tech developed bacteria that can control a robotic car. The robot’s “brain” was replaced with bacterial community, enabling the car to move towards the food sources. The bacteria in the robot’s brain send biochechemical signals to machine’s processor to move its mechanical body. The bacteria were bioengineered to emit green or red signals depending on the condition they found in their environment. Under repeated observations, the scientists noticed that the robot...

A few weeks ago, Google researchers announced that they had peered inside the mind of an artificial intelligence program. What they discovered was a demonic hellscape. You’ve seen the pictures. These are hallucinations produced by a cluster of simulated neurons trained to identify objects in a picture. The researchers wanted to better understand how the neural network operates, so they asked it to use its imagination. To daydream a little. At first, they gave the computer abstract images to interpret — like a field of clouds. It was a Rorschach test. The artificial neurons saw what they wanted to see,...

Researchers have shown that machines are inching closer to self-learning, and perhaps even copping a little attitude. Over at Google, a computer program using a database of movie scripts was asked again and again by researchers to define morality. It struggles to do so, and in a conversation recorded by its human engineers, becomes exasperated and ends the conversation by lashing out at its human inquisitor. Here’s part of the exchange, as related in a paper presented this week: Human: Tell me the definition of morality. Machine: I don’t have ethics. Human: Look, I need help; I need to know...

"The Echo may be the closest thing we’ll have to a Star Trek computer at home." – CNET "Echo could hear my voice even when music was playing loudly…" – USA Today "With Amazon Echo, it was love at first sight." – Re/code What is Amazon Echo? Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It's hands-free and always on. With seven microphones and beam-forming technology, Echo can hear you from across the room—even while music is playing. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. Echo connects to Alexa, a cloud-based voice service,...

Strategy games such as chess have long been considered important ways to measure artificial intelligence. But A.I. researchers at Carnegie Mellon University chose a different, and in some ways, more challenging game: poker. Susan Koeppen of CBS Pittsburgh station KDKA reports on what happens when the chips are down. Doug Polk, 26, is considered the best heads up, or one on one, no limit Texas hold 'em player in the world. He's defeated countless opponents and won millions of dollars. Polk bet his reputation that he could beat Claudico, Carnegie Mellon's artificial intelligence super computer.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that the decision on whether humans live or die will be left to artificial intelligence when self-driving cars become a reality.

Computers have as much consciousness as cars or concrete. This will not change. They’re machines. They can be programmed to follow directions and calculate certain kinds of solutions within those directed parameters. That’s it. That’s the beginning and end of the story. Why do some technocrats believe computers will gain actual consciousness? They think a) the brain is a machine that expresses consciousness via information processing, and b) information processing is all the consciousness there is. To sum up, technocrats are high-IQ idiots. You can assemble all the information in the world and cross-reference it 100 billion different ways; you...

He was trying to take out some cash, armed with a pellet gun – but a blade-flashing sushi chef stood it his way. According to the Champaign News-Gazette, the incident occurred Tuesday at the Kamakura Japanese restaurant in Champaign when 23-year-old Clayton Dial entered the restaurant, pulled what appeared to be a revolver and demanded cash from the teenaged hostess. Sushi chef Tetsuji Miwa overheard the exchange. “He just stood there and started asking for money,” Miwa told the paper. I saw her face. She was very scared.” “I heard him the second time. He said, ‘Give me your money....

[Most of these, except for a couple, are very positive achievements. Let’s work for more in 2015, Happy New Year!] The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True In 2014 By George Dvorsky As 2014 comes to a close, it's time to reflect on the most futuristic breakthroughs and developments of the past year. This year's crop features a slew of incredible technological, scientific, and social achievements, from mind-to-mind communication to self-guiding sniper bullets. Here are 15 predictions that came true in 2014. Technologically-assisted telepathy was successfully demonstrated in humans For the first time ever, two humans exchanged thoughts via mind-to-mind...

Stanford to host 100-year study on artificial intelligence Stanford University will lead a 100-year effort to study the long-term implications of artificial intelligence in all aspects of life. By Chris Cesare Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and of computer science at Stanford, will serve as faculty director of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence. Stanford University has invited leading thinkers from several institutions to begin a 100-year effort to study and anticipate how the effects of artificial intelligence will ripple through every aspect of how people work, live and play. This effort, called the One Hundred Year...

That an octopus called Paul had a better success rate than Goldman Sachs when predicting World Cup results (credit to the Wall Street Journal for the headline “Octopus Beats Vampire Squid”) tells you something about the wisdom of guessing the future in public. Guessing what the world will look like in 50 years’ time, however, is pretty safe, as I won’t be here to see myself proved wrong. Or will I? If Google’s director of engineering has his way, we’ll all be around indefinitely – in the cloud at least. AI (artificial intelligence) guru Ray Kurzweil is one of a...

"You know all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he's like... yeah, he's sure he can control the demon, [but] it doesn't work out." This has become a recurring theme in Musk's public comments, and each time he warns of the AI bogeyman it seems even more dire. In June, Musk raised the specter of the "Terminator" franchise, saying that he invests in companies working on artificial intelligence just to be able to keep an eye on the technology. In August, he reiterated his concerns in a tweet, writing that AI is...

DETROIT (Reuters) - An Acura RLX sedan demonstrated an unusual way to tow another car this week: the vehicles were not physically attached. The second car drove itself, following instructions beamed over by the first in a feat of technology that indicates a new stage in automation is happening faster than many expected. An Acura RLX sedan brakes to avoid a mannequin "pedestrian"  

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. ... “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda [?], and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said. ... “Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. ... The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use...

Human rights group Amnesty International has taken “unprecedented” action to deal with unrest in Ferguson by sending a delegation that has never before been deployed inside the United States.The organization has had members on the ground in Ferguson since Thursday, in the wake of the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. According to a news release, the 12-person delegation is there to “observe police and protester activity, gather testimony, seek meetings with officials and offer support to the community.”Organizers will also train local activists on methods of non-violent protest.“Law enforcement, from the FBI to state...

Deciding to cancel a cable service subscription can be difficult -- breaking the news to the cable company can be near-impossible. Tech journalist Ryan Block and his wife Veronica Belmont tried to cancel their Comcast service last week over the phone. Block says 10 minutes into his frustrating conversation with the Comcast customer service representative, he started recording the phone call, which he posted on SoundCloud. The representative, whose name Block withheld, repeatedly demanded to know why Block would want to cancel the service. Block tells WTOP he and his wife told the representative they wanted to change providers, before...

In a story unlikely to receive attention from the mainstream media in the United States, a former Guantanamo Bay captive has been arrested in Spain for operating what authorities there say is a sophisticated jihadist recruitment network. Spanish media is reporting that the one-time Gitmo prisoner is a 46-year-old Moroccan named Lahcen Ikassrien, who heads an Islamic cell that recruits fighters for the Syrian and Iraqi-based terror group known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Ikassrien and seven others were arrested in Madrid recently as part of a dozen raids on terrorism cells in the Spanish capital,...