Sunday, June 26, 2016

"Elon Musk's new company is developing robots to do your housework"

Sure you've got your rockets and your electric vehicles and your solar installers but what would really tie it all together?

From Science Alert. June 22:

TAKE MY MONEY.
For most people, housework is the absolute worst, and it’s kinda weird how in 2016, we still don’t have anything remotely like Rosie the robot maid, who vacuumed the hell out of the Jetsons’ house.
Well, it might finally be our time, because multitasking entrepreneur Elon Musk just announced that his new robotics firm, Open AI, will be developing 'domestic robots' that can perform basic household chores.
To accelerate the process, Open AI will be developing the robots based on technology that already exists - basically, it’s going to be taking off-the-shelf robots and customising them to do housework.

"There are existing techniques for specific tasks, but we believe that learning algorithms can eventually be made reliable enough to create a general-purpose robot," Open AI says in a blog post.

Open AI launched back in December 2015, and is headed up by Musk and Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator - a US company that provides seed funding for startups. Since then, it’s secured US$1 billion in funding from tech heavy-hitters such as PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.


The idea behind the non-profit is to bring artificial intelligence to our everyday lives, rather than keeping it locked up in robotics labs around the world.

"We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as is possible safely," the company announced at its launch. ...MORE

Roger that, extend human will, spirit of liberty, over.

It appears the (so-called) parody site "Bored Elon Musk" was real after all:


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