With a service as big as?YouTube ? with literally dozens of hours of new content popping up every minute ? it's easy to forget how it all began. Today marks the seventh birthday of YouTube's very first clip which, like much of the site's user-generated content, is a bit humorous but almost entirely pointless.
The 19-second video is entitled?Me at the zoo, and it features YouTube co-founder?Jawed Karim as he talks a bit about elephants and their?really long trunks. The short clip has tallied nearly 7.5 million views since it popped online in April of 2005, which is an impressive number but nowhere near some of the heavy viral hitters like?Evolution of Dance (194 million views) or?Charlie bit my finger (448 million views).
In the seven years since its launch, YouTube has seen some truly explosive growth. The site now enjoys over 800 million unique viewers per month, watching over four billion videos each day. 60 hours of video is uploaded to the?streaming portal every minute, which is the equivalent of roughly 11,368 copies of?Me at the zoo. That's a lot of elephants.
Light-based communication seems to wind throughout the MIT Media Lab -- it is a universal language, after all, since many devices output light, be it with a dedicated LED or a standard LCD, and have the capacity to view and interpret it. One such device, coined Droplet, essentially redirects light from one source to another, while also serving as a physical interface for tablet-based tasks. Rob Hemsley, a research assistant at the Media Lab, was on hand to demonstrate two of his projects. Droplet is a compact self-contained module with an integrated RGB LED, a photodiode and a CR1216 lithium coin battery -- which provides roughly one day of power in the gadget's current early prototype status. Today's demo used a computer-connected HDTV and a capacitive-touch-enabled tablet. Using the TV to pull up a custom Google Calendar module, Hemsley held the Droplet up to a defined area on the display, which then output a series of colors, transmitting data to the module. Then, that data was pushed to a tablet after placing the Droplet on the display, pulling up the same calendar appointment and providing a physical interface for adjusting the date and time, which is retained in the cloud and the module itself, which also outputs pulsing light as it counts down to the appointment time.
StackAR, the second project, functions in much the same way, but instead of outputting a countdown indicator, it displays schematics for a LilyPad Arduino when placed on the tablet, identifying connectors based on a pre-selected program. The capacitive display can recognize orientation, letting you drop the controller in any position throughout the surface, then outputting a map to match. Like the Droplet, StackAR can also recognize light input, even letting you program the Arduino directly from the tablet by outputting light, effectively simplifying the interface creation process even further. You can also add software control to the board, which will work in conjunction with the hardware, bringing universal control interfaces to the otherwise space-limited Arduino. Both projects appear to have incredible potential, but they're clearly not ready for production just yet. For now, you can get a better feel for Droplet and StackAR in our hands-on video just past the break.
Robots fighting wars could be blamed for mistakes on the battlefieldPublic release date: 23-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Molly McElroy mollywmc@uw.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington
As militaries develop autonomous robotic warriors to replace humans on the battlefield, new ethical questions emerge. If a robot in combat has a hardware malfunction or programming glitch that causes it to kill civilians, do we blame the robot, or the humans who created and deployed it?
Some argue that robots do not have free will and therefore cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. But University of Washington psychologists are finding that people don't have such a clear-cut view of humanoid robots.
The researchers' latest results show that humans apply a moderate amount of morality and other human characteristics to robots that are equipped with social capabilities and are capable of harming humans. In this case, the harm was financial, not life-threatening. But it still demonstrated how humans react to robot errors.
The findings imply that as robots become more sophisticated and humanlike, the public may hold them morally accountable for causing harm.
"We're moving toward a world where robots will be capable of harming humans," said lead author Peter Kahn, a UW associate professor of psychology. "With this study we're asking whether a robotic entity is conceptualized as just a tool, or as some form of a technological being that can be held responsible for its actions."
The paper was recently published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
In the study, Kahn and his research team had 40 undergraduate students play a scavenger hunt with a humanlike robot, Robovie. The robot appeared autonomous, but it was remotely controlled by a researcher concealed in another room.
After a bit of small talk with the robot, each participant had two minutes to locate objects from a list of items in the room. They all found the minimum, seven, to claim the $20 prize. But when their time was up, Robovie claimed they had found only five objects.
Then came the crux of the experiment: participants' reactions to the robot's miscount.
"Most argued with Robovie," said co-author Heather Gary, a UW doctoral student in developmental psychology. "Some accused Robovie of lying or cheating."
(Watch a video of one of the participants disagreeing with Robovie: http://depts.washington.edu/hints/video1b.shtml.)
When interviewed, 65 percent of participants said Robovie was to blame at least to a certain degree for wrongly scoring the scavenger hunt and unfairly denying the participants the $20 prize.
This suggests that as robots gain capabilities in language and social interactions, "it is likely that many people will hold a humanoid robot as partially accountable for a harm that it causes," the researchers wrote.
They argue that as militaries transform from human to robotic warfare, the chain of command that controls robots and the moral accountability of robotic warriors should be factored into jurisprudence and the Laws of Armed Conflict for cases when the robots hurt humans.
Kahn is also concerned about the morality of robotic warfare, period. "Using robotic warfare, such as drones, distances us from war, can numb us to human suffering, and make warfare more likely," he said.
###
The National Science Foundation funded the study. Co-authors at UW are Nathan Freier, Jolina Ruckert, Solace Shen, Heather Gary and Aimee Reichert. Other co-authors are Rachel Severson, Western Washington University; Brian Gill, Seattle Pacific University; and Takayuki Kanda and Hiroshi Ishiguro, both of Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan, which created Robovie.
For more information, contact Kahn at pkahn@uw.edu or Gary at 206-221-0643 or hgary@uw.edu. Pdf of the paper: http://depts.washington.edu/hints/publications/Robovie_Moral_Accountability_Study_HRI_2012_corrected.pdf
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Robots fighting wars could be blamed for mistakes on the battlefieldPublic release date: 23-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Molly McElroy mollywmc@uw.edu 206-543-2580 University of Washington
As militaries develop autonomous robotic warriors to replace humans on the battlefield, new ethical questions emerge. If a robot in combat has a hardware malfunction or programming glitch that causes it to kill civilians, do we blame the robot, or the humans who created and deployed it?
Some argue that robots do not have free will and therefore cannot be held morally accountable for their actions. But University of Washington psychologists are finding that people don't have such a clear-cut view of humanoid robots.
The researchers' latest results show that humans apply a moderate amount of morality and other human characteristics to robots that are equipped with social capabilities and are capable of harming humans. In this case, the harm was financial, not life-threatening. But it still demonstrated how humans react to robot errors.
The findings imply that as robots become more sophisticated and humanlike, the public may hold them morally accountable for causing harm.
"We're moving toward a world where robots will be capable of harming humans," said lead author Peter Kahn, a UW associate professor of psychology. "With this study we're asking whether a robotic entity is conceptualized as just a tool, or as some form of a technological being that can be held responsible for its actions."
The paper was recently published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
In the study, Kahn and his research team had 40 undergraduate students play a scavenger hunt with a humanlike robot, Robovie. The robot appeared autonomous, but it was remotely controlled by a researcher concealed in another room.
After a bit of small talk with the robot, each participant had two minutes to locate objects from a list of items in the room. They all found the minimum, seven, to claim the $20 prize. But when their time was up, Robovie claimed they had found only five objects.
Then came the crux of the experiment: participants' reactions to the robot's miscount.
"Most argued with Robovie," said co-author Heather Gary, a UW doctoral student in developmental psychology. "Some accused Robovie of lying or cheating."
(Watch a video of one of the participants disagreeing with Robovie: http://depts.washington.edu/hints/video1b.shtml.)
When interviewed, 65 percent of participants said Robovie was to blame at least to a certain degree for wrongly scoring the scavenger hunt and unfairly denying the participants the $20 prize.
This suggests that as robots gain capabilities in language and social interactions, "it is likely that many people will hold a humanoid robot as partially accountable for a harm that it causes," the researchers wrote.
They argue that as militaries transform from human to robotic warfare, the chain of command that controls robots and the moral accountability of robotic warriors should be factored into jurisprudence and the Laws of Armed Conflict for cases when the robots hurt humans.
Kahn is also concerned about the morality of robotic warfare, period. "Using robotic warfare, such as drones, distances us from war, can numb us to human suffering, and make warfare more likely," he said.
###
The National Science Foundation funded the study. Co-authors at UW are Nathan Freier, Jolina Ruckert, Solace Shen, Heather Gary and Aimee Reichert. Other co-authors are Rachel Severson, Western Washington University; Brian Gill, Seattle Pacific University; and Takayuki Kanda and Hiroshi Ishiguro, both of Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan, which created Robovie.
For more information, contact Kahn at pkahn@uw.edu or Gary at 206-221-0643 or hgary@uw.edu. Pdf of the paper: http://depts.washington.edu/hints/publications/Robovie_Moral_Accountability_Study_HRI_2012_corrected.pdf
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Today is officially Ivy Bridge day, in case you didn't already know. Intel took the wraps off the latest member of its processor family and the internet wasted no time putting the flagship Core i7-3770K through its paces. The 3.5GHz quad-core desktop chip comes packing not only some architectural tweaks, but a brand new integrated GPU in the form of the HD 4000. Oh, and it does all this using a brand new 22nm manufacturing process and 3D "Tri-Gate" transistors. What does that mean for you, the user? Lower power consumption, better performance and, surprisingly, unbelievably fast media transcoding. When AnandTech turned its eyes towards Quick Sync, the on-die media transcode engine introduced with Sandy Bridge, the 3770K practically buried the competition. Using Cyberlink Media Espresso the new chip turned a DRM-stripped Blu-ray of Harry Potter (130 minutes of 1080p video) into an iPad friendly format in just seven minutes without taxing the CPU.
At idle, power consumption hasn't changed much, but when TechSpot put the pedal to the metal things looked quite a bit different. The new i7-3770K sucked down just 147 watts, which was even four watts less than lower clocked i5-2500K. And, of course, it delivered much better performance. In fact, in Bit-Tech's tests, the only chip that was able to routinely best it was the hexa-core 3960X Extreme Edition -- and even that CPU barely eked out its victories. While AMD's offerings simply can't compete with Intel's on pure performance or power consumption, it does still outrun run Chipzilla's GPU. The HD 4000 is, undeniably, a huge step forward for the Core line, but it falls just short of matching the A8's integrated Radeon on Tech Report's tests. For more benchmarks than your heart can handle check out the pile of links below.
Chloe Moretz hinted for months at a "Kick-Ass" sequel. Jane Goldman, who co-wrote the script with Matthew Vaughn, said the duo probably wouldn't pen the next script, but would oversee the project as producers. And now, Christopher Mintz-Plasse says he'd be on board! With all the rumors and waiting it feels like "Arrested Development" and [...]
The mobile app industry is in a state of confusion in the wake of Apple?s recent measures to wean developers from the UDID (Unique Device Identifier), a function broadly used for determining the effectiveness of mobile advertising. In the short term, it seems that notions of an imminent Apple ban on use of UDIDs are premature. However, most in the market have concluded that they need to move toward new methods of marketing attribution for iOS device based advertising. The key for entrepreneurs and mobile app brands is moving to alternatives that will best allow their businesses to thrive. Here are the alternatives and here's how pick which ones you should use:
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Public release date: 23-Apr-2012
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The mobile app industry is in a state of confusion in the wake of Apple?s recent measures to wean developers from the UDID (Unique Device Identifier), a function broadly used for determining the effectiveness of mobile advertising. In the short term, it seems that notions of an imminent Apple ban on use of UDIDs are premature. However, most in the market have concluded that they need to move toward new methods of marketing attribution for iOS device based advertising. The key for entrepreneurs and mobile app brands is moving to alternatives that will best allow their businesses to thrive. Here are the alternatives and here's how pick which ones you should use: