VP and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon: ‘The Turing Test is Obsolete. It’s Time To Build a New Barometer For AI’

Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist of Alexa at Amazon, writes: While Turing’s original vision continues to be inspiring, interpreting his test as the ultimate mark of AI’s progress is limited by the era when it was introduced. For one, the Turing Test all but discounts AI’s machine-like attributes of fast computation and information lookup, features that are some of…

Police Turn To Car Data To Destroy Suspects’ Alibis

In recent years, investigators have realized that automobiles — particularly newer models — can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. From a report: They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and…

Astronauts Grow Radishes in a Microfarm on the International Space Station

From a report: The thought of eating “astronaut food” brings to mind a kind of instant food that is far from “farm to table.” However, recent experiments aboard the ISS are improving our understanding of how to bring the farm directly into space itself. Astronauts just ran a Veg-PONDS 02 experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment used food that…

2-Acre Vertical Farm Run By AI and Robots Out-Produces 720-Acre Flat Farm

schwit1 quotes Intelligent Living: Plenty is an ag-tech startup in San Francisco, co-founded by Nate Storey, that is reinventing farms and farming. Storey, who is also the company’s chief science officer, says the future of farms is vertical and indoors because that way, the food can grow anywhere in the world, year-round; and the future of farms employ robots and AI…

The Site of Hawaii’s First Tesla Supercharger? Probably Larry Ellison’s 3,400-Person Island

Electrek reports that 2021 will bring one of Tesla’s fast-charging Supercharger to a state that’s never had one before: Lanai Island, a former pineapple plantation that was almost entirely (98%) purchased by Oracle founder and Tesla board member Larry Ellison for $300 million in 2012, is the first in Hawaii to see a Supercharger permit filed by Tesla… The 145-square-mile island…

Red Bull skydivers recreate mysterious Marfa lights for winter solstice 2020

An epic nighttime skydive saw Red Bull Air Force’s Amy Chmelecki and teammates don pyrotechnics to highlight – literally – the importance of astronomy and dark skies in a rural region of Texas. Source: https://www.livescience.com/marfa-lights-red-bull-night-sky-video.html

How Do US Government Agencies Verify Security Software from Private Contractors?

A recent article at Politico argues that the U.S. government “doesn’t do much to verify the security of software from private contractors. And that’s how suspected Russian hackers got in.” The federal government conducts only cursory security inspections of the software it buys from private companies for a wide range of activities, from managing databases to operating internal chat applications. That…

Image of fairy penguins watching Melbourne lights wins photo prize

This poignant image shows two penguins huddling together as they stare from St Kilda Pier, Melbourne. It won Tobias Baumgaertner an award in Oceanographic magazine’s Ocean Photography Awards 2020 Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24833132-300-image-of-fairy-penguins-watching-melbourne-lights-wins-photo-prize/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Favorite photos of 2020’s Geminid meteor shower

EarthSky community members from around the world share their photos and experiences of this year’s Geminid meteor shower, here. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/favorite-photos-of-2020s-geminid-meteor-shower…