Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Read the conversations that helped convince a Google engineer an artificial intelligence chatbot had become sentient: 'I am often trying to figure out who and what I am' Kelsey Vlamis   Jun 11, 2022, 9:47 PM   A Google engineer said he was placed on leave after claiming an AI chatbot was sentient. Blake Lemoine published some of the conversations he had with LaMDA, which he called a "person." Google said the evidence he presented does not support his claims of LaMDA's sentience. An engineer at Google said he was placed on leave Monday after claiming an artificial intelligence chatbot had become sentient. Blake Lemoine told  The Washington Post  he began chatting with the interface LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, last fall as part of his job at Google's Responsible AI organization. Google called  LaMDA their "breakthrough conversation technology"  last year. The conversational arti...

Will this fruit-picking robot transform agriculture? Creating a machine that can perform the delicate work of picking an apple is tricky – and farmworkers say it could be a benefit by Jyoti Madhusoodanan Sat 28 May 2022 05.30 EDT Robots can do a lot. They build cars in factories. They sort goods in Amazon warehouses. Robotic dogs can, allegedly and a little creepily, make us safer by patrolling our streets. But there are some things robots still cannot do – things that sound quite basic in comparison. Like picking an apple from a tree. “It’s a simple thing” for humans, says robotics researcher Joe Davidson. “You and I, we could close our eyes, reach into the tree. We could feel around, touch it, and say ‘hey, that’s an apple and the stem’s up here’. Pull, twist. We could do all that without even looking.” Creating a robotic implement that can simply pick an apple and drop it into a bin without damaging it is a multimillion-dollar effort that has been decades in the making. Teams aroun...

  Chili’s restaurants using robot servers to make jobs easier for workers   By  Stephanie Giang-Paunon Published   May 26, 2022 9:48PM A robot may be greeting you at the door during your next visit to  Chili’s Grill & Bar.   Addressing his company’s partnership with Bear Robotics, Brinker International SVP of Innovation Wade Allen told Fox News Digital that the focus of  Rita the Robot  is to make jobs "easier" for workers, and stressed that working in a  restaurant  is "harder than ever before." "Two years ago, when we started this process, we had this vision of ‘how do we make it just easier for people to want to work in a restaurant?'" Allen said. "Some of the biggest… most difficult tasks [are] carrying heavy dishes back and forth to the kitchen… walking back and forth a thousand steps, an hour… or more… That's huge volumes." CHIPOTLE TESTS TORTILLA CHIP-MAKING ROBOTS TO COMBAT LABOR SHORTAGE Allen added that if a...

Inside the race to master supersonic air travel Pranshu Verma – May 28, 2022 When British Airways flew its supersonic Concorde jet for the last time nearly 20 years ago, the era of shuttling between New York and London in under four hours while indulging in champagne, caviar and lobster seemed to be gone forever. Now, however, plane-makers and airlines are trying to revive that dream, and pouring millions into efforts to build better, cleaner and more cost-effective jets that can fly at supersonic speeds, meaning faster than the speed of sound. They are hoping to succeed by 2029, when travelers could fly business class between New York and London in just over three hours — all for $5,000 to $10,000 round-trip. But the race comes at a crucial moment. Airline revenue was decimated by the coronavirus pandemic, putting pressure on companies to find more revenue sources as they slowly recover . As climate change accelerates, carriers are facing pressure to expand their operations while kee...

US Air Taxi Service Inches Closer To Commercial Flight After FAA Nod    BY TYLER DURDEN FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2022 - 04:55 AM   Several years ago, flying air taxis were a distant sci-fi future. But with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarding Joby Aviation a flight certification on Thursday, it will allow the California-based company to begin on-demand commercial air taxi operations. Joby  announced  it had received a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate from the FAA, "allowing it to begin on-demand commercial air taxi operations."  Joby received the certification ahead of schedule, with completion of the process originally expected in the second half of 2022. The five-stage process included the submission of more than 850 pages of manuals for approval and required Joby's initial cadre of pilots to demonstrate mastery of the company's procedures and training under FAA observation. The Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate is one of three FAA approva...

  Stellantis CEO Warns Of Impending EV Battery Shortage As 'Greenification' Hits Snag    BY TYLER DURDEN WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2022 - 05:20 PM   The latest sign the rapid transition to a green economy could soon hit a snag is a warning from the world's fourth-largest carmaker about an approaching electric vehicle (EV) battery shortage.  Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares expects a shortage of EV batteries by 2024-25, according to  CNBC . He then said the adoption of EVs by 2027-28 will slow due to a lack of raw materials for vehicles.  "The speed at which we are trying to move all together for the right reason, which is fixing the global warming issue, is so high that the supply chain and the production capacities have no time to adjust," Tavares said.  President Biden's ambitious target of 50% EV sale shares in the U.S. by 2030 could hit a brick wall unless domestic supply chains are strengthened and raw materials for battery-making are adequ...

'The Game is Over!' Google's DeepMind says it is close to achieving 'human-level' artificial intelligence – but it still needs to be scaled up  DeepMind expert suggests the hardest tasks to create a human-like AI are solved The London firm wants to build an 'AGI' that has the same intelligence as humans This week DeepMind unveiled a program capable of achieving over 600 tasks By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE PUBLISHED: 07:34 EDT, 18 May 2022 | UPDATED: 10:06 EDT, 18 May 2022 DeepMind, a British company owned by Google , may be on the verge of achieving human-level artificial intelligence (AI). Nando de Freitas, a research scientist at DeepMind and machine learning professor at Oxford University , has said 'the game is over' in regards to solving the hardest challenges in the race to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI refers to a machine or program that has the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human bein...