Tag: Cyborgs

Ultron, the new Terminator?

Avengers, the Age of Ultron opens in the UK later this week, and in the US the week after. Apparently Hollywood can forecast a film's takings pretty well these days (thanks to clever AI algorithms, no doubt) and it seems the studio is quietly confident it's going to overturn box office records. It may also overturn something else: the unwritten law that every article about the future of artificial intelligence has to be accompanied by a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the killer robot he played. The original Terminator movie was released in 1984, and 31 years is a great innings....

Google Glass takes the broader view

Google has several thousand people test-driving its optical head-mounted display product known as Google Glass.  Each of these people has just been asked to invite three other people to join in and become "Explorers".  If you're reading this anywhere outside the USA you can put your phone back down as the programme is only available to US residents over 18 years old. Meanwhile, Marc Levoy, a Stanford professor, claims that Google's first foray into wearable computing will give its users "superhero vision".  And he should know, since he's has just finished a two-year sabbatical working on the Glass project.  He...

Google Glass and different reactions to our cyborg future

Today I went on a tour of the Google campus at Palo Alto, arranged as part of a family holiday in California.  It was, of course, inspiring. (Ray Kurzweil was hired by Google late last year, and we were told that he works in building 42, but I did wonder if that was no more than a jokey reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) When I told Eryka, our charming Google staffer guide, that the first group of Google Glass users are now able to invite their friends to join the second wave, she gasped and reached for her phone...