A quick glance at the news headlines each morning might convey that the world is in crisis. Challenges include climate-change threats to human infrastructure and habitats; cyberwarfare by state and nonstate actors attacking energy sources and health care systems; and the global water crisis, which is compounded by the climate crisis. Perhaps the biggest challenge is the rapid advance of artificial intelligence and what it means for humanity. As people grapple with those and other issues, they typically look to policymakers and business leaders for answers. However, no true solutions can be d ..read more

The emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems that can perform any task a human can—could be the most important event in human history, one that radically impacts all aspects of our collective lives. Yet AGI, which could emerge soon, remains an elusive and controversial concept. We lack a clear definition of what it is, we don’t know how we will detect it, and we don’t know how to deal with it if it finally emerges. What we do know, however, is that today’s approaches to studying AGI are not nearly rigorous enough. Within industry, where many of today’s AI breakthroughs are ..read more

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion. Eurobot Open 2024: 8–11 May 2024, LA ROCHE-SUR-YON, FRANCE ICRA 2024: 13–17 May 2024, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN RoboCup 2024: 17–22 July 2024, EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024, ZURICH Enjoy today’s videos! In this work, we present LocoMan, a dexterous quadrupedal robot with a novel morphology to perform versatile manipulation in diverse ..read more

Dina Genkina: Hi, I’m Dina Genkina for IEEE Spectrum‘s Fixing the Future. Before we start, I want to tell you that you can get the latest coverage from some of Spectrum‘s most important beats, including AI, climate change, and robotics, by signing up for one of our free newsletters. Just go to spectrum.ieee.org/newsletters to subscribe. And today our guest on the show is Suraj Bramhavar. Recently, Bramhavar left his job as a co-founder and CTO of Sync Computing to start a new chapter. The UK government has just founded the Advanced Research Invention Agency, or ARIA, modeled after the US’s ..read more

In 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea: Could you project an artificial starry sky onto a dome, as a way of demonstrating astronomical principles to the public? It was such a novel concept that when von Miller approached the Carl Zeiss company in Jena, Germany, to manufacture such a projector, they initially rebuffed him. Eventually, they agreed, and under the guidance of lead engineer Walther Bauersfeld, Zeiss created something amazing. The use of models to show the movements of the planets and stars goes back centuries, starting w ..read more

The shift toward the electrification of vehicles and the expansion of the electrical grid for renewable energy integration has led to a considerable increase in the demand for power electronics devices and modernized cable systems — applications that will help ensure a consistent and long-term electricity supply. Simulation is used to drive the design of new power electronics devices (such as solar power and wind turbine systems), which are required to operate efficiently for varying levels of power production and power consumption (in the case of electric vehicles). A multiphysics modeling ..read more

When Marianne Smith was teaching computer science in 2016 at Flathead Valley Community College, in Kalispell, Mont., the adjunct professor noticed the female students in her class were severely outnumbered, she says. Smith says she believed the disparity was because girls were not being introduced to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in elementary and middle school. Code Girls United Founded 2018 Headquarters Kalispell, Mont. Employees 10 In 2017 she decided to do something to close the gap. The IEEE member started an after-school program to teach coding and computer science ..read more

One of the biggest challenges for robotics right now is practical autonomous operation in unstructured environments. That is, doing useful stuff in places your robot hasn’t been before and where things may not be as familiar as your robot might like. Robots thrive on predictability, which has put some irksome restrictions on where and how they can be successfully deployed. But over the past few years, this has started to change, thanks in large part to a couple of pivotal robotics challenges put on by DARPA. The DARPA Subterranean Challenge ran from 2018 to 2021, putting mobile robots throug ..read more

At TSMC’s North American Technology Symposium on Wednesday, the company detailed both its semiconductor technology and chip-packaging technology road maps. While the former is key to keeping the traditional part of Moore’s Law going, the latter could accelerate a trend toward processors made from more and more silicon, leading quickly to systems the size of a full silicon wafer. Such a system, Tesla’s next generation Dojo training tile is already in production, TSMC says. And in 2027 the foundry plans to offer technology for more complex wafer-scale systems than Tesla’s that could deliver 40 ..read more

Digital Chinese-language keyboards that are vulnerable to spying and eavesdropping have been used by 1 billion smartphone users, according to a new report. The widespread threats these leaky systems reveal could also present a concerning new kind of exploit for cyberattacks, whether the device uses a Chinese-language keyboard, an English keyboard, or any other. Last year, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab released a study of a proprietary Chinese keyboard system owned by the Shenzhen-based tech giant Tencent. Citizen Lab’s “Sogou Keyboard” report exposed the widespread range of attacks ..read more