Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Thursday 2 augusT 2018
A robotic hand can juggle a cube _ with lots of training

By RYAN NAKASHIMA every simulated movement ables so the software learns
AP Technology Writer that brought the cube clos- to operate in a way that
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — er to the goal gave Dactyl is adaptable. That helped
How long does it take a a small reward. Dropping narrow the gap between
robotic hand to learn to the cube caused it to feel real-world results and sim-
juggle a cube? a penalty 20 times as big. ulated ones, which were
About 100 years, give or The process is called rein- much better.
take. forcement learning. The The variations helped the
That's how much virtual robot software repeats the hand succeed putting the
computing time it took re- attempts millions of times in right letter face up more
searchers at OpenAI, the a simulated environment, than a dozen times in a row
non-profit artificial intelli- trying over and over to get before dropping the cube.
gence lab funded by Elon the highest reward. Ope- In simulation, the hand typi-
Musk and others, to train nAI used roughly the same cally succeeded 50 times
its disembodied hand. The algorithm it used to beat in a row before the test was
team paid Google $3,500 human players in a video stopped.
to run its software on thou- game, "Dota 2." OpenAI's goal is to devel-
sands of computers simul- This undated photo provided by OpenAI shows a robotic In real life, a team of re- op artificial general intel-
hand holding a cube at the company's research lab in San
taneously, crunching the Francisco. searchers worked about a ligence, or machines that
actual time to 48 hours. Associated Press year to get the mechanical think and learn like hu-
After training the robot in hand to this point. mans, in a way that is safe
a virtual environment, the Ken Goldberg, a University its hand is simpler and the Why? for people and widely dis-
team put it to a test in the of California, Berkeley ro- objects it manipulates are For one, the hand in a simu- tributed.
real world. botics professor who isn't more complex. lated environment doesn't Musk has warned that if
The hand, called Dac- affiliated with the project, "The key is the idea that you understand friction. So AI systems are developed
tyl, learned to move itself, said OpenAI's achieve- can make so much prog- even though its real fingers only by for-profit compa-
the team of two dozen ment is a big deal because ress in simulation," he said. are rubbery, Dactyl lacks nies or powerful govern-
researchers disclosed this it demonstrates how robots "This is a plausible path for- human understanding ments, they could one day
week. Its job is simply to ad- trained in a virtual environ- ward, when doing physical about the best grips. exceed human smarts and
just the cube so that one of ment can operate in the experiments is very hard." Researchers injected their be more dangerous than
its letters — "O," ''P," ''E," ''N," real world. His lab is trying Dactyl's real-world fingers simulated environment nuclear war with North
''A" or "I'' — faces upward to something similar with a ro- are tracked by infrared dots with changes to gravity, Korea.q
match a random selection. bot called Dex-Net, though and cameras. In training, hand angle and other vari-

Human rights group: Employee

targeted with Israeli spyware

in a series of digital break- es, led to the termination of Any possible use of Israeli
in attempts, including a contracts. technology to police dis-
campaign to compromise Amnesty's findings were sent in the Arab world could
proponents of a soda tax corroborated by internet raise uncomfortable ques-
in Mexico and an effort to watchdog Citizen Lab, tions both for Israel, which
hack into the phone of an which has been tracking still sees itself as a bastion of
Arab dissident that prompt- NSO spyware for two years democracy in the region,
ed an update to Apple's and is based at the Uni- and for countries with no
operating system. versity of Toronto's Munk formal diplomatic ties to
Joshua Franco, Amnesty's School of Global Affairs. the Jewish state.
head of technology and In its own report being re- For Amnesty's Franco, it was
human rights, said the latest leased Wednesday, Citizen a sign of an out-of-control
In this Aug. 25, 2016, file photo, the logo of the Israeli NSO hacking attempt was em- Lab said it so far had count- trade in high-tech surveil-
Group company is displayed on a building where they had
offices until few months ago in Herzliya, Israel. blematic of the increased ed some 175 targets of NSO lance tools.
Associated Press digital risk faced by activists spyware worldwide, includ- "This is a huge market
worldwide. ing 150 people in Panama that's completely opaque
By RAPHAEL SATTER nesty outlined how it thinks "This is the new normal for identified as part of a mas- and under-regulated," he
AP Cybersecurity Writer a hacker tried to break into human rights defenders," sive domestic espionage said.q
LONDON (AP) — An Am- an unidentified staff mem- Franco said. scandal swirling around the
nesty International employ- ber's smartphone in early NSO said in a written state- country's former president.
ee has been targeted with June by baiting the em- ment that its product was The Amnesty International
Israeli-made surveillance ployee with a WhatsApp "intended to be used exclu- report said the organization
software, the human rights message about a protest in sively for the investigation identified a second human
group said Wednesday, front of the Saudi Embassy and prevention of crime rights activist, in Saudi Ara-
adding to a growing num- in Washington. and terrorism" and that al- bia, who was targeted in a
ber of examples of Israeli The London-based human legations of wrongdoing similar way to its staffer. Citi-
technology being used to rights organization said it would be investigated. In zen Lab said it found traces
spy on human rights work- traced the malicious link response to a series of writ- of similar hacking attempts
ers and opposition figures in the message to a net- ten questions, the compa- tied to Qatar or Saudi, hint-
in the Middle East and be- work of sites tied to the NSO ny said past allegations of ing at the use of the Israeli
yond. Group, an Israeli surveil- customer misuse had, in an spyware elsewhere in the
In a 20-page report, Am- lance company implicated undisclosed number of cas- Gulf.