Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Nvidia Launches AI Computer To Give Autonomous Robots Better Brains (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the it's-what's-on-the-inside-that-counts dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: At Computex 2018, Nvidia unveiled two new products: Nvidia Isaac, a new developer platform, and the Jetson Xavier, an AI computer, both built to power autonomous robots. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Isaac and Jetson Xavier were designed to capture the next stage of AI innovation as it moves from software running in the cloud to robots that navigate the real world. The Isaac platform is a set of software tools that will make it simpler for companies to develop and train robots. It includes a collection of APIs to connect to 3D cameras and sensors; a library of AI accelerators to keep algorithms running smoothly and without lag; and a new simulation environment, Isaac Sim, for training and testing bots in a virtual space. Doing so is quicker and safer than IRL testing, but it can't match the complexity of the real world.

But the heart of the Isaac platform is Nvidia's new Jetson Xavier computer, an incredibly compact piece of hardware that's comprised of a number of processing components. These include a Volta Tensor Core GPU, an eight-core ARM64 CPU, two NVDLA deep learning accelerators, and processors for static images and video. In total, Jetson Xavier contains more than 9 billion transistors and delivers over 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of compute. And it consumes just 30 watts of power, which is half of the electricity used by the average light bulb. The cost of one Jetson Xavier (along with access to the Isaac platform) is $1,299, and Huang claims the computer provides the same processing power as a $10,000 workstation "AI, in combination with sensors and actuators, will be the brain of a new generation of autonomous machines," said Huang. "Someday, there will be billions of intelligent machines in manufacturing, home delivery, warehouse logistics and much more."

7 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress/"Mike" by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I swear to you all.. it's like everyone read TMIAHM, and actually believes that if you hook together enough hardware, it'll magically become a sentient self-aware synthetic mind like Mike in the book. Sorry, doesn't work that way, and until we solve the riddle of sentience, all these 'deep learning algorithms' will always fall short of whatever expectations you might have, no matter how much hardware you throw at it.

    1. Re:The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress/"Mike" by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

      We can't 'direct' something that we don't understand. We haven't got a clue how the phenomenon of 'consciousness' 'self awareness' or 'sentience' actually works in our own brains; the current approach in my opinion is fatally flawed and will not ever produce these phenomenon; it's like a million monkeys mashing keys on a million typewriters for a million years, expecting to get a duplication of Shakespeares' works. If and when we have the instrumentation to understand how our own brains produce these phenomena, then maybe we'll be able to build machines that can do that, too, but so far as I'm concerned not until then. It's wishful thinking at best otherwise, and delusional at worst, and falling for marketing hype the whole way.

    2. Re:The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress/"Mike" by mark-t · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We can't 'direct' something that we don't understand

      Well, it's only true to say that we don't understand it fully. That's not the same thing as saying we don't understand it at all. And it's certainly not the same thing as saying that we are necessarily far away from understanding it sufficiently to artificially replicate it.

      I mean, starting from the time that man started building machines, we managed to create flying machines in a barely negligible *fraction* of the time that it took nature to pull it off, for instance.

      Again, given that nature managed to create something intelligent within a a billion or so years without *ANY* intelligence applied to the process whatsoever, I'd suggest that's not a far stretch to suggest that we might be able to outpace it in that regard as well.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    3. Re:The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress/"Mike" by jma05 · · Score: 2

      > all these 'deep learning algorithms' will always fall short of whatever expectations you might have

      Actually, they have exceeded expectations so far,

      None of the actual researchers who work on these worry about these going sentient at this level, only the Gates and Musk types.

      Actual researchers simply see these as slightly deeper statistical learning systems and are just concerned about building models with better classification accuracy. That itself is tremendously powerful TODAY to keep working on them.

    4. Re:The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress/"Mike" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Artificial Intelligence" is not the same thing as "consciousness, self-awareness, or sentience."

      You are fixated on a definition that is wrong, and white-knuckling an enormous straw-man fallacy.

      Yes, we don't have synthetic consciousness, and perhaps never will. But we already have artificial intelligence, and it is getting better every day.

  2. Average lightbulbs don't use 60 watts by Bryansix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's 2018 and most of by lightbulbs use between 8 and 15 watts each and contain only a single LED. Yes this computer is energy efficient but lets ditch the anachronisms.

  3. When the Last Tree Is Cut Down... etc etc by timerider · · Score: 2

    Am I the only one who sees "Someday, there will be billions of intelligent machines in manufacturing, home delivery, warehouse logistics and much more." and translates that to "some day there will be billions of unemployed"?

    Can someone PLEASE wake up those idiots and make them understand that ROBOTS do not buy PRODUCTS?