News Brief: Computer scientists have trained a neural network to transform the action from pre-recorded videos of soccer games into immersive augmented-reality “holograms” you can shrink down onto a tabletop. The artificial-intelligence system developed by the University of Washington’s Konstantinos Rematas and colleagues analyzed 12,000 player models from FIFA, Electronic Arts’ soccer simulation game. Once the system learned to conceptualize the 3-D motions of soccer players, it could convert YouTube videos into 3-D renderings viewable via Microsoft’s HoloLens headset. Someday it may convert live World Cup matches on the fly. But for now, you’ll just have to check out the… Read More
The Winter Olympics’ first-ever drone light show has earned Intel the title from Guinness World Records for the “most unmanned aerial vehicles airborne simultaneously.” There might be an asterisk in the record book, however: The show didn’t actually take place at today’s opening ceremony for the PyeongChang Olympics in South Korea. Instead, it was pre-recorded last December for broadcast during the event, just to make sure that bad weather or a technical glitch didn’t spoil the view. The synchronized flight of 1,218 Intel Shooting Star drones broke Intel’s previous record of 500 drones, flown simultaneously in Germany in 2016. The… Read More
Embed from Getty Images Seattle Seahawks fans don’t need an astrophysicist to tell them that quarterback Russell Wilson is capable of otherworldly heroics on the football field. But coach Pete Carroll did reach out to one this week for help in explaining a play in Sunday night’s win over the Philadelphia Eagles. During a fourth-quarter scramble, Wilson avoided getting creamed by defenders when he pitched the ball to running back Mike Davis, trailing to Wilson’s right. Because the play happened beyond the line of scrimmage, rules dictate that that pitch must travel backwards. When the ball left Wilson’s hand it… Read More
Retired All-Star pitcher Roy Halladay died today when his plane, an amphibious light-sport aircraft known as the Icon A5, crashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast. Halladay’s death at the age of 40 was particularly poignant, and not only because of his stellar career as one of only six pitchers to win the Cy Young Award in the American League (with the Toronto Blue Jays, 2003) as well as the National League (with the Philadelphia Phillies, 2010). He received the plane a month ago from Icon Aircraft, and became one of its biggest boosters on Twitter: Can’t… Read More
The Dota 2 esports tournament in Seattle, known as The International, demonstrates how video games have become hugely popular team sports — and today alpha geek Elon Musk took the occasion to tout a different kind of team effort. Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is also a big supporter of OpenAI, a nonprofit research company aimed at boosting artificial intelligence architectures and applications that benefit humanity. Today, OpenAI showed off an AI bot that vanquished Danylo “Dendi” Ishutin, one of the world’s top Dota 2 players, in a one-vs.-one demonstration match. “OK, this guy is scary,” Ishutin said as he… Read More
