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Top 10 Machines That Are ALREADY Smarter Than You

Top 10 Machines That Are ALREADY Smarter Than You
VOICE OVER: Rebecca Brayton
Script written by Aaron Cameron.

Will robots ever pose a threat to humans? Many people think intelligent robots will overtake humans one day, and there are some robots that can already outsmart a human. Whether it's IBM's "Jeopardy" champion Watson, NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover, or Google Deepmind's AlphaGo – which beat a human at the game Go – maybe you should be worried that artificial intelligence is ALREADY smarter than you. WatchMojo counts down ten pieces of machinery that are winning the battle between man vs. machine.

Special thanks to our user Muppet_Face for suggesting this idea! Check out the voting page at http://www.WatchMojo.comsuggest/Top%2010%20Machines%20That%20Are%20ALREADY%20Smarter%20Than%20You
Script written by Aaron Cameron.

#10: Compressorhead

Sure, there are more noble, beneficial, and world changing reasons for a robot to be called into existence – but none of them rocks quite as hard as Compressorhead. An all robot band, Compressorhead was created in Germany by Frank Barnes with Markus Kolb and Stock Plum, using recycled bits and pieces and MIDI controllers. More than just the sum of their parts and programming, the guitarist – aptly named Fingers – is a strict Gibson man; Bones, the bassist, decides for himself how he’ll play a number; while the four-armed Stickboy can self-calibrate – a feat some human drummers have difficulty with. Now all they need is a robot lead singer – but don’t worry, Helga’s on her way!

#9: AlphaGo

Developed by Google DeepMind, AlphaGo earned its place in history in 2015 when it became the first artificial intelligence to beat a human professional Go player, without a handicap. It also earned a cool million U.S. dollars for its win, which was then donated to charity. A popular game in many Asian nations, Go is more difficult for a computer to master than chess because it doesn’t really suit traditional modes of AI thinking. AlphaGo first analyzed old game records and picked up a human playing style, only to outgrow this training and master the game through machine learning and tree learning, as well as by literally practicing the game… against itself.

#8: PLEO

Modeled after a baby Camarasaurus, PLEO may just be a toy… but what a toy! Designed by Caleb Chung, who also helped design the Furby, PLEO effectively mimics life. It has body language, thinks and acts independently, shows emotions, is aware of its surroundings, and passes through newborn, juvenile, teen, and mature states based on time and learning. And, it does this in just a few days – meaning this is one robot toy that’s way quicker to adapt than humans. It’s also packed with tech – from camera based vision, binaural hearing, touch sensors, beat detection so it can dance(!), and a 32-bit Atmel ARM7 processor “brain” – all of which is hidden within its Camarasaurus shape.

#7: Shaheen II

At its heart a Cray XC40, this supercomputer resides at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. Launched in 2015, Shaheen II was at the time the only computer in the Middle East to crack the world’s top 10 supercomputers club. Packed with 196,608 Intel Xeon E5-2698v3 cores, this puppy can hit around 5.54 petaFLOPS. Taking up 36 cabinets, the Shaheen II has a total memory of 790TB and is typically used to aid in energy and environment resource research as well as bioscience and bioengineering projects. Given its location, it also has a special focus on Red Sea data and oil and gas reserves. Let’s see a human do all that.

#6: Titan

Based on a Cray XK7 system, and housed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, this U.S. Department of Energy supercomputer was once the most powerful in the world. Loaded with 261,632 Nvidia K20x cores and hitting 17.59 petaFLOPS, it’s still no slouch. Partly an upgrade of the pre-existing Jaguar, Titan is a hybrid system, using both GPUs and CPUs and is used to research molecular scale physics, nuclear reaction efficiency, and climate models. Housed in 200 cabinets, packing 693.6TiB of CPU and GPU RAM, and boasting 40 PB of storage (far more than they estimate the human brain has), Titan’s true geek cred comes down to these four words: it runs on Linux.

#5: Watson

A spiritual successor to Deep Blue, Watson was created for one purpose: to meet Alex Trebek… kinda. Inspired by Ken Jennings’ 74-game “Jeopardy!” win streak, Watson was designed by David Ferrucci with IBM’s DeepQA project to kick ass in the form of a question. The supercomputer beat both Jennings and fellow champ Brad Rutter in 2011, earning a $1 million payday. Processing over 500 GB (or like a million books) per second, Watson came prepared for the show with 4 TB of data storage – including the entirety of Wikipedia. It’s essentially a question answering system; however, Watson works to actually understand the question rather than just sifting through data using a keyword search. Do YOU have all of Wiki memorized???

#4: Curiosity

Born on Earth and raised on Mars, Curiosity today calls the Gale Crater home. A key player in NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, it roams the red planet in search of signs of water, or the possibility of microbial life. Dabbling in geology, the machine’s main scientific interest is chemistry, and the rover seeks out so called building blocks of life, including nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and carbon. Curiosity is fully loaded with impressive kit, not the least of which is its ChemCam which analyzes elemental composition, an X-ray spectrometer, and an onboard laser to vaporize and analyze samples. The lonesome pilgrim also has 3D vision, and 4 pairs of HazCams, for hazard avoidance. Almost like a robot Matt Damon, if you will.

#3: Atlas

It may not play guitar or be a “Jeopardy!” grand champion, but Atlas is no less impressive – or human-like. Built by Boston Dynamics, with funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (or DARPA), Atlas looks like it stepped out of a Stark Industries lab and into the Star Wars canon. Intended to be a real-world superhero, it stands around 6-feet-tall, can walk, keep balance on a single leg if needed, and can maneuver through rough terrain. Capable of sight via a laser rangefinder and stereo cameras, and gifted with finely tuned motor control in its hands, Atlas can open doors, use power tools, and can drive a vehicle – all with the goal of conducting search and rescue missions.

#2: Tianhe-2

Packed with 3,120,000 computing cores, and 16,000 nodes with two Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon processors each, Tianhe-2 was the supercomputer that knocked Titan off the top of the smart pile. Built by China’s National University of Defense Technology, Tianhe-2 – or Milky Way 2 in English – held claim to the title of most powerful supercomputer in the world from June 2013-June 2016. Tianhe-2 can hit 33.86 petaFLOPS, with a theoretical peak of 54.9. In fact, the only thing holding this bad boy back was the U.S. Government, which blocked an export license for additional premium Intel CPUs and coprocessor boards. But even without them, Tianhe-2 is definitely smarter than you.

Before we unveil our top pick here are a few honorable mentions:
- RuBot II
- IBM Sequoia

#1: Kirobo

What’s cooler than a robot? A robot astronaut, of course! Crafted by the University of Tokyo, roboticist Tomotaka Takahashi, Toyota, Robo Garage, and JAXA – Japan’s space agency – Kirobo was essentially made as a robotic sidekick to human astronaut Commander Koichi Wakata. Standing a mighty 13 inches tall, the 2.2lb robo-dude speaks fluent Japanese, has voice, speech and facial recognition, and was designed to work in zero gravity. Although light-years away from Commander Data, this little space traveller represents a major breakthrough in Toyota-led AI and robotics. In 2016, the car manufacturer announced sales of the Kirobo Mini, a 4-inch version, which – while more basic in function – remains an excellent conversationalist, with the smarts of roughly a 5-year-old.

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