Killer robots: Icelandic parliament considers supporting international ban

HANDOUT RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE AND EDITORIAL SALES - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / HO / NEW ZEALAND DEFENCE FORCE" This undated handout photo obtained on November 22, 2010 from the New Zealand Defence Force shows a military robot (L), named a "Remote Positioning Device Wheelbarrow Revolution, NZ Defence Force Version", being used at an undisclosed location. New Zealand rescuers on November 22 were considered sending the military robot into a blast-hit mine to search for 29 missing men, as a bore hole to check gas levels and carry video gear inched towards completion. AFP PHOTO / HO / NEW ZEALAND DEFENCE FORCE / AFP / NEW ZEALAND DEFENCE FORCE / New Zealand Defence Force
A military robot. Photo: AFP

A proposal for supporting an international ban of manufacturing and usage of autonomous weapons has been submitted to the Icelandic parliament, Althingi. The proposal was put forth by four members of Parliament from the Left Green Party; Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir, Steinunn Þóra Árnadóttir and Svandís Svavarsdóttir. They propose that Althingi supports the initiative of an international ban of the manufacturing and usage of autonomous weapons and entrust the government of Iceland to work towards that within the United Nations and other appropriate venues. The proposal is now being reviewed at the Committee of International Affairs.

Continue reading Killer robots: Icelandic parliament considers supporting international ban

PhD positions at KTH Speech, Music and Hearing

KTH copyThe KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm is looking for  PhD students in “Social Robotics” and related areas.

The positions are hosted by the department of Speech, Music and Hearing (TMH).
TMH is an internationally distinguished group within speech technology and associated fields dating back to the 1950s. Research at the department is truly multi-disciplinary including linguistics, phonetics, auditory perception, vision and experimental psychology. Rooted in an engineering modeling approach,its research forms a solid base for developing multimodal human-computer interaction systems in which speech, music, sound and gestures combine to create human-like communication.

Continue reading PhD positions at KTH Speech, Music and Hearing

Seminar on a Simulated Banking System

Essex
The University of Essex.

IIIM Research Scientist Dr. Jacky Mallett will speak in an Expert Seminar Series on Economic Policy and Financial Regulation and Governance at the University of Essex, England, tomorrow the fifth of February. The seminar is held as part of the course MSc Computational Economics, Financial Markets and Policy.

Dr. Mallett will speak of her unique economic simulation, Threadneedle, which is a simulation framework that allows the behaviour of banking systems and their influence on the macroeconomy to be explored in an experimental fashion. Continue reading Seminar on a Simulated Banking System

Catalyzing innovation and high-technology research in Iceland