Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Posts Video of Jarvis Robot Assistant at Work

December 21, 2016

Dec 21: Mark Zuckerberg has a new housemate: Jarvis, an artificial intelligence assistant he created this year that can control appliances, play music, recognize faces and, perhaps most impressively, entertain his toddler.

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The Facebook founder spent 100 hours putting together the virtual assistant - named after the artificial intelligence system in "Iron Man" - which understands spoken commands as well as text messages, he wrote in a 3,000-word Facebook post Monday.

Among Jarvis's skills: Adjusting the home thermostat, turning on lights and operating the toaster. The virtual assistant texts Zuckerberg images of visitors who stop by during the day, and opens the front door for those it recognizes. It can also tell when Zuckerberg's 1-year-old daughter, Max, wakes up "so it can start playing music or a Mandarin lesson," he wrote.

In a tongue-in-cheek video he posted on Facebook Tuesday, Zuckerberg offers an example of Jarvis at work: "Max woke up a few minutes ago. I'm entertaining her," the virtual assistant (voiced by Morgan Freeman) tells Zuckerberg, before turning his attention to the toddler. "Good morning Max, let's practice our Mandarin."

The year-long project was part of an effort to learn about the state of artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg wrote, and also an opportunity to experiment with cutting-edge technology at a time when voice-activated assistants like Amazon's Echo and Google Home are gaining widespread popularity.

"At this point, I mostly just ask Jarvis to "play me some music" and by looking at my past listening patterns, it mostly nails something I'd want to hear. If it gets the mood wrong, I can just tell it, for example, "that's not light, play something light", and it can both learn the classification for that song and adjust immediately. It also knows whether I'm talking to it or Priscilla is, so it can make recommendations based on what we each listen to. In general, I've found we use these more open-ended requests more frequently than more specific asks. No commercial products I know of do this today, and this seems like a big opportunity."

Building the robot was the easier - and less time-consuming - of his two goals for the year, he said. The other was to run 365 miles in 2016.

"Now I have a pretty good system that understands me and can do lots of things," Zuckerberg, adding that he's tried to give his robot a sense of humor. "I've taught it fun little games like Priscilla or I can ask it who we should tickle and it will randomly tell our family to all go tickle one of us, Max or Beast. I've also had fun adding classic lines like 'I'm sorry, Priscilla. I'm afraid I can't do that.'"

But there are also some kinks to work out, particularly around voice commands. When Zuckerberg demonstrated the technology for a Fast Company story, he had to ask the robot to turn off the lights four times before it complied. Shutting down the music took another two tries. ("Wow, that's like the most fails that it's ever had," the 32-year-old told the reporter, visibly embarrassed.)

Next up, Zuckerberg plans to create an Android app for the robot and connect it to more appliances around the house, such as his Big Green Egg grill. The ultimate challenge, he says, is "to build a system that could learn completely new skills on its own."

"In the longer term, I'd like to explore teaching Jarvis how to learn new skills itself rather than me having to teach it how to perform specific tasks," he wrote. "If I spent another year on this challenge, I'd focus more on learning how learning works."

After a year of coding, here's Jarvis.

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, December 20, 2016

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Agencies
June 12,2020

New Delhi, Jun 12: The Supreme Court on Friday asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to convene a meeting of the Finance Ministry and RBI officials over the weekend to decide whether interest incurred on EMIs during the moratorium period can be charged by banks.

A bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.R. Shah queried Mehta as the court was concerned since the Centre has deferred loan for three months.

"Then how can interest of these 3 months be added?" the apex bench asked. Mehta replied: "I need to sit down with the RBI officials and have a meeting."

SBI's counsel, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, intervened during the proceedings and said "all banks are of the view that interest cannot be waived for a six month EMI moratorium period".

"We need to discuss it with the RBI," insisted Rohatgi.

Justice Bhushan then asked Mehta to convene a meeting of the RBI and Finance Ministry officials over the weekend, and listed the matter for further hearing on June 17.

The top court, during the hearing, indicated that it was not considering a complete waiver of interest but was only concerned that postponement of interest shouldn't accrue further interest on it.

After the RBI said the waiver of interest charges on EMIs during moratorium will lead to loss of 1 per cent of the nation's GDP, the top court had earlier asked the Finance Ministry to reply, whether the interest could be waived or it would continue during the moratorium period.

The top court said these are not normal times, and it is a serious issue, as on one hand moratorium is granted and then, the interest is charged on loans during this period.

"There are two issues in this (matter). No interest during the moratorium period and no interest on interest," said Justice Bhushan. The observation from the bench came on a petition by Gajendra Sharma, in which he sought a direction to declare portion of the RBI's March 27 notification as ultra vires to the extent it charged interest on the loan amount during the moratorium period.

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Agencies
March 10,2020

New Delhi, Mar 10: Crisis-hit Yes Bank on Tuesday said that it has enabled inward IMPS and NEFT services.

The move allows people to send money from other bank accounts to their Yes Bank account through IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) and NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer) mode.

In a tweet, the bank also said that Yes Bank customers can pay their credit card dues and loan obligations from other bank accounts.

"Inward IMPS/NEFT services have now been enabled. You can make payments towards YES BANK Credit Card dues and loan obligations from other bank accounts. Thank you for your co-operation. @RBIA @FinMinIndia," said tweet.

Last week Yes Bank was placed under moratorium and a withdrawal cap of Rs 50,000 was imposed till April 3.

The administrator of Yes Bank, Prashant Kumar and Rajnish Kumar, the Chairman of the State Bank of India are hopeful that moratorium would be lifted within a week.

As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) draft reconstruction scheme for the crisis-hit private lender, the SBI will take up 49 per cent in the bank by investing Rs 2,450 crore.

The new board of directors will stand constituted from the appointed date. It will comprise a CEO and MD, non-executive chairman and non-executive directors. The SBI will have nominee directors appointed on the board of the reconstructed bank.

The RBI may appoint additional directors to the board, who shall continue in office for one year, or until an alternate board is constituted by Yes Bank.

The SBI will not reduce its holding below 26 per cent before completion of three years from the date of infusion of the capital.

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Agencies
February 6,2020

Washington D.C., Feb 6: An international team of astronomers has found an unusual monster galaxy that existed about 12 billion years ago when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old.

The team of astronomers was led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside.

Dubbed XMM-2599, the galaxy formed stars at a high rate and then died. Why it suddenly stopped forming stars is unclear.

"Even before the universe was 2 billion years old, XMM-2599 had already formed a mass of more than 300 billion suns, making it an ultra massive galaxy," said Benjamin Forrest, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC Riverside Department of Physics and Astronomy and the study's lead author.

"More remarkably, we show that XMM-2599 formed most of its stars in a huge frenzy when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and then became inactive by the time the universe was only 1.8 billion years old," Forrest added.

The team used spectroscopic observations from the W. M. Keck Observatory's powerful Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration or MOSFIRE, to make detailed measurements of XMM-2599 and precisely quantify its distance.

The study results appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

"In this epoch, very few galaxies have stopped forming stars, and none are as massive as XMM-2599," said Gillian Wilson, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCR in whose lab Forrest works.

"The mere existence of ultramassive galaxies like XMM-2599 proves quite a challenge to numerical models. Even though such massive galaxies are incredibly rare at this epoch, the models do predict them."

"The predicted galaxies, however, are expected to be actively forming stars. What makes XMM-2599 so interesting, unusual, and surprising is that it is no longer forming stars, perhaps because it stopped getting fuel or its black hole began to turn on. Our results call for changes in how models turn off star formation in early galaxies," the professor stated.

The research team found XMM-2599 formed more than 1,000 solar masses a year in stars at its peak of activity -- an extremely high rate of star formation. In contrast, the Milky Way forms about one new star a year.

"XMM-2599 may be a descendant of a population of highly star-forming dusty galaxies in the very early universe that new infrared telescopes have recently discovered," said Danilo Marchesini, an associate professor of astronomy at Tufts University and a co-author on the study.

"We have caught XMM-2599 in its inactive phase," Wilson said, who led the W. M. Keck Observatory data acquisition
Co-author Michael Cooper, a professor of astronomy at UC Irvine, said this outcome is a strong possibility.

"Perhaps during the following 11.7 billion years of cosmic history, XMM-2599 will become the central member of one of the brightest and most massive clusters of galaxies in the local universe," he said.

"Alternatively, it could continue to exist in isolation. Or we could have a scenario that lies between these two outcomes," he stated.

The study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA.

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