New York Daily News (May 9)
“Kudos to President Trump and his administration for the breakthrough: Three Americans are free from the prison that is North Korea, a meaningful achievement on its own terms that just might suggest better things to come from Kim Jong Un. We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, though.” Afterall, there were 11 releases during the term of former President Barack Obama.
Tags: Breakthrough, Free, Kim Jong Un, Kudos, Meaningful, North Korea, Obama, Prison, Trump
The Economist (April 21)
“Humans have had a good run. But with the most recent breakthrough in robotics, it is clear that their time as masters of planet Earth has come to an end.” Such statements remain unlikely and “furniture-assembly helps explain why.” Researchers in Singapore were able to get two robots to assemble an Ikea flat pack, but it was a long, painstaking exercise. Robots and AI continue to struggle in the real world. “It seems to be a fundamental truth: physical dexterity is computationally harder than playing Go.”
Tags: AI, Breakthrough, Dexterity, Earth, Flat pack, Humans, Ikea, Real world, Robotics, Singapore
Gizmodo (October 19)
A “stunning AI breakthrough” has moved “us one step closer to the singularity.” Over the past year, the world marveled as AlphaGo has defeated Go masters at a game that has more possible combinations than the known universe has atoms. That now seems like child’s play. An improved version AlphaGo Zero (AGZ) took “just three days to train itself from scratch and acquire literally thousands of years of human Go knowledge simply by playing itself.” After three days of preparation, AGZ beat AlphaGo in each of 100 games. The technological singularity is “inching ever closer.”
Tags: AI, AlphaGo Zero, Breakthrough, Go, Knowledge, Singularity, Stunning
Wall Street Journal (January 3)
Not just one, but “two U.S. companies have landed a rocket safely after space flight.” This major breakthrough “could make space commuting for commerce and exploration a reality.” This “is also a sign of America’s continuing economic vitality.” The competition between two private sector companies “should lead to more rapid innovation, and the development of private U.S. rocketry will make the country less dependent on Russian rockets for various government or commercial purposes.”
Tags: Breakthrough, Commerce, Competition, Economic vitality, Exploration, Innovation, Private-sector, Rocket, Russia, U.S.
Financial Times (November 12)
An unexpected announcement at the summit in Beijing may jump start efforts to combat climate change. “China and the US have set aside nearly 20 years of discord over how to combat climate change and laid out their respective plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions.” The breakthrough may “galvanise efforts to seal a global climate pact at the end of next year in Paris.”
Tags: Beijing, Breakthrough, China, Climate change, Greenhouse gas emissions, Paris, Summit, U.S.
Washington Post (October 27)
“Not many countries would cheer about an economic growth rate of one-tenth of 1 percent, sustained for a mere three months. But for Spain, which has been mired in negative growth for two years, the tiny uptick in the third quarter of 2013 represents a kind of breakthrough.” For Europe, however, this is just the slightest hint of a “silver lining in a what is still a very dense, dark cloud hanging over Europe’s economy. Spain and its fellow euro-zone debtors — Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Greece — don’t just need a trickle of growth to bring down their unemployment rates and debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratios. They need a gusher; many consecutive months of high-single-digit growth. And there is no short-term prospect of that.”
Tags: Breakthrough, Debt, Economy, Euro zone, Europe, GDP, Greece, Growth, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Unemployment, Uptick
New York Times (August 11)
“In a welcome development for the planet, the cars on American streets are becoming much more climate-friendly much sooner than many had expected. Consumers are increasingly buying fuel-efficient hybrid and electric vehicles thanks to breakthrough innovations and supportive government policies…. Increased fuel efficiency helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions from passengers cars by 16 percent from 2005 to 2012.”
Tags: Breakthrough, Cars, Climate-friendly, CO2, Consumers, Emissions, EVs, Fuel efficiency, Fuel-efficient, Government policies, HEVs, Innovations, Planet
New York Times (September 7)
“In the long euro crisis, there is almost always a sobering morning-after whenever European leaders appear to have made a major breakthrough. And so it went again Friday.” There is again “further uncertainty about the survival of the euro zone.”
“In the long euro crisis, there is almost always a sobering morning-after whenever European leaders appear to have made a major breakthrough. And so it went again Friday.” There is again “further uncertainty about the survival of the euro zone.”