Detecting Bridge Maintenance Need

Fascinating Application Proposed

Smartphone data from drivers could help spot when bridges need urgent repairs

The system could provide live structural data more cheaply and quickly than existing methods—and help engineers prevent catastrophic collapses.

By Tammy Xuarchive 

November 3, 2022 Technology Review

Smartphones could be used to monitor the safety of bridges much more quickly and cheaply than currently possible, providing engineers with data they can use to fix the structures before they become dangerously unstable.

Usually, bridges’ state of repair is monitored in one of two ways: either engineers visually inspect them for cracks and faults, or sensors collect data about their vibrations and movements. But a new method developed by researchers at West Point Military Academy avoids the need for either by collecting accelerometer data from smartphones in cars as they drive over the bridges. 

In tests that involved driving across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and a reinforced concrete bridge in Italy, they found that just two smartphones could provide data of similar accuracy to 240 stationary sensors. The phones pick up on naturally occurring vibrations from the bridges, allowing researchers to monitor their structural changes over time. Their research is described in a study published in Nature today. ... ' 

A Hybrid AI Wins at Bridge. And Explains Win. A more Human Intelligence?

 Most impressive, the win includes many kinds of human like interaction,  a complex, multi-player  gaming interaction.  Are we closer, or is this simply luck?

A Hybrid AI Just Beat Eight World Champions at Bridge—and Explained How It Did It

By Jason Dorrier -Apr 03, 2022   in Singularity Hub

Champion bridge player Sharon Osberg once wrote, “Playing bridge is like running a business. It’s about hunting, chasing, nuance, deception, reward, danger, cooperation and, on a good day, victory.”

While it’s little surprise chess fell to number-crunching supercomputers long ago, you’d expect humans to maintain a more unassailable advantage in bridge, a game of incomplete information, cooperation, and sly communication. Over millennia, our brains have evolved to read subtle facial queues and body language. We’ve assembled sprawling societies dependent on the competition and cooperation of millions. Surely such skills are beyond the reach of machines?

For now, yes. But perhaps not forever. In recent years, the most advanced AI has begun encroaching on some of our most proudly held territory; the ability to navigate an uncertain world where information is limited, the game is infinitely nuanced, and no one succeeds alone.

Last week, French startup NukkAI took another step when its NooK bridge-playing AI outplayed eight bridge world champions in a competition held in Paris.

The game was simplified, and NooK didn’t exactly go head-to-head with the human players—more on that below—but the algorithm’s performance was otherwise spectacular. Notably, NooK is a kind of hybrid algorithm, combining symbolic (or rule-based) AI with today’s dominant deep learning approach. Also, in contrast to its purely deep learning peers, NooK is more transparent and can explain its actions.

“What we’ve seen represents a fundamentally important advance in the state of artificial intelligence systems,” Stephen Muggleton, a machine learning professor at Imperial College London, told The Guardian. In other words, not too bad for a cold, calculating computer.   .... '