Lifeboat Foundation

Andrew Ng hands me a tiny device that wraps around my ear and connects to a smartphone via a small cable. It looks like a throwback—a smartphone earpiece without a Bluetooth connection. But it’s really a glimpse of the future. In a way, this tiny device allows the blind to see.

Ng is the chief scientist at Chinese tech giant Baidu, and this is one of the company’s latest prototypes. It’s called DuLight. The device contains a tiny camera that captures whatever is in front of you—a person’s face, a street sign, a package of food—and sends the images to an app on your smartphone. The app analyzes the images, determines what they depict, and generates an audio description that’s heard through to your earpiece. If you can’t see, you can at least get an idea of what’s in front of you.

Artificial intelligence is changing not only the way we use our computers and smartphones but the way we interact with the real world.

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Artificial intelligence is moving so fast that within a decade, we will even be able to swallow computers so they can perform internal operations and release drugs.

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Samsung’s already wide product family is getting even bigger thanks to its new chip dubbed the “Samsung Bio-Processor.” As the company tells it, it’s already in mass production and is “specifically designed to allow accelerated development of innovative wearable products for consumers who are increasingly monitoring their health and fitness on a daily basis.” Phew. The announcement post goes on to say that the processor is the first all-in-one health solution chip and that since it’s packing a number of different control and sensor units (like a quintet of Analog Front Ends, a microcontroller unit, digital signal processor and eFlash memory) it can do all these tricks without the need for external processing.

The idea behind the silicon is to be the one-stop wearable fitness resource. Those five AFEs? One keeps track of bioelectrical impedance analysis, while the others focus on volumetric measurements of organs, an electrocardiogram and skin temperature, among other things. Bear in mind that Samsung’s latest smartwatch, the Gear S2, only tracks your heart rate. Same goes for the Apple Watch. Considering how err… interesting Samsung wearables tend to be, a possible scenario here is that the tech giant won’t keep the Bio-Processor all to itself. Nope, the real money here lies in potentially licensing it out to other folks, as it’s wont to do with its other self-made parts.

We won’t have to wait too long to see these in the wild, either: Samsung promises it’ll be packed into devices available early next year. If you’re wondering where, the inevitable follow-up to the aforementioned Gear S2 successor is a pretty likely bet. Whether that shows its face at CES or Mobile World Congress is the real question, though.

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The combination of human and computer intelligence might be just what we need to solve the “wicked” problems of the world, such as climate change and geopolitical conflict, say researchers from the Human Computation Institute (HCI) and Cornell University.

In an article published in the journal Science, the authors present a new vision of human computation (the science of crowd-powered systems), which pushes beyond traditional limits, and takes on hard problems that until recently have remained out of reach.

Humans surpass machines at many things, ranging from simple pattern recognition to creative abstraction. With the help of computers, these cognitive abilities can be effectively combined into multidimensional collaborative networks that achieve what traditional problem-solving cannot.

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Small Form Factor Technology Solves Complexities of Thought-Controlled Leg Prosthetics

Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago has developed the first neural-controlled bionic leg, using no nerve redirection surgery or implanted sensors. It’s a powerful advancement in prosthetics, including motorized knee and ankle, and control enabled by the patient’s own neural signals. Powered by a tiny but powerful Computer-on-Module platform, this thought-controlled prosthetic represents a significant breakthrough in medical embedded design, improving patients’ lives and mobility with a prosthetic that more closely than ever acts like a fully-functioning natural limb.

The technology of prosthetic limbs has come a long way over time, yet options are still limited for leg amputees. While simple peg legs have evolved to more sophisticated and realistic artificial limbs, the patient was forced to undergo nerve surgery or endure invasive implants. And even though the technology to produce through-controlled mechanized arms has existed for some time, the complexities of leg motion have kept it from being successfully applied in leg prosthetics. Without the ability to move and control the knee and ankle, the prosthetic leg remained a passive solution for patients struggling to replicate natural leg motion.

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Researchers from the University Of New South Wales(UNSW) in Australia have successfully demonstrated that they can write and control the quantum version of computer code on a silicon microchip. Computers, at the moment, use binary language to operate, 0 and 1. Together, these two bits generate code words that can be used to program complex commands. But in quantum computing language there’s also the option for bits to be in superposition, what this actually means is that they can be 1 and 0 at the very exact same time. This unlocks a massively more powerful programming language, but until now scientists haven’t been able to figure out how to write it.

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Better cameras, along with more powerful algorithms for computer vision and emotion-sensing facial analysis software, could transform the way we interact with our devices.

By Andrew Moore on December 28, 2015.

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Engineer Robert Grass says that though we believe information is here forever, it’s actually fragile. Hard drives and physical sources of information, like books, decay over time. In a video for the BBC, Grass describes his quest to find a method of preserving information that could be stable for millions of years. The secret is DNA.

In 2012, research showed that you could translate a megabyte (MB) of information into DNA and then read it back again. DNA has a language of its own, and is written in sequences of nucleotides (A, C, T, and G). Think of it as similar to binary, which breaks information down into ones and zeros.

And DNA has the advantage of being able to put an enormous amount of information in a tiny space. Theoretically, one gram of DNA could hold 455 exabytes of information. That’s “enough for all the data held by Google, Facebook and every other major tech company, with room to spare”, according to New Scientist.

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This came up recently and it occurred I never posted this here. This is a lecture by Robert Bradbury, not not Ray Bradbury. I had the pleasure of exchanging a few emails with him. Unfortunately those emails are lost so I cannot share them. He was an advocate of life extension and he was a big thinker. I’ll post both vids and a link to the M-brain page. He is not with us anymore I regret to say. Ready?

Renown aging expert Robert Bradbury discusses whole genome engineering, evolution and aging and ways to defeat aging. His talk touches on many areas including nanotechnology, biology, and computer science. More information can be found at http://manhattanbeachproject.com Follow updates at http://twitter.com/maxlifeorg

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