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Lifeboat News #105

#105

Lifeboat News

This issue published on 04/01/11. Copyright 2011 Lifeboat Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

The Fourth Conference on Artificial General Intelligence: Improved Lineup

Our Itamar Arel, Anirban Bandyopadhyay, Eric Baum, James Bonaiuto, Joanna Bryson, Antonio Chella, Haris Dindo, Marco Dorigo, Wlodzislaw "Wlodek" Duch, Rod Furlan, Deon Garrett, Ben Goertzel, Faustino Gomez, J. Storrs Hall, Demis Hassabis, Marcus Hutter, Matt Iklé, Bruce Klein, Randal Koene, András Kornai, Kai-Uwe Kühnberger, John E. Laird, Christian Lebiere, Shane Legg, Moshe Looks, András Lörincz, Matt Luciw, David Orban, Jan Poland, Stephen Reed, Sebastian Rudolph, Rafal Rzepka, Alexei V. Samsonovich, Ricardo Sanz, Tom Schaul, Matthias Scheutz, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Kristinn R. Thórisson, Julian Togelius, Lyle Ungar, Wendell Wallach, Pei Wang, Marco Wiering, Mary-Anne Williams, and David Wolpert are participating in The Fourth Conference on Artificial General Intelligence which will be hosted by Google from August 3rd to 6th in Mountain View, California, USA.
 
Learn more at http://agi-conf.org/2011/

Reports

Read "The 'Energularity'" by our José Luis Cordeiro at http://lifeboat.com/ex/the.energularity
 
It begins with:
 
Homo sapiens sapiens is the only species that has learned how to harness the power of fire. The conscious generation and use of external energy plays a unique role in our human and cultural evolution, from harnessing fire to developing nuclear fusion. Humanity has gone through several energy "waves", advancing exponentially from wood, coal, oil, gas, and hydrogen/solar/nuclear in a continuous process of "decarbonization" and "hydrogenization" of our energy sources.
 
The creation of an Energy Network or "Enernet" will allow us to connect the whole world and to increase, not reduce, our energy consumption. With the "Enernet", energy and power will become abundant and basically free, just like information and bandwidth are today thanks to the Internet. This is fundamental for improving the living standards of all people around the world and for moving into the next planetary transition; energy is essential for solving humanity's needs on Earth and for exploring and colonizing the universe.

Blog

Matt Funk joins our blog team with the post "A (Relatively) Brief Introduction to The Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth" at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/04/a-rela...of-earth
 
Paul McGlothin joins our blog team with the post "You are What you Don't Eat!" at http://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/04/you-ar...dont-eat

Brazil Job Opening

Cria is looking to hire a senior technology futurist. The position is full-time, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and involves a minimum of 20% of time for travel.
 
Learn more at http://criaglobal.com/tech-futurist-cria/

Growing Membership

Recent donations/pledges we have received since the last newsletter:
 
Donald Maclean: $1,000, Anonymous: $500, Ralf J. Muller: $350, James Blodgett: $200, Michael Dickey: $85, Sergio M.L. Tarrero: $85, Philippe Van Nedervelde: $85, Kenneth P. Weiss: $85, Michael Breazeale: $25, Rick Hubbard: $25, Matthew L. McGuirl: $25, Ronald Amos: $10, Rebecca R. Cooper: $10, Christopher Dilkus: $10, Thomas Dolphin: $10, Stephen Fleming: $10, George Garrett: $10, Charles Hawk: $10, Alexander Macrae: $10, Aaron Mayzes: $10, Glenn A. Miller: $10, Philip Morehead: $10, Phil Nadeau: $10, John N. Philipps (Jack): $10, Lee Irwin Pringle: $10, Frank D. Smith: $10, Rhonda Stevenson: $10, and Eric McGehearty: $1.
 
Our Join Us page at https://lifeboat.com/ex/join.us now allows you to pay for your membership anywhere from monthly to every ten years.