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Category: computing – Page 1,091

AI Goes Mainstream

It’s leading to a different way of thinking about computing.

This year’s Detroit auto show is proving that autonomous driving is no longer a techie’s pipe dream. Even holdout Akio Toyoda has finally joined the parade. The self-driving car is coming.

But behind that development is an even more profound change: artificial intelligence (also known as “deep learning”) has gone mainstream. The autonomous driving craze is just the most visible manifestation of the fact that computers now have the capacity to look, learn and react to complex situations as well or better than humans. It’s leading to a profoundly different way of thinking about computing. Instead of writing millions of lines of code to anticipate every situation, these new applications ingest vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and “learn” from them, much as the human brain does.

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Why Digital Overload Is Now Central to the Human Condition

Imagine: What happens when you’re in 2027 on the job competing with other AI; and there is so much information exposed to you that you’re unable to scan & capture all of it onto your various devices and personal robot. And, the non-intrusive nanobot for brain enhancement is still years away. Do you finally take a few hundred dollars & get the latest chip implant requiring a tricky surgery for your brain or wait for the nanobot? These are questions that folks will have to assess for themselves; and this could actually streamline/ condition society into a singularity culture. https://lnkd.in/bTVAjhb

A mom pushes a stroller down the sidewalk while Skyping. A family of four sits at the dinner table plugged into their cell phones with the TV blaring in the background. You get through two pages in a book before picking up your laptop and scrolling through a bottomless stream of new content.

Information technology has created a hyper-connected, over-stimulated, distracted and alienated world. We’ve been living long enough with internet-connected computers and other mobile devices to have begun to take it for granted.

But already the next wave is coming, and it promises to be even more immersive.

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‘Bubble pen’ can precisely write patterns with nanoparticles as small as 1 nanometer

Allows for more easily building tiny machines, biomedical sensors, optical computers, solar panels, and other devices — no complex clean room required; portable version planned.

Illustration of the bubble-pen pattern-writing process using an optically controlled microbubble on a plasmonic substrate. The small blue spheres are colloidal nanoparticles. (credit: Linhan Lin et al./Nano Letters)

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have created “bubble-pen lithography” — a device and technique to quickly, gently, and precisely use microbubbles to “write” using gold, silicon and other nanoparticles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size as “ink” on a surface.

The new technology is aimed at allowing researchers to more easily build tiny machines, biomedical sensors, optical computers, solar panels, and other devices.

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The Singularity Controversy, Part I: Lessons Learned and Open Questions: Conclusions from the Battle on the Legitimacy of the Debate

Friends,

When Singularity Hypotheses was published, the technological singularity was (barely) a fringe academic topic. Three years later, and the singularity is in the headlines of every magazine and tabloid.

Yet the subject became even more controversial, with some very polarizing views confusing the public.

We’ve decided to help policy makers understand the technological singularity and publish this report. It is intended to clarify the debate, refute common misconceptions, and highlight the open questions.

Please comment below with your views!

Thanks, Amnon.
Sapience Project for Study of Disruptive and Intelligent Computing.

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RFID Tagging Chip is Here for the Human

It’s about 12 millimeters in size, and embedded under your skin, most likely in the hand. The RFID chip is here. Swiping cards when we make purchase transactions will be a thing of the past. A ride on public transport, simple tasks such as accessing the photocopier at work or sending a business card to a client’s phone at a literal tap of the finger.

The RFID chip stands for Radio Frequency Identification, and a company in Sweden, Epicenter, is embracing the new technology for their employees. Co-Founder and CEO of the company Patrick Mesterton says their employees have a personal choice to be chipped or not, it’s a voluntary decision.

RFID-chip-2

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Ex-NSA Boss Says FBI is wrong on Encryption

Ex-NSA boss says FBI director is wrong on encryption

Encryption protects everyone’s communications, including terrorists. The FBI director wants to undermine that. The ex-NSA director says that’s a terrible idea.

The FBI director wants the keys to your private conversations on your smartphone to keep terrorists from plotting secret attacks.

But on Tuesday, the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency…

Read the full article at CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/13/technology/nsa-michael-hayden-encryption/

Goldman Sachs says VR will be bigger than TV in 10 years

In an analyst note published on Wednesday, Goldman Sachs predicted that the virtual reality (VR) market will outpace the TV market in annual revenue by 2025, making VR bigger than TV.

The banking firm writes that the VR market will generate $110 billion dollars compared to TVs $99 billion in 10 years.

This will happen if VR adoption follows their “Accelerated Uptake” projection, in which virtual reality becomes more commonplace through advances in battery and cellular technologies. By eventually ditching the current wires and accompanying computers needed to power high-end VR headsets, the devices would become truly mobile; think a headset that’s more akin to a pair of sunglasses than the bulky goggles of the first generation Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

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7 Mind-Blowing Digital Health Tools That Could Disrupt Health Care in 2016

Wow!!! Chewing gum wearable technology, Cyborg Chips, Ingestible sensors to let doctors know if you’re taking your meds, etc. 2016 is going to be interesting

The phrase “Brave New World” has become one of the most often used clichés in medical technology in recent years. Google the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian, and anticipatory, novel with the word medicine and 2,940,000 results appear.

But could there be better shorthand to describe some of the recent developments in medical, health and bio-tech? Consider these possibilities coming to fruition, or close to, in 2016:

1. Back from Extinction

Gene-editing startup Editas Medicine of Cambridge, Mass., filed to go public this month. The company’s founder, Harvard professor George Church, hopes to, among other things, revive the extinct woolly mammoth or create a facsimile. Investors include Google and Bill Gates.

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Medgadget @ CES 2016: Samsung Shows Off S-Patch Wearable Featuring Its Bio-Processor Chip (VIDEO)

S-PatchA couple weeks ago Samsung affirmed its ongoing commitment to the digital health space with the release of the Bio-Processor. The Bio-Processor is a single, compact chip that is capable of measuring PPG, ECG, skin temperature, GSR, and body fat. While it’s already in mass production and anticipated to be found in devices soon, Samsung took some time during its CES press event to demonstrate the Bio-Processor’s power in a prototype device called the S-Patch.

Not a lot was said about the S-Patch, but it’s a reference platform and won’t enter production. Because the Bio-Processor is built into the S-Patch, both data collection, storage, and processing takes place on the device itself. The brief demo also showed the S-Patch wirelessly transmitting real-time data (we assume via Bluetooth) to a mobile device.

Take a look below at an excerpt from Samsung’s CES press event showing the S-Patch in action:

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