Lifeboat Foundation

More than 9000 scientists, including Andre Geim, Carlo Rubbia and eight other Nobel-prize-winning physicists, have signed a letter calling on the European Commission (EC) to reinstate a dedicated commissioner for education and research. The letter claims that that an out-and-out role for education and research is necessary to create a sound basis for innovation in Europe.

News of the apparent sidelining of science emerged when Ursula von der Leyen, the EC’s president-elect, presented her team and the new structure of the next European Commission on 10 September. It included her candidates for the new set of 18 commissioners, but the plan no longer included a commissioner that explicitly represents education and research.

These areas are instead expected to be covered by the commissioner for innovation and youth – the nominee for which is Mariya Gabriel, who is the current commissioner for digital economy and society. In the new set-up, the innovation and youth role appears to be a merger between the current directorate for research, science and innovation with that for education, culture, youth and sport.

The report also predicts India’s economy will surpass the U.S. by 2030.

The competition between the United States and China on artificial intelligence is heating up recently. In the coming AI Race, can India with an abundance of engineering talent really catch up with the US and China?

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, and The Internet of Things (IoT) are one of the rapidly advancing technological developments. The rate of progress in the field of these is amazingly rapid. From SIRI to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence is changing our daily life in many ways.

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Are humans born with “intelligence” genes, or is human intelligence determined by environmental factors, such as economic status or easy access to education?

When a team of researchers set out to answer this question, they discovered that more than 500 genes were associated with intelligence. The results, published in Nature Genetics, indicate that intelligence is much more complex than previously thought.

Continue reading “More than 500 Intelligence Genes Discovered” »

IBM HR Director Diane Gherson says that over the next three years, 120 million workers will need retraining as artificial intelligence continues to take jobs.

Artificial intelligence is obviously ready to get started. Over the next three years, about 120 million workers from the 12 largest economies in the world may need to undergo retraining due to advances in artificial intelligence and intelligent automation, according to a study published on Friday by the IBM Institute of Business Value. However, less than half of the CEOs surveyed by IBM said they had the resources needed to bridge the skills gap caused by these new technologies.

Continue reading “Over Next Three Years, Employees will Need Reskilling as AI Takes Jobs” »

This aptly named startup is eyeing extraterrestrial outsourcing.

Made in Space has plans to produce ZBLAN wire on the International Space Station and have it shipped back to Earth for humans to use, reports Wired.

Both Made in Space CEO Andrew Rush and NASA (currently the company’s primary investor and customer) hope this could be the start of the “low-Earth orbit economy,” per Wired.

The essence of the issue is property rights, which now extend to rights over individuals’ personal data. Traditionally, property rights referred to control of tangible assets, such as gold or oil, or control of intangible assets like patents and copyrights. In the digital era, technology can create huge amounts of intangible assets from individuals’ data without their knowledge. How the data is used could bring not only great benefits but also, potentially, great harm. This raises a crucial question: who has the right to control over these new assets?

Recognising and protecting property rights to each individual’s data or all individuals’ data is vital to determining the fate of the new economy.

When talking about the economics of Tesla’s future fleet of robotaxis at the Tesla Autonomy Event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk emphasized that the vehicles need to be durable in order for the economics to work:

“The cars currently built are all designed for a million miles of operation. The drive unit is design, tested, and validated for 1 million miles of operation.”

But the CEO admitted that the battery packs are not built to last 1 million miles.