Join top executives in San Francisco on July 11–12, to hear how leaders are integrating and optimizing AI investments for success. Learn More
The skies above where I reside near New York City were noticeably apocalyptic last week. But to some in Silicon Valley, the fact that we wimpy East Coasters were dealing with a sepia hue and a scent profile that mixed cigar bar, campfire and old-school happy hour was nothing to worry about. After all, it is AI, not climate change, that appears to be top of mind to this cohort, who believe future superintelligence is either going to kill us all, save us all, or almost kill us all if we don’t save ourselves first.
Whether they predict the “existential risks” of runaway AGI that could lead to human “extinction” or foretell an AI-powered utopia, this group seems to have equally strong, fixed opinions (for now, anyway — perhaps they are “loosely held”) that easily tip into biblical prophet territory.
Unlike many of his peers in the artificial intelligence community, Andrew Ng isn’t convinced about the dangers of AI.
In a video posted to Twitter this week, Ng, a Stanford University professor and founder of several Silicon Valley AI startups, expressed doubt about the doomsday predictions of other executives and experts in the field.
Italy’s Campi Flegrei is showing some troubling early warning signs, but scientists caution that its eruption is far from certain.
The sex of human and other mammal babies is decided by a male-determining gene on the Y chromosome. But the human Y chromosome is degenerating and may disappear in a few million years, leading to our extinction unless we evolve a new sex gene.
The good news is two branches of rodents have already lost their Y chromosome and have lived to tell the tale.
A recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows how the spiny rat has evolved a new male-determining gene.
A raft of industry experts have given their views on the likely impact of artificial intelligence on humanity in the future. The responses are unsurprisingly mixed.
The Guardian has released an interesting article regarding the potential socioeconomic and political impact of the ever-increasing rollout of artificial intelligence (AI) on society. By asking various experts in the field on the subject, the responses were, not surprisingly, a mixed bag of doom, gloom, and hope.
Yucelyilmaz/iStock.
Geneticists have unearthed a major event in the ancient history of sturgeons and paddlefish that has significant implications for the way we understand evolution. They have pinpointed a previously hidden “whole genome duplication” (WGD) in the common ancestor of these species, which seemingly opened the door to genetic variations that may have conferred an advantage around the time of a major mass extinction some 200 million years ago.
The big-picture finding suggests that there may be many more overlooked, shared WGDs in other species before periods of extreme environmental upheaval throughout Earth’s tumultuous history.
The research, led by Professor Aoife McLysaght and Dr. Anthony Redmond from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, has just been published in Nature Communications.
