An actual ethicist thinks that we might get a Terminator future soon if we keep making AI too advanced.
In an unfinished part of his basement, 95-year-old Richard Soller zips around a makeshift track encircling boxes full of medals he’s won for track and field and long-distance running.
Without a hint of breathlessness, he says: “I can put in miles down here.”
Steps away is an expensive leather recliner he bought when he retired from Procter & Gamble with visions of relaxing into old age. He proudly proclaims he’s never used it; he’s been too busy training for competitions, such as the National Senior Games.
Researchers claim to have deciphered Linear Elamite, a mysterious ancient writing system used between 2,300 B.C. and 1,800 B.C. The study alleges success in decoding Linear Elamite, despite the fact that only about 40 known examples of the script remain today, according to a paper published in the journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie.
Over 300 Linear Elamite signs represent different sounds, such as a crescent-shaped sign that sounds like “pa,” the research team wrote in the paper.
ZA publishes articles and reviews in all areas of Assyriology, including Near Eastern archaeology and art history. The main geographical areas covered are Mesopotamia, Northern Syria, Anatolia, Ancient Armenia, and Elam from the fourth to first millennia BC. All articles are peer-reviewed.
Israeli startup Future Meat Technologies has opened what it says is the first industrial-scale cultured meat production facility — a move designed to finally get lab-grown meat onto consumers’ plates.
“Our goal is to make cultured meat affordable for everyone,” CSO Yaakov Nahmias said in a press release, “while ensuring we produce delicious food that is both healthy and sustainable, helping to secure the future of coming generations.”
Why it matters: Demand for meat is higher than ever before, but the traditional means of producing it — by raising and slaughtering animals — is bad for the environment and arguably unethical.
The Silurian Hypothesis is not a work of science fiction. It was proposed by two scientists who posed a thought question about how would we know if a previous civilization rose and fell in Earth’s past.
Would we know the signs in geological records dating millions of years if an advanced technical civilization once existed on this planet?
The area surveyed represents two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.
Almost half of the reefs studied had between 10% and 30% hard coral cover, while about a third of the reefs had hard coral cover levels between 30% and 50%, the report said.
While higher water temperatures led to a coral bleaching event in some areas in March, the temperatures did not climb high enough to kill the coral, the agency said.