Lifeboat Foundation

“Be very, very afraid. As this extraordinary book reveals, we are fast sailing into an era in which big life-and-death decisions in war will be made not by men…and women, but by artificial intelligence” — @stavridisj’s review of @paul_scharre upcoming book Pre-order yours now:

A Pentagon defense expert and former U.S. Army Ranger explores what it would mean to give machines authority over the ultimate decision of life or death.

What happens when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Or when a weapon that can hunt its own targets is hacked? Although it sounds like science fiction, the technology already exists to create weapons that can attack targets without human input. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in emerging weapons technologies, draws on deep research and firsthand experience to explore how these next-generation weapons are changing warfare.

Continue reading “Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War” »

‘Google should not be in the business of war’: Over 3,000 employees pen letter urging CEO to pull out of the Pentagon’s controversial AI drone research, citing firm’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto…

More than 3,000 Google employees have penned an open letter calling upon the internet giant’s CEO to end its controversial ‘Project Maven’ deal.

Continue reading “Google employees pen letter denouncing controversial AI drone project” »

In summary — “I am cautiously optimistic about the promise of tDCS; cognitive training paired with tDCS specifically could lead to improvements in attention and memory for people of all ages and make some huge changes in society. Maybe we could help to stave off cognitive decline in older adults or enhance cognitive skills, such as focus, in people such as airline pilots or soldiers, who need it the most. Still, I am happy to report that we have at least moved on from torpedo fish” smile

In 47 CE, Scri­bo­nius Largus, court physi­cian to the Roman emper­or Claudius, described in his Com­po­si­tiones a method for treat­ing chron­ic migraines: place tor­pe­do fish on the scalps of patients to ease their pain with elec­tric shocks. Largus was on the right path; our brains are com­prised of elec­tri­cal sig­nals that influ­ence how brain cells com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and in turn affect cog­ni­tive process­es such as mem­o­ry, emo­tion and attention.

The sci­ence of brain stim­u­la­tion – alter­ing elec­tri­cal sig­nals in the brain – has, need­less to say, changed in the past 2,000 years. Today we have a hand­ful of tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) devices that deliv­er con­stant, low cur­rent to spe­cif­ic regions of the brain through elec­trodes on the scalp, for users rang­ing from online video-gamers to pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes and peo­ple with depres­sion. Yet cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists are still work­ing to under­stand just how much we can influ­ence brain sig­nals and improve cog­ni­tion with these techniques.

Continue reading “Research trend: Combining brain stimulation with cognitive training to enhance attention and memory” »

The US Army today released documents detailing plans to build a large-scale battlefield platform dubbed the “Internet of Battle Things.”

Autonomous weapon bans (previously) are currently being debated, but in the meantime, the US Department of Defense continues work with its Perdix Micro-Drone project. Ostensibly for surveillance, it’s clear these could easily be modded with lethal weaponry.

F/A-18 Super Hornets deploy the drones, which can then perform a series of tactical maneuvers based on post-launch commands.

“We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us,” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

“Both Russia and China are aggressively pursuing hypersonic capabilities,” Hyten added. “We’ve watched them test those capabilities.”

Researchers and engineers at Rand explain what a hypersonic weapon is, which countries are developing them and how the U.S. could look to defend against them.

Continue reading “Russia and China are ‘aggressively developing’ hypersonic weapons — here’s what they are and why the US can’t defend against them” »

A clever configuration of industrial lasers is set to finally make laser weapons practical.

The US military likes to stay at the forefront of the cutting edge of science — most recently investigating ways they can ‘hack’ the human brain and body to make it die slower, and learn faste r.

But in an unexpected twist, it turns out they’re also interested in pushing the limits of quantum mechanics. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced it’s funding research into one of the strangest scientific breakthroughs in recent memory — time crystals.

In case you missed it, time crystals made headlines last year when scientists finally made the bizarre objects in the lab, four years after they were first proposed.

Continue reading “DARPA Is Researching Time Crystals, And Their Reasons Are ‘Classified’” »

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield was launched on Sunday against Palestinian machine gun fire originating in the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, and not against incoming militant rockets, the Israeli army said.

Flaming streams of about 10 Iron Dome rockets could be seen rising into the night sky in a spectacular light show, but there was no indication that Islamist militants in Gaza had fired rockets, a military spokeswoman said.

A subsequent army statement said: “Following reports of sirens sounding in southern Israel, unusual machine gun fire towards Israel was identified. No rocket launches were identified. The (military) is looking into the circumstances which led to the activation of the Iron Dome system.”

Continue reading “Israeli interceptors deployed against machine gun fire, not rockets: army” »