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Study identifies a neural network supporting flexible learning and memory

People often need to adapt to unexpected and sudden events, such as a road construction or a road accident while driving, a broken automatic payment or ATM machine, and changes in weather. To effectively deal with these events, they must possess what is known as behavioral flexibility, or the ability to deviate from routine and well-establish behavioral patterns.

To adapt their behavior based on unforeseen events, humans need to encode and retrieve reward-related memories and use them to inform their present or future choices. This process entails the integration of different cognitive abilities that are supported by different regions of the .

Past studies found that patients with different neuropsychiatric disorders and those suffering from an addiction tend to have a scarce behavioral flexibility. This often adversely affects their quality of living, as it makes dealing with the uncertainty of daily life particularly challenging.

Cyborg cockroaches are coming, and they just want to help

Inspired by insects, robotic engineers are creating machines that could aid in search and rescue, pollinate plants and sniff out gas leaks.

Cyborg cockroaches that find earthquake survivors. A “robofly” that sniffs out gas leaks. Flying lightning bugs that pollinate farms in space.

These aren’t just buzzy ideas, they’re becoming reality.

Robotic engineers are scouring the insect world for inspiration. Some are strapping 3D-printed sensors onto live Madagascar hissing cockroaches, while others are creating fully robotic bugs inspired by the ways insects move and fly.


Robotic engineers are scouring the insect world for inspiration, and creating machines that could be used for emergency response, farming and energy.

Ben Goertzel | Artificial General Intelligence: An Overview

Dr. Ben Goertzel, a self-described Cosmist and Singularitarian, is one of the world’s leading researchers in artificial general intelligence (AGI), natural language processing, cognitive science, data mining, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, and virtual worlds and gaming He has published a dozen scientific books, 100+ technical papers, and numerous journalistic articles.

AGI-22 | Joscha Bach — It from no Bit: Basic Cosmology from an AI Perspective

Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist focused on cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and learning.

Currently the Principal AI Engineer, Cognitive Computing at Intel Labs, having authored the book “Principles of Synthetic Intelligence”, his focus is how to build machines that can perceive, think and learn.

In this video you can watch his keynote presentation at the AGI-22 Conference, on the topic of “It from no Bit: Basic Cosmology from an AI Perspective”.

Joscha’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Plinz.
Joscha’s Website: http://bach.ai/

SingularityNET is a decentralized marketplace for artificial intelligence. We aim to create the world’s global brain with a full-stack AI solution powered by a decentralized protocol.

We gathered the leading minds in machine learning and blockchain to democratize access to AI technology. Now anyone can take advantage of a global network of AI algorithms, services, and agents.

#16 David Chalmers PHD — THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS AND VIRTUAL WORLDS

How likely is it that we live in a simulation? Are virtual worlds real?

In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and philosophers begun to assess the statistical probabilities that our shared reality could in fact be some kind of representation rather than a physical place.
As we become more open to these possibilities, other difficult questions start to come into focus. How can we create a common language to talk about matter and energy, that bridges the simulated and simulating worlds. Who could have created such a simulation? Could it be an artificial intelligence rather than a biological or conscious being? Do we have ethical obligations to the virtual beings we interact with in our virtual worlds and to what extent are those beings and worlds ‘real’? The list is long and mind bending.

Fortunately, to untangle our thoughts on this, we have one of the best known philosophers of all things mind bending in the world, Dr. David Chalmers; who has just released a book ‘Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy’ about this very topic. Dr. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specialising in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness. He’s the founder of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference’ at which he coined the term in 1994 The Hard Problem of Consciousness, kicking off a renaissance in consciousness studies, which has been increasing in popularity and research output ever since.

Donate here: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes.

What we discuss in this episode:
00:00 Short Intro.
06:00 Synesthesia.
08:27 The science of knowing the nature of reality.
11:02 The Simulation Hypothesis explained.
15:25 The statistical probability evaluation.
18:00 Knowing for sure is beyond the reaches of science.
19:00 You’d only have to render the part you’re interacting with.
20:00 Clues from physics.
22:00 John Wheeler — ‘It from bit’
23:32 Eugene Wigner: measurement as a conscious observation.
27:00 Information theory as a useful but risky hold-all language tool.
34:30 Virtual realities are real and virtual interactions are meaningful.
37:00 Ethical approaches to Non-player Characters (NPC’s) and their rights.
38:45 Will advanced AI be conscious?
42:45 Is god a hacker in the universe up? Simulation Theology.
44:30 Simulation theory meets the argument for the existence of God from design.
51:00 The Hard problem of consciousness applies to AI too.
55:00 Testing AI’s consciousness with the Turing test.
59:30 Ethical value applied to immoral actions in virtual worlds.

References:

This podcast brings Steve Jobs back to life, thanks to AI

In a free-wheeling conversation with Joe Rogan, Jobs talks about Microsoft, Adobe, and much more.

If there was anything that could make a case for how far Artificial intelligence (AI) has come, it would be the ability to converse with the dead. Podcast.ai is a platform that aims to demonstrate this week after week with its in-depth interviews, which began with no one other than Steve Jobs.

The episode does begin with a big disclaimer that the entire conversation has been generated by AI. The podcast maker also taps into the expertise of play.ht, which, according to its webpage, gives one the option of 907 ultra-realistic voices to choose from.

Podcast.


Waseef/iStock.

Podcast.ai states that they chose Jobs for their first project due to his impact on the technology world and how he continues to inspire people, much after his death too.

This Mach-5 engine will do what no other can | Challengers

Hermeus is building the world’s fastest commercial aircraft. And we got to tour their hypersonic flight lab.

Watch the Challengers playlist ► https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXthoedLVIdKeeuwpDPSyHSC54obntRxB

The aircraft startup Hermeus is aiming to do something unprecedented: build an aircraft that can take off from sea level, hit hypersonic speeds, and land to be reused, all while using one jet engine.

To achieve that goal, Hermeus is experimenting with a demonstrator aircraft called Quarterhorse — a small single-engine autonomous vehicle designed to test the company’s one-of-a-kind engine and briefly hit Mach 5 to collect data.

Freethink asked Hermeus whether early experiments with Quarterhorse are likely to succeed. The answer? No. Failure is still the most likely outcome. “And every day that inches a little bit closer to success, a little bit closer and a little bit closer,” said the founder of Hermeus. “And there’ll be days when we go the other direction, where we learned something we didn’t know, where we fail in a test, and we take a step back. We just keep moving, keep moving a little bit by bit, until we will this into existence.”

Watch on Freethink.comhttps://www.freethink.com/series/challengers/commercial-hypersonic-flight.

Video: Here is a spooky robotic arm that can fool people into believing it’s a real human hand

Beware! This robotic arm has a powerful grip.

What would be your first reaction when you see a grey-colored robotic hand mimicking your real hand’s (assuming that the reader is a human) movements and functions? You’d be shocked and spooked, right? Well, a robotics company in Poland has managed to create such an unbelievable artificial hand for real, New Atlas.


A robotic hand that looks and works almost like a human hand is about to arrive in the market by 2023. Here is everything you want to know about the science and underlying technology that makes this innovation work.