Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2016

Scientists and engineers since the 1940s have been toying with the idea of building self-replicating machines, or von Neumann machines, named for John von Neumann. With recent advances in 3D printing (including in zero gravity) and machine learning AI, it seems like self-replicating machines are much more feasible today. In the 21st century, a tantalizing possibility for this technology has emerged: sending a space probe out to a different star system, having it mine resources to make a copy of itself, and then launching that one to yet another star system, and on and on and on.

As a wild new episode of PBS’s YouTube series Space Time suggests, if we could send a von Neumann probe to another star system—likely Alpha Centauri, the closest to us at about 4.4 light years away—then that autonomous spaceship could land on a rocky planet, asteroid, or moon and start building a factory. (Of course, it’d probably need a nuclear fusion drive, something we still need to develop.)

Continue reading “Could We Explore the Entire Galaxy With Self-Replicating Robots?” »

A view of the 40-foot radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, the world’s first automated radio telescope, with its underground control room.

Circa 2019

For better or worse, machine learning and big data are poised to transform the study of the heavens.

Artificial camouflage is the functional mimicry of the natural camouflage that can be observed in a wide range of species^1,2,3. Especially, since the 1800s, there were a lot of interesting studies on camouflage technology for military purposes which increases survivability and identification of an anonymous object as belonging to a specific military force^4,5. Along with previous studies on camouflage technology and natural camouflage, artificial camouflage is becoming an important subject for recently evolving technologies such as advanced soft robotics^1,6,7,8 electronic skin in particular^9,10,11,12. Background matching and disruptive coloration are generally claimed to be the underlying principles of camouflage covering many detailed subprinciples¹³, and these necessitate not only simple coloration but also a selective expression of various disruptive patterns according to the background. While the active camouflage found in nature mostly relies on the mechanical action of the muscle cells^14,15,16, artificial camouflage is free from matching the actual anatomies of the color-changing animals and therefore incorporates much more diverse strategies^{17,18,19,20,21,22}, but the dominant technology for the practical artificial camouflage at visible regime (400–700 nm wavelength), especially RGB domain, is not fully established so far. Since the most familiar and direct camouflage strategy is to exhibit a similar color to the background^23,24,25, a prerequisite of an artificial camouflage at a unit device level is to convey a wide range of the visible spectrum that can be controlled and changed as occasion demands^26,27,28. At the same time, the corresponding unit should be flexible and mechanically robust, especially for wearable purposes, to easily cover the target body as attachable patches without interrupting the internal structures, while being compatible with the ambient conditions and the associated movements of the wearer^29,30.

System integration of the unit device into a complete artificial camouflage device, on the other hand, brings several additional issues to consider apart from the preceding requirements. Firstly, the complexity of the unit device is anticipated to be increased as the sensor and the control circuit, which are required for the autonomous retrieval and implementation of the adjacent color, are integrated into a multiplexed configuration. Simultaneously, for nontrivial body size, the concealment will be no longer effective with a single unit unless the background consists of a monotone. As a simple solution to this problem, unit devices are often laterally pixelated^12,18 to achieve spatial variation in the coloration. Since its resolution is determined by the numbers of the pixelated units and their sizes, the conception of a high-resolution artificial camouflage device that incorporates densely packed arrays of individually addressable multiplexed units leads to an explosive increase in the system complexity. While on the other hand, solely from the perspective of camouflage performance, the delivery of high spatial frequency information is important for more natural concealment by articulating the texture and the patterns of the surface to mimic the microhabitats of the living environments^31,32. As a result, the development of autonomous and adaptive artificial camouflage at a complete device level with natural camouflage characteristics becomes an exceptionally challenging task.

Our strategy is to combine thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) ink with the vertically stacked multilayer silver (Ag) nanowire (NW) heaters to tackle the obstacles raised from the earlier concept and develop more practical, scalable, and high-performance artificial camouflage at a complete device level. The tunable coloration of TLC, whose reflective spectrum can be controlled over a wide range of the visible spectrum within the narrow range of temperature^33,34, has been acknowledged as a potential candidate for artificial camouflage applications before^21,34, but its usage has been more focused on temperature measurement^35,36,37,38 owing to its high sensitivity to the temperature change. The susceptible response towards temperature is indeed an unfavorable feature for the thermal stability against changes in the external environment, but also enables compact input range and low power consumption during the operation once the temperature is accurately controlled.

A recently granted South African patent seems fairly mundane, but, he inventor is not a human being – it is an AI system named DABUS. property= description.

Chameleons have long been a symbol of adaptation because of their ability to adjust their iridophores—a special layer of cells under the skin—to blend in with their surroundings.

In a new study published today in Nature Communications, researchers from South Korea have created a robot chameleon capable of imitating its biological counterpart, paving the way for new artificial camouflage technology.

Quartz is a guide to the new global economy for people in business who are excited by change. We cover business, economics, markets, finance, technology, science, design, and fashion.

Circa 2014

A computer program called Eugene Goostman, which simulates a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, is said to have passed the Turing test at an event organised by the University of Reading.

Since 1,988 and formation of the Posthuman Movement, and articles by early adopters like Max Moore were a sign our message was being received — although I always argued on various Extropian & Transhuman bulletin boards & Yahoo groups &c that “Trans” was a redundant middle and we should move straight to Posthuman, now armed with the new MVT knowledge (also figures on the CDR). There will be a new edition of World Philosophy, the first this millennium, to coincided with various Posthuman University events later this year. Here is the text:

THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES V. 2.01 August 7 1992.

Max More Executive Director, Extropy Institute.

Continue reading “This 1,992 paper was included on best-selling CDR World Philosophy compilation (before internet) and I claim some credit for circulated it and popularising the ‘Transhuman sidetrack’” »