Lifeboat Foundation

A robotic Japanese cargo ship successfully arrived at the International Space Station Saturday (Sept. 28) carrying more than 4 tons of supplies, including new batteries for the outpost’s solar power grid.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) HTV-8 cargo ship pulled up to the space station at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT), where it was captured by a robotic arm wielded by NASA astronaut Christina Koch inside the orbiting lab. The station and HTV-8, also known as Kounotori 8 (Kounotori means “white stork” in Japanese), were soaring 262 miles (422 kilometers) over Angola in southern Africa at the time.

“What you all have done is a testament to what we can accomplish when international teams work together towards a common goal,” Koch radioed to NASA’s Mission Control in Houston and flight controllers at JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center in Japan. “We’re honored to have Kounotori on board, and look forward to a successful and productive mission together.”

DARPA is asking for help to create the super-fast network interface card that industry has so far failed to produce.

Finally, the future that children of the ’80s want to see is on its way. NASA is working on its very own Transformer — a bot called Shapeshifter, made up of smaller robots which can combine into different configurations to roll, swim, fly, and float.

Shapeshifter is a prototype for exploring Saturn’s moon Titan. Before it ended its mission by burning up in Saturn’s rings, the Cassini probe flew by Titan more than one hundred times, observing the moon which is surprisingly similar to Earth. It has rivers, lakes, and rain, but instead of being made of water, these bodies are made of liquid methane and ethane. On Earth, these are gases, but in the freezing temperatures of Titan, they are liquid. Cassini collected mapping data of the surface, and scientists have been keen to discover more since then.

Continue reading “Autobots, Roll Out: NASA Creates Transforming Robot for Exploring Titan” »

(VATICAN CITY) — Pope Francis on Friday warned tech company executives, diplomats and financiers that the race to create artificial intelligence and other forms of digital development pose the risk of increasing social inequality unless the work is accompanied by an ethical evaluation of the common good.

Francis addressed a Vatican conference that brought government envoys and Facebook and Google representatives together with philosophers, physicists and ethicists. A smattering of academics and Catholic bishops rounded out participants at “The Common Good in the Digital Age” conference.

The three-day gathering is the latest evidence of the Vatican wanting a place in the debate over the prospects and perils of artificial intelligence.

Jeff Bezos may be trying to get ahead of mounting criticism of its controversial Rekognition tech.

The rise of killer robots is now unstoppable and a new digital Geneva Convention is essential to protect the world from the growing threat they pose, according to the President of the world’s biggest technology company.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, said the use of ‘lethal autonomous weapon systems’ poses a host of new ethical questions which need to be considered by governments as a matter of urgency.

He said the rapidly advancing technology, in which flying, swimming or walking drones can be equipped with lethal weapons systems – missiles, bombs or guns – which could be programmed to operate entirely or partially autonomously, “ultimately will spread… to many countries”.

Well, it’s sound weird but in the upcoming future, your toilet will be your mini doctor. A company called Micron is developing a smart artificial intelligence-powered toilet that will reportedly be able to diagnose your state of health and risk of disease by analyzing your bodily waste.

The major goal of this technology is to analyze bowel movements and recognize the signs for health issues or ailments early on. This information will also use to understand early symptoms of certain diseases.

Elon Musk has once again issued a stark warning over his fears about the rise of artificial intelligence.

The Telsa CEO shared a pair of tweets today that stated it will not be long until ‘advanced AI’ manipulates social media.

Continue reading “Elon Musk warns ‘bot swarms’ will evolve to manipulate social media” »

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