Lifeboat Foundation

Have you ever been in a situation where knowing another language would have come in handy?

I remember standing on the platform at Tokyo Station watching my train to Nagano — the last train of the day — pulling away without me on it. What ensued was a frustrating hour of gestures, confused smiles, and head-shaking as I wandered the station looking for someone who spoke English (my Japanese is unfortunately nonexistent). It would have been really helpful to have a bilingual pal along with me to translate.

Bilingual pals can be hard to find, but Google’s new translation software may be an equally useful alternative. In a paper released last week, the authors noted that Google’s Neural Machine Translation system (GNMT) reduced translation errors by an average of 60% compared to Google’s phrase-based system. GMNT uses deep learning, a technology that aims to ‘think’ in the same way as a human brain.

Continue reading “A Computer Can Now Translate Languages as Well as a Human” »

Come “ask me anything” right now!!! I’m trying to answer all questions I get asked:

Hi Reddit,

Thank you for having me here. My name is Zoltan Istvan, and I’m a futurist, journalist, and science fiction writer. I’m also the 2016 Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party.

Continue reading “AMA: I’m Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist US Presidential Candidate. Ask me anything!! : Futurology” »

In Brief:

• As part of a strategy to prepare for the Singularity, Japanese telecom multinational SoftBank spent $31 billion to acquire microprocessing company ARM.
• This hypothetical day in the future when machine intelligence surpasses that of humanity may not be the doomsday it is portrayed as in much of pop culture.

And how to keep secrets.

We’re supposed to be building robots and AI for the good of humankind, but scientists at MIT have pretty much been doing the opposite — they’ve built a new kind of AI with the sole purpose of generating the most frightening images ever.

Just in time for Halloween, the aptly named Nightmare Machine uses an algorithm that ‘learns’ what humans find scary, sinister, or just downright unnerving, and generates images based on what it thinks will freak us out the most.

“There have been a rising number of intellectuals, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, raising alarms about the potential threat of superintelligent AI on humanity,” one of the team, Pinar Yanardag Delul, told Digital Trends.

Continue reading “Scientists have built a Nightmare Machine to generate the scariest images ever” »

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Your Tesla can drive itself. Not just on the highway, not under strict guidance, but everywhere. Or at least, it will have all the necessary gadgets to do so soon.

We are excited to announce that, as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.

– Tesla Blog

Continue reading “Teslas Are Teaching Each Other How to Drive Better Than You” »

The robot revolution is gaining pace, but is it running in line with our values? Here are some of the main ethical issues keeping the AI experts up at night.