Toggle light / dark theme

Amanda Feilding, a well-known researcher from the Beckley Foundation in Oxford, has long been an advocate for LSD microdosing.

Before it was made illegal in 1968, Ms Feilding would take LSD to boost her creativity, and even found that her performace in the ancient Chinese game of Go, improved.

Speaking to Motherboard, Ms Feilding said: ‘I found that if I was on LSD and my opponent wasn’t, I won more games.

Read more

Neurala today announced a major advance in deep learning with software that can learn with or without the cloud and eliminates the risk of forgetting its previous knowledge…


Lifelong-DNN™ (Lifelong-Deep Neural Networks), Neurala’s Patent-Pending Software, Overcomes Catastrophic Forgetting—the #1 Problem Limiting the Growth of Deep Learning Neural Networks for Real-Time Use

SAN JOSE, CA —May 8, 2017— Neurala today announced a major advance in deep learning with software that can learn with or without the cloud and eliminates the risk of forgetting its previous knowledge. The new patent-pending approach means that for the first time a self-driving car can be personalized by each owner or dealer to a specific neighborhood; a parent can teach a toy to recognize a child, without infringing on privacy; and industrial machines can be updated in the field for specific tasks.

Until now, if an AI system had learned a certain number of objects and needed to learn one more, it would have to be retrained on all of the objects. This traditional method requires using powerful servers that are often located in the cloud. Neurala Lifelong Deep Neural Networks (L-DNN) enable learning of the incremental object on the edge.

A new story out on #transhumanism:


In the Basic Income America Facebook group, Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist who recently ran for president, shared his Wired article, Capitalism 2.0: the economy of the future will be powered by neural lace. He (along with many others) argues Wall Street, law offices, engineering firms, and more will soon be mostly void of humans.

I think I mostly agree with him. Algorithms will far surpass human ability to achieve the best possible outcomes (Nash equilibrium). Having read Super Intelligence, the Master Algorithm, The Age of Em, books on evolution, lectures, interviews, etc… I think we’re approaching an important moment in human history where we have to figure out morality so we can build it into the proto-AI children we are giving birth to. I’ve even toyed around with a fun idea related to the simulation hypothesis. Maybe we exist as a simulation, repeating the birth of AI over and over again until we figure out a way to do it without destroying ourselves or turning the universe into computonium.

I’ve argued the world may need a Universal Basic Income and Steem Power might power it. I’ve also discussed the morality of artificial intelligence. I’m a big fan of Ray Kurzweil and love hearing him lecture about the future longevity we might enjoy, but I also recognize how fragile biological life is compared to exponentially growing super intelligence. I’ve heard the concerns by Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and others, and to me, they are convincing.

IN AN effort to mine precious metals potentially worth trillions of dollars and aid interstellar travel, China has unveiled plans to build a base on an asteroid, likely to happen “in the near future”.

Ye Peijian, the chief commander and designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, revealed details that could potentially put an unmanned craft on an asteroid and mine the rock for metals like palladium, platinum and others that are used in items such as smartphones and cars.

“In the near future, we will study ways to send robots or astronauts to mine suitable asteroids and transport the resources back to Earth,” Peijian said in comments reported by China Daily.

Read more

The US government has rolled out a plan to reshape airport security around facial recognition, playing off a wealth of passport photos and visa applications.

Led by Customs and Border Protection, the plan is built around the Biometric Exit program, which will register visitors leaving the US using facial recognition. But new statements show that CBP’s plans could make facial scans necessary for US citizens as well, documenting them when they reenter the country or pass through TSA checkpoints. The result would eventually grow into an airport-wide system Customs officials call “The Biometric Pathway.”

John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner at CBP, laid out that vision at the ConnectID conference last week. “We’re going to build this for [Biometric] Exit. We’re out of time, we have to,” Wagner told the crowd. “But why not make this available to everyone? Why not look to drive the innovation across the entire airport experience?”

Read more

Self-driving cars could soon be hitting the streets of the Big Apple, thanks to a new law that allows firms to apply to run trials there.

New York joins a growing list of states that are accepting applications for autonomous vehicle trials.

Cars will not allowed to be completely driverless yet, with a human driver in place to step in in case of emergency.

Read more

Future of farming? Driverless tractors and drones attempt to grow crops without humans setting foot on the land in a world first…


Drones are also being used to monitor the crops so agronomists don’t have to enter the field to carry out their observations.

The team from the Harper Adams University in Shropshire believe their research will revolutionise farming and free up the time of farmers.

Move over Sherlock: AI detective Valcri solves crimes using deductions made from MILLIONS of pieces data…


A super-sleuth AI system created by scientists at the University of Middlesex in London scans millions of police files to suggest how and why a crime happened, all at the click of a button.

Read more

A critical article on my work by The Rouser with some mangled facts in it for effect. But still worth reading: https://rousernews.com/2017/05/08/why-zoltan-istvan-isnt-a-true-libertarian/ #libertarian #transhumanism


Zoltan Istvan is a journalist and blogger who strongly supports transhumanism, a concept that promotes the idea that humans can utilize the advancement of technology in order to live forever. His rise to stardom began after writing a controversial sci-fi novel called The Transhumanist Wager, but he is also well known due to some of his rather outlandish statements. In 2016, Istvan ran as an independent candidate for president with very little support. He is now running for California governor as a libertarian, and though he is promising a libertarian platform, some of his ideals and scientific views seem to promote another worldview. This could be because he lacks experience of either a scientific or political background.

While transhumanism promotes the idea that humans can advance technology to eventually live forever, it also suggests that this goal will be achieved without any ethical consequences.