Lifeboat Foundation

And it wouldn’t actually be that expensive, thanks to robots, 3D printing, and SpaceX.

Google DeepMind’s machine-learning AlphaGo program has defeated South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol in the first match of five historic matches between human and AI, taking place in Seoul.

Continue reading “AlphaGo machine-learning program defeats top Go player in first match” »

Graphene, that atomic-scale super material that promises to revolutionize everything from batteries to robots, is already improving the cycling world. Vittoria’s new graphene-infused Mezcal and Morsa bike tires are lightweight, thin, grippy, and everything a cyclist wants in a tire without any tradeoffs.

Choosing what tires to put on your bike usually depends on the conditions in which you’ll be riding. Larger tires provide better grip and durability, but add weight to a bike, while smaller tires are lighter and sleeker but wear out faster and provide minimal traction.

But by adding graphene—that wonder new material made of carbon atoms arranged in a strong honeycomb pattern—Vittoria’s new G+, or Graphene Plus, tires exhibit wonderful new properties. When riding on straightaways, the dual-layer makeup of the G+ tires allows them to remain firm for lower rolling resistance and added speed. But when a cyclist is braking or cornering, the tires get soft for added traction and grip.

Continue reading “Graphene-Infused Bike Tires Automatically Get Softer While Cornering For Better Grip” »

Wearables and other connected devices have been available to help treat chronic conditions like asthma and heart disease for a while now. But thus far, the nation’s 30 million diabetics haven’t seen much to help them improve their health or reduce the daily grind of finger pricks and needle pokes.

The $2.5 billion connected-care industry may be off to a late start in diabetes, but it’s making up for lost time. A new breed of connected glucometers, insulin pumps and smartphone apps is hitting the market. They promise to make it easier for diabetics to manage the slow-progressing disease and keep them motivated with feedback and support. In as little as two years, the industry plans to take charge of the entire uncomfortable, time-consuming routine of checking and regulating blood-sugar levels with something called an artificial pancreas. Such systems mimic the functions of a healthy pancreas by blending continuous glucose monitoring, remote-controlled insulin pumps and artificial intelligence to maintain healthy blood-sugar levels automatically.

For Jeroen Tas, CEO of Philips’ Connected Care and Health Informatics unit, diabetes management is also personal: his daughter Kim is diabetic.

Continue reading “‘Artificial pancreas’ is one of new tech devices aimed at diabetes” »

It might sound like Science Fiction, but robots are helping a local hospital fight infections.

Given robotics history, I can understand Canada’s viewpoint. However, as technologies such as Quantum is applied to AI; we then will see real improvements in robotics. Until Quantum is AI’s platform; we will see robotics still fall short in many areas and will continue to see limited use and adoption.

Nowhere is the world’s robotic future more controversial than in Canada.

In a new global poll from travel site Travelzoo, Canadians were the least likely to agree that robots will make people’s lives better.

Continue reading “Poll On Attitudes Towards Robots Finds Canadians As Pessimistic As It Gets” »

Jeff Goodell is a braver person than me. Goodell reports that the driverless car “still drives like a teenager” Personally, I would worry more about the ability to hack these cars in the middle of a major US highway going 60 to 70 mph and hackers abruptly shutting off the engine.

Self-driving cars, war outsourced to robots, surgery by autonomous machines – this is only the beginning.

A group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have found a way to speed up the Web without actually increasing the connection throughput or making fundamental code changes.

It created Polaris, a framework that determines how to overlap the objects being downloaded by a page and minimize the amounts of time a site fetches individual resources. The framework creates a dependency graph of the page, then uses that to determine when each object should be loaded.

Don’t miss our biggest TNW Conference yet! Join us May 26 & 27 in Amsterdam.

Continue reading “MIT researchers found a way to load websites 34% faster on the same connection” »

A huge milestone has just been reached in the field of artificial intelligence: AlphaGo, a program developed by Google’s DeepMind unit, has defeated legendary Go player Lee Se-dol in the first of five historic matches being held in Seoul, South Korea. Lee resigned after about three and a half hours, with 28 minutes and 28 seconds remaining on his clock. The series is the first time a professional 9-dan Go player has taken on a computer, and Lee is competing for a $1 million prize.

“I was very surprised,” said Lee after the match. “I didn’t expect to lose. [But] I didn’t think AlphaGo would play the game in such a perfect manner.” DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis expressed “huge respect for Lee Se-dol and his amazing skills,” calling the game “hugely exciting” and “very tense.” Team lead David Silver said it was an “amazing game of Go that really pushed AlphaGo to its limits.”