California-based SSL, formerly known as Space Systems Loral, says it’ll receive continued funding from NASA for an on-orbit satellite assembly program known as Dragonfly. SSL and its partners, including Bothell, Wash.-based Tethers Unlimited, recently completed a successful ground demonstration of the Dragonfly system, which is designed to assemble pieces of space hardware in orbit robotically. The next step is to move forward with a detailed design for a semi-autonomous assembly system that could be sent into space sometime in the 2020s. Check out this 11-second video clip about the Dragonfly’s ground test:
Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,448
Researchers Have Linked a Human Brain to the Internet for the First Time Ever
Researchers from Wits University have linked a brain directly to the internet. Data gathered from this project could help fuel the next steps in machine learning and brain-computer interfaces.
A team of researchers at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa have made a major breakthrough in the field of biomedical engineering. According to a release published on Medical Express, for the first time ever, researchers have devised a way of connecting the human brain to the internet in real time. It’s been dubbed the “Brainternet” project, and it essentially turns the brain “…into an Internet of Things (IoT) node on the World Wide Web.”
A DNA nanorobot is programmed to pick up and sort molecules into predefined regions
Imagine a robot that could help you tidy your home: roving about, sorting stray socks into the laundry and dirty dishes into the dishwasher. While such a practical helper may still be the stuff of science fiction, Caltech scientists have developed an autonomous molecular machine that can perform similar tasks—at the nanoscale. This “robot,” made of a single strand of DNA, can autonomously “walk” around a surface, pick up certain molecules and drop them off in designated locations.
The work was done in the laboratory of Lulu Qian, assistant professor of bioengineering. It appears in a paper in the September 15 issue of Science.
Why Nanobots?
There’s no need to fear a robot taking your job – not if you become one yourself
A new article recently out discussing issues of #transhumanism:
Hello reader, are you trans? Transhuman, that is.
Probably not, but one day you might be – or, failing that, your kids or grandkids. In what is very much a ‘guest’ piece for the American Conservative, Zoltan Istvan – the Libertarian candidate for Governor of California – explains his transhumanist vision:
“…transhumanism is the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic world—a world that consists of biohackers, cyborgists, roboticists, life extension advocates, cryonicists, Singularitarians, and other science-devoted people.”
There’s no need to fear a robot taking your job – not if you become one yourself!
A Letter From the Future: Dear Dad
For millennials and the generations to follow, the future will differ radically from their parents’ world. Massively powerful digital technologies will bring seismic changes in the lifestyles, opportunities, privileges and choices experienced by young people compared to their parents.
Robots will become smarter than humans by 2029, says HP Chief Technology Officer Shane Wall
The ‘singularity’ event that scientists talk about in artificial intelligence (AI) — when robots would outsmart human beings in reasoning — has just been moved up, according to a top scientist at HP Inc. The progress in AI and machine learning has been so rapid that scientists have upped the estimate for the ‘singularity’ to happen in 2029 from 2040, shaving off 11 years of development time, says Shane Wall, Chief Technology Officer at HP, who also heads the HP Labs which is at the centre of innovation within the company.
Wall, who was speaking at the HP Reinvent Partner Forum here, said there may be some who watch with fear for that event to happen but taken adequate precautions, this change would bring in much good for everyone — be it in manufacturing, health, innovation or elsewhere. He said AI handles huge amount of data and can discern patterns to take decisions. “Machine learning uses AI and big data to learn and it can find things that no humans can see,” Wall noted.
According to him, already there are massive data farms which are crunching big numbers and there are research labs and companies where machines are taught how to use data to managing things around us. Wall, who joined HP over a decade ago, drives the company’s technology vision and its strategy and helms the innovation community within. According to him, machines have become smart enough to predict failures within a system and 3D manufacturing is a massive revolution in the making. “Already, 3D printing is handling intricate products and in the future this will bring about a disruptive change,” Wall said.
Update on Google’s Secretive Startup Calico Labs
Update on google’s secretive calico labs.
Google’s #Calico #Labs startup has been cloaked in secrecy, until recently. Calico Labs is using #AI and #MachineLearning to defeat aging. Using a new AI-based machine, they decoded a human genome from scratch — without looking at the official genome map.
Google’s biotech startup Calico Labs is hoping to outsmart death and has been cloaked in secrecy, until recently. That is, until this report.
Artificial Intelligence: The Quest for Universal Beauty Could Also Help Aging Research
Humanity has been attempting to measure and assess beauty long before anyone even knew about computers and algorithms. Surprisingly, a new technology may help to solve the ancient question that mankind has struggled to answer: what is universal beauty? And perhaps even more intriguingly, it might help us in aging research.
Leonardo da Vinci attempted to capture the essence of beauty in his famous drawing, Vitruvian Man, through the use of geometrically equal proportions. This drawing was based on the writing of Roman architect Vitruvius in his treatise De Architectura.
According to Plato, beauty was an idea or form of which beautiful things were a consequence. He suggested that beauty was found when the sum of parts became a harmonious whole.
The Libertarian Futurist’s Case for Avoiding War and Military Entanglements
My new policy article for the HuffPost on why more than ever we need to avoid war and armed conflict:
Some of the early years of my adult life were in conflict zones as a journalist—which included covering the Pakistan/Indian Kashmir conflict for the National Geographic Channel and The New York Times Syndicate. War zones are terrifying. One always is worried about bullying soldiers, speeding armed military vehicles, stray bullets, and whether there’s a roadside bomb on your path. Anyone that approaches you is suspect and could be carrying ready-to-detonate explosives.
One thing conflict zones teach you is that freedom is precious. The nearly 70-year Kashmir conflict has approximately a half million soldiers involved, so even if they’re supposedly on your side (depending on what country you’re in), you still feel under siege. My time in certain parts of Sudan, Israel, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Mali, and Yemen left me with the same feeling.
We face an unusual time with President Trump, whose bold behavior could prove dangerous to stable foreign policy. This situation has now become even more worrisome this month when Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to RT, said publicly that whoever “leads in artificial intelligence will rule the world.” Some experts believe we will have an AI equivalent to human intelligence in less than 10 years time—which means in 15–20 years time, AI will far outdo human thinking and could be in control of all nuclear weaponry on the planet.
For this reason, nothing is more critical for nations and peoples to strive for peaceful times and to get along with one another. In any kind of modern conflict or 21st Century arms race—AI, genetic engineering, or nuclear arms—we likely will lose some of our freedoms and sense of security.