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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,474

Study finds hackers could use brainwaves to steal passwords

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that brainwave-sensing headsets, also known as EEG or electroencephalograph headsets, need better security after a study reveals hackers could guess a user’s passwords by monitoring their brainwaves.

EEG headsets are advertised as allowing users to use only their brains to control robotic toys and video games specifically developed to be played with an EEG . There are only a handful on the market, and they range in price from $150 to $800.

Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences Department of Computer and Information Sciences, and Ph.D. student Ajaya Neupane and former master’s student Md Lutfor Rahman, found that a person who paused a video game and logged into a bank account while wearing an EEG headset was at risk for having their passwords or other sensitive data stolen by a malicious software program.

“Self-driving room” adapts to each passenger’s needs

National Electric Vehicle Sweden, which purchased Saab’s assets back in 2012, is using CES Asia to show its vision of autonomous commuting. Owning a car is out in this particular mobility vision, and vehicles not only pick you up and drop you off autonomously, they change their interiors around your needs and whims. So you enjoy a personalized ride and can make the most of every moment.

Synergy Between Torah and Science: How Far is TOO Far?

This is one of the first articles I’ve seen specifically on #Judiasm and #transhumaism, with input by rabbis. Naturally the article is cautious, but interesting too.

Transhumanism, an intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities, a concept once limited to the realm of science-fiction, is now becoming more of a reality than ever before. The once outlier philosophy is quickly becoming mainstream, an accepted part of the social conscience that is the new religion for the anti-religious, including its own Messianic vision.

There are many aspects to the transhumanism philosophy, often abbreviated as H+ or h+, including physical longevity through medical breakthroughs and/or merging mankind with machines. Many transhumanists advocate transferring the sum total of a person’s knowledge and experiences into a computer and recreating the individual as a form of artificial intelligence ( AI ) in order to extend an individual’s life.

In its most extreme form, transhumanism advocates limiting human population. This extreme philosophy is criticized for being eugenicist master-race ideology and infringing on basic reproductive rights.

Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman, director of Ohr Chadash Torah Institute, noted that as in any social reform, the driving intention behind the movement is the key element, the factor that decides whether it will be a positive or negative influence on human history.

Apocalypse, now? The 10 biggest threats facing civilisation, from asteroids to tyrannical leaders

The team, made up of highly educated academics, lawyers, scholars and philosophers, form the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER, commonly referred to as “caesar”) and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. At times of global threat, the experts meet to assess the biggest threats facing Earth and what can be done to save civilisation from the impending apocalypse.

New Report Predicts Over 100,000 Legal Jobs Will Be Lost To Automation

An extensive new analysis by Deloitte estimates that over 100,000 jobs will be lost to technological automation within the next two decades. Increasing technological advances have helped replace menial roles in the office and do repetitive tasks.

To paraphrase the Bard’s famous quote: “The first thing we do, let’s replace all the lawyers with automated algorithms.”

Artificial Intelligence Will Make Forging Anything Entirely Too Easy

Lyrebird, a deep learning tech startup based in Montreal, is developing technology that allows anyone to produce surprisingly realistic-sounding speech with the voice of any individual. Lyrebird’s demo generates speech, including varied intonation, in the voices of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. For now, the impersonations are impressive, but also possess a fuzzy, robotic quality that allows even an untrained ear to easily recognize the voice as computer-generated. Still, the technology is making rapid progress.

Opinion: The world of truth is about to be upended by AI technologies.

Hypersonic and anti-hypersonic arms race

Lockheed Martin is using turbine rocket combined cycle (TRCC) to build a mach 6–10 hypersonic plane. The TRCC is an engine that switches between turbofan, ramjet and scramjets for subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flight. The TRCC engine will be tested on a fighter-sized flight testbed by 2020. They would then try to develop a Mach 6, unmanned spyplane by 2030 that would perform the same role as the old SR-71 Blackbird. The hypersonic spyplane would enter highly contested and defended airspace at altitudes of 18 and 62 miles, using its speed to outrun enemy defenses. Hypersonic planes could fire hypersonic missiles. It would join the B-21 stealth bomber in the US air force future global strike arsenal.

Raytheon is also developing anti-hypersonic missile defenses.

Air-breathing hypersonic weapons and boost glide weapons are very difficult to engage, as both fly depressed trajectories that dispense with the high, arc-like, and most importantly predictable trajectories of traditional ballistic missiles.

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