Amazon announces a new type of smart brick-and-mortar shopping with no checkouts.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,518
Synthego bags $41M to grow CRISPR synthetic RNA kit biz
Nice.
Synthetic RNA kit business Synthego has raised $41 million to step up its efforts to make CRISPR gene editing easier and more accurate. The West Coast startup relied heavily on tech VCs for the cash, but also gained validation from having CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna invest in its business.
Redwood City, CA-based Synthego exited stealth in August, four years after it was set up by two former SpaceX computer engineers. In those early years, which were bankrolled by an $8.3 million investment in 2013, Synthego established an automated manufacturing process for guide RNA products that it thinks sets it apart from larger competitors in terms of cost, turnaround time and editing efficiency.
Sythengo has persuaded some big names it is on to something. 8VC, an infrastructure-focused VC that also invested in uBiome, led the round with support from fellow new backers AME Cloud Ventures, Elements Capital, OS Fund, Alexandria Equities and ZhenFund. Existing investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Menlo Ventures also contributed to the Series B round.
Japanese company replaces office workers with artificial intelligence
A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.
Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI.
The Transhumanist Paradox [33c3]
“I’m a political theory researcher at Sciences Po, and this talk draws on modern political theories of liberalism, the latest transhumanist literature, and ancient Greek theories of the good life.”
The Transhumanist Paradox.
Deciding between technological utopias in a liberal state.
How does a pluralist society – a society built to accommodate our irreconcilable differences – make a choice about the technological future of mankind? How can a liberal state dedicated to upholding individual liberty interfere in technological progress, and why should it?
Do we really want to leave our technological futures in the hands of the major AI researchers – Google, Facebook, and the US Defense Department?
Artificial Intelligence is Helping Restore Vision
In Brief
- Microsoft is partnering with a prestigious eye hospital in India to help perfect AI powered computer diagnostics to the field of ophthalmology.
- Artificial intelligence is continually making great strides to integrate more in various healthcare settings, hopefully increasing the quality and availability of patient care.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 285 million people are visually impaired, with 39 million living with blindness and the other 246 million having low vision.
In a world of modern technological advancements, visual impairment has been the subject of much medical research. Perhaps the most notable among these are those that use artificial intelligence (AI), specifically through machine learning. Google’s DeepMind has been working with the UK’s National Health Service to do ophthalmology research.
A Wolverine Inspired Material
Transparent, self-healing, conducting artificial muscle could power robots of the future…
December 23, 2016: Researchers create a self-healing, transparent, highly stretchable material that can be electrically activated and used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots.