Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,588

By — SingularityHub

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Last year, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking admitted they were concerned about artificial intelligence. While undeniably brilliant, neither are AI researchers. Then this week Bill Gates leapt into the fray, also voicing concern—even as a chief of research at Microsoft said advanced AI doesn’t worry him. It’s a hot topic. And hotly debated. Why?

In part, it’s because tech firms are pouring big resources into research. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others are making rapid advances in machine learning—a technique where programs learn by interacting with large sets of data.

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By –Singularity Hub

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Since 2005, I’ve been grappling with the issue of what to teach young people. I’ve written curricula for junior high students in the US, for a UNICEF program reaching students in a dozen countries, and now, for East African young people as they become financially literate and business savvy.

Through the years, I’ve watched program directors demand young people focus on foolish content because it lined up with something trending in the public discourse—units on climate change; modules about using social media to share stories; lessons on agricultural policy; and so forth.

What have I learned? The attention of a young person is tremendously valuable. We should stop teaching them whatever makes us feel good and get honest about the next fifteen years.

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lifeboat-min
From Innovation to Oblivion…

The ups and downs of Bitcoin as an internet currency may be compared to the eventual demise of Google Glass due to its lack of purpose among consumers. While it does not significantly hold true for bitcoins, which apparently have a more supportive and enthusiastic followers, the path that these two have taken and will take may be substantially similar than we like to admit.

For one, Bitcoin’s staggering price decline in the recent days left some people wondering what road it will eventually take in the near future. Is it only taking a detour or is it bound for a dead end?

In the case of Google Glass, it received much attention during its inception a few years ago. It was even named by Time magazine one of the best innovations of 2012. However, despite the ingenuity behind a supposed-to-be groundbreaking invention, Google Glass lacked a tangible sense, its purpose incoherent.

Thus, after much speculation, Google recently announced that it would stop selling Glass and that the product would no longer be developed in their research division.

Will Bitcoin End Up Like Google Glass?

Google Glass and Bitcoin are connected by the revolutionary technology that made them a star in the first place. There was some genius work in each of the piece, there’s no doubt about that, but without a clear purpose of how to integrate each product into the mainstream society, it becomes pointless.

Fortunately, bitcoins may stand a chance. Though there’s a portion of the populace that thinks of bitcoins as the internet currency that’s only best suited for illegal activities, its original function, which is for faster and cheaper way of transacting online, still proves to be prevalent.

It’s true that bitcoins were way more fun before that they are now, but it cannot be denied that this cryptocurrency has opened doors for a myriad of possibilities and eliminated security vulnerabilities, in which financial institutions such as banks and credit card companies are relatively known for.

Unlike Google Glass, Bitcoin has a tangible sense, a coherent purpose, and a crystal-clear vision. That is to move around the internet with your money free from the control of the government or any institution. Since there’s nothing that precedes this work of art and technology, it has a chance of staying. Thus, Bitcoin’s game is far from over.

By Erico Guizzo — IEEE Spectrum

The robot seems determined to put a bigger smile on the man’s face. “Are you smiling from the bottom of your heart?” it asks. The man chuckles. “That’s what I’m talking about,” the robot quips in a high-pitched voice. Then, just for good measure, it bows its plastic head and apologizes for being “too bossy to our CEO.”

The CEO is Masayoshi Son, founder and chairman of telecom giant SoftBank and Japan’s richest person. As such, he has overseen the development of hundreds of new products as part of a vast conglomerate of mobile-phone carriers, Internet ventures, and media companies. But last June, at a press conference outside Tokyo, Son climbed onstage to unveil a pet project: a humanoid robot named Pepper. Designed to be a companion in the home, it is the world’s first full-scale humanoid to be offered to consumers. In February, SoftBank plans to start selling it in Japan for 198,000 yen (less than US $2,000), plus a monthly subscription fee. Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, known for building iPhones and iPads for Apple, will produce the robots.

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By –SingularityHUB

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In 2012, University of Pittsburgh researchers released a video of Jan Scheuermann feeding herself a bite of chocolate. This, of course, wouldn’t be noteworthy but for one thing: Scheuermann is paralyzed from the neck down. She fed herself that chocolate using a brain implant and thought-controlled robotic arm—and got a taste of freedom once unthinkable.

Scheuermann’s spinocerebellar degeneration left her unable to move her limbs over a decade ago. She leapt at the chance to take part in the University of Pittsburgh study investigating brain-computer interfaces. The study’s researchers are developing a system that reads and decodes brain activity, translating it into physical action in a robotic arm and hand.

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By Jacob Kastrenakes — The Verge

Elon Musk is worried that AI will destroy humanity, and so he’s decided to donate $10 million toward research into how we can keep artificial intelligence safe. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has previously expressed concern that something like what happens in The Terminator could happen in real life. He’s also said that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.” The purpose of this donation is to both prevent that from happening and to ensure that AI is used for good and to benefit humanity.

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By — Wired
Robots look cute and safe - for now.
I didn’t invent the word “robotification.” It already exists. But here is my version of the definition.

Robotification: The process by which tasks normally performed by humans are replaced with machines of some kind. These machines could be mechanical or electronic. Past tense: robotified.

You might think robotification is something that will happen in the future. Nope. It’s already started. Scholars might debate the exact beginning of the robotification of Earth, but we should all agree that it has already started. Just take a moment and look around you. How many things do you interact with that were once done by humans but are now performed by machines?

Here are some examples.

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New Book: An Irreverent Singularity Funcyclopedia, by Mondo 2000’s R.U. Sirius.

Posted by Rob Chamberlain in 3D printing, alien life, automation, big data, bionic, bioprinting, biotech/medical, complex systems, computing, cosmology, cryptocurrencies, cybercrime/malcode, cyborgs, defense, disruptive technology, DNA, driverless cars, drones, economics, electronics, encryption, energy, engineering, entertainment, environmental, ethics, existential risks, exoskeleton, finance, first contact, food, fun, futurism, general relativity, genetics, hacking, hardware, human trajectories, information science, innovation, internet, life extension, media & arts, military, mobile phones, nanotechnology, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, posthumanism, privacy, quantum physics, robotics/AI, science, security, singularity, software, solar power, space, space travel, supercomputing, time travel, transhumanism

Quoted: “Legendary cyberculture icon (and iconoclast) R.U. Sirius and Jay Cornell have written a delicious funcyclopedia of the Singularity, transhumanism, and radical futurism, just published on January 1.” And: “The book, “Transcendence – The Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity,” is a collection of alphabetically-ordered short chapters about artificial intelligence, cognitive science, genomics, information technology, nanotechnology, neuroscience, space exploration, synthetic biology, robotics, and virtual worlds. Entries range from Cloning and Cyborg Feminism to Designer Babies and Memory-Editing Drugs.” And: “If you are young and don’t remember the 1980s you should know that, before Wired magazine, the cyberculture magazine Mondo 2000 edited by R.U. Sirius covered dangerous hacking, new media and cyberpunk topics such as virtual reality and smart drugs, with an anarchic and subversive slant. As it often happens the more sedate Wired, a watered-down later version of Mondo 2000, was much more successful and went mainstream.”

Read the article here >https://hacked.com/irreverent-singularity-funcyclopedia-mondo-2000s-r-u-sirius/

Quoted: “Tony Williams, the founder of the British-based legal consulting firm, said that law firms will see nearly all their process work handled by artificial intelligence robots. The robotic undertaking will revolutionize the industry, “completely upending the traditional associate leverage model.” And: “The report predicts that the artificial intelligence technology will replace all the work involving processing information, along with a wide variety of overturned policies.”

Read the article here > https://hacked.com/legal-consulting-firm-believes-artificial…yers-2030/

by — TechCrunch

Designing a good-looking website has never been easy, and while many services promise to let you build a site without ever having to touch any code, you quickly reach their limits if you want to have a more advanced site. The Grid, which is launching its crowdfunding campaign today, promises to do away with all of this. Instead of designing your site pixel by pixel yourself, The Grid team wants to use artificial intelligence to design your site based on your content and goals (more followers, more customers, higher sales, etc.).

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