Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: robotics/AI – Page 93

Does Tech, including AI, erode our cognitive abilities … or can we harness it to enhance our cognition and our lives?

Our core cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, such as atten­tion, work­ing mem­o­ry and IQ, are shaped part­ly by genet­ics and part­ly by envi­ron­men­tal influ­ences–which include cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing activ­i­ties as well as delib­er­ate, cog­ni­tive training. The plas­tic­i­ty of these cog­ni­tive func­tions is evi­dent, for exam­ple, in the impact of edu­ca­tion: as my research group and oth­ers have shown, each…

Japan’s nuclear reactor robot inspector boosts power plant safety

Mitsubishi says that the robot has been developed to carry out non-destructive inspections of nuclear reactor vessels in underwater environments.

It states that the robot has been working at pressurized water reactor power plants across Japan since 1995, and has been used at least 50 times.

The robot can be controlled remotely using a computer and joystick by operators. The robot navigates around the hazardous environment, swimming in the water inside the nuclear reactor vessel, sticking to the walls with vacuum-pad feet, and using a probe to carry out ultrasonic testing.

AI tools can help hackers plant hidden flaws in computer chips, study finds

Widely available artificial intelligence systems can be used to deliberately insert hard-to-detect security vulnerabilities into the code that defines computer chips, according to new research from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, a warning about the potential weaponization of AI in hardware design.

In a study published by IEEE Security & Privacy, an NYU Tandon research team showed that like ChatGPT could help both novices and experts create “hardware Trojans,” malicious modifications hidden within chip designs that can leak , disable systems or grant unauthorized access to attackers.

To test whether AI could facilitate malicious hardware modifications, the researchers organized a competition over two years called the AI Hardware Attack Challenge as part of CSAW, an annual student-run cybersecurity event held by the NYU Center for Cybersecurity.

Software tool shows clear advantage in water purity prediction

A powerful new software tool that can accurately predict the performance of biofilters used by the water industry could reduce the challenge of maintaining the purity of tap water.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow’s James Watt School of Engineering developed the tool, called the Environmental Buckingham Pi Neural Network, or EnviroPiNet.

It uses machine learning techniques paired with sophisticated physical modeling to predict the ability of biofilters to remove organic carbon compounds from water with up to 90% accuracy. The tool is now available online for free use.

Michael Freedman | The Poincaré Conjecture and Mathematical Discovery

Millennium Prize Problems Lecture 9/17/2025
Speaker: Michael Freedman, Harvard CMSA and Logical Intelligence.

Title: the poincaré conjecture and mathematical discovery.

Abstract: The AI age requires us to re-examine what mathematics is about. The Seven Millenium Problems provide an ideal lens for doing so. Five of the seven are core mathematical questions, two are meta-mathematical – asking about the scope of mathematics. The Poincare conjecture represents one of the core subjects, manifold topology. I’ll explain what it is about, its broader context, and why people cared so much about finding a solution, which ultimately arrived through the work of R. Hamilton and G. Perelman. Although stated in manifold topology, the proof requires vast developments in the theory of parabolic partial differential equations, some of which I will sketch. Like most powerful techniques, the methods survive their original objectives and are now deployed widely in both three-and four-dimensional manifold topology.

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