Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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NASA and partner Bradley University of Peoria, Illinois, have selected the top five teams to share a $100,000 prize in the latest stage of the agency’s 3D-Printed Habitat Centennial Challenge competition. Winning teams successfully created digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of a house on Mars using specialized software tools. The teams earned prize money based on scores assigned by a panel of subject matter experts from NASA, academia and industry. The judges interviewed and evaluated submissions from 18 teams from all over the world and selected these teams:

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Title is a bit misleading — atheism is only unpolular with totalitarian regimes (and Templeton Foundation?) — interesting.

Although Johnson said he found the team’s research useful and important, he was unimpressed by their claim to have outperformed previous predictive methods. “Linear regression analysis is not very powerful for prediction,” he said. “I was a little surprised by the strength of their claims.” He cautioned that we should be skeptical about the word prediction in relation to this type of model. Opinion might be better.

“It’s great to have as a tool,” he said. “It’s like, you go to the doctor, they give an opinion. It’s always an opinion, we never say a doctor’s prediction. Usually, we go with the doctor’s opinion because they’ve seen many cases like this, many humans who come in with the same thing. It’s even more of an opinion with these types of models, because they haven’t necessarily seen many cases just like it—history mimics the past but doesn’t exactly repeat it.”

The silver lining here is that if the power of the models is being overstated then so, too, is the ethical concern.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular” | >

The engineering firm Munro & Associates made waves recently when it tore the new Tesla Model 3 apart both literally and figuratively. The company dismantles and studies cars and other products, and CEO Sandy Munro was very vocal about his feelings regarding Tesla’s newest electric vehicle. He said the build quality was like a Kia from the 90s. Now, the company has completed its analysis. While Munro’s opinion on the fit and finish hasn’t changed, he has expressed downright shock that the Model 3 is highly profitable for Tesla.

The initial Munro & Associates analysis of the Model 3 called out issues like clunky door handles and windows that bounce around inside the door panels. The exterior panels of the Model 3 also drew Munro’s ire. The gaps are substantially larger than the more expensive Teslas — even conventional cars that cost thousands less look more polished on the outside, according to Munro.

To say Munro & Associates was skeptical of the Model 3 early on would be an understatement. Now, Sandy Munro says he’s “eating crow,” but not because the Model 3 has better polish than he initially thought. The company has determined that it’s very profitable for Tesla. It’s probably the most profitable electric vehicle on the road right now.

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Designer babies are on the horizon after an influential group of scientists concluded that it could be ‘morally permissible’ to genetically engineer human embryos.

In a new report which opens the door to a change in the law, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, said that DNA editing could become an option for parents wanting to ‘influence the genetic characteristics of their child.’

Although it would be largely used to cure devastating genetic illnesses, or predispositions to cancers and dementia, the experts said they were not ruling out cosmetic uses such as making tweaks to increase height or changing eye or hair colour, if it would make a child more successful.

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