What we need to do, to prevent global wealth inequality and advanced technology from adding up to produce global catastrophe, is increase equitability of opportunity. We need to enable everyone in the world to have the opportunity to really play the modern global economic-social game.
AI scientist BEN GOERTZEL believes that advanced technologies will change the world and transform our species in the process — unless tragedy strikes. Here’s how we ought to save the world if it does …
Full automation of things like Logging, and Mining is not that far off. A humanoid robot that can do all the tasks of those sorts of jobs is already really close, the main issue right now is copying Human Hands, and it is almost there. Then, having vehicles like this to haul the stuff out of there. And, then those jobs are gone for good.
It might not be the quickest vehicle at the event, but Swedish transport company Einride has chosen the Goodwood Festival of Speed to reveal the T-log, an autonomous, electric logging truck. Incorporating some unusual purpose-built design for the niche logging market, the vehicle is designed to go off-road and to navigate forest roads with and without loads.
Ionic Materials received an investment from Hyundai Cradle. Ionic Materials has a polymer electrolyte that can make higher performing and safer solid-state batteries. Prototype batteries with Ionic Materials’ solid plastic electrolyte can enable higher energy densities at low cost.
Properties of Ionic Materials polymer
Up to 1.3 mS/cm at room temperature Lithium transference number of 0.7 High voltage capability (5 volts) Can accommodate high loadings in the cathode High elastic modulus Low cost precursors Stable against Lithium Conducts multiple ions.
Their task was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others.
To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically, a plastic-covered disk of plutonium, a material that can be used to fuel nuclear weapons, and another of cesium, a highly radioactive isotope that could potentially be used in a so-called “dirty” radioactive bomb.
But when they stopped at a Marriott hotel just off Highway 410, in a high-crime neighborhood filled with temp agencies and ranch homes, they left those sensors on the back seat of their rented Ford Expedition. When they awoke the next morning, the window had been smashed and the special valises holding these sensors and nuclear materials had vanished.
In a new study published in “Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems” an international team of scientists explain that there may be more than a quadrillion tons of diamonds scattered throughout the Earth, buried in ancient slabs of rocks known as cratonic roots. They came across these by studying seismic wave movement.
CTRL-labs’s noninvasive neural interface allows people to control computers, robots and applications by tracking electrical activity generated when a person thinks about moving. This electrical activity is detected by an armband outfitted with sensors and decoded by a computer. The team thinks the technology will initially be used for augmented and virtual reality, but CTRL-labs is already experimenting with medical applications.
Want a hint of how the automotive zeitgeist is changing? You only need to look at the just-ended Goodwood Festival of Speed. Roborace has carved out a small niche in history with the first self-driving vehicle to successfully complete Goodwood’s famous hill climb, where vehicles have to tackle a gradual 300-foot ascent that includes narrow hay- and brick-lined passages. It wasn’t a flat-out assault, but the attempt (which was preceded by a practice run) went off without a hitch — which you can’t say for the other autonomous contender at the festival.
Siemens had prepared an autonomous Ford Mustang that carried none other than the festival’s founder, the Duke of Richmond, through the run. Technically, it did complete the run — but only with help from a safety driver, who had to repeatedly take over as the modified coupe threatened to plow into hay bales. This came despite Siemens’ team having 3D-mapped the course and plotted the route in advance.
Human drivers don’t have anything to worry about yet in either case. The Roborace vehicle was not only cautious, but tended to make constant corrections that are clearly visible in the video below. Even so, it’s good to know that a completely driverless race car isn’t intimidated by an elevation change. We just can’t help but imagine Goodwood guests feeling nervous — the festival might have less reason to exist if many future cars won’t need a human pilot.
Researchers involved in the Blue Brain Project – which aims to create a digital reconstruction of the brain – have announced the deployment of a next-generation supercomputer.
Credit: HPE
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Swiss university and research institute developing the Blue Brain Project, has announced the selection of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to build a next-generation supercomputer. This will model and simulate the mammalian brain in greater detail than ever before. The powerful new machine, called “Blue Brain 5”, will be dedicated to simulation neuroscience, in particular simulation-based research, analysis and visualisation, to advance the understanding of the brain.
