Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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IBM Q is an industry-first initiative to build a commercially available universal quantum computers for business and science. While technologies like AI can find patterns buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen and the number of possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous ever to be processed by classical computers.

IBM Q quantum systems and services will be delivered via the IBM Cloud platform and will be designed to tackle problems that are too complex and exponential in nature for classical computing systems to handle. One of the first and most promising applications for quantum computing will be in the area of chemistry and could lead to the discovery of new medicines and materials. IBM aims at constructing commercial IBM Q systems with ~50 qubits in the next few years to demonstrate capabilities beyond today’s classical systems, and plans to collaborate with key industry partners to develop applications that exploit the quantum speedup of the systems.

IBM also announced:

  • The release of a new API (Application Program Interface) for the IBM Quantum Experience that enables developers and programmers to begin building interfaces between its existing five quantum bit (qubit) cloud-based quantum computer and classical computers, without needing a deep background in quantum physics.

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The burgeoning space-transportation company owned by Amazon.com chairman Jeff Bezos this week is expected to announce some customers and new initiatives, the latest step toward its long-term goal of building rockets powerful enough to penetrate deep into the solar system, according to industry officials.

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The moves by the typically secretive Mr. Bezos, these officials said, are anticipated to disclose further details about Blue Origin LLC’s strategy to create a family of reusable rockets initially intended to take tourists on suborbital voyages, and then propel spacecraft into Earth’s orbit and eventually blast both manned and robotic missions to the Moon and various planets.

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Virginia Tech’s Visual Arts Department and Engineering Department have been joining forces to design ESCHER, a firefighting robot.

ESCHER was originally created at the beginning of 2015 in the Terrestrial Robotics Engineering and Controls Laboratory. ESCHER is short for Electronic Series Compliant Humanoid for Emergency Response.

“The special application for this project is the idea that ESCHER could go on naval ships and fight fires and go places that would normally be hazardous to humans,” said Meaghan Dee, assistant professor and chair of Visual Communications. “If you think of something like the Fukushima Disaster, you could have just sent in a robot, and that’s what these emergency robots are designed to do.”

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Are we ready for cyborgs? More specifically, people with implants that enhance beyond the superficially cosmetic and into the realms of evolved beings?

Jorge Pelegrín-Borondo (Universidad de La Rioja), Eva Reinares-Lara (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) and Cristina Olarte-Pascual (Universidad de La Rioja), in cooperation with Professor Kiyoshi Murata, from Meiji University in Tokyo, believe society is ready for this melding of (hu)man and machine.

The Spanish academics’ report “Assessing the acceptance of technological implants (the cyborg): Evidences and challenges” has just been released in the scientific journal Computers in Human Behavior. The report shows a significant proportion of those surveyed are comfortable with the coming cyborg modifications. The group are also collaborating with other academics across the world, including Professor Kiyoshi Murata, for a comparative cross-cultural study roundtable at the 2017 ETHICOMP conference this summer in Turin, Italy.

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Carla Rivas Schab

Gordon is a robotic arm that serves coffee in a San Francisco shopping complex. It’s the first robotic barista in the U.S., and it could serve about 120 coffees in an hour. “A lot of us spend a lot of time in line waiting for coffee,” Henry Hu, CEO of Cafe X Technologies, the local start-up that created the robot, tells USA Today. “And we decided to do something about it.”

Cafe X Technologies built a toll-booth sized stall to house Gordon, and customers can approach the stall or order via a mobile app. Gordon can serve seven drinks, including espressos and cafe lattes, for about $2.25 to $2.95 per 8-ounce cup. This system won’t get your name wrong, either. After choosing their type of drink, flavor, and intensity of flavor, customers enter a mobile number to get a four-digit code and then pay. When their drink is ready, they receive a text message.

Continue reading “This Robot Barista Is Faster Than a Human, and It Just Started Work in San Fran” | >

Various transhumanism stories newly out or reshared:

https://mysteriousearth.net/2017/02/23/two-americans-aim-to-…-implants/ &

http://3dpromote.com/zoltan-istvan-nick-bostrom-and-the-anti…-atlantic/ &

http://www.hashtagy.net/en/news/zoltan-istvan-ran-for-presid…ork-times/

Continue reading “Two Americans Aim to Plug Into the ‘Matrix’ through Black Market Brain Implants” | >

A laser phased array directed energy system has been designed and simulated. Lubin and Hughes calculated the requirements and possibilities for DE-STAR systems of several sizes, ranging from a desktop device to one measuring 10 kilometers, or six miles, in diameter. Larger systems were also considered. The larger the system, the greater its capabilities.

For instance, DE-STAR 2 – at 100 meters in diameter, about the size of the International Space Station – “could start nudging comets or asteroids out of their orbits,” Hughes said. But DE-STAR 4 – at 10 kilometers in diameter, about 100 times the size of the ISS – could deliver 1.4 megatons of energy per day to its target, said Lubin, obliterating an asteroid 500 meters across in one year.

The speed of interplanetary travel – far beyond what is possible with chemical propellant rockets used today – could be increased with this sized system, according to Lubin. It could also power advanced ion drive systems for deep space travel, he said. Able to engage multiple targets and missions at once, DE-STAR 4 “could simultaneously evaporate an asteroid, determine the composition of another, and propel a spacecraft.”

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Controlled nuclear fusion has been a holy grail for physicists who seek an endless supply of clean energy. Scientists at Rice University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chile offered a glimpse into a possible new path toward that goal.

Their report on quantum-controlled fusion puts forth the notion that rather than heating atoms to temperatures found inside the sun or smashing them in a collider, it might be possible to nudge them close enough to fuse by using shaped laser pulses: ultrashort, tuned bursts of coherent light.

Authors Peter Wolynes of Rice, Martin Gruebele of Illinois and Illinois alumnus Eduardo Berrios of Chile simulated reactions in two dimensions that, if extrapolated to three, might just produce energy efficiently from deuterium and tritium or other elements.

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