Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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The proposal primarily budgets for the fact that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning may mature to surpass human intelligence in the future. Robots’ ability to learn from experience and take independent decisions has made them suitable for human-like interaction with its environment. In future, if a robot commits a mistake or omits a task, authorities should be able to trace back to the manufacturer or owner to check if the robot could have avoided the harmful behaviour. Through this legislation, manufacturers and owners could be held accountable for the machine’s action.

Logic of legislation

While a framework to regulate robotics is essential, the need for one is ‘imminent’ and not ‘immediate’, believes Patrick Schwarzkopf, the head of one of the Germany’s largest industry associations. He said that legislation like this would be needed “in 50 years, but not in 10 years”. A legislative framework around self-driving cars is probably a more immediate need.

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Yikes!

If there’s an unavoidable accident in a self-driving car, who dies? This is the question researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) want you to answer in ‘Moral Machine.’

The simplistic website is sort of like the famed ‘Trolley Problem’ on steroids. If you’re unfamiliar, according to Wikipedia, the Trolley Problem is as follows:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Continue reading “MIT’s ‘Moral Machine’ wants you to decide who dies in a self-driving car accident” | >

Researchers at MIT have developed a method of altering 3D printed objects once printed. The technique involves using light in order to adapt the chemical structure of a 3D printed material. This allows the creation of more complex objects which could be molded together, softened, or even enlarged.

The university is a hub of 3D printing research. Recently announcement include their Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab creating the ‘photoshop for 3D printing’. The ‘Foundry’ software was developed in order to make use of 3D printing’s advanced capabilities over conventional manufacturing techniques. Also addressing 3D printing technology, MIT researchers looked at using 3D printing to investigate how graphene might create the strongest material ever.

The newly published paper is called ‘Living Additive Manufacturing: Transformation of Parent Gels into Diversely Functionalized Daughter Gels Made Possible by Visible Light Photoredox Catalysis’ and available in the ACS Central Science Journal.

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Biological engineers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have invented a microchip that can be lined with living human cells in order to revolutionise medicine, particularly relating to drug testing, disease modelling and personalised medicine.

The ‘human organs-on-chip’ is a microchip made from a clear flexible polymer that contains hollow microfluidic channels that are lined with living human cells, together with an interface that lines the interior surface of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels, known as an endothelium.

The idea is that the microchip can emulate the microarchitecture and functions of multiple human organs such as the lungs, kidneys, skin, bone marrow, intestines and blood-brain barrier. And if you were able to do this, you could then test out drugs and study how diseases affect the body without having to endanger human patients, or waste precious organs needed for transplants.

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Thus far, the month of January has been an exciting time for AI — new smart technologies have demoed, new papers have been written, and new discussions about how to make sure our new synthetic friends don’t kill us have sprung up.

According to Crunchbase’s annual Global Innovation Investment report, venture capital funding for artificial intelligence projects is primed for a boom this coming year, especially when it comes to smart devices, all of those lovely little toys that will make up the Internet of Things, aimed at making consumers’ lives just that much easier.

From the report:

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Interesting.

TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2017 (HealthDay News) — Just a half hour a day of moderate physical activity could be potent medicine for patients with advanced colon cancer, preliminary research suggests.

Study authors who tracked more than 1,200 colon cancer patients found a 19 percent decline in risk for early death among those who got 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily.

And, five or more hours of moderate — but non-vigorous — activity a week pushed that survival benefit to 25 percent, researchers said.

Continue reading “Even a Little Daily Activity May Boost Colon Cancer Survival: Study” | >

Summary: Researchers report an anti malaria drug has helped improve length and quality of life for a 26 year old brain cancer patient.

Source: University of Colorado.

After her brain cancer became resistant to chemotherapy and then to targeted treatments, 26-year-old Lisa Rosendahl’s doctors gave her only a few months to live. Now a paper published January 17 in the journal eLife describes a new drug combination that has stabilized Rosendahl’s disease and increased both the quantity and quality of her life: Adding the anti-malaria drug chloroquine to her treatment stopped an essential process that Rosendahl’s cancer cells had been using to resist therapy, re-sensitizing her cancer to the targeted treatment that had previously stopped working. Along with Rosendahl, two other brain cancer patients were treated with the combination and both showed similar, dramatic improvement.

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