Lifeboat Foundation

Quartz

Bill Gates hosted a Reddit Ask Me Anything session yesterday, and in between pushing his philanthropic agenda and divulging his Super Bowl pick (Seahawks, duh), the Microsoft co-founder divulged that he is one in a growing list of tech giants who has reservations when it comes to artificial intelligence.

In response to Reddit user beastcoin’s question, “How much of an existential threat do you think machine superintelligence will be and do you believe full end-to-end encryption for all internet activity [sic] can do anything to protect us from that threat (eg. the more the machines can’t know, the better)??” Gates wrote this (he didn’t answer the second part of the question):

I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned. Read more

A revolutionary Finding waits for the final Clinch: c-global

Otto E. Rossler

Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract: The global nature of the speed of light in the vacuum, c, was reluctantly given up by Einstein in December of 1907. A revival of the status c had enjoyed during the previous 2 ½ years, from mid-1905 to late-1907, is in the literature for several years by now. The consequences of c-global for cosmology and black-hole theory are far-reaching. Since black holes are an acute concern to date because there exists an attempt to produce them down on earth, the question of whether a global-c transform of the Einstein field equations can be found represents a vital issue — only days before an experiment that is based on the assumed absence of the new result is about to be ignited. (December 22, 2014, February 6, 2015)

Continue reading “A Propos Stephen Hawking” »

http://yournewswire.com/cern-to-attempt-big-bang-in-march-st…s-warning/

Mark Wilson — FastCo

“Obviously, it’s not a thoroughly vetted concept, but I think it’s extremely intriguing where drones might show up,” says Mark Rolston, founder of argodesign. “It would be nice to see them used this way, rather than another military function or more photography.”

The idea was born from a team brainstorming session around how health care could become more accessible. The designers first thought about how they could build a better ambulance, and the rise of autonomous vehicles inspired them to consider a self-driving ambulance. Then they thought of helicopters and drones, and the rest developed from there.

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Ariel Schwartz — FastCo

No matter how many coding initiatives for women and diversity programs are launched, the inescapable fact remains: The tech industry is overloaded with men, especially in the top ranks. It’s an vicious cycle. The more men are hired for top jobs, the more they tend to hire men themselves.

Entrepreneurs Eileen Carey and Lauren Mosenthal believe the best path to gender equality is peer mentorship—that is, mentorship from people at your same skill and career level. So they created Glassbreakers, an online platform that matches women in tech (product managers, software engineers, data scientists, and so on) with peer mentors. It’s a little like online dating for mentors.

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Quartz

Bitcoin’s ideological foe is becoming its saving grace.

To many Bitcoin enthusiasts, the decentralized currency’s allure was that it was designed to exist beyond the reach of government regulation. Free from central banks, its value wasn’t tied to government policies or geopolitical factors.

But now it seems the very regulation its creator or creators (since we don’t actually know who first minted Bitcoin) guarded against is what’s now buoying the cryptocurrency’s price. Read more

By Peter Diamandis — SingularityHub
In my new book BOLD, one of the interviews that I’m most excited about is with my good friend Ray Kurzweil.

Bill Gates calls Ray, “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.” Ray is also amazing at predicting a lot more beyond just AI.

This post looks at his very incredible predictions for the next 20+ years.

So who is Ray Kurzweil?

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By Jason Dorrier — SingularityHub

More and more people are getting to know drones, and not just the military kind.

Drones were one of the hottest gifts over the holidays because they’re not only getting easier to fly (though not yet a no-brainer), they’re also pretty affordable. In fact, a toy drone recently crash landed on the White House lawn, prompting President Obama to call for more regulations (something the FAA is already working on).

While these aircraft show the growing accessibility of drones, they belie their true potential.

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By Jason Dorrier — SingularityHub

Last year, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking admitted they were concerned about artificial intelligence. While undeniably brilliant, neither are AI researchers. Then this week Bill Gates leapt into the fray, also voicing concern—even as a chief of research at Microsoft said advanced AI doesn’t worry him. It’s a hot topic. And hotly debated. Why?

In part, it’s because tech firms are pouring big resources into research. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others are making rapid advances in machine learning—a technique where programs learn by interacting with large sets of data.

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