Lifeboat Foundation

This isn’t rocket science it’s neuroscience.

Ever since the dawn of antiquity, people have strived to improve their cognitive abilities. From the advent of the wheel to the development of artificial intelligence, technology has had a profound leverage on civilization. Cognitive enhancement or augmentation of brain functions has become a trending topic both in academic and public debates in improving physical and mental abilities. The last years have seen a plethora of suggestions for boosting cognitive functions and biochemical, physical, and behavioral strategies are being explored in the field of cognitive enhancement. Despite expansion of behavioral and biochemical approaches, various physical strategies are known to boost mental abilities in diseased and healthy individuals. Clinical applications of neuroscience technologies offer alternatives to pharmaceutical approaches and devices for diseases that have been fatal, so far. Importantly, the distinctive aspect of these technologies, which shapes their existing and anticipated participation in brain augmentations, is used to compare and contrast them. As a preview of the next two decades of progress in brain augmentation, this article presents a plausible estimation of the many neuroscience technologies, their virtues, demerits, and applications. The review also focuses on the ethical implications and challenges linked to modern neuroscientific technology. There are times when it looks as if ethics discussions are more concerned with the hypothetical than with the factual. We conclude by providing recommendations for potential future studies and development areas, taking into account future advancements in neuroscience innovation for brain enhancement, analyzing historical patterns, considering neuroethics and looking at other related forecasts.

Keywords: brain 2025, brain machine interface, deep brain stimulation, ethics, non-invasive and invasive brain stimulation.

Continue reading “Brain augmentation and neuroscience technologies: current applications, challenges, ethics and future prospects” »

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new computer chip that uses light instead of electricity. This could improve the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models by improving the speed of data transfer and, more efficiently, reducing the amount of electricity consumed.

Humanity is building the exascale supercomputers today that can carry out a quintillion computations per second. While the scale of the computation may have increased, computing technology is still working on the principles that were first used in the 1960s.

Researchers have been working on developing computing systems based on quantum mechanics, too, but these computers are at least a few years from becoming widely available if not more. The recent explosion of AI models in technology has resulted in a demand for computers that can process large sets of information. The inefficient computing systems, though, result in high consumption of energy.

Plus Waymo issues the first recall of its self-driving cars and BYD could be coming to North America.

OpenAI released its premier AI text-to-video generator, and the results are as incredible as they are concerning.

TikTok today announced that it has released an app for Apple’s Vision Pro headset. The app is optimized for visionOS’s spatial design style, with TikTok promising a more “immersive” viewing experience for its short-form videos.

“Experience your For You feed in an entirely new way through this immersive content view,” said TikTok, in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The app has a familiar layout on the Vision Pro, with a main “For You” video feed, along with profiles, comments, search, and more. TikTok is available now on the Vision Pro’s App Store, and additional images of the app can be found below.

Feb. 15, 2024

RELEASE: J24-003

Humanity’s quest to explore—and, perhaps eventually, colonize—outer space has prompted a great many ideas about how precisely to go about it.

While conventional wisdom suggests that space launch via rockets is the best way to send human beings into orbit, other “non-rocket” methods have been proposed, including a futuristic “space elevator.”

The concept of a space elevator—essentially a sky-high cable that would let humans climb into space—has been championed by some industry experts as a way to overcome the astronomical costs associated with sending people and cargo into space by rocket, says Alberto de la Torre, assistant professor of physics at Northeastern.

A comprehensive analysis of the top conversational artificial intelligence platforms

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — In the dynamic landscape of AI-powered content generation, OpenAI stands at the forefront of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research. However, the primary purpose of products such as GPT-4 is to act as a productivity aid, for tasks such as coding. In addition, access to the best such models is often restricted by paywalls. These limitation have led to the growing popularity of other platforms which are primarily focused on providing Generative AI for consumers.