“James Batchelor believes science and art can work together, and he has hitched a ride to one of the most inhospitable places on the planet to prove it.”
Over the last few years tech companies both large and small have developed programs that can “dream”; and understand and process information; and even write articles; but nothing has come close to the holy grail of artificial intelligence — developing software that can learn independently.
At least, not until now.
Helsinki might seem like an unlikely potential birthplace for this new era of intelligent machines. Yet it’s there — on a side street blocks from the central train station — that a team of roboticists, neuroscientists, and graphics programmers planted the seed that would become the new artificial intelligence software developer, The Curious AI Company.
There’s a chasm between our physical and virtual worlds. This captivating installation offers one way to bridge them.
When I was a kid I remember being a member of Ms. Frizzle’s classroom. We went on adventures under the ocean, into the rainforest, out to the stars, and even to the center of the Earth and it was amazing.
Of course I am talking about my time on the Magic School Bus.
A relic of the nineties, the Magic School Bus starred Lily Tomlin as Ms. Frizzle, an eccentric teacher who owned a magic school bus that she used to take her students on fantastical journeys. The show and subsequent video games were a big part of my, and thousands of other children of the nineties’, formative years as it presented educational topics in an engaging way that made you curious to learn more.
While curious minded people might like to understand exactly why something happens, there are many examples where you don’t have to understand everything that’s going on to fix the problem. After all, your average car might break down every few years but by replacing the parts you can keep it going for decades; you don’t have to redesign the car so it never breaks down again. This is where reparative strategies come in, aiming to rejuvenate and repair accumulated damage. These strategies are immensely challenging, but in comparison to an overhaul of the human genome, they’re arguably easier to implement and we’re already working on many of the tools that would be needed.
Out with the old, in with the new
Proposed by Francesco Cortese from the ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans and Dr. Giovanni Santostasi, from the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, WICT (Whole-body Induced Cell Turnover ) is a comprehensive strategy that involves replacing your entire body with shiny new cells, flushing the body of any old, damaged ones.
What it might be like to live on Mars.
NASA revealed what homes on Mars will be like — and we don’t have to wait long.
In the future, we hope to “tour” around the solar system. Indeed, some companies are already working on private space tours. Here, NASA’s JPL gives us a peek at what this space tourism might look like.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) recently released awesome posters of our solar system, specifically designed at getting people to journey to the stars (or at least some nearby alien planets). “The Vision of the Future” series comprise of seven original posters. In addition to these, there are seven more posters for “Exoplanet Travel Bureau” that were published last year.
Notably, these posters are more than just fantastical imaginings. The designers who created these magnificent posters have been consulting with JPL scientists and engineers to make these tourism scenarios as realistic as they can possibly be. In short, it lets you see what the travel of tomorrow may look like.
Expensive travel bags should do more than look good, and German high-end luggage manufacturer Rimowa would seem to agree. The company has developed an electronic luggage tag which displays baggage info in the same format, size and appearance of typical paper labels, but on a digital screen built into the unit and located near the handle.
The Rimowa e-tag is similar to a device tested by British Airways in 2013, which allowed travelers to attach it to any piece of luggage.
Travelers these days can easily check into a flight and secure a boarding pass, printed or digital, before they step foot in the airport. Despite that convenience, they’re often forced to stand in line to check their bags. Those with a Rimowa electronic tag-enabled bag can send their digital boarding info via Bluetooth from their smartphone to check their bag before they leave home, with details appearing on the bag’s electronic display. After arriving at the airport, they simply hand it off at the airline’s automated check-in station, avoiding at least one line.
Tesla Version 7.1 adds driverless automatic parking to Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles.
Imagine a world where you could download every episode of Game of Thrones before you’d even lifted your finger off the ‘Buy’ button?
Well researchers at University College London have brought us one crucial step closer to this utopian world by creating a record-breaking data transfer speed of 1.125 terabits per second.