Lifeboat News: The Blog – Safeguarding Humanity

Artificial intelligence expert Jerry Kaplan says those whose jobs involve ‘a narrow set of duties’ are most likely to see their work replaced by automation.

A Timely Fix for a Grand Theory of Nature

Posted by Karen Hurst in biological

Mar 13
2016

A disarmingly simple model of ecology does everything well — except for predicting how rapidly nature can change. Can it become more realistic while still avoiding biology’s messy complexities?

Ray Kurzweil: Computers Will Not Rob Us of Our Humanity. They Will Make Us More Profoundly Human

Posted by Karen Hurst in computing, Ray Kurzweil

Mar 13
2016

The futurist sat down with Neil deGrasse Tyson to discuss what it means to think and create in a near-future where knowledge and expertise are downloadable.

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through March 12)

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in internet, robotics/AI

Mar 13
2016

“Deep learning enables the robot to perceive its immediate environment, including the location and movement of its limbs. Reinforcement learning means improving at a task by trial and error. A robot with these two skills could refine its performance based on real-time feedback.”

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Google and Facebook Team Up to Open Source the Gear Behind Their Empires.

C-1

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in energy, transportation

Mar 13
2016

Our tech is engineered from the ground up with you in mind.

Slip and park between cars, get to work fast, and do it all safely, without fossil fuels.

Kuiper Belt Objects Point The Way To Planet 9

Posted by Sean Brazell in computing, mathematics, space

Mar 13
2016

On January 20th, 2016, researchers Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown of Caltech announced that they had found evidence that hinted at the existence of a massive planet at the edge of the Solar System. Based on mathematical modeling and computer simulations, they predicted that this planet would be a super-Earth, two to four times Earth’s size and 10 times as massive. They also estimated that, given its distance and highly elliptical orbit, it would take 10,000 – 20,000 years to orbit the Sun.

Since that time, many researchers have responded with their own studies about the possible existence of this mysterious “Planet 9”. One of the latest comes from the University of Arizona, where a research team from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory have indicated that the extreme eccentricity of distant Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) might indicate that they crossed paths with a massive planet in the past.

Google’s AlphaGo Beats World Champion In Third Match To Win Entire Series

Posted by Gerard Bain in robotics/AI

Mar 13
2016

Go-ing for the sweep.

Craig Venter: Future Pathways for Synthetic Genomics

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in bioengineering, biological, chemistry, computing

Mar 12
2016

Life’s chemistry, it appears, is quite kludgy. Such computer metaphors help explain Dr. Venter’s perspective on synthetic biology. Is a genomic version of Moore’s Law in the offing?