Lifeboat Foundation

I don’t know about you, but any and all advancements with artificial intelligence and/or robotics makes me at least a little bit nervous.

I’ve seen a lot of movies and read even more books, and in the stories where the computers become smarter and more capable than the human beings, things never work out that well for the latter.

Continue reading “There’s A New Robot Record For The Hundred-Meter Sprint” »

Ever since the release of OpenAI’s new chatbot ChatGPT in November, investors have been enamored with A.I. and its potential to revolutionize the world’s economy. Hopes for a future with increased productivity and lower costs as A.I. tools are rolled out to the masses have helped to lift markets in 2023 despite stubborn inflation, rising interest rates, and consistent recession predictions from economists. After dropping more than 30% in 2022, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has recovered nearly all of its losses, gaining over 28% year to date, and the S&P 500 is now up more than 12%.

While some on Wall Street question whether stocks can continue their run of form in the second half of the year, pointing to stretched valuations in the Big Tech names and A.I. plays that have led the rebound so far, Wedbush’s top tech analyst Dan Ives argues it’s just the beginning of the “A.I. gold rush.”

“Many of the tech skeptics will point to today as a ‘1999 moment,’ à la on the verge of the dotcom bubble/collapse, given the significant move in tech valuations. We strongly disagree,” the veteran analyst wrote in a Monday research note. “While valuations in tech will be front and center, we continue to believe A.I. is driving the tech sector to a ‘1995 moment’ with a long runway of growth ahead that we have not seen since the 1990s.”

SpaceX is revolutionizing the Internet industry with its Starlink broadband satellite network. As of today, the company operates a constellation of around 4,265 Starlink satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that provide high-speed internet to over 1.5 million subscribers globally. SpaceX is launching Starlink satellites every month to continue expanding service coverage, with plans to launch a total of 12,000 satellites. Besides providing internet to homes and businesses, Starlink beams service directly to user antennas installed on vehicles in motion, like RVs, cruise ships, and aircraft.

In the early days of satellite internet, Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites were the norm for aviation. These GEO satellites, positioned at an altitude of approximately 36,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, provided coverage to large regions but have limitations in terms of speed and latency – making it hard to livestream or have video calls in-flight. However, everything changed when SpaceX set its sights on LEO and launched thousands of satellites. One of the key advantages of Starlink’s satellites is the ability to provide faster internet speeds because they operate at much lower altitudes of around 550 kilometers. With traditional GEO satellites, the signal had to travel a considerable distance to reach the satellite and then make the round trip back to Earth, resulting in noticeable lag and latency average of around 600ms (milliseconds). In contrast, Starlink’s LEO satellites are positioned much closer to the planet, reducing the distance the signal travels.

Dr David Sinclair talks about what epigenetic reprogramming can achieve in animal and human in this short. Please note that the links below are affiliate link…

The African turquoise killifish is an emerging vertebrate model organism with great potential for aging research due to its naturally short lifespan. Thus far, turquoise killifish aging omic studies using RNA-seq have examined a single organ, single sex and/or evaluated samples from non-reference strains. Here, we describe a resource dataset of ribosomal RNA depleted RNA-seq libraries generated from the brain, heart, muscle, and spleen from both sexes, as well as young and old animals, in the reference GRZ turquoise killifish strain. We provide basic quality control steps and demonstrate the utility of our dataset by performing differential gene expression and gene ontology analyses by age and sex. Importantly, we show that age has a greater impact than sex on transcriptional landscapes across probed tissues. Finally, we confirm transcription of transposable elements (TEs), which are highly abundant and increase in expression with age in brain tissue. This dataset will be a useful resource for exploring gene and TE expression as a function of both age and sex in a powerful naturally short-lived vertebrate model.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

From an emerging golden age in medicine to Microsoft’s quantum supercomputer, check out this week’s awesome tech stories from around the web.

If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.

This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality.

Continue reading “Babble hypothesis shows key factor to becoming a leader” »

MIT engineers have synthesized a superabsorbent material that can soak up a record amount of moisture from the air, even in desert-like conditions.

As the material absorbs water vapor, it can swell to make room for more moisture. Even in very dry conditions, with 30 percent relative humidity, the material can pull vapor from the air and hold in the moisture without leaking. The water could then be heated and condensed, then collected as ultrapure water.

The transparent, rubbery material is made from hydrogel, a naturally absorbent material that is also used in disposable diapers. The team enhanced the hydrogel’s absorbency by infusing it with lithium chloride — a type of salt that is known to be a powerful dessicant.

When Max More writes, it’s always worth paying attention.

His recent article Existential Risk vs. Existential Opportunity: A balanced approach to AI risk is no exception. There’s much in that article that deserves reflection.

Continue reading “The rise of AI: beware binary thinking” »