Lifeboat Foundation

In my chat with Serene, an internet freedom activist and former Google Ideas engineer, I ask: “Am I allowed to speak with you right now? Legally?”“We’re both in the U.S., so yes, I think we’re good,” she answers.

As one of the few tools for accessing blocked and censored information on the web, Serene’s Snowflake is widely used by citizens of oppressive regimes. It is primarily done using Tor, an open-source browser that enables secure, private, and anonymous internet browsing.

She is now unveiling Snowstorm, an upgraded version of Snowflake, which Serene claims will be faster, more generalized, and have more features. Snowstorm is fast enough to stream YouTube videos, something previous versions could not do.

Continue reading “As The Internet Freedom Project Expands, Snowflake Becomes Snowstorm” »

Buckle up folks, the AI wars have arrived.

Hot on the heels of Microsoft announcing its $10bn investment into ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI, Google has entered the fray with news of its own experimental AI. Bard, powered by the search engine stalwart’s LaMDA technology, has now launched to ‘trusted external testers’ and is expected to go live within weeks.

The move comes as the war to dominate the new technological frontier intensifies. The two Tig Tech giants are already rushing to beat one another to the top of the AI mountain, with no signs of slowing. Here’s what’s gone down this week.

With Bard, its newly launched “experimental conversational AI service,” Google is scrambling to ship AI products. But past scandals, botched launches and a talent drain have put it in a surprise position: playing catch-up in a field it helped create.

In 2016, a few months after becoming CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai made a sweeping proclamation: Google, whose name had become synonymous with search, would now be an “AI-first” company. Announced at Google’s massive I/O developer conference, it was his first major order of business after taking the company reins.

What AI-first meant, exactly, was murky, but the stakes were not.

Just when we are getting accustomed to artificial intelligence in our daily lives, get ready for a new disruptor: synthetic biology, or syn-bio, the design and engineering of biological systems to create and improve processes and products. It promises to become a manufacturing paradigm of the future.

Recent advances in molecular, cell, and systems biology have enabled scientists to shift their focus from research of syn-bio to design and engineering, creating some truly mind blowing applications. By using microorganisms, for example, companies can now manufacture an infinite number of things, cell by cell, from scratch. This offers new ways of producing almost everything that humans consume, from flavors and fabrics to foods and fuels.

By the end of the decade, syn-bio may be used extensively in manufacturing industries that account for more than a third of global output, according to BCG Henderson Institute, Boston Consulting Group’s strategy think tank. Various sources estimate that the syn-bio market today is about $10 billion and is expected to reach $30 billion in the next five years.

Today’s Internet is in the early stages of being transformed once again—this time, instead of search, social, mobile, etc.—it’s going to be a Web that supports conversations.

After the news in January of the James Webb Space Telescope spying rings around Chariklo—a tiny world over two billion miles away from Earth—new research reveals another remote ringed world in the solar system.

Quaoar (pronounced “kwar-waar”) is a dwarf planet about 700 miles/1,110 kilometers in diameter—about half the size of Pluto—that orbits the Sun beyond Neptune in the remote and cold Kuiper belt region. It has a tiny moon called Weywot.

Scientists have found rings around Quaoar, a small body in the solar system about half the size of Pluto.

Continue reading “Astonished Scientists Just Discovered Another New ‘Ring World’ In Our Solar System” »

Amid other A.I.-focused announcements, Google today shared that its newer “multisearch” feature would now be available to global users on mobile devices, anywhere that Google Lens is already available. The search feature, which allows users to search using both text and images at the same time, was first introduced last April as a way to modernize Google search to take better advantage of the smartphone’s capabilities. A variation on this, “multisearch near me,” which targets searches to local businesses, will also become globally available over the next few months, as will multisearch for the web and a new Lens feature for Android users.

As Google previously explained, multisearch is powered by A.I. technology called Multitask Unified Model, or MUM, which can understand information across a variety of formats, including text, photos, and videos, and then draw insights and connections between topics, concepts, and ideas. Google put MUM to work within its Google Lens visual search features, where it would allow users to add text to a visual search query.

“We redefined what we mean to search by introducing Lens. We’ve since brought Lens directly to the search bar and we continue to bring new capabilities like shopping and step-by-step homework help,” Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s SVP in charge Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce and Payments products, said at a press event in Paris.

Google is launching new updates for Maps that are part of its plan to make the navigation app more immersive and intuitive for users, the company announced today at its event in Paris.

Most notably, the company announced that Immersive View is rolling out starting today in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. Immersive View, which Google first announced at I/O in May 2022, is designed to help you plan ahead and get a deeper understanding of a city before you visit it. The company plans to launch Immersive View in more cities, including Amsterdam, Dublin, Florence and Venice in the coming months.

For artificial intelligence, 2022 was a year of breakthroughs. Image generation models such as DALL-E, MidJourney and StableDiffusion came in early in the year, garnering much attention, and ChatGPT went viral near the end.

Riding on the euphoria generated by these technological developments, about $49 billion in venture capital was invested in AI in 2022 — 40% more than a year earlier, per CB Insights.

Yet, there has been little conversation about how AI will play a growing role in real estate, a more than $50 trillion asset class, and one of the key drivers of the global economy. We believe this represents a significant opportunity for real estate tech entrepreneurs.