Lifeboat Foundation

Didn’t they just have record-breaking profits?

There’s an eerie similarity to the statements tech companies have made about their recent layoffs. Mainly, if the press releases are to be believed, the C-suite of every Big Tech company on Earth — well, with the notable exception of Apple, which has not announced layoffs — figured no one would ever go outside or spend money offline again after the pandemic and their various online businesses would stay just as big as they were during the heights of covid.

I do love a heavily lawyered statement that was clearly written by the public relations department! In fact, these are all so similar that they might as well have come from the same PR person… More.

Continue reading “Why are so many tech companies laying people off right now?” »

It’s stupid. It’s funny. And I like it.

Over the past few years, a bunch of tools have been released that use AI to edit video calls in real time so that the caller is making eye contact with the camera. FaceTime can do it. Microsoft Teams can do it. And Nvidia Broadcast can do it, too. (Provided, in each case, you have the necessary hardware or software.)

This tech comes with a bunch of interesting questions, of course.

Continue reading “The best use for AI eye contact tech is making movie stars look straight at the camera” »

The AI-powered Watermark Remover.io effortlessly erases watermarks on copyrighted images in seconds.

The already-contentious relationship between AI and the creative industry might soon get even more complicated thanks to a free-to-use service that can completely remove watermarks from images. Watermark Remover.io (as seen via Creative Bloq.

The functionality of Watermark Remover.

Continue reading “This impressive tool removes watermarks in seconds” »

Theories on how to build a space elevator have been around for decades. Scientists say not only would such technology change humanity, but that we could have built one by now.

#Space #Science #Technology.

Continue reading “Space Elevators Are Getting Closer to Reality” »

What happens when two dynamic (and wildly entertaining) science educators come together to talk about evolution VS. creationism? This podcast answers the question. With Forrest Valkai and Erika / Gutsick Gibbon.

We could be living in the most important century in history. Here’s how Artificial Intelligence might uphold a historical trend of super-exponential economic growth, ushering us into a period of sudden transformation, ending in a stable galaxy-scale civilization or doom. All within the next few decades.

This video is based on Holden Karnofsky’s “most important century” blog post series: https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/

Continue reading “Everything might change forever this century (or we’ll go extinct)” »

AUSTIN, Texas — Just as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning emerge as the fastest-growing in-demand skill sets in the global workforce, The University of Texas at Austin is establishing a new online master’s program in AI with the potential to bring thousands of new students into the field.

Delivered by the Department of Computer Science and Machine Learning Laboratory, the Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence (MSAI) will be the first large-scale degree program of its kind and the only master’s degree program in AI from a top-ranked institution to be priced close to $10,000. The master’s degree covers about two years’ worth of course content, to be taken at the learner’s own pace, and will be delivered in partnership with online education platform, edX.

AI master’s programs from peer institutions carry costs five to 10 times as high as UT Austin’s and serve only dozens of students – not the hundreds or thousands the Texas team projects it will reach annually within five years. Similarly priced online master’s programs from the university, in computer science and data science, enroll 2,500 students within less than five years of their launch. Like those programs, the fully online MSAI program is both flexible and accessible.

They were also able to make a cute little LEGO man out of MPTM that liquefies itself and moves through the bars of a cage. Though the robot appears to self-coalesce into its original shape on the other side, Majidi clarified that it was manually recast by the team and then put back into the shot.

“It’s almost T-1000-like in the sense that you have that figurine and it melts into a blob, and it gets sucked through those jail bars,” Majidi said, adding that the villainous assassin android served as an inspiration for the robot.

My keynote on how dictatorships constitute the biggest threat to the progress of humanity on the planetary scale.