Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 2,730

Check out https://NordVPN.com/coolworlds for 4 months for free when you sign up today, thanks to Nord for sponsoring us!

Could there be a bizarre exotic type of star out there made of quarks? What would these things be like and how could they form? Join us as we explore quark stars, and the terrifying implications they have for forging strange matter within their cores…

Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping. Edited by Jorge Casas. Special thanks to Dr Sam Gregson (/ @badboyofscience) for fact checking our script.

→ Support our research: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support.
→ Get merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cool-wor…
→ Check out our podcast: / @coolworldspodcast.

THANK-YOU to D. Smith, M. Sloan, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, A. Jones, S. Brownlee, N. Kildal, Z. Star, E. West, T. Zajonc, C. Wolfred, L. Skov, G. Benson, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, M. Forbes, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, T. Donkin, K. Myers, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, J. Black, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, K. Weber, S. Marks, L. Robinson, S. Roulier, B. Smith, J. Cassese, J. Kruger, S. Way, P. Finch, S. Applegate, L. Watson, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, E. Dessoi, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, C. Hays, W. Evans, D. Bansal, J. Curtin, J. Sturm, RAND Corp., M. Donovan, N. Corwin, M. Mangione, K. Howard, L. Deacon, G. Metts, G. Genova, R. Provost, B. Sigurjonsson, G. Fullwood, B. Walford, J. Boyd, N. De Haan, J. Gillmer, R. Williams, E. Garland, A. Leishman, A. Phan Le, R. Lovely, M. Spoto, A. Steele, M. Varenka, K. Yarbrough, A. Cornejo, D. Compos, F. Demopoulos, G. Bylinsky, J. Werner, B. Pearson, S. Thayer, T. Edris, A. Harrison, B. Seeley, F. Blood, M. O’Brien, P. Muzyka, E. Loomans, D. Lee, J. Sargent, M. Czirr, F. Krotzer, I. Williams, J. Sattler, J. Smallbon, B. Reese, J. Yoder, O. Shabtay & X. Yao.

REFERENCES

Continue reading “Could Quark Stars be the Engines of Self-Replicating Strange Matter?” | >

The question of whether artificial intelligence could ever achieve consciousness is a common theme in science fiction. Could robots ever truly feel anything—like love, hate, or fear—or would they be all “dark inside”, experiencing nothing at all?

It is more important than ever to answer this question correctly. Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a matter of science fiction. AI are increasingly capable of producing art and mastering the use of language, raising serious questions about whether AI are already capable of consciousness, or if not yet, then soon.

Read more | >

How do we ensure that our robots are the most reliable on the market, capable of walking greater distances, climbing more steps, and inspecting more assets than any other mobile robot? In this webinar, we’ll offer an unprecedented glimpse into the rigorous testing each robot endures before it leaves our lab. We’ll also explore our commitment to customer success, covering our after-sales service and support programs that enable an exceptional customer experience.

In this webinar you will learn:

Read more | >

An AI chatbot deployed by a car dealership went off the rails after mischievous users discovered a cheeky exploit, in some cases tricking the bot into offering them the deal of a lifetime: brand new cars for chump change. It’s an amusing but cautionary tale on relying on AIs for front-of-house interactions.

The dealership, Chevy of Watsonville in California, used the chatbot to handle customers’ online inquiries, a purpose it was expressly tailored for.

Chris White, a software engineer and musician, was one such customer. He innocently intended to shop around for cars at Watsonville Chevy — until he noticed an amusing detail about the site’s chat window.

Read more | >

The capacity to be creative, to produce new concepts, ideas, inventions, objects or art, is perhaps the most important attribute of the human brain. We know very little, however, about the nature of creativity or its neural basis. Some important questions include how should we define creativity? How is it related (or unrelated) to high intelligence? What psychological processes or environmental circumstance cause creative insights to occur? How is it related to conscious and unconscious processes? What is happening at the neural level during moments of creativity? How is it related to health or illness, and especially mental illness? This paper will review introspective accounts from highly creative individuals. These accounts suggest that unconscious processes play an important role in achieving creative insights. Neuroimaging studies of the brain during “REST” (random episodic silent thought, also referred to as the default state) suggest that the association cortices are the primary areas that are active during this state and that the brain is spontaneously reorganising and acting as a self-organising system. Neuroimaging studies also suggest that highly creative individuals have more intense activity in association cortices when performing tasks that challenge them to “make associations.” Studies of creative individuals also indicate that they have a higher rate of mental illness than a noncreative comparison group, as well as a higher rate of both creativity and mental illness in their first-degree relatives. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the nature of the unconscious, the unconscious and the predisposition to both creativity and mental illness.

Keywords: Creativity, Complexity, Consciousness, Default mode, Functional imaging, Self-organising systems, The Unconscious, Resting state, REST

Creativity is one of our most valued human traits. It has given human beings the ability to change the world that they live in; and it has also, paradoxically, given them the ability to adapt to changes in the world over which they have no control. Our highly developed capacity to develop and implement new ideas arises from our highly developed human brain. Understanding how creative ideas arise from the brain is one of the most fascinating challenges of contemporary neuroscience.

Read more | >

Canva has crafted a wildly successful business model on the idea that graphic design should be accessible to everyone.

Adams told TechCrunch+ he’s not worried about valuation drops, anyway. “This year has been one of our best years for growth. We’ve almost doubled on most of our metrics. We’ve had 80 million more active users join since this time last year, so it’s just been up and to the right for us,” he said. “That’s what we focus on: more users, better product, revenue growth.”

Over the last 12 months, Canva has released a slew of generative AI products that Adams said gives both the company and its users a new ability to build features and design work that might not have even been considered five years ago. “For us, AI is going to bring human creativity to the next level,” Adams said, noting that AI will enable Canva to “take great visual communication to a billion people around the world.”

Many companies have jumped on the generative AI bandwagon since ChatGPT disrupted the consumer-facing space in November 2022, eliciting eye rolls and suspicion from many a journalist. But with Canva, generative AI hits different. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a better technology to boost Canva’s user growth and revenue generation. Content is the company’s bread-and-butter, the main reason why Canva has been able to scale to such impressive heights and across global boundaries. That’s because the focus has always been on offering images and templates to suit specific geographic audiences.

Read more | >