Lifeboat Foundation

Cotra’s work is particularly relevant in this context as she based her forecast on the kind of historical long-run trend of training computation that we just studied. But it is worth noting that other forecasters who rely on different considerations arrive at broadly similar conclusions. As I show in my article on AI timelines, many AI experts believe that there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, and some believe that it will exist much sooner.

Building a Public Resource to Enable the Necessary Public Conversation

Computers and artificial intelligence have changed our world immensely, but we are still at the early stages of this history. Because this technology feels so familiar, it is easy to forget that all of these technologies that we interact with are very recent innovations, and that most profound changes are yet to come.

I had many ideas on how to improve Twitter, and a communication paradigm was one. The iPhone changed phones, and was a device. Twitter has no device to add to its portfolio. People have no desire to add products to Twitter portfolio to boost revenues. iPhone revenue surpassed computers, therefore it is very easy for Twitter to develop its portfolio to include better more reliable forms of revenue than advertising. A device can make a lot of money if it is a “paradigm” like an iPhone that completely changed our understanding of what a phone can be.

In 1943, Thomas Watson, the president of IBM, famously predicted the world market for computers would top out at “maybe five” of the machines. He was wrong – you likely have more than that in your own house, let’s face it – but at the time, it made sense. After all, if computers were still gigantic, vacuum-tube-powered addition machines, you probably wouldn’t want more than about five either.

It’s a similar story with holograms. Even back in the 1990s, more than 40 years after Dennis Gabor first came up with the idea of using wavefront interference to reconstruct images in three dimensions, science fiction was still assuming the need for entire decks and suites to power our holographic adventures.

Continue reading “You’ll Soon Be Able To Run Holograms On Your Smartphone” »

The last year in architecture will be remembered as one of firsts, from the world’s first “upcycled” skyscraper winning World Building of the Year to Burkina Faso-born Francis Kéré becoming the first African architect to win the coveted Pritzker Prize.

It was also a year in which we lost industry giants like Ricardo Bofill and Meinhard von Gerkan, while gaining long-awaited new landmarks like the Taipei Performing Arts Center and New York’s Steinway Tower.

With construction projects often taking years to complete, delays caused by Covid-19 are still being felt. But 2023 nonetheless promises to be a year of remarkable new openings, whether it’s the world’s second-tallest tower or an interfaith religious complex in Abu Dhabi.

The devastating 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa prompted changes in the way the world responds to outbreaks and other health emergencies. Here are eight things that are being done differently in the response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Scientists from the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) have presented roughly 1.5 years of observational data, calculating new limits on the lifetime of heavy dark matter particles that have masses between 10⁵ and 10⁹ giga-electron volts.

The study, titled “Constraints on heavy decaying dark matter from 570 days of LHAASO observations,” was recently published in Physics Review Letters.

The gravitational model of the Milky Way shows that there is a very high density of dark matter in the galactic center, and the gamma rays produced by the decay of this dark matter will radiate from the galactic center to the surroundings for hundreds of light-years or even thousands of light-years. However, for a long time, the observation of ultra-high-energy gamma rays produced by heavy dark matter has been complicated by the presence of other background radiation.

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite launched into Earth orbit on Friday, Dec. 16, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California, and engineers are working to prepare the mission to begin measuring the height of water on over 90% of Earth’s surface, providing a high-definition survey of our planet’s water for the first time.

But before it can do that, the satellite would need to unfold its large mast and antenna panels (see above) after successfully deploying the solar panel arrays that power the spacecraft. The mission monitors and controls the satellite using telemetry data, but it also equipped spacecraft with four customized commercial cameras to record the action.

Continue reading “Watch the latest water satellite unfold itself in space” »

The research group of laser-matter interaction at the Institute of Intense Lasers and Applications (CELIA) at the University of Bordeaux, France, has explored a new glass micro-drilling method using a femtosecond laser in GHz-burst mode.

Publishing in the journal International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, the research team used a femtosecond laser from Amplitude operating in the GHz-burst regime to study a new glass micromachining method which allows for drilling taper-free, elongated holes with smooth inner walls without any cracks in the glass. Usually, laser drilling with standard single femtosecond pulses results in tapered holes of strongly limited length and rough inner surface.

This new laser-matter interaction regime makes it possible to directly drill holes of high aspect ratio in one single step without any chemical etching. The choice of the laser-burst parameters was revealed to be very important in order to achieve an outstanding micromachining quality of the machined structures. The femtosecond laser GHz-burst mode could pave the way for new applications such as microelectronics where silicon interposers are likely to be replaced by glass interposers.

Octopuses are problem-solvers, mischief-makers and notorious escape artists. They also appear to have a rich inner life – so what is it like to be an octopus?

One afternoon in the fall of 2019, in a grand old office building near the Arc de Triomphe, I was buzzed through an unmarked door into a showroom for the future of surveillance. The space on the other side was dark and sleek, with a look somewhere between an Apple Store and a doomsday bunker. Along one wall, a grid of electronic devices glinted in the moody downlighting—automated license plate readers, Wi-Fi-enabled locks, boxy data processing units. I was here to meet Giovanni Gaccione, who runs the public safety division of a security technology company called Genetec. Headquartered in Montreal, the firm operates four of these “Experience Centers” around the world, where it peddles intelligence products to government officials. Genetec’s main sell here was software, and Gaccione had agreed to show me how it worked.

He led me first to a large monitor running a demo version of Citigraf, his division’s flagship product. The screen displayed a map of the East Side of Chicago. Around the edges were thumbnail-size video streams from neighborhood CCTV cameras. In one feed, a woman appeared to be unloading luggage from a car to the sidewalk. An alert popped up above her head: “ILLEGAL PARKING.” The map itself was scattered with color-coded icons—a house on fire, a gun, a pair of wrestling stick figures—each of which, Gaccione explained, corresponded to an unfolding emergency. He selected the stick figures, which denoted an assault, and a readout appeared onscreen with a few scant details drawn from the 911 dispatch center. At the bottom was a button marked “INVESTIGATE,” just begging to be clicked.