Lifeboat Foundation

Finding alien planets orbiting other stars is easy. Astronomers have found over 6,000 of them in just the last decade, but very few are considered even possibly habitable. Scientists have dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space that can find them and now even study their atmospheres for signs of life. Most are around small, dim red dwarf stars simply because current technology makes it difficult to study objects around bright Sun-like stars.

The next great objective in planetary science? Send a spacecraft to explore the surface of one of them, of course.

If we want to find Earth 2.0 we’re going to have to play the long game and visit star systems most like our own, says a white paper proposing a multi-century mission.

Continue reading “The Jaw-Dropping New Plan To Send A Robot On A 1,000 Years Journey To An Alien Planet” »

Researchers used AI to analyze genes and discovered that aging is caused by unbalanced genes.

Researchers have discovered a breakthrough in what causes people to age. The research team, from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, found a previously unknown factor that leads to aging.

The research team used AI to analyze tissue samples.

Continue reading “A new discovery in genes could help researchers understand longevity” »

More than three years ago, this editor sat down with Sam Altman for a small event in San Francisco soon after he’d left his role as the president of Y Combinator to become CEO of the AI company he co-founded in 2015 with Elon Musk and others, OpenAI.

At the time, Altman described OpenAI’s potential in language that sounded outlandish to some. Altman said, for example, that the opportunity with artificial general intelligence — machine intelligence that can solve problems as well as a human — is so great that if OpenAI managed to crack it, the outfit could “maybe capture the light cone of all future value in the universe.” He said that the company was “going to have to not release research” because it was so powerful. Asked if OpenAI was guilty of fear-mongering — Musk has repeatedly called all organizations developing AI to be regulated — Altman talked about the dangers of not thinking about “societal consequences” when “you’re building something on an exponential curve.”

The audience laughed at various points of the conversation, not certain how seriously to take Altman. No one is laughing now, however. While machines are not yet as intelligent as people, the tech that OpenAI has since released is taking many aback (including Musk), with some critics fearful that it could be our undoing, especially with more sophisticated tech reportedly coming soon.

Microsoft today announced that it acquired Lumenisity, a U.K.-based startup developing “hollow core fiber (HCF)” technologies primarily for data centers and ISPs. Microsoft says that the purchase, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, will “expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure” and “serve Microsoft’s cloud platform and services customers with strict latency and security requirements.”

HCF cables fundamentally combine optical fiber and coaxial cable. They’ve been around since the ’90s, but what Lumenisity brings to the table is a proprietary design with an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes. The idea is that light can travel faster through air than glass; in a trial with Comcast in April, a single strand of Lumenisity HCF was reportedly able to deliver traffic rates ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.

“HCF can provide benefits across a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government,” Girish Bablani, CVP of Microsoft’s Azure Core business, wrote in a blog post. “For the public sector, HCF could provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments across the globe. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it could help accelerate medical image retrieval, facilitating providers’ ability to ingest, persist and share medical imaging data in the cloud. And with the rise of the digital economy, HCF could help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a broad geographic region.”

It’s proving tough to reign in systems like ChatGPT

Did a human.

Did a human write that, or ChatGPT? It can be hard to tell — perhaps too hard, its creator OpenAI thinks, which is why it is working on a way to “watermark” AI-generated content.

Continue reading “OpenAI’s attempts to watermark AI text hit limits” »

Brodmann17, an Israeli computer vision technology startup that developed a novel approach to take on a marketplace dominated by Mobileye, shut down this week. Brodmann17’s co-founder and CEO Adi Pinhas posted a message on LinkedIn announcing the move, stating that while the company would not be able to bring its products to the mass market as hoped, “we do get comfort that our innovation will hopefully influence the market thinking and others will proceed in the mission of creating safer mobility to everyone.”

In a subsequent interview, Pinhas told TechCrunch that “there is a strong feeling of sorrow as we proved the technology, there is outstanding demand and we have customers in production.

Pelorus, a provider of experiential travel and yachting, has partnered with Swedish aviation company OceanSky Cruises, the “airline of airships,” to promote the advancement of ultra-sustainable airship travel.

Pelorus will provide thorough research, planning, and logistics as OceanSky’s “expedition partner” to create individualized private experiences before, after, and onboard OceanSky Cruises’ fleet of premier “lighter than air” airships, according to a press release by the company last week.

Keith Downing is a professor of Computer Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. He has a particular interest in evolutionary algorithms, which have applications ranging from the development of the Mars Rover antenna, patented circuits, early driverless cars, to even art. For computer scientists to learn from nature, he believes there needs to be a shift in our traditional ways thinking.

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In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations).

Tournament selection, roulette selection, mutation, crossover — all processes used in genetic algorithms. Dr Alex Turner explains using the Knapsack Problem.

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