Lifeboat Foundation

Destroying an Earth-killing asteroid is not always possible, here’s what we can do instead.

Do you know what size asteroid would be enough to end all life on Earth? According to the experts at NASA, a space rock only 96 km wide can do the job.

Continue reading “Dust particles from an asteroid could save Earth from doomsday” »

ChatGPT is taking the world by storm. At its core, it uses the self-attention methods pioneered and patented by Google. Will Google try to seek licensing fees or sue OpenAI in court?

If you’re a computer programmer or software engineer, then you may have been alarmed by the capabilities demonstrated by the red-hot software application of the moment.

ChatGPT was unveiled in public beta form slightly before Christmas. It is a chatbot powered by the GPT-3.5 large language model (LLM) designed to use generative AI and natural language processing (NLP) to produce text that is almost indistinguishable from that written by humans. Due to its impressive abilities, it quickly went viral and has so far amassed millions of users.

Tell it to write a poem about trees in the style of Shakespeare, or an article about the applications of AI in industry, and that’s what you’ll get.

Continue reading “How ChatGPT And Natural Language Technology Might Affect Your Job If You Are A Computer Programmer” »

Release the Kraken! You are undoubtedly familiar with that famous catchphrase as especially uttered by actor Liam Neeson in The Clash of the Titans.

Perhaps the same sentiment can be applied these days to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Generative AI ChatGPT is already in the news and will likely garner added attention once the API portal access is opened, leading to either a boon in new uses or a bust in terms of adverse consequences. Here’s the scoop.

Continue reading “Generative AI ChatGPT Is Going To Be Everywhere Once The API Portal Gets Soon Opened, Stupefying AI Ethics And AI Law” »

Paris-based quantum computing startup PASQAL announced today it has raised €100 million in a Series B funding round, led by a new investor, Singapore-based Temasek. It was joined by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Wa’ed Ventures and Bpifrance, through its Large Venture Fund and existing investors Quantonation, the Defense Innovation Fund, Daphni and Eni Next. This brings PASQAL’s total funding to date to more than €140 million.

Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Institut d’Optique, PASQAL develops quantum processors based on ordered neutral atoms in 2D and 3D arrays. Physics Today.

PASQAL’s technology is based on research conducted by the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, and it plans to deliver major commercial advantages over classical computers by 2024.

Continue reading “A ‘Dark Horse’ In The Quantum Computing Race Raises €100 Million” »

The same day Microsoft invested billions in OpenAI, McKinsey snatched up enterprise-focused AI firm Iguazio for a relative steal.

The consulting giant reportedly paid around $50 million for Iguazio, a Tel Aviv–based company offering an MLOps platform for large-scale businesses — “MLOps” refers to a set of tools to deploy and maintain machine learning models in production. In a press release, McKinsey says it plans to use the startup’s tech and team of 70 data scientists to bolster its QuantumBlack platform, McKinsey’s data analytics–focused group, with “industry-specific” AI solutions.

“We analyzed more than a 1,000 AI companies worldwide and identified Iguazio as the best fit to significantly accelerate our AI offering — from the initial concept to production, in a simplified, scalable and automated manner,” McKinsey senior partner Ben Ellencweig said in a statement. Over time, he added, the Iguazio and QuantumBlack teams will be fully integrated and work from a single product roadmap, combining the best of both worlds (with any luck).

SpaceX is poised to conduct a wet dress rehearsal of the Starship launch system from its Starbase site in southeastern Texas, a major milestone in CEO Elon Musk’s quest to turn long-haul interplanetary transportation from science fiction to reality.

It’s the strongest signal yet that Starship’s first orbital flight test could well and truly be imminent. The wet dress is a critical series of prelaunch tests that includes propellant loading of both the upper stage and booster, and a run-through of countdown to around T-10 seconds, or just before engine ignition. If no major issues crop up during the testing, the next step would be “de-stacking,” or the separation of the Starship second stage and Super Heavy booster. That would be followed by a full static fire test, where engineers would light up all 33 of the booster’s Raptor 2 engines. The launch system would then be re-stacked before the first orbital flight test.

This could all take place in a matter of weeks — March is not off the table for the orbital flight test — but that’s assuming that everything goes well and no major mishaps take place (they’re not unheard of). It also assumes that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the body that regulates commercial launches, issues SpaceX the all-important launch license fairly soon. The FAA has been basically mum about the status of its evaluation of SpaceX’s plans, though it’s been conducting extensive assessments of the Starship launch program for some time.

A recent observational study of some 191 giant stars at the end of their lives as hydrogen-burning, main sequence stars, places more precise parameters our own star’s expansionary endgame. The Sun will finish its life at perhaps two to three hundred times its current angular size.

The observations were made between 1996 and 2008 with the now defunct Palomar Testbed Interferometer atop Mount Palomar in southern California. They were coupled with data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hipparcos and Gaia missions to more accurately calculate the stars’ distances and effective temperatures.

New survey of giant stars reveals details about the Sun’s own likely endgame as an expanding red giant.

Continue reading “Sun Will Eventually Expand To Some 300 Times Its Current Size, Says Study” »

HomoSEP, a robot to eliminate the practice of manual scavenging in India, developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is all set for field deployment.

Plans are afoot to deploy 10 units across Tamil Nadu with researchers already establishing contact with sanitation workers to identify locations. According to a press release issued by IIT-M today, Gujarat and Maharashtra are also being considered for deployment.

This robot has been developed over the last several years by a team led by Professor Prabhu Rajagopal, Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation, IIT-M, faculty at the department of mechanical engineering and IIT-Madras-incubated startup Solinas Integrity Private Limited. The team has been in close touch with sanitation workers. Support for this team has come from the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA), an NGO dedicated to the elimination of manual scavenging, along with CSR partners—GAIL Foundation, CapGemini, NSE Foundation and L&T Technology Foundation.