Lifeboat Foundation

Recent advancements in the development of machine learning and optimization techniques have opened new and exciting possibilities for identifying suitable molecular designs, compounds, and chemical candidates for different applications. Optimization techniques, some of which are based on machine learning algorithms, are powerful tools that can be used to select optimal solutions for a given problem among a typically large set of possibilities.

Researchers at Colorado State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have been applying state-of-the-art molecular optimization models to different real-world problems that entail identifying new and promising molecular designs. In their most recent study, featured in Nature Machine Intelligence, they specifically applied a newly developed, open-source optimization framework to the task of identifying viable organic radicals for aqueous redox flow batteries, energy devices that convert chemical energy into electricity.

“Our project was funded by an ARPA-E program that was looking to shorten how long it takes to develop new energy materials using machine learning techniques,” Peter C. St. John, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “Finding new candidates for redox flow batteries was an interesting extension of some of our previous work, including a paper published in Nature Communications and another in Scientific Data, both looking at organic radicals.”

No matter how good our measurement devices get, certain quantum properties always possess an inherent uncertainty. Can we figure out why?

AS man and machine get ever closer, the world of sex tech seems to get a little stranger.

We’ve rounded up some of the most bizarre sex tech inventions that are in the works, including an exoskeleton could let humans make love in the metaverse.

Humans may rely on exoskeletons to have realistic sex in the metaverse, one sex tech expert has revealed.

Some of Solar Orbiter’s instruments had to be turned off during the event.

There’s one spacecraft that will be very well placed to capture that increasing activity: Solar Orbiter is currently 25 percent of the way through its 10-year mission of observing the Sun. By 2025, it will be closer than ever to our parent star, and it has already started observing some fantastic phenomena from our Sun.

Continue reading “Europe’s Sun probe just survived a potentially world-ruining solar storm” »

What if death isn’t the end? NDEs may complicate what science teaches us about death and consciousness.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EEqHir0YFnU

These 15 robots may demonstrate that the concept is viable.

Personal robots have been a common trope in sci-fi for many decades. Their apparent plausibility has made many sci-fi enthusiasts wonder when they may become a reality.

Continue reading “Where are all the personal robots we were promised?” »

Have you ever looked at something and been creeped out by it’s almost, but not quite, human-like appearance? Be honest — does the Sophia robot creep you out?People find things that are human like, but not quite human, to be creepy. The feeling of creepiness can range from robots, to CGI animation, animatronics like you see at theme parks, dolls or even digital assistants. This concept is called the “uncanny valley”. And, believe it or not, is actually a particularly significant reason why many AI projects are failing.

The uncanny valley is the relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to being human and then humans emotional response to that object.

Why is AI so creepy sometimes?

Continue reading “The Creepy Problem Killing AI Projects” »

Midjourney is one of the leading drivers of the emerging technology of using artificial intelligence (AI) to create visual imagery from text prompts. The San Francisco-based startup recently made news as the engine behind the artwork that won an award in a Colorado state fair competition, and that’s unlikely to be the last complicated issue that AI art will face in the coming years.

Midjourney differentiates from others in the space by emphasizing the painterly aesthetics in the images it produces.

Serial entrepreneur David Holz explains the goals and methods of the revolutionary text-to-image platform and his vision for the future of human imagination.

Continue reading “Midjourney Founder David Holz On The Impact Of AI On Art, Imagination And The Creative Economy” »

Earlier this summer, a piece generated by an AI text-to-image application won a prize in a state fair art competition, prying open a Pandora’s Box of issues about the encroachment of technology into the domain of human creativity and the nature of art itself.

Art professionals are increasingly concerned that text-to-image platforms will render hundreds of thousands of well-paid creative jobs obsolete.