Lifeboat Foundation

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Researchers at REMspace, a California-based startup, have achieved a historic milestone, demonstrating that lucid dreams could unlock new dimensions of communication and humanity’s potential. Using specially designed equipment, two individuals successfully induced lucid dreams and exchanged a simple message.

Watch the experiment here.

Lucid dreams occur when a person is aware they are dreaming while still in the dream state. This phenomenon happens during REM sleep and has numerous potential applications, from solving physiological problems to learning new skills. In earlier research, REMspace demonstrated that facial electromyography sensors could decode specific sounds made in dreams. This led to the development of Remmyo, a dream language detectable through sensitive sensors.

The pace of engineering and science is speeding up, rapidly leading us toward a “Technological Singularity” — a point in time when superintelligent machines achieve and improve so much so fast, traditional humans can no longer operate at the forefront. However, if all goes well, human beings may still flourish greatly in their own ways in this unprecedented era.

If humanity is going to not only survive but prosper as the Singularity unfolds, we will need to understand that the Technological Singularity is an Experiential Singularity as well, and rapidly evolve not only our technology but our level of compassion, ethics and consciousness.

The aim of The Consciousness Explosion is to help curious and open-minded readers wrap their brains around these dramatic emerging changes– and empower readers with tools to cope and thrive as they unfold.

Two of San Francisco’s leading players in artificial intelligence have challenged the public to come up with questions capable of testing the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like Google Gemini and OpenAI’s o1. Scale AI, which specializes in preparing the vast tracts of data on which the LLMs are trained, teamed up with the Center for AI Safety (CAIS) to launch the initiative, Humanity’s Last Exam.

Featuring prizes of US$5,000 (£3,800) for those who come up with the top 50 questions selected for the test, Scale and CAIS say the goal is to test how close we are to achieving “expert-level AI systems” using the “largest, broadest coalition of experts in history.”

Why do this? The leading LLMs are already acing many established tests in intelligence, mathematics and law, but it’s hard to be sure how meaningful this is. In many cases, they may have pre-learned the answers due to the gargantuan quantities of data on which they are trained, including a significant percentage of everything on the internet.

With the recent release of the iPhone 16, which Apple has promised is optimized for artificial intelligence, it’s clear that AI is officially front of mind, once again, for the average consumer. Yet the technology still remains rather limited compared with the vast abilities the most forward-thinking AI technologists anticipate will be achievable in the near future.

As much excitement as there still is around the technology, many still fear the potentially negative consequences of integrating it so deeply into society. One common concern is that a sufficiently advanced AI could determine humanity to be a threat and turn against us all, a scenario imagined in many science fiction stories. However, according to a leading AI researcher, most people’s concerns can be alleviated by decentralizing and democratizing AI’s development.

On Episode 46 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond separate fact from fiction by speaking with Ben Goertzel, the computer scientist and researcher who first popularized the term “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI. Goertzel currently serves as the CEO of SingularityNET and the ASI Alliance, where he leads the projects’ efforts to develop the world’s first AGI.

Artificial-intelligence tech company OpenAI said it has raised $6.6 billion in new funding, giving it a massive post-money valuation of $157 billion, almost double its previous reported valuation of $80 billion earlier this year.

The new round of funding was led by venture-capital firm Thrive Capital, with additional investors including Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Fidelity, Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, United Arab Emirates-based MGX and Tiger Global. In 2024, OpenAI is projecting a $5 billion net loss on $3.7 billion in revenue, CNBC reported. Next year, the company is targeting $11.6 billion in revenue, per the report.

“We are making progress on our mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” OpenAI said in a statement announcing the funding. “Every week, over 250 million people around the world use ChatGPT to enhance their work, creativity and learning. Across industries, businesses are improving productivity and operations, and developers are leveraging our platform to create a new generation of applications. And we’re only getting started.”

Humanity’s microscopic foes may be to blame for the ABO polymorphism.

I’m diving deep into the concept of the Universal Productivity Dividend, a potential solution and alternative to UBI for the coming overhaul of the world’s entire socioeconomic system, when total job automation occurs.

We’ll explore what UPD is, how it works, and whether it could be the key to a more equitable future.

Continue reading “Universal Productivity Dividend: Could This Work for the AGI Era?” »

The record-breaking crystal will act as a DNA time capsule that could be used to bring back humanity after our extinction, researchers say. But not everyone is convinced.

Why do we study Mars? What missions have been there? How do we plan to explore this intriguing world in the future? Quench your curiosity with this educational infographic on the Red Planet!

For thousands of years, Mars aka the Red Planet, has fascinated skywatchers from countless civilizations and cultures, leading some to speculate that it was a lush world full of life. However, the exploration of Mars has proven to be quite the contrast, instead exhibiting a dry and inhabitable world utterly devoid of life. Despite this, scientists and engineers from around the world have learned quite a bit from our planetary neighbor with the countless robotic explorers sent there, including flybys, orbiters, landers, and rovers.

Through this, we have gained incredible insight into the ancient history of Mars and whether life might have existed there long ago. In the future, as humanity looks to return the first samples from Mars and land humans on the Red Planet’s surface, we will continue to learn more about this fascinating world and whether it could have, or currently, hosts life as we know it.

Continue reading “Mars Exploration: Past, Present, and Future” »