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Article originally published on LINKtoLEADERS under the Portuguese title “Sem saber ler nem escrever!”

In the 80s, “with no knowledge, only intuition”, I discovered the world of computing. I believed computers could do everything, as if it were an electronic God. But when I asked the TIMEX Sinclair 1000 to draw the planet Saturn — I am fascinated by this planet, maybe because it has rings —, I only glimpse a strange message on the black and white TV:

https://youtu.be/pDSEjaDCtOU?t=2526

Ian Hutchinson’s concerns for existential risk after minute 42.


Ian Hutchinson is a nuclear engineer and plasma physicist at MIT. He has made a number of important contributions in plasma physics including the magnetic confinement of plasmas seeking to enable fusion reactions, which is the energy source of the stars, to be used for practical energy production. Current nuclear reactors are based on fission as we discuss. Ian has also written on the philosophy of science and the relationship between science and religion.

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The idea that some mimic might steal your identity and replace you, or takeover your mind, is terrifying. But could we encounter aliens that were able to do this?

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Using gene modification techniques, a team of researchers have come up with a new treatment for balding, Wired reports — a condition experienced to varying degrees by two-thirds of American men by age 35.

The team, associated with the University of California, Irvine and a biotech company called Amplifica, believes they’ve identified the signaling pathway that drive hair growth to find new ways to stop stem cells from giving up on producing hair follicles.

Experiments with mice, as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Developmental Cell last month, have been promising. The mice were genetically modified to have the hair growth signaling pathway turned on permanently.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can perform preventive healthcare activities such as health screening, routine check-up and vaccination with expert-level accuracy that can turn out to be cost-effective in the long run. Yet, a new research found that individuals show less trust in preventive care interventions suggested by AI than when the same interventions are prompted by human health experts.

The researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore studied 15,000 users of a health mobile application and found that emphasising the involvement of a human health expert in an AI-suggested intervention could improve its acceptance and effectiveness.

These findings suggest that the human element remains important even as the healthcare sector increasingly adopts AI to screen, diagnose and treat patients more efficiently. The findings could also contribute to the design of more effective AI-prompted preventive care interventions, said the researchers.