Lifeboat Foundation

Pfizer has pledged a shipment of its experimental antiviral COVID-19 pill to Israel, according to a Saturday television report, a week after the US drugmaker said it was engaged in “active discussion” with 90 countries regarding the coronavirus medication.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz reached an agreement with the drug company for tens of thousands of doses, Channel 12 news reported. The shipment will be despatched as soon as Pfizer receives FDA approval for the pill, the TV report said.

PM and health minister reach agreement with drug company for ‘tens of thousands of doses’; initial data shows almost 90% efficacy.

Continue reading “Pfizer pledges shipment of new antiviral COVID pill to Israel — report” »

Climate change can cause dramatic shifts in global temperatures and weather patterns. And while scientists won’t be able to reverse all of the negative impacts of these changes, they are looking for ways to lessen the effects by controlling the weather.

Tech Insider tells you all you need to know about tech: gadgets, how-to’s, gaming, science, digital culture, and more.

Continue reading “How We’ll Control The Weather In 100 Years” »

A cold winter is spurring the hole, which will persist through November at least.

Would you have thought that Elon Musk is Vladimir Putin’s best friend?? How about the idea of Elon Musk making a factory in Russia???

How would that work? Good idea? Bad Idea? Who’s going to win from that scenario??

Continue reading “IT HAPPENED!! Russia OFFICIALLY asks Elon Musk for ALL SpaceX’s latest Technology…” »

Battling bias. If I’ve been a little MIA this week, it was because I spent Monday and Tuesday in Boston for Fortune ’s inaugural Brainstorm A.I. gathering. It was a fun and wonky couple of days diving into artificial intelligence and machine learning, technologies that—for good or ill—seem increasingly likely to shape not just the future of business, but the world at large.

There are a lot of good and hopeful things to be said about A.I. and M.L., but there’s also a very real risk that the technologies will perpetuate biases that already exist, and even introduce new ones. That was the subject of one of the most engrossing discussions of the event by a panel that was—as pointed out by moderator, guest co-chair, and deputy CEO of Smart Eye Rana el Kaliouby—comprised entirely of women.

One of the scariest parts of bias in A.I. is how wide and varied the potential effects can be. Sony Group’s head of A.I. ethics office Alice Xiang gave the example of a self-driving car that’s been trained too narrowly in what it recognizes as a human reason to jam on the breaks. “You need to think about being able to detect pedestrians—and ensure that you can detect all sorts of pedestrians and not just people that are represented dominantly in your training or test set,” said Xiang.

Non-verbal social cues are key.

Robots are increasingly becoming common in everyday life but their communications skills still lag far behind. One key attribute that might really help robot-human interactions is if robots could learn to read and respond to human emotional cues.

In that case, they would be able to interfere when they are really needed and not disturb the rest of the time. Now, researchers at Franklin & Marshall College have been working on allowing socially assistive robots to process social cues given by humans and respond to them accordingly.

AI is a classic double-edged sword in much the same way as other major technologies have been since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Burning carbon drives the industrial world but leads to global warming. Nuclear fission provides cheap and abundant electricity though could be used to destroy us. The Internet boosts commerce and provides ready access to nearly infinite amounts of useful information, yet also offers an easy path for misinformation that undermines trust and threatens democracy. AI finds patterns in enormous and complex datasets to solve problems that people cannot, though it often reinforces inherent biases and is being used to build weapons where life and death decisions could be automated. The danger associated with this dichotomy is best described by sociobiologist E.O. Wilson at a Harvard debate, where he said “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and God-like technology.”

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Continue reading “With the Metaverse on the way, an AI Bill of Rights is urgent” »

When comparing Meta — formerly Facebook — and Microsoft’s approaches to the metaverse, it’s clear Microsoft has a much more grounded and realistic vision. Although Meta currently leads in the provision of virtual reality (VR) devices (through its ownership of what was previously called Oculus), Microsoft is adapting technologies that are currently more widely used. The small, steady steps Microsoft is making today put it in a better position to be one of the metaverse’s future leaders. However, such a position comes with responsibilities, and Microsoft needs to be prepared to face them.

The metaverse is a virtual world where users can share experiences and interact in real-time within simulated scenarios. To be clear, no one knows yet what it will end up looking like, what hardware it will use, or which companies will be the main players — these are still early days. However, what is certain is that VR will play a key enabling role; VR-related technologies such as simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM), facial recognition, and motion tracking will be vital for developing metaverse-based use cases.

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Today’s video is a special interview with the one and only Mark Zuckerberg, Founder & CEO of Meta. We discuss the future of the Metaverse, Web3.0, take a dive into how it will change our lives and Mark gives us his thoughts on when and how this new world will come to fruition. This episode will provide you with all you need to know as we move into Web3 and the Metaverse.
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Thanks for watching!
Check out another series on my channel:
Tea With GaryVee (Fan Q&A Series): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FBahSYlSAjOMGsuRPLMWWEO
Overrated Underrated (Hot-takes on Culture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUSNSqA62uI&t=0s.
Gary Vaynerchuk Original Films: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FAvnrOcgy4MvIcCXxoyjuku.
Trash Talk: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FDelN4bXFgtJuczC9HHmm2
WeeklyVee: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FBPjdQcF6uedz9fdk8XKn-b.
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Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the world’s leading marketing experts, a New York Times bestselling author, and the chairman of VaynerX, a modern-day communications company and the active CEO of VaynerMedia, a contemporary global creative and media agency built to drive business outcomes for their partners. He is a highly popular public speaker, and a prolific investor with investments in companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Coinbase, Slack, and Uber. Gary is a board/advisory member of Bojangles’ Restaurants, MikMak, Pencils of Promise, and is a longtime Well Member of Charity: Water. He’s also an avid sports card investor and collector. He lives in New York City.