Lifeboat Foundation

The largest indoor vegetable farm in Japan.

An indoor farm called Spread in Kameoka – west of Tokyo has been opened to eliminate the barrier of weather and meet the demand for fresh vegetables all year round. So every day, up to 21,000 lettuce plants are harvested to be shipped across Japan, all delivered to stores and supermarkets within 24 hours of leaving the farm.

A new approach to building the soft actuators, which drive the drones’ wings boosts the lift-to-weight ratio to 3.7 to 1.

A new scientific study says the universe may actually change its own laws of physics to achieve stability and evolution, called “The Autodidactic Universe.”

One of the most important issues in contemporary societies is the impact of automation and intelligent technologies on human work. Concerns with the impact of mechanization on jobs and unemployment go back centuries, at least since the late 1,500 ’ s, when Queen Elizabeth I turned down William Lee ’ s patent applications for an automated knitting machine for stockings because of fears that it might turn human knitters into paupers. ^[2] In 1936, an automotive industry manager at General Motors named D.L. Harder coined the term “automation” to refer to the automatic operation of machines in a factory setting. Ten years later, when he was a Vice President at Ford Motor company, he established an “Automation Department” which led to widespread usage of the term. ^[3]

The origins of intelligent automation trace back to US and British advances in fire-control radar for operating anti-aircraft guns to defend against German V-1 rockets and aircraft during World War II. After the war, these advances motivated the MIT mathematician Norbert Weiner to develop the concept of “cybernetics”, a theory of machines and their potential based on feedback loops, self-stabilizing systems, and the ability to autonomously lean and adapt behavior. ^[4] In parallel, the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence workshop was held in 1956 and is recognized as the founding event of artificial intelligence as a research field. ^[5]

Since that decade, workplace automation, cybernetic-inspired advanced feedback systems for both analogue and digital machines, and digital computing based artificial intelligence (together with the overall field of computer science) have advanced in parallel and co-mingled with one another. Additionally, opposing views of these developments have co-existed with one side highlighting the positive potential for more capable and intelligent machines to serve, benefit and elevate humanity, and the other side highlighting the negative possibilities and threats including mass unemployment, physical harm and loss of control. There has been a steady stream of studies from the 1950 ’ s to the present assessing the impacts of machine automation on the nature of work, jobs and employment, with each more recent study considering the capability enhancements of the newest generation of automated machines.

Who better to answer the pros and cons of artificial intelligence than an actual AI?

Students at Oxford’s Said Business School hosted an unusual debate about the ethics of facial recognition software, the problems of an AI arms race, and AI stock trading. The debate was unusual because it involved an AI participant, previously fed with a huge range of data such as the entire Wikipedia and plenty of news articles.

Continue reading “AI debates its own ethics at Oxford University, concludes the only way to be safe is ‘no AI at all’” »

KUALA LUMPUR: More than 21,000 people affected by Malaysia’s worst flooding in years — most of them in Selangor — were sheltering in relief centres on Sunday (Dec 19).

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced the government would allocate an initial sum of RM100 million for house and infrastructure repairs, and will provide financial aid to affected households.

In a Facebook post, the prime minister said he had “directed all ministries to double up efforts in helping flood operations especially in the severely affected areas as soon as possible”.

Here’s what you need to know.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, or Webb for short) is scheduled to launch on December 24, 2021, at 7:20 Eastern Standard Time.

Continue reading “James Webb Space Telescope launch date, time, and how to watch NASA’s livestream” »

With a decades-long track record of making space a profitable business, Luxembourg is betting big on everything from space resources, satellites and training the next generation of space entrepreneurs.

In spring 2020, shortly after the pandemic began, many scientists predicted that the coronavirus would not evolve particularly fast.

But those predictions have been upended time and again — and never more so than with omicron, a variant with an astonishing number of mutations that is rampaging through Europe and South Africa. In New York, cases are suddenly soaring to record levels as holiday parties and sports games are canceled, and California officials are bracing for a similar crisis in the coming weeks.

Once again, uncertainty and worry are rising. No one knows what the next Greek letter variants will unleash.