Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 5

ServiceNow, which provides businesses with outsourced IT and customer service support as well as other digital services, said it was buying the business process automation company Moveworks for $2.85 billion in cash and stock. The Santa Clara, California-based ServiceNow framed the acquisition around the burgeoning market for AI agents that can perform digital tasks for people, often involving the use of other software.

The company is among a clutch of competing software giants, including Salesforce, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google, that are building platforms that enable companies to automate work with AI agents. ServiceNow said the purchase would allow it to combine its own agentic AI and automation capabilities with Moveworks’ AI assistant, as well as Movework’s prowess in providing AI-based search tools that allow organizations to find information within their own large data pools.

Gina Mastantuono, ServiceNow’s president and chief financial officer, told Fortune that while ServiceNow’s AI agents primarily automate specific back-end tasks, Moveworks had built an elegant front-end AI assistant that can perform a wide range of different tasks.

The same interface works for both people requesting a task to be fulfilled and for the people who are normally responsible for fulfilling those requests. More than 90% of the customers that use Moveworks’ AI assistant have rolled it out to their entire workforce—a reach into the employee base that Mastantuono said was attractive to ServiceNow.

The combined companies would be able to build what ServiceNow said would be a powerful universal AI assistant, along with more perceptive AI-based enterprise search to find answers to requests, automate and complete everyday tasks, and increase productivity.

(https://open.substack.com/pub/remunerationlabs/p/servicenow-…hare=true)

Continue reading “ServiceNow Buys AI Agent Company Moveworks For .85 Billion” | >

Is an in-depth investigation featuring world renowned philosophers and scientists into the most profound philosophical debate of all time: Do we have free will?

Featuring: Sean Carroll, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne, Dan Barker, Heather Berlin, Gregg Caruso, Massimo Pigliucci, Alex O’Conner, Coleman Hughes, Edwin Locke, Robert Kane, Rick Messing, Derk Pereboom, Richard Carrier, Trick Slattery, Dustin Kreuger, Steven Sharper, Donia Abouelatta.

Chapters.

Intro: — 0:00
Chapter 1: What is Free Will? — 4:19
Chapter 2: The Problem of Free Will — 15:29
Interlude: 22:33
Chapter 3: Libertarian Free Will — 23:16
Chapter 4: Compatibilism — 34:47
Chapter 5: Free Will Skepticism — 45:13
Interlude: The 3 Positions of Free Will — 55:45
Chapter 6: The Great Debate — 57:28
Chapter 7: Neuroscience — 1:07:28
Chapter 7: The Interaction Problem — 1:18:37
Chapter 8: Physics — 1:20:10
Chapter 8: Reduction & Emergence — 1:22:14
Chapter 9: Can We Have Determinism and Free Will? — 1:28:57
Chapter 10: Free Will and the Law — 1:45:57
Chapter 11: Should We Stop Using the Term Free Will? — 1:56:37
Outro: 2:00:38

Read more | >

Buy me a coffee and support the channel: https://ko-fi.com/jkzero.
Part 3 of the groundbreaking but less-known theory of quantum mechanics proposed by Louis de Broglie in 1923. In this video de Broglie’s unification of wave and particles using his matter waves to show that Fermat’s principle of ray optics is equivalent to Maupertuis’ principle for the dynamics of particles. Although incomplete, this corresponds to the early development of de Broglie’s pilot-wave theory.

∘ Pilot-wave theory (part 1): the origin of de Broglie’s matter waves https://youtu.be/YQNEziGyDxU
∘ Pilot-wave theory (part 2): explaining Bohr’s atom https://youtu.be/5MMs6iFSiY8
∘ This is how the wave-particle duality of light was discovered https://youtu.be/f7JvywBOGYY
∘ Playlist Quantum Physics https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_UV-wQj1lvVxch-RPQIUOHX88eeNGzVH

∘ L. de Broglie, “Ondes et quanta,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Aadémie des Sciences (Paris), 177,507 (1923)
∘ L. de Broglie, “Quanta de lumière, diffraction et interférences,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Aadémie des Sciences (Paris), 177,548 (1923)
∘ L. de Broglie, “Les quanta, la théorie cinétique des gaz et le principe de Fermat,” Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l’Aadémie des Sciences (Paris), 177,630 (1923)
∘ F. Grimaldi, “Physico-mathesis de lumine, coloribus et iride aliisque adnexis” (1665)
∘ I. Newton, “Optiks” (1704)
∘ L. de Broglie, “On the Theory of Quanta,” translation of doctoral thesis, Foundation Louis De Broglie (1924)
∘ A. Einstein, “Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas, Part II” Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. 3, (1925)

M. de Broglie, public domain.
Diffraction half plane with rays, by MikeRun under CC BY-SA 4.0
Oualidia Lagoon, Morocco via Google Earth.
Matter Waves, AT&T Archives and History Center (1961)
Francesco Grimaldi, public domain.
First edition of Opticks, public domain.
Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller, public domain.
Light refraction, by ajizai, public domain.
Interference pattern, by J.S. Diaz (own work)
Polarization clamp, by A.Davidhazy under CC BY-SA 4.0
Light bulb through diffraction grating, by R.D. Anderson under CC BY-SA 3.0
Davisson and Germer, public domain.
Davisson-Germer Figure 2, public domain.
Fifth Solvay Conference, AIP
Refraction with soda straw, by Bcrowell under CC BY-SA 1.0
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, public domain.
P. Langevin, public domain.
Peter Debye, AIP
Portrait of Erwin Schrodinger, AIP
Eels Swimming in Aquarium by M. Ehlers, free use via Pexels https://www.pexels.com/video/eels-swimming-in-aquarium-10106765/

AIP: American Institute of Physics, Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.
CC BY-SA 1.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/deed.en.
CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en.
CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en.
CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Read more | >

Although it’s not the first time this was hypothesized, this study is the first time researchers looked at the presence of gingipains within the brains of diseased patients. Even more, the patients themselves were never even diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“Our identification of gingipain antigens in the brains of individuals with AD and also with AD pathology but no diagnosis of dementia argues that brain infection with P. gingivalis is not a result of poor dental care following the onset of dementia or a consequence of late-stage disease, but is an early event that can explain the pathology found in middle-aged individuals before cognitive decline,” the authors explained.

While this isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to what causes Alzheimer’s, it’s a step in the right direction to finding the reasoning behind this life-altering disease.

Read more | >

How will artificial intelligence affect the distribution of income and wealth this century? After falling through much of the 20th century, income inequality, measured as the fraction of income going to the richest 1% of residents, has been rising since the 1980s. The fraction has doubled in both China and the United States during that time, increased by 50% in Europe and one-third worldwide.

Industrialization dominated the economy before then, but starting in the ’70s and ’80s, capital took over as globalization increased, tax changes reduced progressivity and game-changing technologies were introduced rapidly.

The computer and personal computer revolution came first, followed by the Internet and the World Wide Web. Now (AI) is beginning to make its mark in the world as a next-generation general-purpose technology.

Read more | >

Prostate cancer statistics can look scary: 34,250 U.S. deaths in 2024. 1.4 million new cases worldwide in 2022. Dr. Bruce Montgomery, a UW Medicine oncologist, hopes that patients won’t see these numbers and just throw up their hands in fear or resignation.

“Being diagnosed with is not a death knell,” said Montgomery, senior author of a literature and trial review that appeared in JAMA today. Montgomery is the clinical director of Genitourinary Oncology at Fred Hutch Cancer Center and University of Washington Medical Center, and a professor of medicine and urology at the UW School of Medicine.

He encourages patients to ask their primary-care doctor specific questions about this cancer too. Montgomery also encourages his fellow doctors to bring up the question of prostate cancer screening with their patients.

Read more | >

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have identified genetic changes in blood stem cells from frequent blood donors that support the production of new, non-cancerous cells.

Understanding the differences in the mutations that accumulate in our as we age is important to understand how and why blood cancers develop and hopefully how to intervene before the onset of clinical symptoms.

As we age, stem cells in the bone marrow naturally accumulate mutations and with this, we see the emergence of clones, which are groups of blood cells that have a slightly different genetic makeup. Sometimes, specific clones can lead to like leukemia.

Read more | >

A team of environmental researchers, Earth scientists and pollution specialists at Nanjing University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues from Germany and the U.S. has found evidence that microplastics have a negative impact on photosynthesis in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems.

In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group conducted a meta-analysis of data from more than 150 studies involving the impact of microplastics on plants.

Prior research has shown that microplastics have made their way to nearly every ecosystem on the planet, and now contaminate plants and animals, including humans. For this new study, the research team wondered if microplastics might have an unknown impact on plants living in the ocean, in fresh water or growing on land, and they conducted a study of prior research to find out.

Read more | >