Lifeboat Foundation

The work on the planned Dallas and Houston high-speed rail continues to advance slowly, despite years of pushback.

SparkLabs — an early-stage venture capital firm that has made a name for itself for backing OpenAI as well as a host of other AI startups such as Vectara, Allganize, Kneron, Anthropic, xAI, Glade (YC S23) and Lucidya AI — is gearing up to double down on more startups in the space. The VC firm announced Tuesday that it has closed a new $50 million fund, AIM AI Fund, which will back AI startups out of its own AIM-X accelerator in Saudi Arabia as well as other AI startups across the globe.

SparkLabs’ new fund and its wider investment aims underscore the bigger trends that have swirled around artificial intelligence for the last few years. The explosion of interest in generative AI in particular has led to a surge of startups in the space, as well as a rush of investors looking for the next Open AI — or at the very least, a startup that a bigger company might snap up as it looks to sharpen its own AI edge.

It also points to how the AI opportunity continues to widen beyond Silicon Valley. AIM-X is an AI-focused startup accelerator that SparkLabs launched earlier this year in the kingdom as part of its AI Mission, a national initiative to bolster AI technology over the next five years.

Chip sector driving to develop tech to boost speeds, cut power usage.

The mapping of 50,000 mysterious “knots” in the human genome may someday lead to the development of new cancer drugs, researchers say.

When sensory input meets spontaneous brain activity’

https://cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(24)00153-X

https://nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50102-9

Continue reading “Network mechanisms of ongoing brain activity’s influence on conscious visual perception” »

Here the notorious but eloquent transhumanism critic Wesley J. Smith takes a swipe at the quickly growing movement to overcome death with science. New story in Merion West!

“Utopians often produce evil because their movement’s aspirations become paramount —that is, more important than avoiding acts ‘traditionally perceived as immoral.’ If enough people follow Istvan on the transhuman roller coaster, people could eventually get hurt.”

“I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen.

Continue reading “Why Transhumanism Is Unrealistic and Immoral” »

A real stinker.

The trial, conducted by Amazon Web Services, was commissioned by the government regulator as a proof of concept for generative AI’s capabilities, and in particular its potential to be used in business settings.

That potential, the trial found, is not looking promising.

Continue reading “Government Test Finds That AI Wildly Underperforms Compared to Human Employees” »

A Space Force officer will command a mission later this month to safely bring home two astronauts who have been unexpectedly stuck aboard the International Space Station, or ISS, marking the first time a Guardian will launch into space for such a high-profile operation.

Col. Nick Hague, an active-duty Space Force Guardian, will be joined by Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for NASA’s Crew-9 mission. Originally, Hague and Gorbunov were supposed to be joined by two other astronauts for a trip to space, but problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that have left astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams stuck aboard the space station for months longer than anticipated shifted the mission objective, date and staffing.

Hague and Gorbunov will launch no earlier than Sept. 24, NASA said in a Friday news release, and will return to Earth with Wilmore and Williams in February 2025. The Guardian and the cosmonaut were chosen for their particular experience and skill sets, the agency said.

Scientists have grown blood stem cells in the laboratory for the first time in a move that could potentially end the need for stem cell transplants.

During a stem cell (or bone marrow) transplant, damaged blood cells are replaced with healthy ones and can be used to treat conditions such as leukaemia.

However, finding a donor match can be difficult and some patients die before a donor is found.