Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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With the recent release of the iPhone 16, which Apple has promised is optimized for artificial intelligence, it’s clear that AI is officially front of mind, once again, for the average consumer. Yet the technology still remains rather limited compared with the vast abilities the most forward-thinking AI technologists anticipate will be achievable in the near future.

As much excitement as there still is around the technology, many still fear the potentially negative consequences of integrating it so deeply into society. One common concern is that a sufficiently advanced AI could determine humanity to be a threat and turn against us all, a scenario imagined in many science fiction stories. However, according to a leading AI researcher, most people’s concerns can be alleviated by decentralizing and democratizing AI’s development.

On Episode 46 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond separate fact from fiction by speaking with Ben Goertzel, the computer scientist and researcher who first popularized the term “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI. Goertzel currently serves as the CEO of SingularityNET and the ASI Alliance, where he leads the projects’ efforts to develop the world’s first AGI.

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Artificial-intelligence tech company OpenAI said it has raised $6.6 billion in new funding, giving it a massive post-money valuation of $157 billion, almost double its previous reported valuation of $80 billion earlier this year.

The new round of funding was led by venture-capital firm Thrive Capital, with additional investors including Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Fidelity, Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, United Arab Emirates-based MGX and Tiger Global. In 2024, OpenAI is projecting a $5 billion net loss on $3.7 billion in revenue, CNBC reported. Next year, the company is targeting $11.6 billion in revenue, per the report.

“We are making progress on our mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” OpenAI said in a statement announcing the funding. “Every week, over 250 million people around the world use ChatGPT to enhance their work, creativity and learning. Across industries, businesses are improving productivity and operations, and developers are leveraging our platform to create a new generation of applications. And we’re only getting started.”

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We’re joined by Dr. Denis Noble, Professor Emeritus of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford, and the father of ‘systems biology’. He is known for his groundbreaking creation of the first mathematical model of the heart’s electrical activity in the 1960s which radically transformed our understanding of the heart.

Dr. Noble’s contributions have revolutionized our understanding of cardiac function and the broader field of biology. His work continues to challenge long-standing biological concepts, including gene-centric views like Neo-Darwinism.

In this episode, Dr. Noble discusses his critiques of fundamental biological theories that have shaped science for over 80 years, such as the gene self-replication model and the Weissmann barrier. He advocates for a more holistic, systems-based approach to biology, where genes, cells, and their environments interact in complex networks rather than a one-way deterministic process.

We dive deep into Dr. Noble’s argument that biology needs to move beyond reductionist views, emphasizing that life is more than just the sum of its genetic code. He explains how AI struggles to replicate even simple biological systems, and how biology’s complexity suggests that life’s logic lies not in DNA alone but in the entire organism.

Continue reading “Denis Noble — Why The Last 80 Years of Biology was Wrong” | >

Following the accelerated expansion discovery of the Universe, scientists introduced dark energy concepts, which faced issues like the cosmological constant problem.

Researchers at IKBFU developed a holographic dark energy model based on quantum gravity, which views the Universe as a hologram. This model, initially unstable, was refined to treat dark energy as perturbations, stabilizing it. It is now being tested against observational data for accuracy.

Discovery of Accelerated Universe Expansion.

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A team of US-based researchers has developed an inexpensive and ultrathin metasurface that, when paired with a neural network, enables a conventional camera to capture detailed hyperspectral and polarization data from a single snapshot.

Inexpensive metasurface could revolutionize the capabilities of conventional imaging systems.

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For the last three years,…

A UWE Bristol researcher hopes to revolutionise the jewellery industry and its supply chains with the creation of unique gemstone and jewellery designs with ground-breaking properties — including the world’s first single stone glow-in-the-dark manmade crystal.

For the last three years, award-winning jewellery designer Sofie Boons, who’s a Crafts Council Research Fellow at the university’s Centre for Print Research (CFPR), has been undertaking tests on the viability, limitations and use of innovative and experimentally grown crystals in the production of contemporary jewellery.

Working in collaboration with Swiss company BREVALOR Sarl and using their new material ‘BRG’, Sofie has successfully facetted a single stone out of the material – offering jewellery designers a crystal which is not only brilliant when seen in daylight, but illuminates when seen in the dark.

Continue reading “Glow in the dark gemstones show the jewellery industry that laboratory-grown crystals can shine bright” | >