Lifeboat Foundation

Why a blog post and not a proper response in a philosophy journal? My very first journal submission is still in the review process, close to two months later, for one. Secondly, blogging allows me to be pedantic, to be human, that is, to express frustration, to show anger, to be candid; in other words, blogging allows me to be myself. Probably of highest priority is the fact that I do not want my first publication in the philosophy of mind to be a response. I want to eventually outline my own theory of consciousness, which is strongly hinted at here, and I prefer for that to be my first contribution to the philosophy of mind. I do not find panpsychism convincing and I think there is another theory of consciousness, similar to panpsychism in ways, that is much more cogent. I have outlined some qualms I have with panpsychism before; to people new to the blog, you can read here.

Researchers from the University of Pisa developed a quantum subroutine to improve matrix multiplication for AI and machine learning applications.

When you multiply two large matrices—this is a common task in fields like machine learning, but it can be time-consuming, even for powerful computers…

In a recent study published in IEEE Access, a team of researchers from the University of Pisa introduced a quantum subroutine designed to streamline matrix multiplication. This subroutine is a new feature in the toolbox of matrix multiplication that could improve computational efficiency, particularly in applications like machine learning and data processing.

Continue reading “Matrix Re-Reloaded: Quantum Subroutine Improves Efficiency of Matrix Multiplication for AI and Machine Learning Applications” »

Imagine you’re sitting across from a friend, having a conversation.

I’m a die-hard Beach Boys fan. In one of their most famous songs, they sing about “pickin’ up good vibrations” from a girl. We’ve all felt those “good vibes” when we’re connecting with someone new. I used to think that feeling was a mysterious, mystical experience — something I couldn’t fully explain that bonded me with some friends and strangers more easily than others.

It turns out that “good vibes” aren’t as mysterious as I thought.

Continue reading “Picking up good vibes from a stranger? That might be your neurons aligning” »

Android users have been warned that a dangerous new hack attack uses optical character recognition to grab passphrases from your smartphone.

Google has built a quantum computer that makes fewer errors as it is scaled up, and this may pave the way for machines that could solve useful real-world problems for the first time.

By Matthew Sparkes

Learning and a spectrum of other behavioral competencies allow organisms to rapidly adapt to dynamically changing environmental variations. The emerging field of diverse intelligence seeks to understand what systems, besides ones with complex brains, exhibit these capacities. Here, we tested predictions of a general computational framework based on the free energy principle in neuroscience but applied to aneural biological process as established previously, by demonstrating and manipulating pattern recognition in a simple aneural organism, the green algae Volvox. Our studies of the adaptive photoresponse in Volvox reveal that aneural organisms can distinguish between patterned and randomized inputs and indicate how this is achieved mechanistically.

Independent advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration are meeting this week to discuss the regulations, ethics and possibilities of creating an artificial womb to increase the chances that extremely premature babies would survive — and without long-term health problems.

Last month I was involved in a fantastic conference: the 26th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. I think it went really well, and some parts got a fair amount of mainstream coverage, with varying degrees of accuracy.

As crazy or stupid as it may sound to some people there are some dreams and ideas I will never Give up no matter how impossible it may seem now.

One account stated that Clarke’s laws were developed after the editor of his works in French started numbering the author’s assertions. ^{[ 2 ]} All three laws appear in Clarke’s essay “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination”, first published in Profiles of the Future (1962); ^{[ 3 ]} however, they were not all published at the same time. Clarke’s first law was proposed in the 1962 edition of the essay, as “Clarke’s Law” in Profiles of the Future.

The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay but its status as Clarke’s second law was conferred by others. It was initially a derivative of the first law and formally became Clarke’s second law where the author proposed the third law in the 1973 revision of Profiles of the Future, which included an acknowledgement. ^{[ 4 ]} It was also here that Clarke wrote about the third law in these words: “As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there”