Lifeboat Foundation

“The Artificial Intelligence Contagion” is book and blog which compares A.I. and Robotics researchers to “the worst criminals the world has ever known”. This is my rebuttal to the author’s promotional material he circulated to 86 law professors and A.I. scientists.

A week ago I received an email from David Barnhizer, the author of a new book entitled “The Artificial intelligence contagion” addressed to 86 law professors, attorneys, and A.I. Researchers. I’ve began reading and found the book’s blog and a book review which says that “Those responsible for [artificial intelligence and robotics] are the worst criminals the world has ever known”. This sentiment is repeated throughout the writings, claiming to reflect growing animosity towards the artificial intelligence community.

For this reason, this piece is NOT a review of the book, which I did not read for reasons made obvious further below, for I do not wish to draw any attention to it. But I take exception to comparing me and my fellow scientists and researchers in artificial intelligence to genocidal dictators and war criminals. And Luddite Activism is a real danger.

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We believe that reality is exactly what we perceive but really, this is just an illusion of our own brain. This happens because our brain takes shortcuts to interpret information and adapt to our surroundings: heuristics on which the brain relies to understand the reality perceived, but… can we always trust our brain when it utilizes these resources?

Cracks are emerging in the outer space honor system.

We’re already starting to treat the cosmos the way we treat the Earth.

Research led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has uncovered a new process that may help explain how Type 2 diabetes develops. In tests on live mice and human cells in the lab, the team found a new mechanism besides insulin resistance and high glucose levels that triggers pancreatic cells to begin overproducing insulin.

Type 2 diabetes is the form of the disease that’s usually a result of lifestyle choices, such as poor diet and not enough exercise. It involves a kind of vicious cycle of insulin – beta cells in the pancreas produce too much insulin, which causes the body to become resistant to it. That in turn means the beta cells could produce even more to compensate.

It was long thought that high glucose levels – most commonly caused by eating too much sugary and fatty foods – was the trigger for the beta cells to begin overproducing insulin. But it’s also been shown in the past that even beta cells isolated in a lab dish can over-secrete insulin, without glucose playing a part.

What if astronauts could take a spacecraft to Mars or some other alien planet and, without ever flying through a toxic atmosphere or landing on an inhospitable surface, control drones and rovers to unearth things that would be otherwise impossible to get up close to?

This is the thinking behind the Ntention smart glove. Ntention is an ambitious futuretech startup that was the brainchild of Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) students who wanted to push the limits of space exploration. They designed this glove, equipped with sensors, as a human-machine interface that lets you mind-control a robot with hand gestures. Now NASA’s Haughton Mars project (HMP) has field tested the glove and found it to be many levels of awesome.

An Ontario woman who was part of a U.S. study on experimental spinal stimulators similar to the device implanted in a paralyzed Humboldt Broncos player in Thailand says the device should be tested in Canada where it is not approved for use.

Certain foods, drinks, and behaviors could be filling you up with gas.

White Sands National Monument in New Mexico is now White Sands National Park.

On Friday, President Donald Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 that, among many other things, stripped away the monument status and upgraded it to “national park.” The 275 square miles of desert filled with gypsum sand dunes in southern New Mexico became the 62nd national park in the federal system.

The act proclaims the establishment of White Sands Park is intended “to protect, preserve, and restore its scenic, scientific, educational, natural, geological, historical, cultural, archaeological, paleontological, hydrological, fish, wildlife, and recreational values and to enhance visitor experiences…”

Researchers from MIT have revealed the very first images of a human generated through a novel laser ultrasound imaging technique. Unlike conventional ultrasound, the new technique does not require any skin contact with the body, dramatically amplifying the range of uses for doctors in clinical environments.

A conventional ultrasound is one of the cheapest and easiest imaging methods clinicians currently have in their arsenal. Unlike X-ray or CT scans, an ultrasound does not involve harmful radiation, and unlike PET or MRI scans, there is no need for large expensive machines. Of course, ultrasound does have a number of limitations, from the need for significant bodily contact in the process of imaging, to a variability in imaging results.

A new non-contact ultrasound method involving lasers has now been effectively demonstrated by a team of researchers from MIT. The challenge in developing the new method has been figuring out a way to use a laser to produce sound waves. Traditional ultrasound uses sound waves to penetrate a human body and bounce back off different tissues. Light, of course, cannot penetrate a human body as deeply as sound.