Lifeboat Foundation

From Watson to Sophia, who are the artificially intelligent robot personas of today, and what can they tell us about our future?

Siri. Alexa. Cortana. These familiar names are the modern-day Girl Fridays making everyone’s life easier. These virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence (AI) bring to life the digital tools of the information age. One of the subtle strategies designers use to make it easier for us to integrate AI into our lives is “anthropomorphism” - the attribution of human-like traits to non-human objects. However, the rise of AI with distinct personalities, voices, and physical forms is not as benign as it might seem. As futurists who are interested in the impacts of technology on society, we wonder what role human-like technologies play in achieving human-centred futures.

For example, do anthropomorphized machines enable a future wherein humanity can thrive? Or, do human-like AIs foreshadow a darker prognosis, particularly in relation to gender roles and work? This article looks at a continuum of human-like personas that give a face to AI technology. We ask: what does it mean for our collective future that technology is increasingly human-like and gendered? And, what does it tell us about our capacity to create a very human future?

The Women of AI

Continue reading “Fembots vs. HAL: Who are the people of AI?” »

Magnetic levitation keyboards have been around for a while, but they’ve never really taken off, or floated our boats, or attracted much atten… Anyway, a Taiwanese manufacturer called Darfon is persevering with the idea, and it’s discovered that maglev keys, which rest on opposing magnets instead of mushy membranes or mechanical switches, can make laptop keyboards significantly thinner. Unfortunately, according to a CNET journalist who played with a couple of prototypes at Computex, the keys can be hard to type on if skinniness is taken to the extreme. Then again, there’s scope to change the resistance of the keyboard electronically to suit your preference, and Darfon claims it has already received orders from laptop makers who are targeting launches later this year. If that’s true, perhaps the technology isn’t so repellant after all.

[Image credit: Aloysius Low / CNET].

Researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam studied the faces of almost 2,700 elderly Dutch Europeans, and found that those carrying a variation of the MC1R gene (most prevalent in redheaded people) looked on average two years younger than they actually are.

Tunneling, a key feature of quantum mechanics, is when a particle that encounters a seemingly insurmountable barrier passes through it, ending up on the other side. A series of experiments carried out by physicists from Griffith University, Lanzhou University, the Australian National University, Drake University and Korea’s Institute for Basic Science has definitively determined the tunneling delay, which is also the time it takes for an electron to get out or ionize from a hydrogen atom.

Breakthrough will help with the development of reliable quantum computers.

Mathematicians used “magic functions” to prove that two highly symmetric lattices solve a myriad of problems in eight- and 24-dimensional space.

DENVER — Researchers have developed a new, unspeakably dangerous, and incredibly slow method of crossing the universe. It involves wormholes linking special black holes that probably don’t exist. And it might explain what’s really going on when physicists quantum-teleport information from one point to another — from the perspective of the teleported bit of information.

Daniel Jafferis, a Harvard University physicist, described the proposed method at a talk April 13 here at a meeting of the American Physical Society. This method, he told his assembled colleagues, involves two black holes that are entangled so that they are connected across space and time.

Researchers have learned how to produce electricity from Earth’s excess infrared radiation and waste heat through the unusual physics of quantum tunneling.