Lifeboat Foundation

Onstage at the launch of Amazon’s Alexa Prize, a multimillion-dollar competition to build AI that can chat like a human, the winners of last year’s challenge delivered a friendly warning to 2018’s hopefuls: your bot will mess up, it will say something offensive, and it will be taken offline. Elizabeth Clark, a member of last year’s champion Sounding Board team from the University of Washington, was onstage with her fellow researchers to share what they’d learned from their experience. What stuck out, she said, were the bloopers.

We were interested to learn that Juvenescence Limited, a biotech and development company involved in the development of therapies that target the aging processes, has successfully raised $50 million in a series A financing round.

Jim Mellon, the chairman of Juvenescence Limited, said, “We are delighted with the progress we have made and the faith that investors have placed in us to build a world-class company, one that we hope will lead the field in longevity science for the benefit of humanity as well as yield superb returns for our shareholders. Our company ethos is to advance the science that will add years of healthy life to every human being, and that is exactly what we are executing on at record speed.”

Juvenescence has raised $63 million from various international investors since its creation in October 2016 and is now moving forward with a number of key projects. The company is comprised of a number of industry leaders in business as well as a solid scientific team led by Dr. Declan Doogan and Dr. Annalisa Jenkins.

Continue reading “Juvenescence Completes $50 Million Series A Financing Round” »

But there’s a recent lesson worth learning from. Globalization and automation caused upheaval in the manufacturing industry from the 1980s through the early 2000s, and millions of factory workers lost their jobs. The disruption to communities is still being felt, and is arguably at the root of a lot of the biggest social and economic problems of this era.

Some big ideas are starting to percolate. But less dramatic ones might work, too.

Americans installed 2.5 gigawatts of solar panels in the first quarter of the year—a 13 percent increase from a year earlier, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association. That made solar the leading source of new energy generation at 55 percent, dominating over wind and natural gas turbines. This was in spite of the fact that President Donald Trump imposed tariffs earlier this year on imported panels and their parts, reported Bloomberg News. Total installations are on track to reach 10.8 gigawatts at the end of the year, with installations reaching more than 14 gigawatts by 2023.

Read it at Bloomberg.

Neutrinos are so tiny and inconspicuous that physicists believed for a long time they had no mass. Now, a massive device that scientists say will determine the mass of neutrinos has begun operation in Karlsruhe.

What is the exact mass of the three known kinds of neutrinos? Any answers? No? Well, don’t worry, because nobody knows. Not yet. Electron, muon and tau neutrinos are simply too difficult to grasp for scientists.

Recent research published in Cerebral Cortex shows where spirituality exists in the brain by comparing brain scans of people in a spiritual state, stressful state, and a neutral state. Spiritual experiences, it seems, may boil down to rising and falling experiences in the brain.

As technology changes the way people live and work, cities are undergoing an unprecedented transformation. Those that have the infrastructure and strategy to manage this rapid technological shift are set to become the most competitive.

Globally, city economies in India, Vietnam and China have the strongest short-term momentum. The pace and scale of change in these markets is extraordinary, as they build out their skylines and infrastructure platforms to meet booming demand. While these changes present opportunities, many of these cities are facing challenges to their longer-term development prospects, with strains on infrastructure, high levels of inequality, issues around affordability, and environmental degradation.

Such rapid transformation is often eye-catching. But it is cities that are investing in a sustainable future, and laying the groundwork for ongoing success, that deserve recognition. These cities are “future-proofing” to ensure positive, long-term momentum. Key elements of future-proofing include: the ability to drive and manage technological change; infrastructure that contributes to a high quality of life; a long-term city vision; and attracting and retaining talent.

Continue reading “These are the world’s most future-proof cities” »

If your understanding of A.I. and Machine Learning is a big question mark, then this is the blog post for you. Here, I gradually increase your Awesomenessicity ™ by gluing inspirational videos together with friendly text.

Sit down and relax. These videos take time, and if they don’t inspire you to continue to the next section, fair enough.

However, if you find yourself at the bottom of this article, you’ve earned your well-rounded knowledge and passion for this new world. Where you go from there is up to you.

Continue reading “Machine Learning: how to go from Zero to Hero” »

By pairing neural network algorithms with circuits modeled after the structure of the human brain, artificial intelligence works 100 times more efficiently.