Lifeboat Foundation

Remember AlphaGo, the first artificial intelligence to defeat a grandmaster at Go? Well, the program just got a major upgrade, and it can now teach itself how to dominate the game without any human intervention. But get this: In a tournament that pitted AI against AI, this juiced-up version, called AlphaGo Zero, defeated the regular AlphaGo by a whopping 100 games to 0, signifying a major advance in the field. Hear that? It’s the technological singularity inching ever closer.

A new paper published in Nature today describes how the artificially intelligent system that defeated Go grandmaster Lee Sedol in 2016 got its digital ass kicked by a new-and-improved version of itself. And it didn’t just lose by a little—it couldn’t even muster a single win after playing a hundred games. Incredibly, it took AlphaGo Zero (AGZ) just three days to train itself from scratch and acquire literally thousands of years of human Go knowledge simply by playing itself. The only input it had was what it does to the positions of the black and white pieces on the board. In addition to devising completely new strategies, the new system is also considerably leaner and meaner than the original AlphaGo.

Now, every once in a while the field of AI experiences a “holy shit” moment, and this would appear to be one of those moments. Looking back, other “holy shit” moments include Deep Blue defeating Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, IBM’s Watson defeating two of the world’s best Jeopardy! champions in 2011, the aforementioned defeat of Lee Sedol in 2016, and most recently, the defeat of four professional no-limit Texas hold’em poker players at the hands of Libratus, an AI developed by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University.

Continue reading “Stunning AI Breakthrough Takes Us One Step Closer to the Singularity” »

Tell us your story too!

https://www.leafscience.org/longevity-month-2017-tell-us-your-story/

An upgraded version of the game-playing AI teaches itself every trick in the Go book, using a new form of machine learning.

Author, Writer, Consultant, Speaker and researcher into all areas of Autism.

All from the perspective of being Autistic myself.

Really excited to announce my interview in Allure Magazine, one of the biggest women’s mags out there. This is also in print as their November “Science” Issue with 1.2 million distribution: I believe it’s the first time #transhumanism has been in their mag and shows how widespread the movement is getting. 2 other longevity interviews as well in story:

If you’ve ever thought it might be nice to live forever, you’re in impressive company. From moon-shot projects to billionaire-funded research, three experts share vastly different views on the future of what it means to be human.

Laura Carstensen is the director of the Center of Longevity at Stanford University and the author of A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity (PublicAffairs).

Continue reading “Here’s EXACTLY What You Need to Do to Live Forever” »

Every modern economy wants its own version of Silicon Valley and in Japan the urge to find or create one is just as strong. Although the country’s pedigree as an innovator is not in doubt, rapidly adapting to the digital age has proven challenging for its once-mighty consumer electronics companies.

Fukuoka, Kyoto and Tokyo’s Shibuya district are all staking their claim.

I often hear the claim that death is a statistical certainty. This is my mathematical take at why this is not true, assuming the defeat of ageing, and no, being immortal is not required.

If a fully rejuvenated person was hit by a train at full speed, I can promise you they would stand the same pathetically low chances of ever being reassembled into a single, barely functional piece as any non-rejuvenated person of any age. Keeping that in mind, if anyone tried to sell me rejuvenation as ‘immortality’, rest assured I would demand to see the manager right away.

On a different yet unexpectedly related note, if I had a nickel for every time I heard or read something along the lines of ‘death is inevitable because probability’, I could donate so much money to LEAF the IRS would start thinking they’re a bit too well off for a charity.

Continue reading “Mathematics, rejuvenation, and immortality walk into a bar…” »

Automating machine learning will make the technology more accessible to non–AI experts.