Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 9499

When artificial intelligence systems start getting creative, they can create great things – and scary ones. Take, for instance, an AI program that let web users compose music along with a virtual Johann Sebastian Bach by entering notes into a program that generates Bach-like harmonies to match them.

Run by Google, the app drew great praise for being groundbreaking and fun to play with. It also attracted criticism, and raised concerns about AI’s dangers.

My study of how emerging technologies affect people’s lives has taught me that the problems go beyond the admittedly large concern about whether algorithms can really create music or art in general. Some complaints seemed small, but really weren’t, like observations that Google’s AI was breaking basic rules of music composition.

Read more

Biotech is the solution to tackle the environmental impact of meat and the fertilizer shortage.

The world has focused first on energy in its effort to stop greenhouse gas emissions, but former Energy Secretary Steven Chu puts agriculture at the top of his list of climate challenges—particularly animal agriculture.

The Nobel Prize winning physicist surveyed the world’s carbon-polluting industries in a lecture at the University of Chicago, and he started with meat and dairy.

“If cattle and dairy cows were a country, they would have more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire EU 28,” said Chu, who recently assumed the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Continue reading “Meat And Agriculture Are Worse For The Climate Than Power Generation, Steven Chu Says” | >

Two new autonomous aircraft concepts that promise to redefine the Air Force’s unmanned fleet are moving forward.

The latest, Skyborg, is an autonomous drone prototyping program underway at the Air Force Research Laboratory. Researchers hope to get the aircraft—expected to be cheaper than other platforms and easily replaceable—combat-ready by the end of 2023.

Air Force Acquisition Executive Will Roper revealed the program, which launched in October, at a conference in Washington last month. Skyborg must be able to autonomously take off and land, fly in bad weather, and avoid other aircraft, terrain, and obstacles, the Air Force said.

Read more

PureLiFi partner aeroLiFi who specialises in LiFi solutions for the aerospace industry, is exhibiting at the Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX). aeroLiFi will present a demonstration of a multimedia LiFi network for an aircraft cabin. Merging standard LiFi technology components with latest innovations made in multicast network protocols to show the first all optical multimedia IFE solution for aircraft cabins.

Read more

Galor says the study results, published on Monday, April 1, in Nature Ecology & Evolution, lend credence to what he and a colleague had surmised in a highly influential 2002 paper — that during the pre-industrial era, the natural selection of those who were genetically predisposed toward having fewer children was instrumental in spurring industrialization and sustained economic growth.

In a study of 200 years of pre-industrial Quebecois genealogical history, researchers at Brown found that fertility-related changes in natural selection during the pre-industrial era paved the way for economic and technological progress.

Read more

(Reuters) — Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Thursday it was dissolving a council it had formed a week earlier to consider ethical issues around artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

The council had run into controversy over two of its members, according to online news portal Vox, which first reported the dissolution of the council.

The council, launched on March 26, was meant to provide recommendations for Google and other companies and researchers working in areas such as facial recognition software, a form of automation that has prompted concerns about racial bias and other limitations.

Read more

It’s the kind of diverse, multidisciplinary community, Chinese scientists say, that is crucial to doing great research but is often lacking in labs. “The goals of the Materials Genome Initiative in the States and in China are the same: to produce better materials more quickly that cost less. It’s very important we collaborate with overseas scientists because the materials genome is a new topic. We need to figure out the best path together,” says Zhang.

Researchers are reaping the benefits of carefully built programmes and a surge in funding.

Read more