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Sentient Phones? “Massive” AI Research Sparked By Mobile Phone Wars
“You can ask your cell phone what it’s thinking about now, and the answer is that it isn’t. But in 50 years it will be. And it won’t be a companion of yours, you might be a companion of it.”
He’s serious. The CTO of D-Wave Systems says “massive amounts of money” are now going into artificial intelligence research, because “Microsoft, Google, Apple and other companies all want to dominate the mobile space, and to do that you need compelling applications… All of that requires better AI.”
D-Wave Systems worked with Google on the “Google Goggles” mobile phone app for augmented reality, using their systems to “teach” a neural network how to recognize objects like automobiles, and then transferring those algorithms to the mobile app. And to do it they used subatomic…
Can You Build a Fusion Reactor for $20 million?
In a fascinating new interview, the CEO of General Fusion explains why he believes today’s cheap digital signal processors have now actually become powerful enough to control a fusion energy-generating plasma reaction!
“Those involved in science should be curious, but it’s easier to just dismiss us… There’s a feeling that the research has to be done by a government, that it costs billions of dollars and that 3,000 smart people can’t be wrong.” But working with just $9 million from private investors and a $12.9 million grant, General Fusion is currently finishing their components, and in 2011 they’ll assemble the reactor. And if his company succeeds, they’ll create a virtually unlimited source of clean energy.
“Electric plants in the United States take three trainloads of coal a day, but you could run…
Do You Want To Join The Zombies?
Would you join the zombies?
George Romero once said, if faced with a zombie apocalypse, he’d run out and join them. This article by former disinformation® writer Nick Mamatas traces the secret appeal of collaborating with world-conquering zombies, and suggests zombie-mania is becoming a real social force. “For many readers and viewers of zombie stuff, the zombies are what you practice on while preparing for the real uprisings to come.”
Besides zombie literature like “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and George Romero’s new upcoming zombie movie, Marvel even launched a line of superhero comics called… “Marvel Zombies”. And people are staging zombie-themed flash mobs on two different continents…)
But zombie message boards inevitably turn to discussions about real-world survivalism tactics, which has its own appeal. “The iconic zombie horde isn’t just a stand-in for…
Can We Build Robotic Eyes?
Geeks are now discussing the topic of “computer vision”, and this article includes a video showing how robots are taught to perceive images. (”For robots, the choice of eyes varies, from single light-dependant resistors to high-resolution video cameras…)
But interestingly, researchers have already determined that the state-of-the-art machine vision systems are all outperformed by systems based on human biology.
Perfect Humans – Is It Really Wrong To Enhance Athletes?
Mark McGwire, St. Louis, 2001. Photo: Rick Dikeman (CC)
Now that the Olympics are over, science writer Quinn Norton asks if there’s contradictory rules when athletes technologically enhance their bodies. “A new injectable hormone will quickly become anathema, but seeking multiple LASIK eye surgeries to get better than 20/20 vision is a professional responsibility… Another instructive example is Tommy John surgery, an operation that replaces the ligament in the elbow that tends to suffer most in baseball pitchers. This surgery lets them pitch harder for longer, and despite being a major surgical modification, it isn’t viewed negatively.”
And here’s an even better example. “Injections of synthetic Erythropoietin to boost performance are a major no-no in sports. It’s considered blood doping. But athletes can produce EPO another way: by sleeping in a hypobaric chamber.…
Is It Wrong To Cure Colorblindness?
One in twelve men suffers from colorblindness, though “The good news here is that these folks are simply missing a patch of DNA… which is just the kind of challenge this Millennium is made for. Enter science.”
But NPR’s Moira Gunn (from Biotech Nation) now asks a provocative question. Is it wrong to cure colorblindness?
She reports on an experiment that used a virus to introduce corrective DNA into colorblind monkeys. (”It took 20 weeks, but eventually the monkeys started distinguishing between red and green.”) Then she asks, could it be viewed differently? “Are we trying to ‘normalize’ humans to a threshold of experience?
“Slippery Slope. Enter here. Watch your step…”
Microsoft-Borg Wearable Windows / Smartphone Eye Display
Kopin makes advanced night vision goggles and thermal weapon sights for the U.S. Army, but they’ll soon be releasing a wearable Windows/smartphone eye display!
Imagine your smartphone feeding information to a virtual 15-inch Microsoft Windows PC display that sits in front of one eye, just beneath your line of sight. You speak commands using hands-free speech recognition to control both wireless access to the internet and your phone…
Robot Future Arrives in South Korea?
South Korea’s government is investing $750 million to become the world robot leader within the next eight years.
They plan to get a service robot in every home within a decade, and they’re developing English-teaching robots to replace up to 30,000 human instructors at language institutes. The demilitarized zone even inspired an “Intelligence Surveillance and Guard” robot “that detects and interrogates intruders, sounds alarms, and can fire with a Daewoo K-3 machine gun.”
And finally, they’re building “Robot Land” – a combination grad school, R & D robotics center, and theme park with 340 robots, including the 364-foot tall Robot Taekwon U – “Voltar the Invincible”.
Plus, South Korea also has 3,000 computer specialists just to counter online attacks from North Korea…
New Outer Space Policy – Rights for Martians and Astronauts?
Professor Andy Miah notes there’s already international government policies taking hold on outer space – and a need for new ethical guidelines. “For instance, what obligations do we owe to the various life forms we send there, or those we might discover? Can we develop a more considerate approach to colonizing outer space than we were able to achieve for various sectors of Earth?”
And what rights do astronauts have? “Could our inevitable public surveillance of their behavior become too much of an infringement on their personal privacy?”
But more importantly, professor Miah notes that “the goods of space exploration far exceed the symbolic value,” pointing out that “A vast amount of research and development derives from space exploration… For example, the United Kingdom’s 2007 Space Policy inquiry indicated that the creation of…
Can Open Source Manufacturing Save Humanity?
Open source manufacturing essentially lets you download hardware from the web — free packages of coded instructions to make…well, just about anything.
It leverages collaborative “hackerspace” dens and fab labs, while the Social Engineering-Knowledge Database simplifies searching for free open source hardware designs and creating materials lists by organizing them into packages with things like CAD files, assembly instructions, and a bill of materials…
Outer Space Exploration Depends on Your Orgasms
Author Jason Louv asks: what happened to the Great Dream? And then he urges you to start thinking about outer space when you have an orgasm.
“Space is fundamentally about sex. And by eroticizing space, instead of militarizing it, we can do wonders for our limp interest.”
Humankind’s best hope for outer space exploration may be to…eroticize it. “If we could harness the sexual juice poured into the Internet every day and aim it toward the stars, just think what we could achieve.” And in fact, space has a very clear link to sexuality — the threat of world overpopulation! (”Sex makes human beings…And we’ll eventually need to get into space to find somewhere to put them!”)
“Don’t use sexuality to further pollute planet Earth. Use it as a spaceship. Forget Earth, with…
Real-Time Movie-Quality CGI for Games?
Evan Newton writes on h+ magazine:
There aren’t very many games today that, graphically, give one goose bumps. While movies like James Cameron’s Avatar or Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings have graphical effects that appear absolutely real, many wonder if games will ever achieve that level of detail.
Now get ready for Project Offset. This little-known development team, owned by Intel, is building a game engine that may make you believe that the richness of reality in the virtual world is not so far away.
Videos posted on their website show a variety of graphics engine experiments. You will find video footage that ranges from the detailed facial expressions of an ogre to a meteor shower blasting through ancient stone pillars.
Remembering the “Prince of Gonzo Porn”
Porn star Jamie Gillis died of cancer today. But just two years ago, Susie Bright performed the definitive interview with “the first male superstar of porn.”
“Gillis graduated from Columbia University in 1970. An aspiring actor, he was working as a cabbie when he answered an ad in the Village Voice and – ka-boom! He found himself making porn loops…”
After “The Opening of Misty Beethoven,” he became the world’s most famous adult film star — and evventually, even Jamie’s dad was asking if Jamie could get him a date with porn stars…
How a Spider Robot Leads a Student to Intel
Intel is now discussing a dancing humanoid robot project with the Arizona college student who built the famous dancing hexapod “spider” robot!
It got him an “A” in his cognitive robotics class — and 100,000 hits on YouTube — but in a new interview, Matt Bunting explains how he’s culminating a lifelong fascination with robots…
Perform Amateur Home Surgery to Implant Tech Into Your Body
Lepht Anonym writes on h+ magazine:
“Biohacker” Lepht Anonym discusses amateur home surgery to implant technology into her body — and challenges the media portrayal of cyborg prosthetics “that only the elite can afford…”
“I’ve made scalpel incisions in my hands, pushed five-millimeter diameter needles through my skin, and once used a vegetable knife to carve a cavity into the tip of my index finger…”
“Anesthetic is illegal for people like me, so we learn to live without it.”
Now RFID readers can recognize her hand-implanted biochip, and she’s added a series of implants that also sense electromagnetic fields. The implants can register power lines, an active hard drive, and even signals sent by a cell phone, while its magnetism can hold screws to the back of her hand.
“I’m an idiot, but I’m an idiot…
Where’s Your Flying Car (and Your Jetpack)? (Video)
Via h+ magazine:
This article lists three real flying cars that are already in development — and provides video of each one!
MIT engineers are already taking deposits for next year’s roll-out of a “Roadable Aircraft” that can fold and stow its wings in less than 30 seconds — and then drive like a regular car.
And NASA’s electric-powered flying suit will even take off vertically like a helicopter before converting into a propeller-driven airplane. Though it accelerates up to 300 mph, one NASA engineer reports it has zero emissions, and “It’s a 10 times reduction in noise from the quietest helicopters today.”
Artificial Stem Cells? Researchers Transform A Skin Cell Into A Nerve Cell
Via h+ magazine:
Stanford researchers just changed a skin cell into a nerve cell. “Only stem cells have been known to do this… The direct conversion of one terminally differentiated cell to another changes the facts, and shakes our understanding – implying that, just maybe, under the right conditions, all cells are pluripotent: with the proper tools, all types of cells may form all types of cells…
“There is much to hope for as we discover this great leap sideways…”
The team bathed skin cells in “delivery viruses” containing proteins to trigger a neuron-specific DNA sequence, and discovered the skin cells changed completely — growing rounder, extending axon-like processes and even forming functional synapses…
This article suggests ultimately research in this field “could lead to revolutionary progress in the fight against Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and neurodegenerative…
When Will Computers Be Smarter Than Humans?
21 AI experts have predicted the date for four artificial intelligence milestones. Seven predict AIs will achieve Nobel prize-winning performance within 20 years, while five predict that will be accompanied by superhuman intelligence.
One also predicted that in 30 years, “virtually all the intellectual work that is done by trained human beings…can be done by computers for pennies an hour,” adding that AI “is likely to eliminate almost all of today’s decently paying jobs.”
The other milestones are passing a 3rd grade-level test, and passing a Turing test – and the experts estimate the probability that an AI passing a Turing test would result in an outcome that’s bad for humanity…with four estimating that probability was greater than 60%! (Regardless of whether the developer was private, military, or even open source…) Yet interestingly,…
Can We Engineer Immunity on Demand?
Caltech scientists have already engineered stem cells into B cells that produce HIV-fighting antibodies – and an NIH researcher engineered T cells that recognize tumors which has already had promising clinical trials again skin cancer. Now a microbiology professor now asks: could we just genetically engineer all the antibodies we need?
Describing “Immunity on demand, he writes “…there’s a good chance this system, or something like it, will actually be in place within decades!”
“Our best hope may be to cut out the middleman. Rather than merely hoping that the vaccine will indirectly lead to the antibody an individual needs, imagine if we could genetically engineer these antibodies and make them available as needed?”
