Lifeboat Foundation

A person can weed about one acre of crops a day. This smart robot can weed 20.

Carbon Robotics has unveiled the third-generation of its Autonomous Weeder, a smart farming robot that identifies weeds and then destroys them with high-power lasers.

The weedkiller challenge: Weeds compete with plants for space, sunlight, and soil nutrients. They can also make it easier for insect pests to harm crops, so weed control is a top concern for farmers.

Continue reading “Farming Robot Kills 100,000 Weeds per Hour With Lasers” »

Artificial intelligence is helping humans make new kinds of art. It is more likely to emerge as a collaborator than a competitor for those working in creative industries. Film supported by Mishcon de Reya.

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Continue reading “How AI is transforming the creative industries | The Economist” »

Others think we’re still missing fundamental aspects of how intelligence works, and that the best way to fill the gaps is to borrow from nature. For many that means building “neuromorphic” hardware that more closely mimics the architecture and operation of biological brains.

The problem is that the existing computer technology we have at our disposal looks very different from biological information processing systems, and operates on completely different principles. For a start, modern computers are digital and neurons are analog. And although both rely on electrical signals, they come in very different flavors, and the brain also uses a host of chemical signals to carry out processing.

Now though, researchers at NIST think they’ve found a way to combine existing technologies in a way that could mimic the core attributes of the brain. Using their approach, they outline a blueprint for a “neuromorphic supercomputer” that could not only match, but surpass the physical limits of biological systems.

The world’s biggest AI chip just doubled its specs—without adding an inch.

The Cerebras Systems Wafer Scale Engine is about the size of a big dinner plate. All that surface area enables a lot more of everything, from processors to memory. The first WSE chip, released in 2019, had an incredible 1.2 trillion transistors and 400000 processing cores. Its successor doubles everything, except its physical size.

The WSE-2 crams in 2.6 trillion transistors and 850000 cores on the same dinner plate. Its on-chip memory has increased from 18 gigabytes to 40 gigabytes, and the rate it shuttles information to and from said memory has gone from 9 petabytes per second to 20 petabytes per second.

With artificial intelligence and painstaking study of sperm whales, scientists hope to understand what these aliens of the deep are talking about.

Circa 2020 o.o!

Japanese researchers have had success with miniscule robots that are small enough to get inside and neutralize a cancer cell — and they want their creations to be ready to deal with future outbreaks of lethal viruses.

To enable the efficient operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in instances where a global localization system (GPS) or an external positioning device (e.g., a laser reflector) is unavailable, researchers must develop techniques that automatically estimate a robot’s pose. If the environment in which a drone operates does not change very often and one is able to build a 3D map of this environment, map-based robot localization techniques can be fairly effective.

Ideally, map-based pose estimation approaches should be efficient, robust and reliable, as they should rapidly send a robot the information it needs to plan its future actions and movements. 3D light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems are particularly promising map-based localization systems, as they gather a rich pool of 3D information, which drones can then use for localization.

Researchers at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Spain have recently developed a new framework for map-based localization called direct LIDAR localization (DLL). This approach, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, could overcome some of the limitations of other LIDAR localization techniques introduced in the past.

The only thing bad about Star Trek was they made the Borg evil.

Emerging technologies have unprecedented potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. Among the most powerful — and controversial — is the gene-editing tech, CRISPR-Cas9, which will improve agricultural yields, cure genetic disorders, and eradicate infectious diseases like malaria. But CRISPR and other disruptive technologies, like brain-machine interfaces and artificial intelligence, also pose complex philosophical and ethical questions. Perhaps no one is better acquainted with these questions than Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founder of Singularity University and Human Longevity Inc. In this session, Peter will give a state of the union on the near future and explore the profound ethical implications we will face in the ongoing technological revolution.

Continue reading “CRISPR, AI & Brain-Machine Interface: The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Peter Diamandis” »

Great episode from a great channel and creator. Though I’m sure almost everyone here is familiar with the channel in question, It’s still worth pointing out subscribing and supporting even if only 1 or 2 people who otherwise haven’t heard it get the opportunity to do so!

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As Humanity moves into the future, traveling to other worlds and exploring genetics, AI, transhumanism, and cybernetics, we may begin to diverge into a thousand post-human species.

Continue reading “Post-Human Species” »