Lifeboat Foundation

“The countries which have the capacity to bring that source from the moon to Earth will dictate the process,” said K Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). “I don’t want to be just a part of them, I want to lead them.”

The mission would solidify India’s place among the fleet of explorers racing to the moon, Mars and beyond for scientific, commercial or military gains. The governments of the US, China, India, Japan and Russia are competing with startups and billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to launch satellites, robotic landers, astronauts and tourists into the cosmos.

The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe.

Continue reading “India’s quest to find a trilliondollar nuclear fuel on the Moon” »

Flight is about to get a lot more personal, says aviation entrepreneur Rodin Lyasoff. In this visionary talk, he imagines a new golden age of air travel in which small, autonomous air taxis allow us to bypass traffic jams and fundamentally transform how we get around our cities and towns. “In the past century, flight connected our planet,” Lyasoff says. “In the next, it will reconnect our local communities.”

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

“The actual path of a raindrop as it goes down the valley is unpredictable, but the general direction is inevitable,” says digital visionary Kevin Kelly — and technology is much the same, driven by patterns that are surprising but inevitable. Over the next 20 years, he says, our penchant for making things smarter and smarter will have a profound impact on nearly everything we do. Kelly explores three trends in AI we need to understand in order to embrace it and steer its development. “The most popular AI product 20 years from now that everyone uses has not been invented yet,” Kelly says. “That means that you’re not late.”

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

Continue reading “How AI can bring on a second Industrial Revolution” »

Cafe X, the robotic coffeeshop startup, debuted its second generation robot barista kiosk on the streets of downtown San Francisco today.

Unlike other dedicated storefront locations, this new version of the Cafe X robot is a standalone kiosk that sits literally on the sidewalk at the corner of Sansome and Bush in SF’s Financial District. In addition to the updated form factor, the new version of the robot can handle multiple drink sizes (8 oz and 12 oz), clear cups, and also does nitro-infused cold brew coffee.

Continue reading “Cafe X Debuts 2nd Gen Coffee Robot Kiosk in Downtown San Francisco” »

Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., calls quantum computing one of three emerging technologies that will radically reshape the world, along with artificial intelligence and augmented reality. But it’s easier to describe quantum computing’s importance — that is, its potential importance, because it barely exists now — than to say what it is. Understanding quantum mechanics, whose principles underpin quantum computing, involves a lot of mental mountain climbing. Someth.

What if a large class of algorithms used today—from the algorithms that help us avoid traffic to the algorithms that identify new drug molecules—worked exponentially faster?

Computer scientists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a completely new kind of algorithm, one that exponentially speeds up computation by dramatically reducing the number of parallel steps required to reach a solution.

The researchers will present their novel approach at two upcoming conferences: the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), June 25–29 and International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), July 10 −15.

Continue reading “‘Breakthrough’ algorithm exponentially faster than any previous one” »

Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore may have multi-million-user installed bases, but so does Niantic’s Pokémon Go, the first hit augmented reality game. Now Niantic plans to offer its custom AR software to other developers as the Real World Platform, and is teasing advanced features that go beyond the capabilities of Apple’s and Google’s development kits.

Already used in Pokémon GO, Ingress, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the Real World Platform is an evolving software engine that adds digital characters and shared social experiences to real-world map data. Niantic has recently bolstered the AR platform’s development team by acquiring computer vision specialist companies Escher Reality and Matrix Mill, the latter with machine learning expertise.

Continue reading “Niantic will offer AR platform to third-parties, including AI object recognition” »

I’m excited to share my interview with Jakub Dymek on #transhumanism in the new edition of The Aspen Institute (Eastern Europe) quarterly Aspen Review magazine.

Let’s think about this: what happens when sometime in the future the whole generation of Chinese kids have higher IQs than their American peers, because they’re technologically hardwired for that? Will this be a national security issue? This is a global security issue—says Zoltan Istvan in an interview with Jakub Dymek.

JAKUB DYMEK: You are a transhumanist—member of a movement endorsing technologically augmented advancement of human species and using technology to extend our capabilities. What does transhumanist thinking bring into the world of policy debate in the US and worldwide and how politically influential it is?

Continue reading “Zoltan Istvan: It Goes beyond Human” »

A team of OpenAI robots beat amateur human players at Dota 2.