Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists from Tufts University, the University of Vermont, and the Wyss Institute at Harvard published early research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about robots made from heart and skin cells derived from frog embryo stem cells that they call xenobots. What does this mean for robotics and what are the ethical issues at play?

Starring tom merritt, sarah lane, len peralta, roger chang, annalee newitz.

Continue reading “Xenobots Have Heart (Cells) — DTNS 3700” »

Kansas City Chiefs or San Francisco 49ers? Let the swarm decide.

Remember the first time you tried Apple’s Siri and went absolutely gaga over the human-like qualities of the application? Well, then came Amazon’s Alexa, a virtual assistant AI that was first available in the Amazon Dot and Amazon Echo Dot speakers but none of these were conversational as such. Although they can answer general questions about the weather and news, it will never feel really conversational.

Google, however, has in store something more conversational than the existing Siri, Alexa and Cortana in the form of its new chat companion, Meena. The company claims that it is going to be the best chatbot in the market that can talk with the user about anything on earth.

Continue reading “Meet Meena, Google’s new chatbot that interacts like humans” »

Using digital ai generated medicines plus human on a chip systems you could get new medicines out not in years but hours.

The next generation of MOC design at TissUse aims for a Human-on-a-Chip, increasing the number of interconnected organs toward acceptable organismal complexity. This number of organs is supposed to be efficient to provide human organismal homeostasis, sufficiently flexible for diverse disease modelling and to bear the potential of ultimately replacing animal models for systemic substance testing.

A swarm of autonomous robots has been deployed by researchers from DARPA to test how the technology could be used as part of an urban raid. The experiment was part of a project to find ways to map environments and gather real-time intelligence using aerial and land based robots.

In the not-so-distant future, hundreds of unmanned drones and on-the-ground rovers could swoop into an area of interest and spew crucial data to human military operators faced with limited sight lines or tasked with navigating unpredictable spaces, researchers the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said this week.

A drug molecule invented entirely by artificial intelligence is set to enter human clinical trials for the first time, marking a critical milestone for the role of machine learning in medicine.

The new compound, which has been designed to treat patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, was developed by Oxford-based AI start-up Exscientia in collaboration with the Japanese pharmaceutical firm Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma.

In a sharp acceleration of the typical path to drug development, which can take about four and a half years, the AI-designed compound reached the point of entering clinical trials within just 12 months.

YouTube’s “next video” is a profit-maximizing recommendation system, an A.I. selecting increasingly ‘engaging’ videos. And that’s the problem.

“Computer scientists and users began noticing that YouTube’s algorithm seemed to achieve its goal by recommending increasingly extreme and conspiratorial content. One researcher reported that after she viewed footage of Donald Trump campaign rallies, YouTube next offered her videos featuring “white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content.” The algorithm’s upping-the-ante approach went beyond politics, she said: “Videos about vegetarianism led to videos about veganism. Videos about jogging led to videos about running ultramarathons.” As a result, research suggests, YouTube’s algorithm has been helping to polarize and radicalize people and spread misinformation, just to keep us watching.”

By teaching machines to understand our true desires, one scientist hopes to avoid the potentially disastrous consequences of having them do what we command.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Will Do What We Ask. That’s a Problem” »

A British start-up has developed a new drug much more quickly than traditional methods by using AI.

So what’s Tesla to do? The answers may come in the Battery Day, a forthcoming explainer that could take place in April. The day is expected to be similar in setup to the Autonomy Day in April 2019, where Musk explained to investors the company’s progress on full self-driving capabilities.

What will they show? One of the standout features may be the company’s Maxwell Technologies acquisition. The $218 million deal, announced February 2019, brings in a firm working on exotic technologies like dry electrodes and ultracapacitors. The firm has also identified a pathway to raising battery density to 500 watt-hours per kilogram. Current batteries tend to weigh around 300 watt-hours, but a jump to 500 could enable advanced uses like an electric plane.

Musk confirmed during Wednesday’s call that Tesla is working with Maxwell, while also stating that its ultracapacitor technology is an “important piece of the puzzle.” This exotic technology could transform how energy is managed within the car, and Musk was actually planning to do his PhD at Stanford University on them before he dropped out.