Lifeboat Foundation

Back in the late 1990s, a traveler from Lebanon to London would have noticed something interesting about telecommunications in the two countries, while many people in Lebanon owned a mobile phone, London was still accustomed to using red telephone boxes to make calls on the run. What caused such a difference? During the Lebanese Civil War, all landline infrastructures were destroyed, and the Lebanese leapfrogged to owning mobile phones. Fast-forward 20 years to today and one can see a similar pattern in many developing countries, where landlines and personal computers are bypassed for mobile internet. 5G is going to make that shift even more dramatic and in many other similar areas, technology is enabling us to bypass existing infrastructure and to rethink the way things are made.

Manufacturing cars is highly efficient and in most 21st century facilities you hardly see any people. Everything is done by robots on a moving assembly line. But it makes you wonder if such a factory setup would make sense for new product categories, which in the beginning are a novelty at best? For example, flying cars or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ( UAV). The questions we should be asking: How are we going to do it cost-effectively and with similar automation as automotive factories? And can Additive Manufacturing help these novel product categories excel, cut costs and completely skip the assembly line altogether? Just like when Henry Ford created the first moving assembly line back in 1913, it was then a necessity for industrial production to take place. If we wish to cut costs, simplify assembly, reduce factory footprints and part counts, Additive Manufacturing starts becoming a necessity and as a result, we can start questioning the 100-year-old assembly line.

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Forget large arrays of sensors and radars. Forget hard-coded road rules. British startup Wayve taught a car to teach itself to drive, and using only some cameras, a sat-nav and 20 hours’ worth of experience, it’s already driving itself short distances on unfamiliar UK roads.

Continue reading “After just 20 hours of training, Wayve’s fast-learning AI car is already driving itself on unfamiliar roads” »

Instead of throwing away your broken boots or cracked toys, why not let them fix themselves? Researchers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering have developed 3D-printed rubber materials that can do just that.

Assistant Professor Qiming Wang works in the world of 3D printed materials, creating new functions for a variety of purposes, from flexible electronics to sound control. Now, working with Viterbi students Kunhao Yu, An Xin, and Haixu Du, and University of Connecticut Assistant Professor Ying Li, they have made a new material that can be manufactured quickly and is able to repair itself if it becomes fractured or punctured. This material could be game-changing for industries like shoes, tires, soft robotics, and even electronics, decreasing manufacturing time while increasing product durability and longevity.

Continue reading “3D printed tires and shoes that self-repair” »

Today’s AI is technically “weak”—but it’s complex and can have a great societal impact.

Facebook’s new report attempts to convey how effective its AI is at flagging bad content and fake accounts.

New book calls Google, Facebook, Amazon, and six more tech giants “the new gods of A.I.” who are “short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain”.

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head.

We like to think that we are in control of the future of “artificial” intelligence. The reality, though, is that we—the everyday people whose data powers AI—aren’t actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can’t see and have no input into—one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple—are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain.

Continue reading “The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity” »

The European Commission recommends using an assessment list when developing or deploying AI, but the guidelines aren’t meant to be — or interfere with — policy or regulation. Instead, they offer a loose framework. This summer, the Commission will work with stakeholders to identify areas where additional guidance might be necessary and figure out how to best implement and verify its recommendations. In early 2020, the expert group will incorporate feedback from the pilot phase. As we develop the potential to build things like autonomous weapons and fake news-generating algorithms, it’s likely more governments will take a stand on the ethical concerns AI brings to the table.

The EU wants AI that’s fair and accountable, respects human autonomy and prevents harm.

Human agency and oversight — AI should not trample on human autonomy. People should not be manipulated or coerced by AI systems, and humans should be able to intervene or oversee every decision that the software makes. — Technical robustness and safety — AI should be secure and accurate. It shouldn’t be easily compromised by external attacks (such as adversarial examples), and it should be reasonably reliable. — Privacy and data governance — Personal data collected by AI systems should be secure and private. It shouldn’t be accessible to just anyone, and it shouldn’t be easily stolen. — Transparency — Data and algorithms used to create an AI system should be accessible, and the decisions made by the software should be “understood and traced by human beings.” In other words, operators should be able to explain the decisions their AI systems make. — Diversity, non-discrimination, and fairness — Services provided by AI should be available to all, regardless of age, gender, race, or other characteristics. Similarly, systems should not be biased along these lines. — Environmental and societal well-being — AI systems should be sustainable (i.e., they should be ecologically responsible) and “enhance positive social change” — Accountability — AI systems should be auditable and covered by existing protections for corporate whistleblowers. Negative impacts of systems should be acknowledged and reported in advance.

AI technologies should be accountable, explainable, and unbiased, says EU.

Tune in beginning at 6:30 a.m. EDT on Monday, as Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency set up a redundant power supply for the station’s robotic arm. Watch live coverage here: