Lifeboat Foundation

Advances in artificial intelligence have led many to speculate that human beings will soon be replaced by machines in every domain, including that of creativity. Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, predicts that by 2029 we will have produced an AI that can pass for an average educated human being. Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, is more circumspect. He does not give a date but suggests that philosophers and mathematicians defer work on fundamental questions to “superintelligent” successors, which he defines as having “intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.”

Creativity is, and always will be, a human endeavor.

Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua has unveiled “the world’s first female AI news anchor.” The computer-generated journo will team up with Xinhua’s existing male AI anchors at an upcoming series of political meetings in China.

The virtual reporter, named Xin Xiaomeng, was developed by Xinhua, in conjunction with a search engine company called Sogou. Developers modeled her speech and mannerisms on Xinhua news anchor Qui Meng, and showed her off in a video released on Tuesday.

Xiaomeng is lifelike, blinking and adjusting her hands as she speaks into the camera. Save for some rigid mouth movement, she could pass for the real thing.

Tesla will have the technology to pick up passengers and drive them to destinations by the end of the year, said CEO Elon Musk said on a podcast with an investor.

• Spherical nucleic acids are a class of personalized medicines for treating cancer and other diseases
• SNAs are challenging to optimize because their structures can vary in many ways
• Northwestern University team developed a library approach and machine learning to rapidly synthesize, analyze and select for potent SNA medicines

EVANSTON, Ill.— With their ability to treat a wide a variety of diseases, spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) are poised to revolutionize medicine. But before these digitally designed nanostructures can reach their full potential, researchers need to optimize their various components.

A Northwestern University team led by nanotechnology pioneer Chad A. Mirkin has developed a direct route to optimize these challenging particles, bringing them one step closer to becoming a viable treatment option for many forms of cancer, genetic diseases, neurological disorders and more.

Circa 2018

The CEO is worried about unchecked machines.

There’s a four-bedroom Edinburgh unit with “original wood floors,” listed by Christine. And there’s a two-bathroom apartment in Gainesville with a double sofa bed and open kitchen plan, listed by Michel. A “beautiful apartment” in Berlin has a “floral feeling.” A three-bedroom in Rome includes “utilities and toiletries.”

There’s just one problem with these Airbnb listings: they don’t exist.

A group of computer scientists once backed by Elon Musk has caused some alarm by developing an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) they say is too dangerous to release to the public.

OpenAI, a research non-profit based in San Francisco, says its “chameleon-like” language prediction system, called GPT–2, will only ever see a limited release in a scaled-down version, due to “concerns about malicious applications of the technology”.

That’s because the computer model, which generates original paragraphs of text based on what it is given to ‘read’, is a little too good at its job.

Continue reading “Scientists Developed an AI So Advanced They Say It’s Too Dangerous to Release” »

Advanced technologies come together to get autonomous vehicles driving safely and efficiently.

It should be possible to automatically identify dubious news sources—but we’ll need a lot more data.