Lifeboat Foundation

Gone are the days when a store’s security cameras only mattered to shoplifters.

Now, with the rising prevalence of surveillance systems constantly monitored by artificial intelligence, ubiquitous security systems can watch, learn about, and discriminate against shoppers more than ever before.

That’s the gist of a new ACLU report titled “The Dawn of Robot Surveillance,” about how emerging AI technology enables security companies to constantly monitor and collect data about people — opening new possibilities in which power is abused or underserved communities are overpoliced.

Researchers combine deep learning and symbolic reasoning for a more flexible way of teaching computers to program.

Luminous Computing has developed an optical microchip that runs AI models much faster than other semiconductors while using less power.

Nichol Bradford, MBA, is the CEO & Founder of the Willow Group and the Executive Director and co-founder of the Transformative Technology Lab, Conference, and TT200 List. Prior to becoming a leader in Transformative Technology, Bradford was a senior executive in video games with responsibility for strategy, operations and marketing for major brands that include: Activision Blizzard, Disney, and Vivendi Games — including operating World of Warcraft China. Nichol is a graduate of Singularity University GSP15, has an MBA from Wharton School of Business in Strategy. She is author of a novel, The Sisterhood.

Here she describes developments in the emerging industry of transformative technology. She points out that, in the next 25 years, enormous numbers of jobs will be displaced by automation. This challenge, and others, make it essential that people large numbers of people actualize more of their innate potential. Technology can assist in this process — particularly when it is scalable and can be afforded by the millions. She emphasizes a variety of technological advances while emphasizing the importance of ethics, privacy, and data sovereignty.

Continue reading “Technology and Human Potential with Nichol Bradford” »

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Robots are finally smart enough to understand humans and talk back. By leveraging artificial intelligence, IBM’s Project Debater is a supercomputer that can take on human opponents in a debate — and win! Although humans have better delivery, Project Debater was able to make better arguments with more facts.

Haha this is great!

Turns out that last one was a CGI joke but this one isn’t. Facebook wouldn’t let me delete the post.

Recently, I picked up Kai-Fu Lee’s newest book, AI Superpowers.

Kai-Fu Lee is one of the most plugged-in AI investors on the planet, heading management of over $2 billion AUM between six funds, and over 300 portfolio companies in the U.S. and China.

Continue reading “AI Superpowers” »

Cops would love to have a system that uses DNA from a crime scene to generate a picture of a suspect’s face, but that tech is still restricted to science fiction.

That technology may never exist, but a team of Belgian and American engineers just developed something similar. Using what they know about how DNA shapes the human face, the researchers built an algorithm that scans through a database of images and selects the faces that could be linked to the DNA found at a crime scene, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications — a powerful crime-fighting tool, but also a terrifying new way to subvert privacy.

Automatic system could speed up drug discovery by conducting time-consuming single-cell electrophysiology measurements without human supervision.