Lifeboat Foundation

Push Beyond Your Limits. Go Stronger, Longer, and Safer.

Experience the first of its kind robotic powered exoskeleton to superpower your knees during alpine skiing and snowboarding. The sensors and the software on the exoskeleton senses user intent and automatically adjusts torque at the knee via air actuators effectively mimicking the quadricep muscles. The device is fully programmable and automated but with manual overrides thus always keeping user in control.

Extend your ski day, access longer challenging terrain, make stronger turns, or simply enjoy the sport without the pain. All the while keeping your knees safer.

NVIDIA Corporation NVDA continues to gain traction in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology with the help of several partnerships. Most recently, the graphic chip maker partnered with Adobe Systems Incorporated ADBE as part of which its graphics processing units (GPUs) will power up the latter’s AI toolkit, Sensei.

The partnership is anticipated to improve Adobe’s services for Creative and Experience Cloud customers and developers. That means, it will improve the performance as well as speed of Adobe’s Sensei.

The companies believe the collaboration will help them in targeting a new audience of developers, data scientists and partners for Sensei, thereby providing scope of business opportunities to both.

Continue reading “NVIDIA (NVDA) Collaborates With Adobe for Sensei AI Toolkit” »

To ensure the safety of larger aircraft carrying pilots and passengers, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, can’t be flown higher than 400 feet so they don’t enter national airspace. Regulations in Russia, however, aren’t as strict, enabling drone pilot Denis Koryakin to fly his homebuilt, 2.3-pound craft to a staggering height of almost 33,000 feet.

For comparison, a 747 has a maximum ceiling of just over 45,000 feet, but most airliners will cruise at around the same altitude this tiny drone managed to reach. As amazing as the view is from 33,000 feet, it’s certainly a dangerous stunt and will get you in heaps of trouble in the US if you get caught. But Koryakin’s flight took place near the city of Strejevoï, in Siberia, which is notoriously frigid and sparsely populated. Russia also doesn’t appear to have any regulations on how high a drone can be flown, but hopefully stunts like this don’t become too commonplace.

[YouTube via DPReview].

Continue reading “Flying a Tiny Drone to a Staggering 33,000 Feet Gives You the Ultimate Bird’s-Eye View” »

In the past, companies have often used technology to keep track of employee actions and increase productivity. But recently, they’ve begun using AI for hiring, firing and compensation.

Xander, which is developed by tech firm Ultimate Software, is being used at steel processor SPS Companies in Manhattan, Kansas, the Journal noted.

Continue reading “New AI software may be used to help companies hire or fire employees” »

The march of AI into the workplace calls for trade-offs between privacy and performance. A fairer, more productive workforce is a prize worth having, but not if it shackles and dehumanises employees. Striking a balance will require thought, a willingness for both employers and employees to adapt, and a strong dose of humanity.

ARTIFICIAL intelligence (AI) is barging its way into business. As our special report this week explains, firms of all types are harnessing AI to forecast demand, hire workers and deal with customers. In 2017 companies spent around $22bn on AI-related mergers and acquisitions, about 26 times more than in 2015. The McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank within a consultancy, reckons that just applying AI to marketing, sales and supply chains could create economic value, including profits and efficiencies, of $2.7trn over the next 20 years. Google’s boss has gone so far as to declare that AI will do more for humanity than fire or electricity.

Such grandiose forecasts kindle anxiety as well as hope. Many fret that AI could destroy jobs faster than it creates them. Barriers to entry from owning and generating data could lead to a handful of dominant firms in every industry.

Continue reading “The workplace of the future” »

Autonomous weapon bans (previously) are currently being debated, but in the meantime, the US Department of Defense continues work with its Perdix Micro-Drone project. Ostensibly for surveillance, it’s clear these could easily be modded with lethal weaponry.

F/A-18 Super Hornets deploy the drones, which can then perform a series of tactical maneuvers based on post-launch commands.

Humanity’s brutal and bellicose past provides ample justification for pursuing settlements on the moon and Mars, Elon Musk says.

The billionaire entrepreneur has long stressed that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species — a giant leap that would render us much less vulnerable to extinction.

Human civilization faces many grave threats over the long haul, from asteroid strikes and climate change to artificial intelligence run amok, Musk has said over the years. And he recently highlighted our well-documented inability to get along with each other as another frightening factor. [The BFR: SpaceX’s Mars Colony Plan in Images].

Https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/

In the natural world, intelligence takes many forms. It could be a bat using echolocation to expertly navigate in the dark, or an octopus quickly adapting its behavior to survive in the deep ocean. Likewise, in the computer science world, multiple forms of artificial intelligence are emerging — different networks each trained to excel in a different task. And as will be presented today at the 25th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), cognitive neuroscientists increasingly are using those emerging artificial networks to enhance their understanding of one of the most elusive intelligence systems, the human brain.

“The fundamental questions cognitive neuroscientists and computer scientists seek to answer are similar,” says Aude Oliva of MIT. “They have a complex system made of components — for one, it’s called neurons and for the other, it’s called units — and we are doing experiments to try to determine what those components calculate.”

Continue reading “Artificial Brains Shed Light on the Workings of Our Own” »

Some of my thoughts on AI politicians out in The Next Web: https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/03/27/th…ent-potus/ #transhumanism

The duties of the President of the United States of America could, arguably, be performed by a computer. Here’s how and why we should make that happen.