Lifeboat Foundation

The famous psychologist Timothy Leary once referred to himself as a “surfer,” envisioning a future where, “[t]o study biology, you can press a button and make yourself part of the human body. You can become a white blood cell and learn about the circulatory system by traveling through an artery. You can call up the Prado Museum in Madrid and study Goya’s paintings.”

When I think about the future, I envision mass technological disruptions across the entire landscape. Artificial intelligence (AI) being embedded into the very fabric of our architecture and institutions, 3D printing transforming our socio-economic system from scarcity to abundance, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) unleashing infinite potential in shaping our perceptions of reality.

Continue reading “How Virtual Reality Will Help Shape Our Psychedelic Future” »

Walmart groceries use Bossa Nova robots, which roam the aisles and scan shelves, to figure out what’s in stock and what’s selling well.

This is the Freethink Dispatch, our rundown of the stories that mattered from the frontiers of a changing world. This week, engineers created brain-surgery robots that can work inside an MRI, scientists found a way to use coffee to treat diabetes, and a startup is making fresh produce that lasts twice as long. All that and more, plus a new episode of Freethink’s original hit series Superhuman about how doctors are reprogramming the immune system to kill untreatable cancers.

There’s no place to hide.

A new group formed by MIT’s Media Lab and IEEE thinks artificial intelligence should complement human endeavors, not just serve the corporate bottom line.

X-ray vision has long seemed like a far-fetched sci-fi fantasy, but over the last decade a team led by Professor Dina Katabi from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has continually gotten us closer to seeing through walls.

Their latest project, “RF-Pose,” uses artificial intelligence (AI) to teach wireless devices to sense people’s postures and movement, even from the other side of a wall.

Join us at D60, DARPA’s 60th anniversary symposium, to learn from Ron Brachman about how #AI rose to prominence.

Artificial Intelligence has experienced waves of excitement before, but we have never seen the kind of worldwide enthusiasm that we see now, especially in the commercial sector, where AI has become the central mission of some of the world’s most powerful tech companies. DARPA is known for being the first supporter of AI research and panelists will highlight the impetus DARPA provided to the field’s most central technological areas, and give insights about where the field is going next.

The best AI in the world is some where in the IQ range of the high 50’s to low 60’s, and is doing this kind of stuff. Should be pretty interesting to see what the average human level AI of 2029 can do.

IBM’s Project Debater has shown off its talents in public for the first time.

https://bloom.bg/2Ggfedp

Engineer and adventurer Richard Jenkins has made oceangoing robots that could revolutionize fishing, drilling, and environmental science. His aim: a thousand of them.