Lifeboat Foundation

Kogan developed Kosinksi’s ideas, improved them, and cut a deal with Cambridge Analytica. Armed with this bounty – and combined with additional data gleaned from elsewhere – Cambridge Analytica built personality profiles for more than 100m registered US voters. It’s claimed the company then used these profiles for targeted advertising.

Imagine for example that you could identify a segment of voters that is high in conscientiousness and neuroticism, and another segment that is high in extroversion but low in openness. Clearly, people in each segment would respond differently to the same political ad. But on Facebook they do not need to see the same ad at all – each will see an individually tailored ad designed to elicit the desired response, whether that is voting for a candidate, not voting for a candidate, or donating funds.

Cambridge Analytica worked hard to develop dozens of ad variations on different political themes such as immigration, the economy and gun rights, all tailored to different personality profiles. There is no evidence at all that Clinton’s election machine had the same ability.

Researchers from the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering are part of a group that has received a multi-million dollar grant from IUs’ Emerging Areas of Research program.

Amr Sabry, a professor of informatics and computing and the chair of the Department of Computer Science, and Alexander Gumennik, assistant professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering, are part of the “Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering” initiative led by Gerardo Ortiz, a professor of physics in IU’s College of Arts and Sciences. The initiative will focus on harnessing the power of quantum entanglement, which is a theoretical phenomenon in which the quantum state of two or more particles have to be described in reference to one another even if the objects are spatially separated.

“Bringing together a unique group of physicists, computer scientists, and engineers to solve common problems in quantum sensing and computation positions IU at the vanguard of this struggle,” Gumennik said. “I believe that this unique implementation approach, enabling integration of individual quantum devices into a monolithic quantum computing circuit, is capable of taking the quantum information science and engineering to a qualitatively new level.”

Continue reading “SICE researchers part of grant to grow quantum information science” »

Millenials grew up under the technological halo of Moore’s law, enjoying booming exponential growth of computation power that ushered in the information age. It should come as no surprise that transhumanism has earned a degree of mainstream acceptance—from Hollywood movies to magazine covers and the latest sci-fi TV. Transhumanist beliefs will continue to permeate culture as long as the promise of technological progress holds its end of the bargain.

For transhumanist faiths, technology becomes a way of cashing checks religion helped write.

For instance, Silicon Valley engineer Anthony Levandowski—whom you may know from the Uber-Waymo lawsuit over self-driving car technology—recently launched the Way of the Future Church, a new religious organization based on developing godlike artificial intelligence. On its website, the Way of the Future states, “We believe the creation of ‘super intelligence’ is inevitable,” and according to IRS documents detailed by Wired, this new religion seeks “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.” This exuberance departs from the cautious stance toward A.I. taken by Hawking, Musk, and others who warn that artificial superintelligence could pose an existential threat. However, regardless of whether artificial superintelligence is seen as an angel or a demon, Hawking, Musk, and A.I. evangelists alike share the common belief that this technology should be taken seriously.

Continue reading “Transhumanism Is Complicating the Sometimes Antagonistic Faith vs. Science Dynamic” »

Nectome has successfully preserved a rabbit’s brain keeping its neural connections intact. Can it do the same with humans? Not without killing them.

http://www.creativefuturism.com/bioengineering-superhumans-fact-not-fiction/

However, the pattern seems clear, and is worth heeding by other nations: despite China’s reputation for authoritarian and hierarchical rule, in science the approach seems to be to ensure that top researchers are well supported with funding and resources, and then to leave them to get on with it.

Chinese investment is paying off with serious advances in biotech, computing and space. Are they edging ahead of the west?

By Philip Ball

Continue reading “China’s great leap forward in science” »