Lifeboat Foundation

TOKYO (Reuters) — What would society look like if cyborg body parts were freely available for use like roadside rental bicycles? Masahiko Inami’s team at the University of Tokyo have sought to find out by creating wearable robotic arms.

Inami’s team is developing a series of technologies rooted in the idea of “jizai”, an Japanese term that he says roughly denotes autonomy and the freedom to do as one pleases.

The aim is to foster something like the relationship between musician and instrument, “lying somewhere between a human and a tool, like how a musical instrument can become as if a part of your body.”

With generative AI taking over the artificial intelligence world, it was only a matter of time before it came to the smart home. Josh.ai, a home automation system for the connected home, has officially launched JoshGPT.

Josh is here to replace your smart home automation system as your all-in-one solution — it says it’s got the brains that your current voice assistant can’t offer you.

Continue reading “The first GPT-powered smart home platform is here” »

Malaria, a mosquito-borne infectious disease mostly found in tropical climates, is now on American shores. Late Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a spat of cases — one in Texas and four in Florida — discovered in May and June that were locally acquired versus acquired while traveling abroad. This is the first time this has happened since 2003.

The CDC said that all five patients received treatment and are recovering, but the agency remains on alert for any new cases. While malaria was once a public health threat in the US, its presence was eradicated in the early 1950s. The last major outbreak was in 2003 with eight patients in Palm Beach County, Florida, all of whom had significant outdoor exposure.

For now, the CDC says the risk of catching malaria in the US “remains extremely low.” However, the instance shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially as many of us will be spending more time outdoors and traveling during the summer. Here’s what you need to know.

In an organism, different kinds of cells carry out specific, specialized functions. Scientists can grow and study various types of cells in the lab. For a long time, a source of many of those cell lines were cancer samples that could be easily cultured over many generations. But those cells were not always representative of a particular cell type. Now, following huge breakthroughs, scientists learned how to create stem cells from adult skin cells. This has allowed scientists to utilize adult cells like those from the skin to create induced pluripotent cells (iPSCs), which can then be made into virtually any cell type.

The creation of so-called iPSCs was made possible through changing gene expression in cells, often with certain molecules or specialized proteins. Cells can also now be directly reprogrammed in some ways, without needing to bring them to a pluripotent state. The number of cell types that can be generated in this way is also expanding, bringing new insights into how specialized cells function.

Previous competitions have involved satellites that weren’t in orbit, but this is the real deal.

It sucks that the primary reason this has not gone forward is because it is off patent.

This video is reproduced from a presentation I gave to the Euro-Geroscience Task Force “Challenges in Developing Geroscience Drug Trials” held March 23, 2022 in Toulouse, France. It gives an introduction to the state of research on rapamycin as a potential longevity and healthspan drug and some of the challenges and opportunities for clinical development.

The idea that our mind could live on in another form after our physical body dies has been a recurring theme in science fiction since the 1950s. Recent television series such as Black Mirror and Upload, as well as some games, demonstrate our continued fascination with this idea. The concept is known as mind uploading.

Recent developments in science and technology are taking us closer to a time when mind uploading could graduate from science fiction to reality.

In 2016, BBC Horizon screened a programme called The Immortalist, in which a
Russian millionaire unveiled his plans to work with neuroscientists, robot builders and other experts to create technology that would allow us to upload our minds to a computer in order to live forever.

Continue reading “How uploading our minds to a computer might become possible” »

A new Microsoft internal presentation reveals the company’s long-term goal for Windows.

Microsoft has been increasingly moving Windows to the cloud on the commercial side with Windows 365, but the software giant also wants to do the same for consumers. In an internal “state of the business” Microsoft presentation from June 2022, Microsoft discuses building on “Windows 365 to enable a full Windows operating system streamed from the cloud to any device.”

The presentation has been revealed as part of the ongoing FTC v. Microsoft hearing, as it includes Microsoft’s overall gaming strategy and how that relates to other parts of the company’s businesses. Moving “Windows 11 increasingly to the cloud”… More.

Continue reading “Microsoft wants to move Windows fully to the cloud” »

The finance automation platform Ramp has acquired Cohere.io, an AI-powered customer support platform. The acquisition marks Ramp’s first foray into the world of generative AI, which is a sign of the growing importance of this technology in the finance industry. This is also a significant milestone for Ramp, as it is the company’s second acquisition since its inception in 2019 and the first since it purchased Buyer, a “negotiation-as-a-service” platform, in August of 2021.

Ramp is a technology business that specializes in corporate credit cards and cost management in the financial technology (fintech) sector. The company was founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Gene Lee, and Karim Atiyeh and is… More.

In addition to improving the quality of customer support, generative AI is also likely to lead to new innovations in customer support. For example, generative AI could be used to create chatbots that are capable of having natural conversations with customers. This could help businesses provide customer support 24/7 while reducing the cost of support.

Continue reading “Ramp’s Acquisition Of Cohere.io Signals The Rise Of Generative AI In Customer Support” »