Lifeboat Foundation

We’re at a fascinating point in the discourse around artificial intelligence (AI) and all things “smart”. At one level, we may be reaching “peak hype”, with breathless claims and counter claims about potential society impacts of disruptive technologies. Everywhere we look, there’s earnest discussion of AI and its exponentially advancing sisters – blockchain, sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, cloud computing, 3D / 4D printing, and hyperconnectivity. At another level, for many, it is worrying to hear politicians and business leaders talking with confidence about the transformative potential and societal benefits of these technologies in application ranging from smart homes and cities to intelligent energy and transport infrastructures.

Why the concern? Well, these same leaders seem helpless to deal with any kind of adverse weather incident, ground 70,000 passengers worldwide with no communication because someone flicked the wrong switch, and rush between Brexit crisis meetings while pretending they have a coherent strategy. Hence, there’s growing concern that we’ll see genuine stupidity in the choices made about how we deploy ever more powerful smart technologies across our infrastructure for society’s benefit. So, what intelligent choices could ensure that intelligent tools genuinely serve humanity’s best future interests.

Firstly, we are becoming a society of connected things with appalling connectivity. Literally every street lamp, road sign, car component, object we own, and item of clothing we wear could be carrying a sensor in the next five to ten years. With a trillion plus connected objects throwing off a continuous stream of information – we are talking about a shift from big to humungous data. The challenge is how we’ll transport that information? For Britain to realise its smart nation goals and attract the industries of tomorrow in the post-Brexit world, it seems imperative that we have broadband speeds that puts us amongst the five fastest nations on the planet. This doesn’t appear to be part of the current plan.

Continue reading “Beyond Genuine Stupidity – Making Smart Choices About Intelligent Infrastructure” »

Its stock has soared past $500 per share. That’s a hopeful sign that the company might finally be executing smoothly.

Researchers reverse stroke damage in animal model using stem cell exosomes.

Expanding upon previous work that developed a treatment using a type of extracellular vesicles known as exosomes—small fluid-filled structures that are created by stem cells—investigators at the University of Georgia (UGA) present brain-imaging data for a new stroke treatment that supported full recovery in swine, modeled with the same pattern of neurodegeneration as seen in humans with severe stroke. Findings from this new study were published recently in Translational Stroke Research through an article titled “Neural Stem Cell Extracellular Vesicles Disrupt Midline Shift Predictive Outcomes in Porcine Ischemic Stroke Model.”

Amazingly, it’s been almost a quarter-century since the first drug was approved for stroke. Yet, what’s even more striking is that only a single drug remains approved today, so having a greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie stroke cases should lead to new therapies that could provide dramatic improvements in patient outcomes.

Continue reading “Exosome Therapy for Stroke Produces Full Recovery in Animal Model” »

London, 15th January 2020 – Biotech LIfT BioSciences today announced a further major investment into the company in its mission to develop the first curative and affordable cell therapy for all solid tumours. The investors included Jonathan Milner, a leading biotech ‘super-angel’ investor and earlier stage investor in LIfT, Kizoo Technology Ventures, a leading early-stage investor in breakthrough technologies and Downing Ventures, a leading London-based investor.

Hype surrounding AI has peaked and troughed over the years as the abilities of the technology get overestimated and then re-evaluated.

The peaks are known as AI summers, and the troughs AI winters.

The 10s were arguably the hottest AI summer on record with tech giants repeatedly touting AI’s abilities.

Continue reading “Are we on the cusp of an ‘AI winter’?” »

Experts hope the technology could help patients with conditions such as diabetes.

That the drug can treat patients in hours or days, instead of weeks or months, has sent scientists chasing its mechanism of action.

by

Michael Torrice

Biological organisms have certain useful attributes that synthetic robots do not, such as the abilities to heal, adapt to new situations, and reproduce. Yet molding biological tissues into robots or tools has been exceptionally difficult to do: Experimental techniques, such as altering a genome to make a microbe perform a specific task, are hard to control and not scalable.

Now, a team of scientists at the University of Vermont and Tufts University in Massachusetts has used a supercomputer to design novel lifeforms with specific functions, then built those organisms out of frog cells.

Continue reading “AI-Designed ‘Living Robots’ Crawl, Heal Themselves” »

As the U.S. Army increasingly uses facial and object recognition to train artificial intelligent systems to identify threats, the need to protect its systems from cyberattacks becomes essential.

An Army project conducted by researchers at Duke University and led by electrical and computer engineering faculty members Dr. Helen Li and Dr. Yiran Chen, made significant progress toward mitigating these types of attacks. Two members of the Duke team, Yukun Yang and Ximing Qiao, recently took first prize in the Defense category of the CSAW ‘19 HackML competition.

“Object recognition is a key component of future intelligent systems, and the Army must safeguard these systems from cyberattacks,” said MaryAnne Fields, program manager for intelligent systems at the Army Research Office. “This work will lay the foundations for recognizing and mitigating backdoor attacks in which the data used to train the object recognition system is subtly altered to give incorrect answers. Safeguarding object recognition systems will ensure that future Soldiers will have confidence in the intelligent systems they use.”