Lifeboat Foundation

Generative AI provoked a lot of discussion last year around images, text and video, but it may soon affect the gaming industry as well. Square Enix said it plans to be “aggressively applying” AI and other cutting-edge tech in 2024 to “create new forms of content,” according to president Takashi Kiryu’s New Year’s letter.

“Artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential implications had for some time largely been subjects of academic debate,” he said. “However, the introduction of ChatGPT, which allows anyone to easily produce writing or translations or to engage in text-based dialogue, sparked the rapid spread of generative AIs. I believe that generative AI has the potential not only to reshape what we create, but also to fundamentally change the processes by which we create, including programming.”

The company will start by using it to improve productivity in development and assist in marketing. “In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities,” Kiryu added. Square Enix also plans to build more immersive AR and VR experiences, including “new forms of content that fuse the real world and virtual worlds.”

The commercial space industry recently received a boost after NASA awarded 10 small businesses up to $150,000 each as part of NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Ignite program, granting each company six months to demonstrate the viability and additional standards of their mission proposals. This funding comes as part of the second round of Phase I awards and holds the potential to continue the development of the commercial space industry for the short-and long-term.

“The investments we’re able to offer through SBIR Ignite give us the ability to de-risk technologies that have a strong commercial pull, helping make them more attractive to outside investors, customers, and partners,” said Jason L. Kessler, who is the Program Executive for the NASA SBIR & Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program. “We also hope it advances the sometimes-overlooked goal of all SBIR programs to increase private-sector commercialization of the innovations derived from federal research and development funding.”

The 10 companies selected for this latest round of funding include (in alphabetical order): Astral Forge LLC, Astrobotic Technology Inc., Benchmark Space Systems, Brayton Energy LLC, Channel-Logistics LLC dba Space-Eyes, GeoVisual Analytics, Lunar Resources Inc., Space Lab Technologies LLC, Space Tango, and VerdeGo Aero.

CES has always been the place for weird, out-there gadgets to make their debuts, and this year’s show is no exception.

Skyted, a Toulouse, France-based startup founded by former Airbus VP Stéphane Hersen and acoustical engineer Frank Simon, is bringing what look like a pair of human muzzles to CES 2024. Called the “Mobility Privacy Mask” and “Hybrid Silent Mask,” the face-worn accoutrements are designed to “absorb voice frequencies” in noisy environments like plains, trains and rideshares, Hersen says.

Continue reading “This startup is bringing a ‘voice frequency absorber’ to CES 2024” »

A new paper published in Frontiers in Psychology: Performance Science led by Andy Parra-Martinez at the University of Arkansas “describes the general status, trends, and evolution of research on talent identification across multiple fields globally over the last 80 years,” by drawing from the Scopus and Web of Science databases and conducting a bibliometric analysis of 2,502 documents.

Bibliometric analysis is a way of understanding the structure and citation patterns of research around a given topic, in this case, talent identification research.

Talent identification research is concentrated in business, sports, and education

Continue reading “Identifying Talent In Business, Sports, And Education” »

Here’s my new Opinion article for Newsweek on AI!

Like so many in America, I watch astounded as generative artificial intelligence (AI) evolved at lighting speed in 2023, performing tasks that seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. Just last month, a survey found that nearly 40 percent of more than 900 companies were planning to cut jobs in 2024 in part because of AI. If robotics takes a giant leap in the next 12 months, as some suspect, then the survey might end up being too conservative. Generative AI combined with humanoids, which many companies are racing to turn out, is a game changer. Construction jobs, physician jobs, police jobs, and many more will soon be at stake.

Clearly, capitalism is facing a crisis. For years, I have advocated for a Universal Basic Income (UBI), as a way to transition society into the AI age. My method was by leasing out the trillions of dollars worth of empty U.S. federal land to big business, and using some of the proceeds to pay for a basic income for every American. However, any method of a basic income will now help offset the loss of jobs AI will bring.

Continue reading “Why Nationalizing AI Is a Bad Idea” »

AUSTIN (Austin Business Journal) — Tesla Inc.’s growing footprint in the Austin area now includes a sizable facility in Hutto. But what it’s for remains unclear.

The Austin Business Journal visited the 36,000-square-foot site at 200 County Road 199 in the fast-growing industrial hub northeast of Austin in late December. The parking lot was full and a nondescript warehouse-style building was bustling with employees in construction vests and helmets, but there were no signs listing any companies and no clear indications of who was occupying it. The only traces it could be Tesla were a handful of the company’s electric vehicle charging stations out front.

But Elon Musk’s EV manufacturing and clean energy company is linked to the site in state filings, and it has been confirmed by Hutto officials. Tesla’s expansion to Hutto underscores the company’s wide-reaching plans for the region — as far south as San Antonio and, now, as far north as Hutto — as it continues buildout of its multibillion-dollar operation in eastern Travis County. The Hutto site is about 30 miles directly north of its gigafactory, which serves as the company’s headquarters, along State Highway 130.

Rocket Lab’s ($RKLB) space systems business got a major boost just before the year drew to a close.

As the cofounder of Google DeepMind, Shane Legg is driving one of the greatest transformations in history: the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). He envisions a system with human-like intelligence that would be exponentially smarter than today’s AI, with limitless possibilities and applications. In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Legg explores the evolution of AGI, what the world might look like when it arrives — and how to ensure it’s built safely and ethically.

If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas: https://ted.com/membership.

Continue reading “The Transformative Potential of AGI — and When It Might Arrive | Shane Legg and Chris Anderson | TED” »

Square Enix is using AI to increase productivity.

“In the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts,” Kiryu continuted. “In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.”

On the publishing front, Kiryu reveals the company wants to “enable greater global collaboration and to promote the shift to digital.” The team hopes this will allow them to not only gives them the chance to “maximize our sales of new titles, but also to deliver our rich back catalog to more customers and in turn to expand the fan base for our Group’s intellectual properties (IPs).”

Continue reading “Square Enix President States the Company Will Be ‘Aggressive in Applying AI’” »