Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: computing – Page 790

Will artificial intelligence mean the end of jobs?

Will any of the jobs that exist today still be around in 20 years? Fast Future’s Steve Wells, Alexandra Whittington and Rohit Talwar explore whether automation is destined to rewrite all our futures.

We are embarking on the so-called fourth industrial revolution – heralding an era where smart technologies could transform every aspect of business, work, government and our daily lives. We are already used to seeing faceless robots undertaking repetitive manufacturing tasks and smart applications determining our credit ratings, autopiloting planes and delivering an array of functionality to our mobile devices.

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Humanity will be lost

I did a new interview on #transhumanism for some journalism students at Germany’s Technical University of Dortmund. It’s in English:

Mechanical bodyparts are very common nowadays – a lot of humans have a hip replacement or a pacemaker. Technology helps saving our lives rather often. Some people want to take this a lot further – a philosophical and scientific movement called Transhumanism. Zoltan Istvan Gyurko is one of the most famous Transhumanists, he even ran for president in 2016. In this interview, he talks about his first experiences with Transhumanism, immortality and the future of humanity.

By Marie-Louise Timcke und Paul Klur

Why is Transhumanism important for our society nowadays?

Zoltan Istvan: Well, Transhumanism is perhaps the most important subject matter that we have actually existing in society at the moment. Because humankind has been moving forward very slowly developing science and technology. But in ways that haven’t really rudimentary changed the human being. But all of a sudden, since the invention of the microchip, humanity is changing dramatically because of data, because of the internet, because of computers, because of smartphones. And what we have seen is almost nothing compared to what we’re going to see over the next ten or twenty years. Transhumanism is the field that wants to use science and technology to modify the human being and realise this kind of digitization of the actual self. But most importantly, the next ten years are going to be completely disruptive to whatever we thought it meant to be human beings.

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Malicious code written into DNA infects the computer that reads it

In a mind-boggling world first, a team of biologists and security researchers have successfully infected a computer with a malicious program coded into a strand of DNA.

It sounds like science fiction, but I assure you it’s quite real — although you probably don’t have to worry about this particular threat vector any time soon. That said, the possibilities suggested by this project are equally fascinating and terrifying to contemplate.

The multidisciplinary team at the University of Washington isn’t out to make outlandish headlines, although it’s certainly done that. They were concerned that the security infrastructure around DNA transcription and analysis was inadequate, having found elementary vulnerabilities in open-source software used in labs around the world. Given the nature of the data usually being handled, this could be a serious problem going forward.

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Mum begged doc to ‘chip’ daughter in case ‘radical’ dad takes her to Syria

Transhumanism discussion of using implants in children is in The Sun today, one of UK’s largest sites/papers.

A DOCTOR known as a “human cyborg” has revealed parents are bombarding him with requests to implant chips into their children.

Dr Patrick Kramer, who work under the job title of “chief cyborg officer”, receives harrowing messages from parents desperate for him to implant tracking chips under their children’s skin.

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Chips Off the Old Block: Computers Are Taking Design Cues From Human Brains

Now, some of the world’s largest tech companies are taking a cue from biology as they respond to these growing demands. They are rethinking the very nature of computers and are building machines that look more like the human brain, where a central brain stem oversees the nervous system and offloads particular tasks — like hearing and seeing — to the surrounding cortex.

New technologies are testing the limits of computer semiconductors. To deal with that, researchers have gone looking for ideas from nature.

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How We’ll Eventually Control Everything With Our Minds

Brain-controlled computers are currently helping paralyzed patients, but one day they might be used to control everything around you.

The ability to control the world around you with only your mind has been a feature of some of the best science fiction stories ever written, but even today the idea sounds pretty futuristic. Still, neuroscientists around the world are hard at work trying to figure out how to make a digital interface for the brain and in recent years have made remarkable strides toward this goal. Although this technology is still in its infancy, it’s not quite as hard to imagine abandoning touch screens for mind control anymore.

For the most part, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are currently being created only for people who have suffered debilitating injuries that left them partially or completely paralyzed.

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