Lifeboat Foundation

Title: Strong AI: Why we should be concerned about something nobody knows how to build.
Synopsis: At the moment, nobody fully knows how to create an intelligent system that rivals or exceed human capabilities (Strong AI). The impact and possible dangers of Strong AI appear to concern mostly those futurists that are not working in day-to-day AI research. This in turn gives rise to the idea that Strong AI is merely a myth, a sci fi trope and nothing that is ever going to be implemented. The current state of the art in AI is already sufficient to lead to irrevocable changes in labor markets, economy, warfare and governance. The need to deal with these near term changes does not absolve us from considering the implications of being no longer the most intelligent beings on this planet.
Despite the difficulties of developing Strong AI, there is no obvious reason why the principles embedded in biological brains should be outside of the range of what our engineering can achieve in the near future. While it is unlikely that current narrow AI systems will neatly scale towards general modeling and problem solving, many of the significant open questions in developing Strong AI appear to be known and solvable.

Talk held at ‘Artificial Intelligence / Human Possibilities’ event as adjunct to the AGI17 conference in Melbourne 2017.

Continue reading “Joscha Bach — Strong AI: Why we should be concerned” »

Aviation is responsible for around five percent of human-induced climate change.

Commercial aviation has become a cornerstone of our economy and society. It allows us to rapidly transport goods and people across the globe, facilitates over a third of all global trade by value, and supports 87.7 million jobs worldwide. However, the 80-tonne flying machines we see hurtling through our skies at near supersonic speeds also carry some serious environmental baggage.

My team’s recent review paper highlights some promising solutions the aviation industry could put in place now to reduce the harm flying does to our planet. Simply changing the routes we fly could hold the key to drastic reductions in climate impact.

“This makes agri-PV systems increasingly attractive for agriculture, because it provides a way to keep domestic agriculture competitive with the international market and to enable farmers to earn additional income,” explains Max Trommsdorff, project manager at Fraunhofer ISE. “At the same time, we can drive the expansion of renewable energies, reduce pressure on scarce land and increase resilience to weather extremes and climate change in different farming systems.”

Nevertheless, only a few projects have been realised so far. Those involved in the project see one of the crucial hurdles in the existing legal framework. These include inadequate incentive systems and comparatively complex approval processes. In addition, there are growing concerns about the acceptance of the local population and the attractiveness of the landscape.

Such economic, legal and social hurdles are to be compiled within the framework of the project. Subsequently, the participants want to work out proposals for solutions on how to reduce and overcome these hurdles. The focus should be on the optimal use of the potentials and the avoidance of wrong decisions in the application of agriphotovoltaics.

Mathematical derivations have unveiled a chaotic, memristor-based circuit in which different oscillating phases can co-exist along six possible lines.

Unlike ordinary electronic circuits, chaotic circuits can produce oscillating electrical signals that never repeat over time—but nonetheless, display underlying mathematical patterns. To expand the potential applications of these circuits, previous studies have designed systems in which multiple oscillating phases can co-exist along mathematically-defined “lines of equilibrium.” In new research published in The European Physical Journal Special Topics, a team led by Janarthanan Ramadoss at the Chennai Institute of Technology, India, designed a chaotic circuit with six distinct lines of equilibrium—more than have ever been demonstrated previously.

Chaotic systems are now widely studied across a broad range of fields: from biology and chemistry, to engineering and economics. If the team’s circuit is realized experimentally, it could provide researchers with unprecedented opportunities to study these systems experimentally. More practically, their design could be used for applications including robotic motion control, secure password generation, and new developments in the Internet of Things—through which networks of everyday objects can gather and share data.

Kyiv will lose nearly two-thirds of its deposits if the Kremlin is successful in annexing Ukrainian territory.

At least $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine’s essential natural resources, including energy and mineral deposits, are now under Russian control.

“The Kremlin is robbing Ukraine” of its natural resources, the backbone of it’s economy, according to an analysis by SecDev posted by Washington Post on August 10.

Two of America’s top chipmakers have been ordered to stop selling some of their technology to China that can be used for artificial intelligence.

Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) said Wednesday that they had been told by the US government to halt exports of certain high-performance chips to the world’s second largest economy.

In a regulatory filing, Nvidia said that it had been told by US officials that the requirement was due to a potential risk of the products being used by, or diverted to, a “military end user.”

While having their own unique areas of expertise and resources, the NQISRCs are all aligned to the same mission—the advancement of quantum information science.

Five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers (NQISRCs) are leveraging the behavior of nature at the smallest scales to develop technologies for science’s most complex problems. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, the NQISRCs have been supporting DOE’s mission since 2020 to advance the energy, economic and national security of the United States. By building a national quantum ecosystem and workforce comprising researchers at roughly 70 institutions across the United States, the centers create a rich environment for quantum innovation and co-design.

The NQISRCs integrate state-of-the-art DOE facilities, preeminent talent at national laboratories and U.S. universities, and the enterprising ingenuity of U.S. technology companies.

“In June, our delegation was in South Korea, in July we went to France. Negotiations are ongoing with Chinese suppliers. Based on the results of an in-depth study of international experience, nuclear technology suppliers will be involved. I repeat, this will be an international project,” he reaffirmed, adding that the results of this experience is under study.

“In principle, the construction of a nuclear power plant is a long process, it takes about eight years. Without nuclear power, we will not be able to ensure energy security for ourselves… We will need such generation — the whole world is moving towards decarbonisation. We must move to clean technologies, and nuclear generation is the answer to the challenge of the times,” he stressed.

He stressed that the safety of NPP operation is of paramount importance. “We will choose the technology that is the safest, and those suppliers who can complete all the work in a timely manner. Related areas of our economy will also develop around this industry. There will be a big positive effect on the development of our country as a whole.”

Economists are turning more bearish about China’s economy, downgrading their growth forecasts further for 2022 and seeing lingering risks into next year as turmoil in the property market and Covid outbreaks persist.

The economy is now projected to grow just 3.5% this year, down from a previous forecast of 3.9%, according to Bloomberg’s latest quarterly survey of economists. Growth projections for the first three quarters of next year were also lowered — by 0.1−0.4 percentage points — although the median for the whole of 2023 remained unchanged at 5.2%.