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Archive for the ‘neuroscience’ category: Page 889

Dec 16, 2015

Pentagon Seeks $12 -$15 Billion for AI Weapons Research

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, military, neuroscience, robotics/AI

The news this month is full of stories about money pouring into AI research. First we got the news about the $15 million granted to the new Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence. Then Elon Musk and friends dropped the news about launching OpenAI to the tune of $1 billion, promising that this would be a not-for-profit company committed to safe AI and improving the world. But that all pales in comparison to the $12-$15 billion that the Pentagon is requesting for the development of AI weapons.

According to Reuters, “The Pentagon’s fiscal 2017 budget request will include $12 billion to $15 billion to fund war gaming, experimentation and the demonstration of new technologies aimed at ensuring a continued military edge over China and Russia.” The military is looking to develop more advanced weapons technologies that will include autonomous weapons and deep learning machines.

While the research itself would be strictly classified, the military wants to ensure that countries like China and Russia know this advanced weapons research is taking place.

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Dec 15, 2015

UAT Tech – Official Blog of the University of Advancing Technology

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, education, nanotechnology, neuroscience, transhumanism

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PDS4oOd4EQY

Inhuman: The Next & Final Phase of Man is Here” is not fiction or a mockudrama but a new investigative documentary from Defender Films and Raiders News Productions.

Inhuman travels the globe to unveil for the first time how breakthrough advances in science, technology and philosophy—including cybernetics, bioengineering, nanotechnology, machine intelligence and synthetic biology are poised to create mind-boggling game changes to everything we have known until now about Homo sapiens.

Continue reading “UAT Tech – Official Blog of the University of Advancing Technology” »

Dec 15, 2015

What Was Your 1st Computer? — Computerphile

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones, neuroscience, robotics/AI, singularity, space

Before each Computerphile interview we asked guests and regular contributors about their first computer.

Professor Uwe Aickelin: Missing Data: https://youtu.be/oCQbC818KKU
Professor Ross Anderson: Chip & PIN Fraud: https://youtu.be/Ks0SOn8hjG8

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Dec 14, 2015

Brain implants and robotic hearts: Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan’s technology predictions for 2025

Posted by in categories: life extension, neuroscience, robotics/AI, transhumanism

This out from the journalist who was embedded with us on the #ImmortalityBus:


Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan gives IBTimes UK his top five predictions for the year 2025.

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Dec 14, 2015

Musk, others commit $1 billion to non-profit AI research company to ‘benefit humanity’

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, finance, neuroscience, robotics/AI

(credit: OpenAI)

Elon Musk and associates announced OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company, on Friday (Dec. 11), committing $1 billion toward their goal to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

The funding comes from a group of tech leaders including Musk, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and Amazon Web Services, but the venture expects to only spend “a tiny fraction of this in the next few years.”

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Dec 11, 2015

Your Attitude About Aging May Impact How You Age

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

In a new study, people who believed negative stereotypes about old age had higher risk of Alzheimer’s.

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Dec 9, 2015

Scores of Labs Should be Gearing Up to Work on Glucosepane Cross-Link Breakers, But Are They?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, health, life extension, neuroscience

Glucosepane is one of the most significant mechanisms of aging and yet very few people are working on it!


As we age skin and blood vessels lose their elasticity. People care too much about the skin and too little about the blood vessels, but that is always the way of it. Appearance first and substance later, if at all. Yet you can live inside an aged skin; beyond the raised risk of skin cancer its damaged state arguably only makes life less pleasant, and the present state of medical science can ensure that the numerous age-related dermatological dysfunctions can be kept to a state of minor inconvenience. Loss of blood vessel elasticity, on the other hand, will steadily destroy your health and then kill you. Arterial stiffening causes remodeling of the cardiovascular system and hypertension. The biological systems that regulate blood pressure become dysfunctional as blood vessels depart from ideal youthful behavior, creating a downward spiral of increasing blood pressure and reactions to that increase. Small blood vessels fail under the strain in ever larger numbers, damaging surrounding tissue. In the brain this damage contributes to age-related cognitive decline by creating countless tiny, unnoticed strokes. Ultimately this process leads to dementia. More important parts of the cardiovascular system are likely to fail first, however, perhaps causing a stroke, or a heart attack, or the slower decline of congestive heart failure.

From what is known today, it is reasonable to propose that the two main culprits driving loss of tissue elasticity are sugary cross-links generated as a byproduct of the normal operation of cellular metabolism and growing numbers of senescent cells. Elasticity is a property of the extracellular matrix, an intricate structure of collagens and other proteins created by cells. Different arrangements of these molecules produce very different structures, ranging from load-bearing tissues such as bone and cartilage to elastic tissues such as skin and blood vessel walls. Disrupting the arrangement and interaction of molecules in the extracellular matrix also disrupts its properties. Persistent cross-links achieve this by linking proteins together and restricting their normal range of motion. Senescent cells, on the other hand, secrete a range of proteins capable of breaking down or remodeling portions of the surrounding extracellular matrix, and altering the behavior of nearby cells for the worse.

Continue reading “Scores of Labs Should be Gearing Up to Work on Glucosepane Cross-Link Breakers, But Are They?” »

Dec 8, 2015

Chinese researchers working on a car driven by your brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, neuroscience, robotics/AI, transportation

If human-less self-driving cars of the future creep you out, then this latest experimental automotive technology from China might offer you some respite. Or freak creep you out even more. Researchers from the port city of Tianjin have revealed what they claim is the country’s first ever car to be driven without the use of human hands or feet but with a driver still in control. All it takes is some brain power. And some highly specialized equipment, of course.

Mind-reading devices aren’t actually new. In fact, many companies and technologies make that claim year after year, but few have actually been able to deliver an actual consumer product, with most successful prototypes designed for therapeutic or medical uses. The theory, however, is the same throughout. Sensors read electroencephalogram or EEG from the wearer’s brain. These are then interpolated and interpreted as commands for a computer. In this case, the commands are mapped to car controls.

The application of direct brain control to driving is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, removing the delay between brain to muscle movement, which sometimes can be erroneous, could actually lead to better driver safety. On the other hand, given how easily drivers can be distracted even while their hands are on the wheel, the idea is understandably frightening to some.

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Dec 8, 2015

Transhumanism Solving Violence and Improving the Human Condition: IQ, EQi, and Intelligence Upgrades

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, computing, cyborgs, life extension, neuroscience, robotics/AI, transhumanism

Can we end violence? Can we create greater emotional well being and intellectual equality for the greater well being of humanity? Will we be able to keep up with machines? How can we augment our intelligence? Could we cure mental illness? After advancements in aging the next major area of research from a standpoint of eliminating personal and global suffering would be upgrades in intelligence. Transhumanist values at their core want to eliminate suffering and existential risk to people’s lives. With well founded logic, these goals are not completely out of reach, it is possible but as usual, we will have to take the complex issue from many angles and from the standpoint of a systems engineer, but let’s look at some fun stuff before we get into the heavy stuff.

The Benefits of Intelligence Upgrades

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Dec 3, 2015

Antidepressant may help prevent memory loss, dementia

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

The prescription antidepressant escitalopram (trademarked as Lexapro) shows promise as a deterrent to dementia.

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