Lifeboat Foundation

Astronomers said Thursday they had found a planetary system with three super-Earths orbiting a bright, dwarf star — one of them likely a volcanic world of molten rock. The four-planet system had been hiding out in the M-shaped, northern hemisphere constellation Cassiopeia, “just” 21 light years from Earth, a team reported in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Super-Earths have a mass higher than Earth’s but are lighter than gas giants like Neptune, Saturn or Jupiter. They can be made of gas, rock, or both.

Read more

#DrAPJAbdulKalam.

Read more

“The idea of rationality is a shared construct between AI and economics. When we frame questions in AI, we say: what are the objectives, what should be optimized and what do we know about the world we’re in? The AI/economics interface has become quite fertile because there is a shared language of utility, probability, and reasoning about others.”

Read more

More than a thousand prominent thinkers and leading AI and robotics researchers have signed an open letter calling for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.”

Read more

Cornell physicists found yet another use for graphene.

Read more

SolarCity is expanding its services to small and medium-sized businesses. This move allows local businesses to save money with renewable energy. Going solar.

Read more

It will be the first country in the world to have universal Internet coverage.

Google has teamed up with the Sri Lankan government to deliver broadband Internet to every region of the island nation, making it the first country in the world to have universal Internet coverage. The initiative is part of Google’s Project Loon, which aims to provide cheap or free Wi-Fi to people in remote rural areas around the world via a fleet of huge helium-filled balloons floating way up in the stratosphere.

Read more

Concerns about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) have recently gained coverage thanks to pioneers like Hawking, Gates, and Musk, though certainly others have been peering down that rabbit hole for some time. While we certainly need to keep our eyes on the far-reaching, it behooves us to take a closer look at the social issues that are right under our noses.

The question of artificial intelligence transforming industry is not a question of when — it’s already happening — but rather of how automation is creeping in and impacting some of the biggest influencers in the economic sphere i.e. transportation, healthcare, and others, some of which may surprise you.

I recently discussed these near-at-hand social implications and ambiguities with Steve Omohundro, CEO and founder of Possibility Research.

Social Implications of AI

In the words of Mr. Omohundro, we’re “on the verge of major transformation” in myriad ways. Consider near-term economics. McKinsey&Company have estimated that the presence of AI automation could impact the economy by $10 to $25 trillion in the next 10 years. Gartner, an information technology research group, estimates that 1/3 of all jobs will be relegated to the world of AI by 2025.

Continue reading “Dr. Steve Omohundro and the Implications of A.I. in the Future of Industry” »

“Furthermore, the chromatophore project marks a shift in computational biophysics from analyzing the individual cell parts (e.g., a single protein) to analyzing the specialized systems of the cell (e.g., hundreds of proteins working together to carry out an autonomous function). This is a significant step toward the long-term goal of simulating an entire living organism.”

Nearly all life on Earth depends on photosynthesis, the conversion of light energy into chemical energy. Oxygen-producing plants and cyanobacteria perfected this process 2.7 billion years ago. But the first photosynthetic organisms were likely single-celled purple bacteria that began absorbing near-infrared light and converting it to sulfur or sulfates about 3.4 billion years ago.

Read more