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Existence, uplift, and science news

October 26, 2012 by David Brin

existence

After an incredible decade, in which the number of planets known beyond our solar system increased from zero to several thousand, astronomers have detected an Earth-sized world orbiting between the two major stars nearest to our system, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B.

Much too hot to sustain life, it nevertheless will help in narrowing down the search space for others. (“News from Alpha Centauri.” Cool to say that!)

In a related… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Singularity/Futures

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AI and Ethiopia: an unexpected synergy

October 25, 2012 by Ben Goertzel

Getnet Aseffa explains Ray Kurzweil's exponential growth of computing (credit: Getnet Aseffa)

In February of this year, KurzweilAI.net’s Amara Angelica put me in touch with an enterprising young Ethiopian engineer named Getnet Aseffa, who was interested in advanced technologies and their implications, and especially in their potential application to help Ethiopia and other African nations.

After some email dialogue, Getnet arranged for me to give a talk via Skype to an audience at Addis Ababa Institute of Technology. The themes of… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Report from the Alcor-40 conference

October 24, 2012 by Ben Goertzel

Ben_at_Alcor

This past weekend I attended the Alcor 40 conference, hosted by the cryonics organization Alcor to celebrate its 40th year of operation, and I was extremely impressed.

(Full disclosure: I am an Alcor member, signed up in 2005 so that in the unfortunate event my body comes to meet the criteria of legal death, they will preserve it in liquid nitrogen until the advance of… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Singularity/Futures

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A stylish new brain-sensing headband

October 22, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

Muse

Finally: a brainwave-sensing gadget disguised as a stylish wearable headband that would fit right in with Google Glass … and not make you look like a Fringe experiment run amok.

InteraXon just announced its Muse tonight. It’s available for pre-order now on crowd-funding platform Indiegogo (to raise $150,000) and due out in Spring 2013, the company says.

It’s not clear to me yet how this gadget differs from other EEG… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Extend your life span without dieting!

October 18, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

(Credit: McDonald's)

Woo hoo! 

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found that a starvation hormone markedly extends life span in mice without the need for calorie restriction.

Yes! I am sooo ready. I’ve waited years to have  fries!

Restricting food intake has been shown to extend lifespan in several different kinds of animals. But in the UT study, the researchers found transgenic mice that produced… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Steal This Singularity: Entry #1

Hijacking the engineer’s Singularity
October 18, 2012 by R.U. Sirius

(Credit: 20th Century Fox)

I’ve been sort of playing around with the concept — “Steal This Singularity” — for several months now. Prior to attending Singularity Summit 2012, I was thinking about it in political terms.

Letting “Singularity” represent, essentially, a buzz word for a future radically transformed by technology, my “Steal This Singularity” notion was simply that the transhuman future should not be dominated by big capital and/or authoritarian government; and that —… read more

Topics: Human Enhancement | Singularity/Futures

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Warning: the writer of this post may be nuts!

October 17, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." --- Salvador Dali (credit: Wikipedia)

Well, this might explain some of my wackier blog posts.

People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, especially writers, according to researchers at Karolinska Institute, whose large-scale Swedish registry study is the most comprehensive ever in its field.

Either that, or Swedes are crazier. Hey, I’m kidding!

Last year, researchers showed that artists and scientists were more… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Let the AIs, not us, formulate a billion-year plan!

Long-term, humanity will be 'left in the dust by the machines,' who will be deciding our next billion years
October 12, 2012 by Robert L. Blum

A celestial object called the Ant Nebula may shed new light on the future demise of our Sun (credit: NASA JPL)

In What our civilization needs is a billion-year plan, posted on KurzweilAI September 23, 2012, Lt Col Peter Garretson calls for a long-term plan to assure humanity’s survival, “moving everyone and everything we value off Earth.”

He cites the coming big extinction events for planet Earth, including asteroid collisions, the Sun engulfing the Earth during its transformation to a red giant, and ultimately, the heat death of the Universe. Human… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Singularity/Futures | Space

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The real reasons we don’t have AGI yet

A response to David Deutsch’s recent article on AGI
October 8, 2012 by Ben Goertzel

(Credit: iStockphoto)

As we noted in a recent post, physicist David Deutsch said the field of “artificial general intelligence” or AGI has made “no progress whatever during the entire six decades of its existence.” We asked Dr. Ben Goertzel, who introduced the term AGI and founded the AGI conference series, to respond. — Ed.

Like so many others, I’ve been extremely impressed and fascinated by physicist David Deutsch’s work on quantum computation… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Decentralizing education: how startups are dismantling the university

October 8, 2012 by Dale J. Stephens

(Credit: iStockphoto)

Dale J. Stephens leads UnCollege, the social movement changing the notion that college is the only path to success. His first book, Hacking Your Education, will be published by Penguin in 2013. Also see the three related posts today (below).

Student/teacher interaction

“What about student/teacher interaction? What about building a social and professional network? How can you get a job without a degree? How will you know you’re succeeding without grades?”… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social Networking/Web/Education

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Navigating the seas of Titan in a boat

Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...
October 5, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

talise_paddles

NASA landed a rover on Mars. So what’s the next step? Right: land a boat on Titan!

Hey, come on, it’s gotta be the ultimate travel destiny:

  • A magical moon that’s actually more like a planet.
  • One of the most Earth-like bodies in the Solar System.
  • Has an atmosphere (OK, mostly nitrogen — so bring your own oxygen, stop kvetching).
  • A vast network of

… read more

Topics: Biotech | Space

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The rise of the machines: and now the really bad news

September 26, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

i-robot-2004-42-g1

Vice just posted an update to their “we’re living in a simulation“ interview with Dr. Rich Terrile of NASA JPL.

“I think our machines will wake up and take over our society,” he said. “They will become us, we will become them. We’ll merge with machines.

Take over? Now wait a minute there, rocket man….

“We have to wake the machines up. Humans look like… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Singularity/Futures

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What our civilization needs is a billion-year plan

September 23, 2012 by Peter A. Garretson

Sun as red giant (credit: Fsgregs /Wikimedia Commons)

Lt Col Garretson — one of the USAF’s most farsighted and original thinkers — has been at the forefront of USAF strategy on the long-term future in projects such as Blue Horizons (on KurzweilAI — see video), Energy Horizons, Space Solar Power, the AF Futures Game, the USAF Strategic Environmental Assessment, and the USAF RPA Flight Plan. Now in this exclusive to KurzweilAI, he pushes the boundary of long-term… read more

Topics: Energy | Environment/Climate | Human Enhancement | Physics/Cosmology | Singularity/Futures | Space | Survival/Defense

Comments (105)

Singularitarians and musicians stage Madrid gathering

September 21, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

book_voz_de_la_ciencia

A spectre is haunting the world — the Singularity. All the powers of the old world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre — the Pope and the ayatollahs, the banks and the political parties, and “bioethicists” of both the right and the left. …

So says KurzweilAI transhumanist editor Giulio Prisco, who will give a talk Saturday (Sept. 22) at the La Voz De La… read more

Topics: Singularity/Futures

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How to access TV news on any topic for the last three years

September 20, 2012 by Amara D. Angelica

internet_archive_news

This is fantastic news for journalists and voters: the Internet Archive has launched the free TV News Search & Borrow service.

The collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected over 3 years from national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington D.C.  The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired.  Older materials are also being added.… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Internet/Telecom

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