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Aokify America Charity for brain research

November 10, 2013 by John Smart

Aoki Charity

You get to vote: the American Brain Foundation, U. of Rochester Memory Care Center (both research ways to prevent neurodegenerative diseases); Infusio, a German wellness clinic; or the Brain Preservation Foundation (BPF), a research charity I’m affiliated with seeking evidence that computational neuroscience and automation can revive the memory and minds of chemopreserved and cryopreserved brains in the future.*… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Entertainment/New Media

Comments (8)

Attention, Kmart shoppers: there’s a robot checker open in aisle six

November 5, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

Robot clerk 'attacks' human

Wow, it’s happening already. Cornell robotics researchers are now teaching robots complex tasks such as performing as grocery-store checkout clerks.

Can robot butlers (as in Robot & Frank) be far behind?

This is a big step beyond what Cornell researchers in Prof. Ashutosh Saxena’s lab were teaching their smart robots the last time we (virtually) visited the lab in May.

We saw then… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Singularity or Bust award-winning documentary now free online

"I believe we can have a positive Singularity within ten years." -- Ben Goertzel, PhD
October 31, 2013 by Ben Goertzel

Singularity0rBust

In 2009, filmmaker and former AI programmer Raj Dye spent his summer following futurist AI researchers Ben Goertzel and Hugo de Garis around Hong Kong and Xiamen, documenting their doings and gathering their perspectives.

The result, after some work by crack film editor Alex MacKenzie, was the 45 minute documentary Singularity or Bust — a uniquely edgy, experimental Singularitarian road movie, featuring perhaps the most philosophical three-foot-tall humanoid robot ever,… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Singularity/Futures

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book review | Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era

October 4, 2013 by Luke Muehlhauser

our final invention

Kurzweil-influenced futurism is sometimes dismissed as naive techno-optimism, but Ray Kurzweil himself is no Pollyanna.

It was Kurzweil who inspired Bill Joy to write the famously pessimistic Wired essay “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” and Kurzweil devoted an entire chapter of The Singularity is Near to the risks of advanced technologies.There, he wrote that despite his reputation as a technological optimist, “I often… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Singularity/Futures | Survival/Defense

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Critique of a claimed discovery of a diatom from outer space [UPDATED]

September 21, 2013 by Richard Gordon

Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) (credit: Kitt Peak National Observatory)

A recent paper by Milton Wainwright et al. [1] claimed that sampling of the stratosphere revealed a diatom frustule captured from a height of >25km.

The paper, published in Journal of Cosmology, also argues that the object came from space, with a probable origin in the watery environment of a comet.

There are a number of problems that I would have flagged had I been a… read more

Topics: Biotech | Physics/Cosmology | Space

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No methane on Mars? Say it isn’t so!

Cat astronauts? Snake robots on rockets? What the ....
September 20, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

persian cat

“In findings that are as scientifically significant as they are crushing to the popular imagination, NASA reported Thursday that its Curiosity Mars rover has deflated hopes that life could be thriving on Mars today.”

So say the kill-joys at The New York Times.

Deftly side-stepping the blow, Michael Meyer, NASA’s lead scientist for Mars exploration, explained: “This important result will help direct our efforts to examine the… read more

Topics: Space

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Take back the Internet

September 17, 2013 by Bruce Schneier

bruce-blog2

Government and industry have betrayed the Internet, and us.

By subverting the Internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our Internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be… read more

Topics: Internet/Cloud/Telecom | Survival/Defense

Comments (57)

Late-night radio host Art Bell returns with new show, Dark Matter

September 17, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

(Credit: Chris Moet)

Talk-radio legend Art Bell launched Monday night his new nightly radio show, Dark Matter, with guest Dr. Michio Kaku.

Dark Matter airs on SiriusXM Indie Talk channel 104 (30-day trial available) at 10PM Eastern/7PM Pacific* (also available via Internet and apps), covering wild ideas at the edge of reality.

Art was a founder and original host of the … read more

Topics: Electronics | Entertainment/New Media | Nanotech/Materials Science | Physics/Cosmology | Singularity/Futures | Space

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Ask Ray | Your recent book mentioned cuteness and made me wonder

September 14, 2013 by Ray Kurzweil

baby kitten and puppy

Ray,

Your recent book on creating intelligence mentioned cuteness in passing, and it made me wonder: why are most baby animals so cute. Naked mole rat is a possible exception?

They can’t look cute so we become gaga, if not for we humans, then it has to be for the parents, and if cuteness is not an exclusively human concept, its origins must be way back in time… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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book review | William Hertling’s Singularity series continues with The Last Firewall

September 12, 2013 by Giulio Prisco

hertling_last_firewall

William Hertling’s science-fiction collection of Singularity novels about the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) consists (so far) of Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears, A.I. Apocalypse, and the recently published The Last Firewall.

I think The Last Firewall is the best of the lot: a fast techno-thriller set in a hybrid human/AI world with social tension and dominance conflicts, in where… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Human Enhancement | Singularity/Futures

Comments (2)

The Last Generation to Die — a short film

A Kickstarter project
September 12, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

The Last Generation To Die

Set in the future when science first begins to stop aging, a daughter tries to save her father from natural death.

The story takes place roughly 30 years in the future at the moment when science has first figured out how to stop aging through genetics. It is framed around the gulf between generations that would occur with the first release of this technology.

A daughter who works… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Singularity/Futures

Comments (57)

Consciousness, the Beatles, and Zombie Blues

September 8, 2013 by Amara D. Angelica

SgtPepperFeatured

I’ve been to two of the amazing biennial Toward a Science of Consciousness events and enjoyed them immensely, but I think this one April 21–26 next year in Tuscon will be the best yet.

It features three of the most interesting characters in neuroscience — Karl Deisseroth, Cristof Koch, and Henry Markram — and a bevy of other compelling speakers.… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Ask Ray | Oral nutritional supplementation decreases hospitalization length by 21% says report

September 4, 2013 by Ray Kurzweil

oral nutritional supplement

Dear readers,

This is a valuable study about supplements and health that I wanted to share with our readers. 

American Journal of Managed Care | “Impact of oral nutritional supplementation on hospital outcomes”

The findings say “the use of oral nutritional supplementation decreases length of stay, episode cost, and 30-day readmission risk in the inpatient population of hospitals.”

That’s the conclusion of an eleven-year retrospective… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

Comments (38)

book review | Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization

August 24, 2013

Radical Abundance

This post is being revised. Please visit Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization meanwhile.

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

Comments (58)

Ask Ray | How can my consciousness survive indefinitely?

August 23, 2013 by Ray Kurzweil

Energy of Human Mind

Dear Ray,

Should my brain be downloaded into a computer, my consciousness would not follow along, since if it did, I — the conscious I that I know and love — would be in two different places at once, both in my body and in the computer, presumably a contradiction of some sort, and the I in the computer may think and react identically to me and it may… read more

Comments (126)

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