Tag Archives: awesome
#432482 This Week’s Awesome Stories From ...
CYBERNETICS
A Brain-Boosting Prosthesis Moves From Rats to Humans
Robbie Gonzalez | WIRED
“Today, their proof-of-concept prosthetic lives outside a patient’s head and connects to the brain via wires. But in the future, Hampson hopes, surgeons could implant a similar apparatus entirely within a person’s skull, like a neural pacemaker. It could augment all manner of brain functions—not just in victims of dementia and brain injury, but healthy individuals, as well.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Here’s How the US Needs to Prepare for the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Will Knight | MIT Technology Review
“The Trump administration has abandoned this vision and has no intention of devising its own AI plan, say those working there. They say there is no need for an AI moonshot, and that minimizing government interference is the best way to make sure the technology flourishes… That looks like a huge mistake. If it essentially ignores such a technological transformation, the US might never make the most of an opportunity to reboot its economy and kick-start both wage growth and job creation. Failure to plan could also cause the birthplace of AI to lose ground to international rivals.”
BIOMIMICRY
Underwater GPS Inspired by Shrimp Eyes
Jeremy Hsu | IEEE Spectrum
“A few years ago, U.S. and Australian researchers developed a special camera inspired by the eyes of mantis shrimp that can see the polarization patterns of light waves, which resemble those in a rope being waved up and down. That means the bio-inspired camera can detect how light polarization patterns change once the light enters the water and gets deflected or scattered.”
POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY
‘The Business of War’: Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon
Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi | The New York Times
“Thousands of Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a letter protesting the company’s involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.
The letter, which is circulating inside Google and has garnered more than 3,100 signatures, reflects a culture clash between Silicon Valley and the federal government that is likely to intensify as cutting-edge artificial intelligence is increasingly employed for military purposes. ‘We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,’ says the letter, addressed to Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive. It asks that Google pull out of Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program, and announce a policy that it will not ‘ever build warfare technology.’ (Read the text of the letter.)”
CYBERNETICS
MIT’s New Headset Reads the ‘Words in Your Head’
Brian Heater | TechCrunch
“A team at MIT has been working on just such a device, though the hardware design, admittedly, doesn’t go too far toward removing that whole self-consciousness bit from the equation. AlterEgo is a headmounted—or, more properly, jaw-mounted—device that’s capable of reading neuromuscular signals through built-in electrodes. The hardware, as MIT puts it, is capable of reading ‘words in your head.’”
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#432324 This Week’s Awesome Stories From ...
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
China Wants to Shape the Global Future of Artificial Intelligence
Will Knight | MIT Technology Review
“China’s booming AI industry and massive government investment in the technology have raised fears in the US and elsewhere that the nation will overtake international rivals in a fundamentally important technology. In truth, it may be possible for both the US and the Chinese economies to benefit from AI. But there may be more rivalry when it comes to influencing the spread of the technology worldwide. ‘I think this is the first technology area where China has a real chance to set the rules of the game,’ says Ding.”
SPACE
Astronaut’s Gene Expression No Longer Same as His Identical Twin, NASA Finds
Susan Scutti | CNN
“Preliminary results from NASA’s Twins Study reveal that 7% of astronaut Scott Kelly’s genetic expression—how his genes function within cells—did not return to baseline after his return to Earth two years ago. The study looks at what happened to Kelly before, during and after he spent one year aboard the International Space Station through an extensive comparison with his identical twin, Mark, who remained on Earth.”
3D PRINTING
This Cheap 3D-Printed Home Is a Start for the 1 Billion Who Lack Shelter
Tamara Warren | The Verge
“ICON has developed a method for printing a single-story 650-square-foot house out of cement in only 12 to 24 hours, a fraction of the time it takes for new construction. If all goes according to plan, a community made up of about 100 homes will be constructed for residents in El Salvador next year. The company has partnered with New Story, a nonprofit that is vested in international housing solutions. ‘We have been building homes for communities in Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia,’ Alexandria Lafci, co-founder of New Story, tells The Verge.”
SCIENCE
Our Microbiomes Are Making Scientists Question What It Means to Be Human
Rebecca Flowers | Motherboard
“Studies in genetics and Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA gave more credence to the idea of individuality. But as scientists learn more about the microbiome, the idea of humans as a singular organism is being reconsidered: ‘There is now overwhelming evidence that normal development as well as the maintenance of the organism depend on the microorganisms…that we harbor,’ they state (others have taken this position, too).”
CULTURE
Stephen Hawking, Who Awed Both Scientists and the Public, Dies
Joe Palca | NPR
“Hawking was probably the best-known scientist in the world. He was a theoretical physicist whose early work on black holes transformed how scientists think about the nature of the universe. But his fame wasn’t just a result of his research. Hawking, who had a debilitating neurological disease that made it impossible for him to move his limbs or speak, was also a popular public figure and best-selling author. There was even a biopic about his life, The Theory of Everything, that won an Oscar for the actor, Eddie Redmayne, who portrayed Hawking.”
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#432316 Video Friday: Dexterous Humanoid, ...
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Posted in Human Robots
#432279 This Week’s Awesome Stories From ...
COMPUTING
Google Thinks It’s Close to ‘Quantum Supremacy.’ Here’s What That Really Means.
Martin Giles and Will Knight | MIT Technology Review
“Seventy-two may not be a large number, but in quantum computing terms, it’s massive. This week Google unveiled Bristlecone, a new quantum computing chip with 72 quantum bits, or qubits—the fundamental units of computation in a quantum machine…John Martinis, who heads Google’s effort, says his team still needs to do more testing, but he thinks it’s ‘pretty likely’ that this year, perhaps even in just a few months, the new chip can achieve ‘quantum supremacy.'”
INTERNET
How Project Loon Built the Navigation System That Kept Its Balloons Over Puerto Rico
Amy Nordrum | IEEE Spectrum
“Last year, Alphabet’s Project Loon made a big shift in the way it flies its high-altitude balloons. And that shift—from steering every balloon in a huge circle around the world to clustering balloons over specific areas—allowed the project to provide basic Internet service to more than 200,000 people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.”
DIGITAL MEDIA
The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News
Robinson Meyer | The Atlantic
“The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor.”
AUGMENTED REALITY
Magic Leap Raises $461 Million in Fresh Funding From the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Lucas Matney | TechCrunch
“Magic Leap still hasn’t released a product, but they’re continuing to raise a lot of cash to get there. The Plantation, Florida-based augmented reality startup announced today that it has raised $461 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment arm, The Public Investment Fund…Magic Leap has raised more than $2.3 billion in funding to date.”
TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Social Inequality Will Not Be Solved by an App
Safiya Umoja Noble | Wired
“An app will not save us. We will not sort out social inequality lying in bed staring at smartphones. It will not stem from simply sending emails to people in power, one person at a time…We need more intense attention on how these types of artificial intelligence, under the auspices of individual freedom to make choices, forestall the ability to see what kinds of choices we are making and the collective impact of these choices in reversing decades of struggle for social, political, and economic equality. Digital technologies are implicated in these struggles.”
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#432273 Video Friday: Human-Drone Interaction, ...
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Posted in Human Robots