Peter Beck is the real life rocket man. He loves rockets so much that he started Rocket Lab, a space startup specializing in lightweight, cost-effective commercial launch services. His goal is to make launching rockets into orbit as common as picking up your mail, and he’s making progress.
Video by Matt Goldman.
Transhumanist Declaration VirtualTranshumanism Virtual is the viewpoint that sapient society, corporeal, digital, and virtual should embrace, wisely, thoughtfully, and compassionately, the radical transformational potential of technology. The Transhumanist Party Virtual calls for: — Projects to take full advantage of accelerating technology. — Economic and personal liberation of all sapient beings — An inclusive new social contract for all sapient and sentient beings in the light of technological disruption — A evolutionary regulatory system to fast-track innovative breakthroughs — Reform of democratic processes with new tools — Education transformed in readiness for a radically different future — A transhumanist rights agenda for all sapient and sentient beings in the coming transhumanist age — An affirmative new perspective on existential risks.
Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, so the struggle between liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism is set to define the twenty-first.
The debate over the effects of artificial intelligence has been dominated by two themes. One is the fear of a singularity, an event in which an AI exceeds human intelligence and escapes human control, with possibly disastrous consequences. The other is the worry that a new industrial revolution will allow machines to disrupt and replace humans in every—or almost every—area of society, from transport to the military to healthcare.
There is also a third way in which AI promises to reshape the world. By allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more closely than ever before, AI will offer authoritarian countries a plausible alternative to liberal democracy, the first since the end of the Cold War. That will spark renewed international competition between social systems.
Continue reading “How Artificial Intelligence Will Reshape the Global Order” »
We are immensely proud to continue a long tradition of aeronautical expertise that helps maintain security and defend nations as well as bringing significant economic, technological and skills benefits. The UK Government has launched its Combat Air Strategy at the 2018 Farnborough International Air Show with the aim of delivering the next generation of combat air capability by 2035.
But even though money is necessary, it’s not sufficient to provide human beings a sense of satisfaction, Obama cautioned. As more and more tasks and services become automated with the rise of artificial intelligence, “that’s going to make the job of giving everybody work that is meaningful tougher, and we’re going to have to be more imaginative, and the pace of change is going to require us to do more fundamental re-imagining of our social and political arrangements, to protect the economic security and the dignity that comes with a job.”
The former president says “we’re going to have to consider new ways of thinking” as technology threatens current labor markets.
New research measuring the importance of religion in 109 countries spanning the entire 20th century has reignited an age-old debate around the link between secularisation and economic growth. The study, published in Science Advances, has shown that a decline in religion influences a country’s future…
Watersheds channel water from streams to oceans, and more than $450 billion in food, manufactured goods and other economic factors depend on them, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Watersheds also are crucial to the health of surrounding ecosystems and communities. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri have found that climatic changes and urban development, when working in tandem, could have profound effects on watersheds by midcentury.
“In some cases, the effects of urban development and climatic changes on hydrologic conditions can be intensified when both stressors are considered,” said Michael Sunde, a researcher in MU’s School of Natural Resources. “In spring, for example, we found that both factors could increase runoff, which, in turn, can send more pollutants into streams, increase erosion and cause more serious flooding.”
Sunde (pronounced “Soond”) and his colleagues used several models, including land cover change, hydrologic and climate model projections to identify potential changes in a Missouri watershed for the mid-21st century. Individually, increased urbanization and climate change were shown to have different impacts on the watershed. Researchers found that urban development is likely to increase runoff and limit the amount of water absorbed into the ground as groundwater. Evaporation of water from soil and other surfaces and consumptive water use by plants is also expected to decrease due to urbanization. Conversely, projected temperature increases and changing precipitation patterns would cause decreases to runoff and increased evaporation and plant transpiration. However, climate impacts were shown to vary widely, depending on the season and direction of precipitation changes projected by climate models.
Don’t tell the Hatton Garden gang: scientists just unearthed an eye-watering hoard of diamonds, so valuable it would completely destroy the world’s economy.
The scientists reckon there’s a quadrillion tonnes of diamond buried in the ‘cratonic roots’ in continents.
There’s just one, tiny, catch: the treasure trove is buried 100 miles down, deeper than any drill has ever penetrated, according to MIT researchers.
Continue reading “Scientists just found £150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of diamonds on Earth” »
What we need to do, to prevent global wealth inequality and advanced technology from adding up to produce global catastrophe, is increase equitability of opportunity. We need to enable everyone in the world to have the opportunity to really play the modern global economic-social game.
AI scientist BEN GOERTZEL believes that advanced technologies will change the world and transform our species in the process — unless tragedy strikes. Here’s how we ought to save the world if it does …
My debate on #BasicIncome at the FreedomFest against Dr. Barbara Kolm, director at the Austrian Economic Center (debate moderated by syndicated columnist and scholar Veronique de Rugy) got a write-up in Nevada Current (article by journalist Jeniffer Solis). https://www.nevadacurrent.com/…/universal-basic-income-tou…/ #FFest18
Earlier this month, the Vdara Hotel & Spa added two relay robots that deliver snacks, sundries and spa products directly to guest suites. While charmingly decorated as a Golden Retriever and Dalmatian dog with Vdara-themed collars, the new robots — named Fetch and Jett — may be a sign of what’s next for Las Vegas.
In 20 years, about 65 percent of the city’s jobs could be automated, according to a study by the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis. That projection may be an outlier – the Organization for Economic for Cooperation and Development, for instance, projects only 10 percent of U.S. jobs are vulnerable to automation.
Continue reading “Universal basic income touted as answer to automation” »
