Lifeboat Foundation

The CEO of Google DeepMind has compared the IQ levels of contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) agents to domestic cats. “We’re still not even at cat intelligence yet, as a general system,” remarked Hassabis, answering a question about DeepMind’s progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, research is progressing fast, with some huge cash and compute investments propelling it forward. Some expect it to eclipse human intelligence in the next half-decade.

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, made the artificial intelligence vs. cat IQ comparison in a public discussion with Tony Blair, one of Britain’s ex-Prime Ministers. The talk was part of the Future of Britain Conference 2024, organized by the Institute for Global Change.

Hassabis highlights that his work is not focused on AI but on AGI. It gives us more perspective on how he is looking at the computer vs cat comparison. Yes, a contemporary AI can sometimes write, paint, or make music in a convincingly human-like fashion, but an ordinary house cat has a lot more general intelligence. “At the moment, we’re far from Human-level intelligence across the board,” admitted Hassabis. “But in certain areas like games playing [AI is] better than the best people in the world.”

After creating the world’s first self-organizing drone flock, researchers at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary have now also demonstrated the first large-scale autonomous drone traffic solution. This fascinating new system is capable of far more than what could be executed with human pilots.

The staff of the Department of Biological Physics at Eötvös University has been working on group robotics and drone swarms since 2009. In 2014, they created the world’s first autonomous quadcopter flock consisting of at least ten units. The research group has now reached a new milestone by publishing the dense autonomous traffic of one hundred drones in the journal Swarm Intelligence.

Continue reading “Self-organizing drone flock demonstrates safe traffic solution for smart cities of the future” »

The AI technologies developed will allow autonomous systems, such as drones and self-driving cars, to navigate unexpected variables.

A machine-learning framework predicts when a complex system, such as an ecosystem or a power grid, will undergo a critical transition.

The world is full of sudden changes that can be hard to forecast ahead of time.

Read & tell me what you think 🙂

There is a rift between near and long-term perspectives on AI safety – one that has stirred controversy. Longtermists argue that we need to prioritise the well-being of people far into the future, perhaps at the expense of people alive today. But their critics have accused the Longtermists of obsessing on Terminator-style scenarios in concert with Big Tech to distract regulators from more pressing issues like data privacy. In this essay, Mark Bailey and Susan Schneider argue that we shouldn’t be fighting about the Terminator, we should be focusing on the harm to the mind itself – to our very freedom to think.

There has been a growing debate between near and long-term perspectives on AI safety – one that has stirred controversy. “Longtermists” have been accused of being co-opted by Big Tech and fixating on science fiction-like Terminator-style scenarios to distract regulators from the real, more near-term, issues, such as algorithmic bias and data privacy.

Continue reading “The real long-term dangers of AI” »

Artificial intelligence holds huge promise in health care. But it also faces massive barriers.

Gerard Johnstone and Akela Cooper’s 2022 sci-fi horror M3GAN (streaming now on Peacock) follows the tragic childhood of Cady, a young girl whose parents are killed in a car accident. In the aftermath, Cady goes to live with her Aunt Gemma, a roboticist who has invented the Model 3 Generative Android, M3GAN for short.

M3GAN is a child-sized anthropomorphic robot with human level intelligence, designed to be the perfect friend. M3GAN’s primary directive is to keep Cady safe and happy, and it’s a job she executes with deadly seriousness. In the real world, scientists in China recently crafted a less deadly but equally spine-tingling intelligent robot controlled not by a person or by programming, but by a spheroid blob of human brain tissue.

Author: Kiyana Rahimian.

“Pick all the cells with traffic lights”… Often, when opening a website, users have to verify that they’re not automated software by completing a test where they select certain parts of a picture. Such tests are types of Automated Turing tests. The Turing test, developed by Alan Turing, helps determine if technology can replicate human intelligence. As of now, even though engineering has sought to replicate brain-like functions through developing artificial intelligence (AI), there’s been no success in replicating human brain functions. Although the human brain processes basic information, like numbers, at slower rates than machines, they are better able to process complex information. Intuitive reasoning gives human brains the means to perform considerably better with little, diverse, and/or incomplete information.⁸ Compared to silicon-based computers, human brains are better at data storage and are way more energy efficient.

Everything you need to know about the that will soon enter the workforce — or are in it already.