Lifeboat Foundation

Will the wagers of a few entrepreneurs yield a golden age in space exploration?

An international team of researchers recently unveiled an algorithm that can be scaled to simulate the human brain’s entire neural network. But there’s a slight catch.

Researchers find machine learning can classify heart anatomy on an ultrasound scan faster, more accurately and more efficiently than a human.

On the Right Track

In the final analysis, while IBM clearly has more work to do, it’s on the right track. Its investments in cloud and AI are already paying off, while blockchain and quantum computing bets are looking promising.

Furthermore, while IBM’s progress overall is clearly a massive team effort, Big Blue’s execution is due in large part to Rometty’s six years of leadership.

Continue reading “IBM Bets Company On Exponential Innovation In AI, Blockchain, And Quantum Computing” »

Biotech lobbyists and companies are trying to get the Trump administration to hand regulation of genetically edited animals over to the USDA, which has more lenient rules than the FDA, which currently regulates animals.

Low-fat pigs? Chickens with cancer-fighting eggs?

Intelligent Machines

AI tackles the Vatican’s secrets

Even church archivists don’t know what mysteries lie hidden in the Vatican Secret Archives, since many of its documents have never been transcribed. A machine-vision system for medieval text is about to change that.

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The renowned physicist Dr. Richard Feynman once said: “What I cannot create, I do not understand. Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.”

An increasingly influential subfield of neuroscience has taken Feynman’s words to heart. To theoretical neuroscientists, the key to understanding how intelligence works is to recreate it inside a computer. Neuron by neuron, these whizzes hope to reconstruct the neural processes that lead to a thought, a memory, or a feeling.

With a digital brain in place, scientists can test out current theories of cognition or explore the parameters that lead to a malfunctioning mind. As philosopher Dr. Nick Bostrom at the University of Oxford argues, simulating the human mind is perhaps one of the most promising (if laborious) ways to recreate—and surpass—human-level ingenuity.

Continue reading “Powerful New Algorithm Is a Big Step Towards Whole-Brain Simulation” »

Pharma and biotech companies spend billions of dollars each year to acquire genomic data. Scientists need large genomic datasets to identify causes of disease and develop cures. However, growth of the genomic data market is hindered by small data quantities, data fragmentation, lack of data standardization and slow data acquisition.

Nebula Genomics will leverage blockchain technology to eliminate the middleman and empower people to own their personal genomic data. This will effectively lower sequencing costs and enhance data privacy, resulting in growth of genomic data. Our open protocol will leverage the genomic data growth by enabling data buyers to efficiently aggregate standardized data from many individuals and genomic databanks.

Perfect vision is great. But like any advantage it comes with limitations. Those with ease don’t develop the same unique senses and strengths as someone who must overcome obstacles, people like Lana Awad, a neurotech engineer at CTRL-labs in New York, who diagnosed her own degenerative eye disease with a high school science textbook as a teen in Syria and went on to teach at Harvard University.

Though they see themselves as clear leaders, visionaries with all the obvious advantages—like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, for example—can be blind in their way, lacking the context needed to guide if they don’t recognize their counterintuitive limitations. This is problematic for humanity because we’re all relying on them to create the tools that increasingly rule every aspect of our lives. The internet is just the start.

Tools that will meld mind and machine are already a reality. Neurotech is a huge business with applications being developed for gaming, the military, medicine, social media, and much more to come. Neurotech Report projected in 2016 that the $7.6 billion market could reach $12 billion by 2020. Wired magazine called 2017, “a coming-out year for the brain machine interface (BMI).”

Continue reading “Lana Awad is engineering the neuro-tech that will transform humanity” »