Lifeboat Foundation

There have been 4 research papers and technological advancements over the last 4 weeks that in combination drastically changed my outlook on the AGI timeline.

GPT-4 can teach itself to become better through self reflection, learn tools with minimal demonstrations, it can act as a central brain and outsource tasks to other models (HuggingGPT) and it can behave as an autonomous agent that can pursue a multi-step goal without human intervention (Auto-GPT). It is not an overstatement that there are already Sparks of AGI.

Continue reading “This Just Changed My Mind About AGI” »

To meet climate commitments, we need to use more batteries across many economic sectors. Battery analytics can help to remove risk and increase uptake.

Francis Lavigne-Theriault/iStock.

Recently, the satellite internet service has also helped an Emmy award-winning meteorologist and storm chaser Nick Stewart to live stream a tornado.

After lightning struck a tree in New Port Richey, Florida, a team of scientists from the University of South Florida (USF) discovered that this strike led to the formation of a new phosphorous material in a rock. This is the first time such a material has been found in solid form on Earth and could represent a member of a new mineral group.

“We have never seen this material occur naturally on Earth – minerals similar to it can be found in meteorites and space, but we’ve never seen this exact material anywhere,” said study lead author Matthew Pasek, a geoscientist at USF.

According to the researchers, high-energy events such as lightning can sometimes cause unique chemical reactions which, in this particular case, have led to the formation of a new material that seems to be transitional between space minerals and minerals found on Earth.

While a pandemic unleashed by a disease from the distant past sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, scientists warn that the risks, though low, are underappreciated. Chemical and radioactive waste that dates back to the Cold War, which has the potential to harm wildlife and disrupt ecosystems, may also be released during thaws.

Permafrost covers a fifth of the Northern Hemisphere, having underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia. It serves as a kind of time capsule, preserving — in addition to ancient viruses — the mummified remains of a number of extinct animals that scientist have been able to unearth and study in recent years, including two cave lion cubs and a woolly rhino.

Warmer temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the region’s permafrost — a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground — and potentially stirring viruses that, after lying dormant for tens of thousands of years, could endanger animal and human health.

Continue reading “Scientists have revived a ‘zombie’ virus that spent 48,500 years in permafrost” »

Can we connect human brains together? What are the limits of what we can do with our brain? Is BrainNet our future?
In science fiction movies, scientists’ brains are downloaded into computers and criminal brains are connected to the Internet. Interesting, but how does it work in real life?
Original title: The greedy brain.
Scientific journalist Rob van Hattum wondered what information we can truly get from our brain and came across an extraordinary scientific experience.
An experiment where the brains of two rats were directly connected: one rat was in the United States and the other rat was in Brazil. They could influence the brain of the other directly. Miguel Nicolelis is the Brazilian neurologist who conducted this experiment. In his book ‘Beyond Boundaries’ he describes his special experiences in detail and predicts that it should be possible to create a kind of BrainNet.
For Backlight, Rob van Hattum went to Sao Paulo and also visited all Dutch neuroscientists, looking for what the future holds for our brain. He connected his own brain to computers and let it completely be scanned, searching for the limits of reading out the brain.
Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2014.
© VPRO Backlight July 2014

On VPRO broadcast you will find nonfiction videos with English subtitles, French subtitles and Spanish subtitles, such as documentaries, short interviews and documentary series.
VPRO Documentary publishes one new subtitled documentary about current affairs, finance, sustainability, climate change or politics every week. We research subjects like politics, world economy, society and science with experts and try to grasp the essence of prominent trends and developments.

Continue reading “Connecting Brains: The BrainNet — VPRO documentary” »

Year 2022 😗😁

The Climate Foundation’s SeaForestation project has won a Milestone XPRIZE for carbon removal, from Elon Musk’s foundation.

According to the prize’s official site, the competition “is aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity — fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle”.

Continue reading “Seaweed project wins million dollar XPRIZE for carbon removal” »

Year 2022 Permaculture once a sorta outcast of the science world is now seen as the forefront of carbon capture for climate change 😀 😉

Since late 2021, WSP has been supporting the Climate Foundation in an exciting project to develop a prototype design for Marine Permaculture Arrays.

Remarkably, the storm has rapidly intensified six times.

Rapid intensification describes an uptick in winds of 35 mph or greater in 24 hours. Research has shown rapid intensification increasing in frequency in many ocean basins because of rising ocean temperatures linked to human-caused climate change.