Lifeboat Foundation

Google’s DeepMind unit, which is working to develop super-intelligent computers, has created a system for machine-generated speech that it says outperforms existing technology by 50 percent.

U.K.-based DeepMind, which Google acquired for about 400 million pounds ($533 million) in 2014, developed an artificial intelligence called WaveNet that can mimic human speech by learning how to form the individual sound waves a human voice creates, it said in a blog post Friday. In blind tests for U.S. English and Mandarin Chinese, human listeners found WaveNet-generated speech sounded more natural than that created with any of Google’s existing text-to-speech programs, which are based on different technologies. WaveNet still underperformed recordings of actual human speech.

Elon Musk blew our minds when he suggested that it’s highly likely we’re all living in a computer simulation. Seriously? Why would he think this, and how could we tell if it’s true?

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have shown for the first time that transistors fashioned out of carbon nanotubes are actually twice as efficient as regular silicon varieties. This comes after decades of research regarding how carbon nanotubes can be used to design the next generation of computers. Speaking about the breakthrough, recently published in the Science Advances journal, Michael Arnold, a member of the team, said:

Making carbon nanotube transistors that are better than silicon transistors is a big milestone. This achievement has been a dream of nanotechnology for the last 20 years.

Continue reading “Carbon Nanotube Transistors Twice As Efficient As Silicon, Study Shows” »

When this hits in 2017, we’re going to see more momentum around accelerating the adoption of a QC in mainstream devices across all areas of business and consumers. China has definitely accelerated the efforts around migrating the net to a Quantum secured net.

Nice.

“We’ve managed to put quantum-based technology that has been used in high profile science experiments into a package that might allow it to be used commercially.”

Random number generators are crucial to the encryption that protects our privacy and security when engaging in digital transactions such as buying products online or withdrawing cash from an ATM. For the first time, engineers have developed a fast random number generator based on a quantum mechanical process that could deliver the world’s most secure encryption keys in a package tiny enough to use in a mobile device.

Continue reading “New Quantum Chip Could Bring Highest Level of Encryption to Any Mobile Device” »

As I mentioned 4 months ago when an article came out stating that this type of concept of a scalable quantum chip was at least 15 years away was bunk; this is again one more example where contributors really need to do their homework and make sure they are speaking to the real folks on the frontlines of QC.

Quantum-based random number generators are now small enough that they could fit in mobile devices.

Imagine a five-year-old watching Mum talking to Siri, and Dad talking to Alexa, on a daily basis — what must she think of such interactions? Children nowadays witness computers that seem like they have a mind of their own — and even a personality with which to engage. It can be taken for granted that their perception of machines, and thus of the world itself, differs a lot from our own.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most promising areas of tech today, if not even the one that is likely to entail the most striking changes in our way of living, the way our economy works and how society functions. Thanks to enormous amounts of data, coupled with compute power to analyze it, technology companies are making strides in AI that resembles something of a gold rush.

New approaches, including use of deep neural networks, have led to groundbreaking achievements in AI, some of which weren’t predicted to happen for another decade. Google defeating the world champion at the ancient game of Go is just one prominent example. Many more are to be expected, including advances in deep learning combined with reasoning and planning — or even emulating creativity and artwork.

A computer’s victory over a human go master this past March reminds us of the pending “singularity” — the rapidly approaching moment in time when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. Machines will learn, and we won’t be their teachers. Are we prepared for it? Can we prepare for it?

We’d better. Many futurists declare it inevitable, probably within a generation, maybe less. Shukan Shincho magazine discusses some hypothetical implications in its Aug. 25 edition. Even the least of them are shocking. For example, in 2045 a computer with the combined intellectual power of the entire human race would cost $100. In short, it’ll be no big deal. What will be a big deal? Should we shudder at the thought, or rejoice?

Francis Bacon (1561−1626) is generally acknowledged as the grandfather of modern science. “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed,” he wrote. His fictional “New Atlantis” was a utopia ruled by scientists who, having admitted their ignorance and purged themselves of illusory knowledge, experimented, observed and slowly built up from scratch an ever-expanding store of “true” knowledge — armed with which they “commanded” nature to outgrow her destructive caprices and ease mankind’s lot.

Continue reading “Building a stairway to the singularity” »

Written by ROLAND BENEDIKTER, KATJA SIEPMANN, ALEXANDER REYMANN

ABSTRACT. This article discusses the philosophical implications and potential social consequences of two experimental – and at the present moment still widely speculative – topics at the intersection between scientific and medical advances, the human body, the human mind, and the globalized health care sector. Head-Transplanting is a chirurgical endeavor envisaged by the HEAVEN project announced to be practically implemented around 2017 and to be available for routine-use around the mid-2020s by a group of internationally as prominent as disputed transplant surgeons. Mind-Uploading is a procedure currently in the first stages of development to create artificial representations of the human brain and its processes in computers and on the internet.