Lifeboat Foundation

Using cannabis may cause changes in the human body’s epigenome, a study of over 1,000 adults suggests. The epigenome functions like a set of switches, activating or deactivating genes to change how our bodies function.

“We observed associations between cumulative marijuana use and multiple epigenetic markers across time,” says Lifang Hou, a preventative medical doctor and epidemiologist from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Cannabis is a commonly used substance in the United States, with 49 percent of people trying it at least once, Hou and a team of US researchers report in their published paper. Some US states and other countries have made it legal, but we still don’t fully understand its effects on our health.

And the right to freedom of thought enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is similarly open to interpretation. It was historically put in place to protect freedoms surrounding beliefs, religion, and speech. But that could change, says Ienca. “Rights are not static entities,” he says.

He is among the ethicists and legal scholars investigating the importance of “neuro rights”—the subset of human rights concerned with the protection of the human brain and mind. Some are currently exploring whether neuro rights could be recognized within established human rights, or whether we need new laws.

Her case highlights why we need to enshrine neuro rights in law.

Continue reading “A brain implant changed her life. Then it was removed against her will” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tU_0jU0mMLw

In recent years, we’ve seen neurotechnologies move from research labs to real-world use. Schools have used some devices to monitor the brain activity of children to tell when they are paying attention. Police forces are using others to work out whether someone is guilty of a crime. And employers use them to keep workers awake and productive.

These technologies hold the remarkable promise of giving us all-new insight into our own minds. But our brain data is precious, and letting it fall into the wrong hands could be dangerous, Farahany argues in her new book, The Battle for Your Brain. I chatted with her about some of her concerns.

Continue reading “Tech that aims to read your mind and probe your memories is already here” »

This segment originally aired on July 10, 2023.
Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley reports on lawsuits against OpenAI regarding copyright law violations including Sarah Silverman and others.

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Continue reading “OpenAI: Sarah Silverman and others launch lawsuits over alleged copyright violation concerns” »

Flying cars are becoming closer to reality than what sci-fi movies may lead you to believe. Another electric flying car “took flight” this week in the US. CEO Doron Merdinger of Miami-based Doroni Aerospace successfully piloted a two-seater personal vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that fits in your garage.

Electric flying cars are all of a sudden taking the US by storm. Last month, California-based Alef Aeronautics revealed its 100% electric flying car, “Model A,” the first of its kind to receive legal approval to fly from the US government.

Continue reading “Flying electric car takes off in the US as CEO discusses industry’s future [Video]” »

Elon Musk will not sit aside while Meta’s new killer app Threads amasses tens of millions of users. A potential legal battle looms.

Twitter is considering sueing Meta over “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property,” a leaked letter by Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro reveals.

Continue reading “Twitter vs. Meta battle heats up as Musk prepares to sue” »

The Titan’s lack of credentials was noted in legal waivers OceanGate asked customers to sign before voyages. The company reportedly warned that its newest submersible had “not been approved or certified by any regulatory body” and that a dive “could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death.”

You do realize carbon fiber is very weak with compression. Tensile strength is superior to the compression strength. No one is talking about regulation for some reason, which disturbs me. Many things are not on the market because of regulations, like FAA regulations. However some geniuses make a sub out of carbon fiber and other cheap materials, they make people sign waivers telling occupants they are going in an unregulated craft, and people act suprised that something went wrong. Something was going to go wrong, the sub was made of carbon fiber. I don’t even know how the fibers were aligned.

This paper examines the compressive strength data of a recent experimental study [Smith FC. The effect of constituents’ properties on the mechanical performance of fibre-reinforced plastics. PhD thesis. Centre for Composite Materials, Imperial College, April 1998] concerned with the evaluation of a range of engineering properties of continuous carbon fibre/epoxy composites subjected to static tensile and compressive loading. A plastic fibre kinking analysis [Budiansky B. Micromechanics. Comput Struct 1983;16:3–12] and a linear softening cohesive zone model (CZM) [Soutis C. Compressive failure of notched carbon fibre–epoxy panels. PhD thesis. Cambridge University Engineering Department, UK, 1989; Soutis C, Fleck NA, Smith PA.

The first “AI incident” almost caused global nuclear war. More recent AI-enabled malfunctions, errors, fraud, and scams include deepfakes used to influence politics, bad health information from chatbots, and self-driving vehicles that are endangering pedestrians.

The worst offenders, according to security company Surfshark, are Tesla, Facebook, and OpenAI, with 24.5% of all known AI incidents so far.

In 1983, an automated system in the Soviet Union thought it detected incoming nuclear missiles from the United States, almost leading to global conflict. That’s the first incident in Surfshark’s report (though it’s debatable whether an automated system from the 1980s counts specifically as artificial intelligence). In the most recent incident, the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) was forced to shut down Tessa, its chatbot, after Tessa gave dangerous advice to people seeking help for eating disorders. Other recent incidents include a self-driving Tesla failing to notice a pedestrian and then breaking the law by not yielding to a person in a crosswalk, and a Jefferson Parish resident being wrongfully arrested by Louisiana police after a facial recognition system developed by Clearview AI allegedly mistook him for another individual.

It’s complicated. So we reached out to legal experts for some definitive answers.