Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: neuroscience – Page 999

A new study found that higher concentrations of NAA (N-acetyl aspartate) in two areas of the brain were associated with better performance on verbal and spatial tests. NAA is a byproduct of glucose metabolism and an indicator of brain health. (credit: Julie McMahon and Erick Paul)

A new study helps explain how brain structure and chemistry relate to “fluid intelligence” — the ability to adapt to new situations and solve problems one has never encountered before.

The study, reported in an open-access paper in the journal NeuroImage, observed two facets of fluid intelligence*:

Read more

If you think your mind is the only safe place left for all your secrets, think again, because scientists are making real steps towards reading your thoughts and putting them on a screen for everyone to see.

A team from the University of Oregon has built a system that can read people’s thoughts via brain scans, and reconstruct the faces they were visualising in their heads. As you’ll soon see, the results were pretty damn creepy.

“We can take someone’s memory — which is typically something internal and private — and we can pull it out from their brains,” one of the team, neuroscientist Brice Kuhl, told Brian Resnick at Vox.

Read more

My new Psychology Today story on BREXIT and the EU:

Scientific innovation doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes stable economies, free societies, and open-minded governments. The best environment for science to thrive in is that of collaborating groups incentivized to communicate and cooperate with one another. This is precisely what the European Union is.

And now, more than ever, the union of Europe is needed—because we are crossing over into the transhumanist age, where radical science and technology will engulf our lives and challenge our institutions. Robots will take 75% of the jobs in the next 25 years. CRISPR gene editing technology will allow us to augment our intelligence, perhaps doubling our IQ. Bionic organs will stave off death, allowing 200 year lifespans.

The science and technology coming in just the next two decades will cause unprecedented challenges to humanity. Most of the world will get chip implants— I have one —to assist with quick payments, emergency tracking, and to replace archaic accessories like car keys. We’ll also all use genetic therapies to cure cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and even aging. And robots will be ubiquitous—driving us everywhere, homeschooling our children, and maybe even becoming preferred sexual partners.

Continue reading “Scientific Innovation Needs the European Union to Succeed” | >

3D Printing never ceases to amaze me.

Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital used a 3D printout of a boy’s skull to prepare for the surgery that saved his life, STAT reports.

Bentley Yoder was born with encephalocele, a rare and often fatal defect in which the skull doesn’t form properly. In Bentley’s case, a significant portion of his brain grew outside of his skull, according to STAT. Despite being told he would not survive, his parents, Dustin and Sierra, continued to seek treatment that would give their son a future, eventually traveling from their home in Ohio to Boston Children’s Hospital.

Aided by 3D models of Bentley’s brain, Dr. John Meara performed the risky surgery on May 24 to save the 7-month-old’s life.

Continue reading “Boston Children’s Hospital uses 3D printing to help baby born with brain outside his skull” | >

Northwestern University’s Ken Forbus is closing the gap between humans and machines.

Using cognitive science theories, Forbus and his collaborators have developed a model that could give computers the ability to reason more like humans and even make moral decisions. Called the structure-mapping engine (SME), the new model is capable of analogical problem solving, including capturing the way humans spontaneously use analogies between situations to solve .

“In terms of thinking like humans, analogies are where it’s at,” said Forbus, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “Humans use relational statements fluidly to describe things, solve problems, indicate causality, and weigh moral dilemmas.”

Read more

Whether referred to as AI, machine learning, or cognitive systems, such as IBM Watson, a growing cadre of business leaders is embracing this opportunity head on.

That’s because their consumers are using cognitive applications on a daily basis — through their phones, in their cars, with their doctors, banks, schools, and more. All of this consumer engagement is creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. And thanks to IT infrastructures designed for cognitive workloads — that can understand, reason, and learn from all this data — organizations and entire industries are transforming and reaping the benefits.

What’s important to remember is that this sci-fi-turned-reality-show of cognitive computing cannot happen without the underlying systems on which the APIs, software, and services run. For this very reason, today’s leading CIOs are thinking differently about their IT infrastructure.

Read more

Because of a plethora of data from sensor networks, Internet of Things devices and big data resources combined with a dearth of data scientists to effectively mold that data, we are leaving many important applications – from intelligence to science and workforce management – on the table.

It is a situation the researchers at DARPA want to remedy with a new program called Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M). The goal of D3M is to develop algorithms and software to help overcome the data-science expertise gap by facilitating non-experts to construct complex empirical models through automation of large parts of the model-creation process. If successful, researchers using D3M tools will effectively have access to an army of “virtual data scientists,” DARPA stated.

+More on Network World: Feeling jammed? Not like this I bet+

This army of virtual data scientists is needed because some experts project deficits of 140,000 to 190,000 data scientists worldwide in 2016 alone, and increasing shortfalls in coming years. Also, because the process to build empirical models is so manual, their relative sophistication and value is often limited, DARPA stated.

Read more

OpenAI’s mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. We’re trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to share our plans and capabilities along the way. We’re also working to solidify our organization’s governance structure and will share our thoughts on that later this year.

Our metric

Defining a metric for intelligence is tricky, but we need one to measure our progress and focus our research. We’re thus building a living metric which measures how well an agent can achieve its user’s intended goal in a wide range of environments.

Read more

An article & short interview on implants with Sputnik:

The US Navy has held talks with “Transhumanist” and presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan, who told Radio Sputnik about the US military’s concerns.

Last week it emerged that US naval officers have held discussions with Zoltan Istvan of the Transhumanist political party, who is also running as a candidate for the US presidency.

He advocates fitting human beings with technology, including microchips, to boost brain power or enhance physical attributes.

Istvan himself has a microchip in his hand that he uses to give out business cards, send text messages, or start his car.

Read more