Lifeboat Foundation

Humanity could be on the verge of an unprecedented merging of human biology with advanced technology, fusing our thoughts and knowledge directly with the cloud in real-time – and this incredible turning point may be just decades away, scientists say.

In a new research paper exploring what they call the ‘human brain/cloud interface’, scientists explain the technological underpinnings of what such a future system might be, and also address the barriers we’ll need to address before this sci-fi dream becomes reality.

At its core, the brain/cloud interface (B/CI) is likely to be made possible by imminent advances in the field of nanorobotics, proposes the team led by senior author and nanotechnology researcher Robert Freitas Jr from the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing in California.

Continue reading “We Are Closer Than Ever to Merging Human Brains With The Cloud” »

News-Medical speaks to David Dambman from Biosero about the emerging importance of automation in scientific research and how a centralized scheduling software is an essential first step for any laboratory looking to automate their workflow.

Why has automation become so critical to advancing scientific research?

There are many reasons why automation is useful in scientific research. First and foremost, automation is about being able to walk away from your experiments and spend time analyzing your results, rather than carrying out mundane tasks such as transferring liquids from one plate to another.

Continue reading “Automation in Scientific Research – Step 1: Invest in Scheduling Software” »

Training bigger neural networks can be challenging when faced with accelerator memory limits. The size of the datasets being used by machine learning models is very large nowadays. For example, a standard image classification datasets like hashtagged Instagram contains millions of images. With the increasing quality of the images, the memory required will also increase. Today, the memory available on NVIDIA GPUs is only 32 GB.

Therefore, there needs to be a tradeoff between memory allocated for the features in a model and how the network gets activated. It is only understandable why the accelerator memory limit needs to be breached.

Continue reading “Reaching Into The Parallel Universe With Intel’s Xeon Processor” »

Intel and others are investing $13 million in Untether AI, a startup that’s working on a novel type of chip for artificial intelligence that promises to perform neural-network calculations at warp speed.

Speedup: Untether, based in Toronto, Canada, has already developed a prototype device that transfers data between different parts of the chip 1,000 times more quickly than a conventional AI chip. That’s an impressive achievement, but it should be treated cautiously since the prototype is far larger than an actual chip—and because other factors will contribute to the overall performance of the finished device.

Bottleneck: One of the key challenges with modern chips is shuttling data from memory to the units used to perform logical operations. This is especially problematic as the amount of data that chips need to process increases, as is the case with AI applications such as face or voice recognition. Untether uses what’s known as “near-memory computing” to reduce the physical distance between memory and the processing tasks, which speeds up data transfer and lowers power consumption.

Continue reading “Intel buys into an AI chip that can transfer data 1,000 times faster” »

Qualcomm said it plans to begin testing its new Cloud AI 100 chip with partners such as Microsoft Corp later this year, with mass production likely to begin in 2020.

Qualcomm’s new chip is designed for what artificial intelligence researchers call “inference” – the process of using an AI algorithm that has been “trained” with massive amounts of data in order to, for example, translate audio into text-based requests.

Analysts believe chips for speeding up inference will be the largest part of the AI chip market.

Continue reading “Qualcomm Aims for Quantum AI Chips” »

Step aside, reindeer — robot dogs are hauling this load.

In an ominous video titled “Mush, Spot Mush!” posted on YouTube Tuesday, robot maker Boston Dynamics showed off the sheer strength of its SpotMini quadripedal robot dog. The clip shows 10 specialized Spotmini derivatives called Spotpower hauling a box truck across a parking lot — and at a one degree incline.

Continue reading “Watch a Pack of Boston Dynamics’ Creepy Robot Dogs Pull a Truck” »

It’s like Ultimate Frisbee meets Quidditch.

With funding from NASA, researchers are exploring how to control inflatable robots for future space missions.

David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is best known for his work on consciousness, including his formulation of the “hard problem” of consciousness; Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of a dozen books, including Consciousness Explained, and, most recently, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds; John Brockman, moderator, is a cultural impresario whose career has encompassed the avant-garde art world, science, books, software, and the Internet. He is the author of By The Late John Brockman and The Third Culture; editor of the Edge Annual Question book series, and Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI.

[ED. NOTE: On Saturday, March 9th, more than 1200 people jammed into Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for a conversation between two of our greatest philosophers, David Chalmers and Daniel C. Dennett: “Is Superintelligence Impossible?” the next event in Edge’s ongoing “Possible Minds Project.” Watch the video, listen to the EdgeCast, read the transcript. Thanks to physicist, artist, author, and Edgie Janna Levin, Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works, who presented the event with the support of Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative. —JB]

Somebody said that the philosopher is the one who says, “We know it’s possible in practice, we’re trying to figure out if it’s possible in principle.” Unfortunately, philosophers sometimes spend too much time worrying about logical possibilities that are importantly negligible in every other regard. So, let me go on the record as saying, yes, I think that conscious AI is possible because, after all, what are we? We’re conscious. We’re robots made of robots made of robots. We’re actual. In principle, you could make us out of other materials. Some of your best friends in the future could be robots. Possible in principle, absolutely no secret ingredients, but we’re not going to see it. We’re not going to see it for various reasons. One is, if you want a conscious agent, we’ve got plenty of them around and they’re quite wonderful, whereas the ones that we would make would be not so wonderful. —Daniel C. Dennett

Continue reading “Is Superintelligence Impossible?” »