Lifeboat Foundation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=c0HLuvmWL7g

Pop music is littered with titles that relay how romantic yearning is sparked and experienced wordlessly with one person staring at the other. Animals don’t have it so good. “Most mammals generally interpret direct gaze as threatening or as a sign of dominance,” wrote researchers in Frontiers In Human Neuroscience.

People, however, usually take gazing with positive interpretations, such as affection, love and attraction. “A preference for direct gaze seems to be present at a very early age: Farroni et al. (2002) found that infants as young as 2 days old prefer to look at faces that gazed directly at them compared to faces with averted gaze.”

Continue reading “Robot-human eye contact helps conversation flow” »

Becoming immortal is one of mankind’s many quixotic notions that most people will relegate to the world of fantasy and science fiction. However, there is a subset of prominent scientists who believe that immortality is not only attainable, but it is something that will come to fruition in as little as 25 years. This idea is shared by men like Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil; Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk; and one of the most interesting presidential candidates outside of Donald Trump and Deez Nuts, Zoltan Istvan. All three men identify as trans-humanist, and for those who don’t know, trans-humanism is the idea that mankind will one day be able to transcend our biological limitations through the use of science and technology; not to mention, the movement has accumulated over 3 million supporters worldwide. So the question remains, with the multitude of prominent intellectuals who believe immortality is a tangible goal, just how will they go about achieving it? Well, the six answers below could possibly hold the key to everlasting life.

Number Six: Uploading Minds to Computers. Futurists believe that at some point in the near future we will be able to copy and scan all of the data that exists in our brains and upload the information into a computer. This will allow us to perpetually exist as incorporeal inhabitants of cyberspace. Of course, the idea of mind uploading is still purely science fiction, but if it ever becomes tangible, progeny could possibly live in a limitless world, that echoes notions expressed in the Matrix; minus the robot despots.

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The year is 2021. You’re driving down the highway on your daily commute. You approach a car that’s stubbornly driving at the max speed limit. You decide to pass this overly law-abiding driver, except when you do, you discover there’s no one in the front seat.

As we learned in the first part of our Future of Transportation series, self-driving cars will become publicly available in only a few short years. But due to their component parts, they will likely be far too expensive for the average consumer. Does this mark self-driving cars as an innovation that’s dead in the water? Who’s going to buy these things?

Most articles about autonomous vehicles (AVs) fail to mention that the initial target market for these vehicles won’t be the average consumer—it will be big business. Specifically, taxi and car sharing services. Why? Let’s look at the opportunity self-driving cars represent to one of the biggest taxi/rideshare services on the planet: Uber.

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YOU GOT A BOT PROBLEM — use DARPA’s BOT Killer”

DARPA shared their method of eliminating “bots.

Bots are a particularly pernicious presence on Twitter. While they can be used for good, (R.I.P., original @horse_ebooks), bots often power spam, scams and, most interestingly, very volatile clusters of political and cultural discussion on Twitter. Last year, DARPA confronted the problem and, according to MIT Tech Review, a new report shows just how researchers were able to identify and shutdown the malicious programs.

Continue reading “Here’s how DARPA trained researchers to kill bots” »

2 trends that is happening now especially with millennials: car ownership is no longer the desire; and home ownership is out of reach. And, this will impact at a minimum 4 industries — financial, real estate, auto, and insurance industries? Something that many in industry will need to get very creative in addressing to entice the future larger market consumers.

Young people no longer rush to buy their first car, meaning future cities need to think quickly about public transport and the emerging “share economy”, one of Australia’s leading urban futurists says.

Fewer people will “own a car”, “shared” driverless cars will be common and the “Uber” idea of sharing a ride will extend beyond an alternative to taxis, to ‘sharing’ homes, jobs, electric cars, hotel rooms and bikes by 2050.

Continue reading “Young Aussies thinking twice about car ownership: city futurist” »

This is definitely a major feat for global business and partnerships.

Within 10 years, earpieces will whisper nearly simultaneous translations—and help knit the world closer together.

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I must admit, the thought of something constantly reading my mind would get on my nerves after a while; just like a nagging spouse asking you constantly what are you thinking about. Ugh.

The team behind Siri have a new idea: a voice-controlled personal assistant linked to all your devices that can almost read your mind.

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Could an avg “Joe” from Wall Street actually beat AI? It sounds like it.

Investor and Forbes contributor John S. Tobey has a rather fatalistic view of artificial intelligence-based investing and trading regimes. In a recent article, the former professional investment manager who formerly operated a multi-manager fund of funds, likes three primary investment strategies – and they don’t generally include artificial intelligence and computer-based hedge fund decision processes.

Continue reading “Beat Artificial Intelligence In Markets By Investing In Individual Stocks?” »

I gave an interview for a queer people of interest blog and plugged the lifeboat foundation. Thought I would share the information here.

Phillipe Bojorquez is an engineer, activist, and artist: He has been described as “a futurist with a community minded bent.” He is a engineer, with experience at First Dibs, Samsung, Boxee, and Canary. He is a board member of The Lifeboat Foundation, an independent research group dedicated to helping humanity survive the risks posed by new technologies. His research areas include artificial intelligence, robotics, engineering, and philosophy. Bojorquez is a past board member of CRUX, NYC’s LGBT rock climbing organization, and an early contributor and organizer of Vegans in Vegas, a yearly gathering of activists and entrepreneurs at the forefront of nutrition and sustainability.

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