Team OB just won the Robotics for Good Award in Dubai. Over 1,600 technologies for good applied and after competing against the top 10 best assistive technologies the judges chose our bionic hands! Now we have the funding to push our hands through the final stages of medical testing and finally get them to everyone who needs one. 
A new in-depth read on #transhumanism and life extension by one of the leading and oldest progressive magazines in America:
Only Human Meet the hackers trying to solve the problem of death.
By Anna Wiener
Join the discussion at TranshumanistForums.com!
All words are used with permission of Raymond Kurzweil and the Singularity is Near.
Continue reading “The Six Epochs from The Singularity is Near” »
Could bionic eyes restore sight to the blind and give the U.S. military super sight?
Bionic implanted eyeballs, “Star Trek”-style visors, telescopic contact lenses … these are just a few of the many exciting projects underway to both restore and provide enhanced sight.
Significant strides have been made in tech that will restore and transform lives — replacing white canes, service animals, braille machines and more for the visually impaired.
Excellent article in Wired this morning. My novel “The Transhumanist Wager” quoted quite a bit to add context to some of Elon Musk’s statements: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elon-musk-humans-must-become-cyborgs #transhumanism
The Tesla and SpaceX founder warned that a future where AI is smarter than us will be ‘dangerous’ and we must all become cyborgs to survive.
A new story out on Engadget, emphasizing the need to make government treat science and technology as a primary focus:
Zoltan Istvan didn’t have much of a chance at being president, but that didn’t stop him from campaigning as the Transhumanist Party’s candidate to promote his pro-technology and science positions. Now, he’s setting his sights a bit lower, and with a different party. Istvan announced this morning that he plans to run for governor of California in 2018 under the Libertarian Party.
“We need leadership that is willing to use radical science, technology, and innovation—what California is famous for—to benefit us all,” he wrote in a Newsweek article. “We need someone with the nerve to risk the tremendous possibilities to save the environment through bioengineering, to end cancer by seeking a vaccine or a gene-editing solution for it, to embrace startups that will take California from the world’s 7th largest economy to maybe even the largest economy—bigger than the rest of America altogether.”
Continue reading “Transhumanist politician wants to run for governor of California” »
Plants take in carbon dioxide, water, and sunshine to create a sugary fuel. Now researchers have done the same, but even better.
A recent study in Science describes the system, named Bionic Leaf 2.0. In the “leaf,” solar energy splits up a water molecule, and bacteria turn hydrogen and carbon dioxide into liquid fuel, mainly isopropanol. The fuel could possibly be used to power a car’s engine or motor in the future.
The researchers, led by Daniel Nocera and Pamela Silver from Harvard University, have made advancements on their original Bionic Leaf, released last year. The system had some problems, mainly with the metal catalyst that helped the reaction. In the first edition, the catalyst also set off a reaction that attacked the bacteria’s DNA.
Continue reading “Bionic Leaf Is 10 Times Better At Photosynthesis Than Real Plants” »
Let’s just go ahead and address the question on everyone’s mind: will AI kill us? What is the negative potential of transhuman superintelligence? Once its cognitive power surpasses our own, will it give us a leg-up in ‘the singularity’, or will it look at our collective track record of harming our own species, other species, the world that gave us life, etc., and exterminate us like pests? AI expert Ben Goertzel believes we’ve been at this point of uncertainty many times before in our evolution. When we stepped out of our caves, it was a risk – no one knew it would lead to cities and space flight. When we spoke the first word, took up agriculture, invented the printing press, flicked the internet on-switch – all of these things could have led to our demise, and in some sense, our eventual demise can be traced all the way back to the day that ancient human learnt how to make fire. Progress helps us, until the day it kills us. That said, fear of negative potential cannot stop us from attempting forward motion – and by now, says Goertzel, it’s too late anyway. Even if the U.S. decided to pull the plug on superhuman intelligence research, China would keep at it. Even if China pulled out, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Nigeria would march on. We know there are massive benefits – both humanitarian and corporate – and we have latched to the idea. “The way we got to this point as a species and a culture has been to keep doing amazing new things that we didn’t fully understand,” says Goertzel, and for better or worse, “that’s what we’re going to keep on doing.” Ben Goertzel’s most recent book is AGI Revolution: An Inside View of the Rise of Artificial General Intelligence.
Ben Goertzel’s most recent book is AGI Revolution: An Inside View of the Rise of Artificial General Intelligence.
