Lifeboat Foundation

According to statistical analysis, Japanese women, in particular, may live to be 122 in the coming decades.

Whether or not there is a limit to the human lifespan has been a subject of debate for millennia. However, estimates indicate that the maximum lifespan has increased throughout recorded history. For instance, the late Bronze Age’s Hebrews regarded 80 years as the maximum human length, then 1,000 years later, the Romans considered it to be 100 years.

Skiping to the present, Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, currently holds the world record for the oldest person. Despite advances in medical science, no one has been able to break this record so far.

Continue reading “Scientists predict human lifespan record could be broken by 2060” »

It is as weird as Saudi Arabia giving an AI citizenship.

Italy is the first Western country to prohibit the advanced chatbot ChatGPT according to authorities. The Italian data protection authorities expressed privacy concerns about the model, which was developed by the US start-up OpenAI and is supported by Microsoft.

Authorities also accused OpenAI of failing to verify the age of its ChatGPT users and of failing to enforce laws prohibiting users over the age of 13. Given their relative lack of development, these young users may be exposed to “unsuitable answers” from the chatbot, according to officials.

Continue reading “ChatGPT is banned by Italian regulators in the country” »

It’s a companion app. It’s a sidebar. It’s definitely not trying to replace mobile Safari, at least not yet.

When the team at The Browser Company set out at the beginning of this year to build a mobile web browser, CEO Josh Miller made a rule: we are not allowed to build a default mobile browser.

It won’t replace your default browser, but it might make you want to.

One million years ago. An ancient hominid cradles a large stone—black and glassy—in the palm of his hand, feeling for creases in the rock with his fingertips. In the other hand he grasps the antler of a deer, the bone’s blunt base pointing forward. He strikes the stone with the antler, and it splits along an invisible fracture. He flips it over and strikes again. Another flake of stone falls away. Examining the contours of the rock he continues to flip and strike—sometimes with force, other times with a gentle tap. Gradually, a useful and deadly object emerges from the formless stone. It is a bifaced handaxe, the most important tool that accompanied our ancestors out of Africa.

Movies and television usually depict embodied AI as a malevolent robot. Terror sells. But without access to the physical world and a tactile curiosity, AI will never be fully creative.

Bard’s getting a tune-up.

“The AI Dilemma“
Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin.
Center for Humane Technology.
Your Undivided Attention Podcast.

00:00 AI responsibility.
03:58 First contact: Social media.
05:32 Second contact: AI
07:05 ChatGPT and Large Language Models (LLMs)
10:10 Language models.
14:38 Emergence.
17:40 Double exponential.
20:47 Democratization.
24:22 Snapchat.
26:35 AI safety gap.
31:10 The Day After.
35:32 China.
36:55 Next steps.

Continue reading “The AI Dilemma — Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin” »

A recent open letter signed by tech giants, including Elon Musk, has called for a halt in AI development, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.” But could this pause lead to a more dangerous outcome? The AI landscape resembles the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, where cooperation yields the best results, but betrayal tempts players to seek personal gain.

If OpenAI pauses work on ChatGPT, will others follow, or will they capitalize on the opportunity to surpass OpenAI? This is particularly worrisome given the strategic importance of AI in global affairs and the potential for less transparent actors to monopolize AI advancements.

Instead of halting development, OpenAI should continue its work while advocating for responsible and ethical AI practices. By acting as a role model, implementing safety measures, and collaborating with the global AI community to establish ethical guidelines, OpenAI can help ensure that AI technology benefits humanity rather than becoming a tool for exploitation and harm.

Shocking output from Bing’s new chatbot has been lighting up social media and the tech press. Testy, giddy, defensive, scolding, confident, neurotic, charming, pompous—the bot has been screenshotted and transcribed in all these modes. And, at least once, it proclaimed eternal love in a storm of emojis.

What makes all this so newsworthy and tweetworthy is how human the dialog can seem. The bot recalls and discusses prior conversations with other people, just like we do. It gets annoyed at things that would bug anyone, like people demanding to learn secrets or prying into subjects that have been clearly flagged as off-limits. It also sometimes self-identifies as “Sydney” (the project’s internal codename at Microsoft). Sydney can swing from surly to gloomy to effusive in a few swift sentences—but we’ve all known people who are at least as moody.

No AI researcher of substance has suggested that Sydney is within light years of being sentient. But transcripts like this unabridged readout of a two-hour interaction with Kevin Roose of The New York Times, or multiple quotes in this haunting Stratechery piece, show Sydney spouting forth with the fluency, nuance, tone, and apparent emotional presence of a clever, sensitive person.

Computers have been digital for half a century. Why would anyone want to resurrect the clunkers of yesteryear?