Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Year: 2018

A new model can detect abnormalities in x-rays better than radiologists—in some parts of the body, anyway.

The results: Stanford researchers trained a convolutional neural network on a data set of 40,895 images from 14,982 studies. The paper documents how the algorithm detected abnormalities (like fractures, or bone degeneration) better than radiologists in finger and wrist radiographs. However, radiologists were still better at spotting issues in elbows, forearms, hands, upper arms, and shoulders.

The background: Radiologists keep getting put up against AI, and they usually don’t fare even as well as this. Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent AI researcher, told the New Yorker that advances in AI mean that medical schools “should stop training radiologists now.”

Read more

Treating the diseases of ageing requires rethinking of our approach to treating disease. Rather than a “whack-a-mole” strategy going after individual conditions, a concerted medical effort against ageing as a whole is in order.

Aging is something that we all share, rich or poor; it is something that happens to us all, and we are taught from a young age that it is inevitable. However, some scientists believe that aging is amenable to medical intervention and that such interventions could be the solution to preventing or reversing age-related diseases.

Academics are currently debating whether aging is natural or a pathological disease that we can treat.

In fact, there is now pressure from many academics to classify aging itself as a disease; indeed, doing so could potentially improve funding for aging research and help to speed up progress in finding solutions to age-related diseases.[1] The debate continues, but does it really matter if aging is classified as a disease, or is it largely a matter of semantics?

Read more

That failure, and another one last year involving another type of Long March rocket, slowed China’s space efforts. Officials had hoped to launch around 30 rockets of one type or another in 2017 but only managed 18 (there were 29 launches in America and another 20 of Russian ones—see chart). But they promise to bounce back in 2018, with 40-or-so lift-offs planned this year. These will probably include a third outing for the Long March 5—assuming its flaws can be fixed in time—and missions that will greatly expand the number of satellites serving BeiDou, China’s home-grown satellite navigation system.

NATTY yellow carts whizz tourists around Wenchang space port, a sprawling launch site on the tropical island of Hainan. The brisk tour passes beneath an enormous poster of Xi Jinping, China’s president, then disgorges passengers for photographs not far from a skeletal launch tower. Back at the visitor centre there is a small exhibition featuring space suits, a model moon-rover and the charred husk of a re-entry capsule that brought Chinese astronauts back from orbit. A gift shop at the exit sells plastic rockets, branded bottle openers and cuddly alien mascots.

The base in a township of Wenchang city is the newest of China’s four space-launch facilities. It is also by far the easiest to visit—thanks in part to the enthusiasm of officials in Hainan, a haven for tourists and rich retirees. Wenchang’s local government has adopted a logo for the city reminiscent of Starfleet badges in “Star Trek”. It is building a space-themed tourist village near the launch site, with attractions that include a field of vegetables grown from seeds that have been carried in spaceships.

Upgrade your inbox.

Read more

Earth-i, a mapping service based in England, has launched a prototype of the world’s first full-colour, full-motion video satellite constellation.

worlds first colour video from satellites

British company Earth-i has successfully launched a prototype of its upcoming satellite constellation into orbit. The new network – known as Vivid-i – will be the first of its kind to provide full-colour motion video and the first European-owned constellation able to provide both video and still images.

Read more

One day, they may yet turn against us, but for now, they’re still our allies: A drone rescued two teenage swimmers in distress off the coast of New South Wales in Australia, according to a new report. The drone spotted two teenagers in trouble around a half-a-mile out from shore, and then dropped a flotation device it carries for the purpose to give them something to hang on to (via Verge).

This drone was actually not supposed to be saving anyone just yet – it was engaged in a pilot project to test its viability. But the Sydney Morning Herald reports that when a call came through about the swimmers in trouble, the drone happened to be in the Ari and nearby, positioned well to respond.

The drone’s pilot, a decorated veteran lifeguard for New South Wales, was able to Gert out to the swimmers’ position, and drop the pod in a minute or two, which is at least a few minutes less than it would’ve taken to respond directly with actual flesh and blood lifeguards.

Read more

Has AI made significant progress over the years towards artificial general intelligence?

This decades-old debate could end by the new project from the Stanford 100 Year Study on AI, called The AI Index. If their goal is achieved.

Off to a good start, the AI Index’s first report includes many useful visualisations of the data they are collecting, such as the following outline of AI breakthroughs since 1980.

Read more