Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health

How will future AI systems make the most ethical choices for all of us?

Artificial intelligence is already making decisions in the fields of business, health care, and manufacturing. But AI algorithms generally still get help from people applying checks and making the final call.

What would happen if AI systems had to make independent decisions and ones that could mean life or death for humans?

Unlike humans, robots lack a moral conscience and follow the “ethics” programmed into them. At the same time, human morality is highly variable. The “right” thing to do in any situation will depend on who you ask.

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For the first time, researchers appear to have effectively treated a genetic disorder by directly injecting a CRISPR therapy into patients’ bloodstreams — overcoming one of the biggest hurdles to curing diseases with the gene editing technology.

The therapy appears to be astonishingly effective, editing nearly every cell in the liver to stop a disease-causing mutation.

The challenge: CRISPR gives us the ability to correct genetic mutations, and given that such mutations are responsible for more than 6,000 human diseases, the tech has the potential to dramatically improve human health.

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Walmart has launched an instant drone delivery system for customers living within a 50-mile radius of its headquarters in northern Arkansas.

The retail giant has partnered with drone company Zipline to launch the new system that will offer on-demand delivery for health and wellness and consumable items within 50 miles of the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Pea Ridge, according to a press release.

“It’s unbelievably exciting, we’ve been working towards this day for many many years,” Zipline’s CEO Liam O’Connor told CBS News.

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Scientists in South Africa are warning of a new strain of COVID-19. The variant, which is yet to be named, appears to have a high number of mutations, and there’s a possibility it could be able to evade our immune response and be even more transmissible.
At first, health officials thought they were seeing a small cluster of outbreaks in South Africa’s most populous province. But after examining specimens, they realized they were dealing with something far more serious — a new variant that could be the hardest yet to contain.
Officials are worried that the new variant, known simply as B.1.1.529, could quickly spread through the country and beyond. Only about 35% of adults in South Africa are fully vaccinated, and the rate of vaccination has slowed. And given the findings so far, even current vaccines may not be enough to stop it.
Several countries, including the UK and Germany have announced a ban on flights from South Africa and five neighboring countries as cases of the new variant have already appeared in Botswana and in Hong Kong. No matter where the variant started, it could quickly become a global problem.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk vended about$1.05 billion in stock on Tuesday evening, according to fiscal forms posted this week. The deals were listed in September to exercise options that were set to expire in 2022.Musk has vended a aggregate of$9.85 billion in Tesla stock this month including the$6.9 billion he vended the week ofNov.10 and another$1.9 billion he vended onNov. 15 andNov. 16. Some of the shares were vended in part to satisfy duty scores related to an exercise of stock options. Musk and his trust still hold further than 169 million shares in the company.

Tesla shares fell15.4 the week endedNov.12 marking the worst week for Tesla stock in 20 months after Musk began dealing shares. Shares of Tesla were over about 1 on Wednesday autumn. Musk ran an informal Twitter bean onNov.6 asking his further than 60 million Twitter followers whether or not he should vend 10 of his Tesla stock. The bean eventually ended with druggies telling Musk to vend.

But Musk had formerly indicated before this time he was likely to vend a huge block of his options in the fourth quarter. During an appearance at the Code Conference in September he said when his stock options expire at Tesla his borderline duty rate would be over 50.

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Health official are reportedly calling for steps to be taken to keep a potentially worrying new variant of the coronavirus out of the country.

Scientists in South Africa revealed Thursday that they had detected a new COVID-19 variant with “a very high number of mutations,” blamed for an “exponential” surge in infections there.

The number of daily infections in Africa’s hardest-hit country has increased tenfold since the start of the month.

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Learn More.

World Economic Forum.

The gigantic roof regulates heat and light, drawing on ancient Mayan design.

Learn more about the importance of sustainable buildings.

For years many of us in the real estate community have recognized the pressing need for change. In early 2020, the World Economic Forum’s Real Estate partners set out to prepare a report on the future of real estate.

At the time, we thought sustainability had to be our core focus; sustainability in the broader sense of its meaning – clearly highlighting the importance of making real estate more environmentally friendly, but also addressing questions such as wellness, community, and the inclusiveness of buildings and urban spaces. For example, inclusiveness doesn’t touch only on city planning, architecture and accessibility, but also on affordability. All these required a concerted response from the real estate sector, from urban entrepreneurs and from policy makers.

And then came COVID-19; a pandemic that has accelerated certain trends and affected many of the underlying demand drivers of the real estate industry. The convergence of multiple crises – public health, social, economic and planetary – has served to drive home the urgency of our efforts to identify a few simple imperatives and create a set of signposts that could help the industry ‘build back better’.

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Sooo… the inimitable Russell Brand posted a video a few weeks ago saying some amusing but largeuly inaccurate and misleading things about the Grace humanoid eldercare robot we’re making in our Awakening Health project (http://awakening.health).

Russell’s video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDD7M1OWBDg.

I recorded this video as a sort of response, to set the record straight a bit and explain why Russell is wrong about Grace and what is the actual nature of the Awakening Health project and what are the motivations behind it!

The three main points I make in the video (but with more color and detail, so do watch the video if you’re interested!!) are:

1) Grace is there to help nurses and nursing assistants not replace or obsolete them. When she becomes an AGI she still won’t obsolete the need for human connection and human care. Elderly folks need extra help and attention right now and Grace can help. My grandfather spent the last 5 years or so of his life in an eldercare facility; it was a pretty good one, but he was still lonely and confused a lot of the time and certainly could have benefited greatly from a robot like Grace.

2) Awakening Health is a JV of Hanson Robotics and: SingularityNET (http://singularitynet.io), whose purpose is to democratize & decentralize AI. It’s all about data sovereignty and putting the control over the AI in the hands of the humans who are training and using the AI. Not about centralized tech oppression of the elderly or anyone else as Russell alludes. Actually I think I see very closely eye to eye w/ Russell Brand on the dangers of Big Tech and Big Government, though I probably more clearly see the path to a solution than he does (hint: it has to do with blockchain-meets-beneficial-AGI).

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 16 (Reuters) — Elon Musk and Brazilian Communications Minister Fabio Faria met in Austin on Tuesday to discuss a potential partnership that would leverage SpaceX technology to bring Internet to rural schools and cut back on illegal deforestation.

In a statement, the Brazilian government said the two talked about how SpaceX and Starlink, a satellite broadband service offered by the firm, could help monitor the Amazon rainforest for illegal cutting, while also providing Internet connections to remote schools and health centers.

“We’re working to seal this important partnership between the Brazilian government and SpaceX,” Faria said, according to the statement. “Our objective is to bring Internet to rural areas and remote places, in addition to helping control fires and illegal deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.”

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