Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience

Whether referred to as AI, machine learning, or cognitive systems, such as IBM Watson, a growing cadre of business leaders is embracing this opportunity head on.

That’s because their consumers are using cognitive applications on a daily basis — through their phones, in their cars, with their doctors, banks, schools, and more. All of this consumer engagement is creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. And thanks to IT infrastructures designed for cognitive workloads — that can understand, reason, and learn from all this data — organizations and entire industries are transforming and reaping the benefits.

What’s important to remember is that this sci-fi-turned-reality-show of cognitive computing cannot happen without the underlying systems on which the APIs, software, and services run. For this very reason, today’s leading CIOs are thinking differently about their IT infrastructure.

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Because of a plethora of data from sensor networks, Internet of Things devices and big data resources combined with a dearth of data scientists to effectively mold that data, we are leaving many important applications – from intelligence to science and workforce management – on the table.

It is a situation the researchers at DARPA want to remedy with a new program called Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M). The goal of D3M is to develop algorithms and software to help overcome the data-science expertise gap by facilitating non-experts to construct complex empirical models through automation of large parts of the model-creation process. If successful, researchers using D3M tools will effectively have access to an army of “virtual data scientists,” DARPA stated.

+More on Network World: Feeling jammed? Not like this I bet+

This army of virtual data scientists is needed because some experts project deficits of 140,000 to 190,000 data scientists worldwide in 2016 alone, and increasing shortfalls in coming years. Also, because the process to build empirical models is so manual, their relative sophistication and value is often limited, DARPA stated.

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OpenAI’s mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. We’re trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to share our plans and capabilities along the way. We’re also working to solidify our organization’s governance structure and will share our thoughts on that later this year.

Our metric

Defining a metric for intelligence is tricky, but we need one to measure our progress and focus our research. We’re thus building a living metric which measures how well an agent can achieve its user’s intended goal in a wide range of environments.

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An article & short interview on implants with Sputnik:

The US Navy has held talks with “Transhumanist” and presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan, who told Radio Sputnik about the US military’s concerns.

Last week it emerged that US naval officers have held discussions with Zoltan Istvan of the Transhumanist political party, who is also running as a candidate for the US presidency.

He advocates fitting human beings with technology, including microchips, to boost brain power or enhance physical attributes.

Istvan himself has a microchip in his hand that he uses to give out business cards, send text messages, or start his car.

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Always a trickle down effect on things that improve or change. Just reconfirms and reminds us organically how everything is indeed connected.

Capital tends to have greater value the more skilled and educated the workforce. Anticipating genetically enhanced workers would cause firms to want to invest more now in new equipment and buildings. Many assets, such as real estate and intellectual property, become more valuable the richer a society and so expectations of a much higher economic growth rate would cause companies to spend more buying and developing these assets so that businesses, as well as governments, will wish to borrow more when they realize the potential of human genetic engineering.

Many individuals will reduce their savings rate in anticipation of a future richer society. Today, fear that Social Security won’t survive motivates many Americans to save, but this fear and so this incentive for saving would disappear once genetic engineering for intelligence proves feasible. Furthermore, many citizens would rationally expect future government benefits to senior citizens to increase in a world made richer by genetic engineering and this expectation would reduce the perceived need to save for retirement.

Since understanding the consequences of a smarter workforce will increase the desire to borrow but reduce the wish to save, real interest rates will have to go up. These higher rates will reduce incentives to borrow while increasing the willingness to save and so will restore equilibrium to money markets. Expect to see higher interest rates as soon as markets price in embryo selection and genetic engineering.

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Steps moving forward to make enhance human intelligence real — definitely would mean a major leap forward in achieving Kurzweil’s and Zolstaf Zoltan Istvan’s super humans.

Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan, from Calfornia, and presidential candidate, met with senior officials from the US navy to discuss policies on how to deal with microchip implants (pictured).

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I often never am amazed when I see people who are both geniuses and gifted not follow society’s view on how they should look, present themselves, or speak, etc. I found this article a bit funny and some comments very short sighted. A real gifted and genius knows to never prejudge things ever because they themselves are already going against society’s label.

A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ—and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness.

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Wearing a specifically designed compression collar around the neck may prevent or reduce the devastating effects of head collisions in sports, two new studies have found.

The neck device, called a Q-Collar, is designed to press gently on the jugular vein to slow blood outflow increasing the brain’s blood volume, according to researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre in the US.

The resulting effect of the increased blood volume helps the brain fit tighter within the skull cavity, reducing the energy absorbed by the brain during collisions, researchers said.

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WEDNESDAY, June 15, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Brain cancer patients might benefit from an implantable ultrasound device that appears to enhance chemotherapy treatment, a small study says.

Researchers from the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and other French institutions tested the experimental device on 15 patients with recurrent glioblastoma, a particularly deadly brain cancer. When the so-called SonoCloud was activated, sound waves opened the blood-brain barrier, letting in more chemotherapy, they said.

“The walls of the blood vessels in the brain are very difficult to cross for certain molecules,” said Frederic Sottilini, CEO of Paris-based CarThera, the company developing SonoCloud.

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