Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: robotics/AI

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9xlw5jAu4kc

Rather than risk the lives of their astronauts, Russian government scientists are now working to develop humanoid robots that can perform complex tasks on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) while astronauts control them safely from within the station.

The Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects, Russia’s military research arm unveiled two prototype robot astronauts on February 13th to the media ahead of a public robotics exhibition in Moscow.

One robot, named Fyodor, has two arms and a torso, and is programmed to either mimic an astronaut’s actions, be under remote control by a human wearing a special suit, or work autonomously.

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Ciliates can do amazing things: Being so tiny, the water in which they live is like thick honey to these microorganisms. In spite of this, however, they are able to self-propel through water by the synchronized movement of thousands of extremely thin filaments on their outer skin, called cilia. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart are now moving robots that are barely perceptible to the human eye in a similar manner through liquids. For these microswimmers, the scientists are neither employing complex driving elements nor external forces such as magnetic fields. The team of scientists headed by Peer Fischer have built a ciliate-inspired model using a material that combines the properties of liquid crystals and elastic rubbers, rendering the body capable of self-propelling upon exposure to green light. Mini submarines navigating the human body and detecting and curing diseases may still be the stuff of science fiction, but applications for the new development in Stuttgart could see the light-powered materials take the form of tiny medical assistants at the end of an endoscope.

Their tiny size makes life extremely difficult for swimming microorganisms. As their movement has virtually no momentum, the friction between the water and their outer skin slows them down considerably — much like trying to swim through thick honey. The viscosity of the medium also prevents the formation of turbulences, something that could transfer the force to the water and thereby drive the swimmer. For this reason, the filaments beat in a coordinated wave-like movement that runs along the entire body of the single-celled organism, similar to the legs of a centipede. These waves move the liquid along with them so that the ciliate — measuring roughly 100 micrometres, i.e. a tenth of a millimetre, as thick as a human hair — moves through the liquid.

“Our aim was to imitate this type of movement with a microrobot,” says Stefano Palagi, first author of the study at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, which also included collaborating scientists from the Universities of Cambridge, Stuttgart and Florence. Fischer, who is also a Professor for Physical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart, states that it would be virtually impossible to build a mechanical machine at the length scale of the ciliate that also replicates its movement, as it would need to have hundreds of individual actuators, not to mention their control and energy supply.

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1st; we all know in 30 years anything can change, wars can be fought & lost, natural disasters can occur, etc. However, posting for everyone’s amusement. 30 years ago which would be 1986; no one thought USSR would be broken up, 9/11 would happen creating the US Homeland Security, Lybia & Eygpt would overthrow their own leaders, that US Space missions would be outside the US Government, hacking at the levels we have today creating the CISO roles, of VR technology would exist, DNA and CRISPR would be discovered, etc.

So, who really knows what jobs will be fully automated v. not in 30 years or even created as a result of Quantum technology (Computing, Networking, Q-Dots for numerous thing that are not only technology, etc.). Just a fun article to share with everyone.

CSIRO says the Australian workplace of the future will be increasingly digitally-focused and automated, with titles such as online chaperone.

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I luv it — India get’s it. You have to make sure that your IT foundation is solid first before unleashing things like AI. Connected AI requires a solid and secured infrastructure foundation 1st. In order for customers to buy into Cloud & the whole IoT, and connected AI set of products and services; the customer must feel that they can trust you fully.

By Jayadev Parida

Take a stock of the past, analyse the present cliché and frame a strategy for future. In the recent years, India’s approach to cyber security has experienced a shift from style to substance. Prime Minister Modi’s foreign policy has made various strong interventions on cyber security matters. Those interventions need to be materialised to manoeuvre the interest. Presumably, the Prime Minister Office (PMO) is likely to invest both political and capital energy to enhance a cautious cyber-strategy. A dedicated Division in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) for cyber security is a value addition to that. In 2015, Minister of Communications and Information Technology in a written reply to the Lok Sabha stated that government allocated Rs 755 crore to combat cyber security threats over a period of five years. But, this financial outlay is quite negligible as the nature of threat is quite huge and unpredictable.

Cheer up, the worst is yet to come! One of those famous words penned by noted American author and novelist Mark Twain a long ago. This sentence is a stark reminder of India’s dawdling approach to new threats. India’s cyber sleuth may be holding their nerves for the worst to frame a robust apparatus to secure cyber ecosystem. The Google Trends of 2015 demonstrated that Islamic State (IS) was a buzz word in India while terrorism continued to exist as the area of concern. Nonetheless, interest over the time for IS’ in Indian Cities is increasing significantly.

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US Military’s new toys to show off in front of China and Russia.

Little noticed amid the daily news bulletins about the Islamic State and Syria, the Pentagon has begun a push for exotic new weapons that can deter Russia and China.

Pentagon officials have started talking openly about using the latest tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create robot weapons, “human-machine teams” and enhanced, super-powered soldiers.

It may sound like science fiction, but Pentagon officials say they have concluded that such high-tech systems are the best way to combat rapid improvements by the Russian and Chinese militaries.

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There is only 2 avenues that “terminator robots” will exist: 1) criminals and terrorists have their followers/ pay some engineers to reprogram the robots and equip them to kill or explode themselves 2) a rogue nation like N. Korea decides to acquire (if not build) and regineer them to kill and deploys them on their neighbors, etc. The reality is robotics and humanoid robotics is even more complex; chances of this happening may be at a 20 to 30% range (if I was to take a guess).

So often Hollywood serves as a sort of idea test-bed for futuristic scientific concepts that often have a habit of becoming reality, but back in 1984 when The Terminator was released, hardly anyone believed that “killer robots” would someday become a reality.

But today, as robotics becomes a much more mature scientific field of study, the possibility that governments or private entities could “program” killer robots to take out certain targets or even entire populations is not so far-fetched anymore. In fact, it’s downright chilling.

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No Robots Please says Mercedes; at least for their manufacturing teams that does specialized/ custom work.

Our dystopian all-robot future just got hit with a minor setback: Mercedes-Benz is ditching some of its robot workers in favor of humans, citing the human ability to move faster and perform a wider array of tasks. The reason largely revolves around Mercedes’ increased array of customization options — there are so many different individualization options at the moment that robots aren’t able to deal with them all. Humans, the auto maker says, are saving the company money.

Mercedes’ individualization options include things like various tire valve caps, trim, and cupholders, small but significant aspects of the vehicles that robots aren’t easily able to switch between. According to Daimler AG’s Markus Schaefer, “The variety is too much to take on for the machines. They can’t work with all the different options and keep pace with changes.”

Robots are good at doing rote tasks — the same thing over and over again with an exact precision. While humans aren’t so good at that, they are better at adjusting to new demands — Daimler would have to deal with weeks of down time every time it needed to change the assembly and reprogram the robots, whereas humans can adjust to new demands in a single weekend.

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Fifteen miles away from where Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked out of their first office developing the technology that would become Google, a team of eleven engineers no older than 20 are hard at work on developing what they hope will be its replacement.

Their adoptive home, for the moment, is the co-working space Tim Draper set up as part of his Draper University startup program, and they’ve been assembled their by Jerry Yue, a 24-year-old serial entrepreneur.

Yue’s last startup, the Chinese food delivery service Benlai.com, raised $100 million at the end of last year and is on its way to joining the ranks of China’s unicorns.

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Interesting read; however, the author has limited his view to Quantum being only a computing solution when in fact it is much more. Quantum technology does offer faster processing power & better security; but, Quantum offers us Q-Dots which enables us to enrich medicines & other treatments, improves raw materials including fuels, even vegetation.

For the first time we have a science that cuts across all areas of technology, medical & biology, chemistry, manufacturing, etc. No other science has been able to achieve this like Quantum.

Also, the author in statements around being years off has some truth if we’re suggesting 7 yrs then I agree. However, more than 7 years I don’t agree especially with the results we are seeing in Quantum Networking.

Not sure of the author’s own inclusion on some of the Quantum Technology or Q-Dot experiements; however, I do suggest that he should look at Quantum with a broader lens because there is a larger story around Quantum especially in the longer term as well look to improve things like BMI, AI, longevity, resistent materials for space, etc/.

I recently read Seth Lloyd’s A Turing Test for Free Will — conveniently related to the subject of the blog’s last piece, and absolutely engrossing. It’s short, yet it makes a wonderful nuance in the debate over determinism, arguing that predictable functions can still have unpredictable outcomes, known as “free will functions.”

I had thought that the world only needed more funding, organized effort, and goodwill to solve its biggest threats concerning all of humanity, from molecular interactions in fatal diseases to accessible, accurate weather prediction for farmers. But therein lies the rub: to be able to tackle large-scale problems, we must be able to analyze all the data points associated to find meaningful recourses in our efforts. Call it Silicon Valley marketing, but data analysis is important, and fast ways of understanding that data could be the key to faster solution implementation.

Classical computers can’t solve almost all of these complex problems in a reasonable amount of time — the time it takes for algorithms to finish increases exponentially with the size of the dataset, and approximations can run amok.

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In June, a team of programmers will release a ground-breaking new video game called No Man’s Sky, which uses artificial intelligence and procedural generation to self-create an entire cosmos full of planets. Running off 600,000 lines of code, the game creates an artificial galaxy populated by 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets that you can travel to and explore.

Though this artificial universe is realistic down to the dimensions of a blade of grass, faster than light-speed travel is available in order for players to bridge the unfathomable distances between stars.

Chief architect Sean Murray says No Man’s Sky is different than most games because the landscapes and distances aren’t faked. While most space-based games utilize a skybox that simply rotates between different modalities, No Man’s Sky is virtually limitless and employs real physics.

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