Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: robotics/AI

With 2700 locations across 10000 U.S. communities, YMCA is becoming a major hub for healthy living — From vaccinations and diabetes prevention programs, to healthy aging and wellness — Siva Balu, VP/Chief Information Officer — The Y of the U.S.A.

Mr. Siva Balu is Vice President and Chief Information Officer of YMCA of the U.S. (Y-USA), where he is working to rethink and reorganize the work of the organization’s information technology strategy to meet the changing needs of Y-USA and Ys throughout the country.

The YMCA is a leading nonprofit committed to strengthening community by connecting all people to their potential, purpose and each other, with a focus on empowering young people, improving health and well-being and inspiring action in and across communities, and with presence in 10000 neighborhoods across the nation, they have real ability to deliver positive change.

Mr. Balu has 20 years of healthcare technology experience in leadership roles for Blue Cross Blue Shield, the nation’s largest health insurer, which provides healthcare to over 107 million members—1 in 3 Americans. He most recently led the Enterprise Information Technology team at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), a national federation of Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies.

Mr. Balu was responsible for leading all aspects of IT, including architecture, application and product development, big data, business intelligence and data analytics, information security, project management, digital, infrastructure and operations. He has created several highly scalable innovative solutions that cater to the needs of members and patients throughout the country in all communities. He provided leadership in creating innovative solutions and adopting new technologies for national and international users.

Mr. Balu earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from Bharathiar University in India, a master’s in business administration from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and executive master’s degree from MIT-Sloan School of Management in Innovation, Strategy and Artificial Intelligence as well as additional certifications in Disruptive Strategy and Negotiation Mastery from Harvard Business School Online.

In his free time, Mr. Balu volunteers and contributes to several charities, including The Soondra Foundation (delivering healthcare to the working poor in India), Special Olympics, Chicago Food Depository, Sarah’s Inn, Challenged Athletes Foundation, Beyond Hunger, The Pack Shack, Cradles to Crayons and Gardeneers.

Mr. Balu has also developed a passion for long-distance running a few years ago starting with a 5k, and then to marathons and to running multiple ultra-marathons. He has run multiple 100-mile races. He recently ran what is referred to as ‘the worlds toughest foot race,’ Badwater 135-miler in Death Valley, and one of the coldest races, Tuscobia 160-miler.

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The inevitable has occurred. A piece of space debris too small to be tracked has hit and damaged part of the International Space Station — namely, the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

The instrument is still operational, but the object punctured the thermal blanket and damaged the boom beneath. It’s a sobering reminder that the low-Earth orbit’s space junk problem is a ticking time bomb.

Obviously space agencies around the world are aware of the space debris problem. Over 23000 pieces are being tracked in low-Earth orbit to help satellites and the ISS avoid collisions — but they’re all about the size of a softball or larger.

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These groups of brain cells are called “assemblies,” which Papadimitriou describes as “a highly connected, stable set of neurons which represent something: a word, an idea, an object, etc.”

Award-winning neuroscientist György Buzsáki describes assemblies as “the alphabet of the brain.”

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced on its website that the agency has plans to put a Transformable Lunar Robot on the moon. In their announcement, they note that the goal of the robot deployment is to learn more about the surface of the moon as part of preparation for the deployment of a future crewed rover.

JAXA has made clear its aim to be part of establishing a permanent crewed presence on the moon, and as part of that, the agency has developed a lunar lander and is working on a rover. The lander, officially called the ispace lunar lander, has been designed to be a generic host for multiple entities. Customers planning to use the lander include the Canadian Space Agency and The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center. JAXA is developing a rover as well, which it plans to send to the moon in 2029. The lander will be launched aboard SpaceX rockets.

As part of their effort to develop a rover, JAXA has commissioned a team from the toy manufacturer, Tomy Company, Sony Corporation and Doshisha University to build a small lunar robot to test dust conditions on the moon. The design of the robot involves making use of transformable technology to save space in the lander—during launch it will be shaped like an 80 mm diameter ball (and will weigh just 250 g). After deployment on the moon, it will push itself into two halves with a connecting axle between them—the separated halves will then serve as wheels to allow the robot to move around on the surface.

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Researchers say we’re unlikely to ever be able to contain a large enough superintelligent artificial intelligence.

The premise sounds scary, but knowing the odds will help scientists who work on these projects.

Self-teaching AI already exists and can teach itself things programmers don’t “fully understand.”

In a new study, researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Human Development say they’ve shown that an artificial intelligence in the category known as “superintelligent” would be impossible for humans to contain with competing software.

That … doesn’t sound promising. But are we really all doomed to bow down to our sentient AI overlords?

➡ The world is f#@!-ing weird. Let’s make sense of it together.

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Deep-learning expert weighs in on getting to AGI, assessing algorithmic intelligence, autonomous vehicles,” “Mark Ryan is a Data Science Manager at Intact Insurance and the author of the recently-released “Deep Learning with Structured Data”. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and is interested in chatbots and natural language processing.

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Marek Rosa, a Slovakian entrepreneur and computer programmer, founded GoodAI, a company dedicated to the research and development of general artificial intelligence (AGI). In 2017, he founded the General AI Challenge, pledging $5 million in prize money to tackle critical research problems in “human-level” AI development.

GoodAI, an organization founded by Slovakian entrepreneur Marek Rosa, aims to solve fundamental challenges in AI.

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The Israeli military is calling Operation Guardian of the Walls the first artificial-intelligence war. the IDF established an advanced AI technological platform that centralized all data on terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip onto one system that enabled the analysis and extraction of the intelligence.

The IDF used artificial intelligence and supercomputing during the last conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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