Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: robotics/AI

Human Security cybersecurity specialists reveal the finding of a massive botnet made up of compromised Android devices. This malicious operation, identified as Pareto, would aim to conduct advertising fraud related to payment connected television (CTV) services and would so far be made up of about one million infected devices.

As you will recall, the term botnet refers to a network of computer systems committed to a specific malware variant, executed autonomously and automatically and under remote control by attack operators.

Experts say hackers have used dozens of mobile apps to mimic the image of over 6000 CTV apps, equivalent to around 650 million ad requests per day. This botnet was first identified in 2020 and since then companies such as Google and Roku have tried to mitigate their progress, although operators have managed to grow inordinately.

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There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. The AI arms race is well underway and leading militaries worldwide do not want to be in second place or worse. Where this will lead is subject to conjecture. Clearly, however, the wars of the future will be fought and determined by AI more than traditional “military might.” The ethical use of AI in these applications remains an open-ended issue. It was within the mandate of the NSCAI report to recommend restrictions on how the technology should be used, but this was unfortunately deferred to a later date.

The AI arms race is speeding ahead in militaries around the world.

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AI squad mates. Called this a few years ago. It’s too annoying getting strangers to join up on some online task for a game.

Who wouldn’t want an A.I.to sit there and play backseat gamer? That’s exactly what looks to be happening thanks to a recently revealed Sony patent. The patent is for an automated Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) control mode specifically designed to perform certain tasks, including playing a game while the player is away.

In the patent, as spotted by SegmentNext, it’s detailed that this A.I. will involve assigning a default gameplay profile to the user. This profile will include a compendium of information detailing the player’s gaming habits, play styles, and decision-making processes while sitting down for a new adventure. This knowledge can then be harnessed to simulate the player’s gaming habits, even when said gamer is away from their platform of choice.

“The method includes monitoring a plurality of game plays of the user playing a plurality of gaming applications,” reads the patent itself. “The method includes generating a user gameplay profile of the user by adjusting the default gameplay style based on the plurality of game plays, wherein the user gameplay profile incudes a user gameplay style customized to the user. The method includes controlling an instance of a first gaming application based on the user gameplay style of the user gameplay profile.”

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Pepper update:

Italian researchers have programmed a humanoid robot named Pepper, made by SoftBank Robotics in Japan, to “thinks out loud” so that users can hear its thought process. Hearing a robot voice its decision-making process increases the transparency and trust between humans and machines.

Arianna Pipitone and Antonio Chella at the University of Palermo, Italy, built an ‘inner speech model’ based on a cognitive architecture that allowed the robot to speak aloud its inner decision-making process, just like humans when faced with a challenge or a dilemma. With the inner speech, users can hear its thought process and better understand the robot’s motivations and decisions.

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A team of researchers working at Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology has developed a skeletal-muscle-based, biohybrid soft robot that can swim faster than other skeletal-muscle-based biobots. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes building and testing their soft robot.

As scientists continue to improve the abilities of soft robots, they have turned to such as animal tissue. To date, most efforts in this area have involved the use of skeletal or cardiac muscles—each have their strengths and weaknesses. Skeletal-muscle-based biobots have, for example, suffered from lack of mobility and strength. In this new effort, the researchers in Spain have developed a new design for a tinyskeletal-muscle-based that overcomes both issues and is therefore able to swim faster than others of its kind.

To make their biobot, the researchers used a simulation to create a spring-based spine for a swimming creature shaped like an eel. The simulation allowed the researchers to optimize its shape. They then 3D printed the skeleton (which was made of a polymer called PDMS) and used it as a scaffold for growing skeletal muscles. The finished was approximately 260 micrometers long—its shape allowed for propulsion in just one direction. The biobot moves when given ; the charge incites the muscle to contract, which compresses the skeletal spring inside. When the stimulation is removed, the energy in the spring is released, pushing the biobot forward.

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Are we gonna get paid just to live in an automated world?

We may need to pay people just to live in an automated world, says Elon Musk. He reckons the robot revolution is inevitable and it’s going to take all the jobs.

For humans to survive in an automated world, he said that governments are going to be forced to bring in a universal basic income—paying each citizen a certain amount of money so they can afford to survive. According to Musk, there aren’t likely to be any other options.

“There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation,” he told CNBC in an interview. “Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen.”

The idea behind universal basic income is to replace all the different sources of welfare, which are hard to administer and come with policing costs. Instead, the government gives everyone a lump sum each month—the size of which would vary depending on political beliefs—and they can spend it however they want.

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EPFL scientists have developed AI-powered nanosensors that let researchers track various kinds of biological molecules without disturbing them.

The tiny world of biomolecules is rich in fascinating interactions between a plethora of different agents such as intricate nanomachines (proteins), shape-shifting vessels (lipid complexes), chains of vital information (DNA) and energy fuel (carbohydrates). Yet the ways in which biomolecules meet and interact to define the symphony of life is exceedingly complex.

Scientists at the Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory in EPFL’s School of Engineering have now developed a new biosensor that can be used to observe all major biomolecule classes of the nanoworld without disturbing them. Their innovative technique uses nanotechnology, metasurfaces, infrared light and . The team’s research has just been published in Advanced Materials.

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