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Audi, Airbus and Italdesign are all working together on an electric “flying taxi” concept and they are now starting to test the vehicle.
The concept was first unveiled earlier this year at the Geneva Auto Show.
They now have a more refined working prototype, but it’s still a 1:4 scale model – though it is flying and driving at Amsterdam Drone Week.
Ever since 2014, Italy-based Youbionic, which was founded by Federico Ciccarese and specializes in robotics and bionics, has been working on its 3D printed, robot-controlled, bionic prosthetic hand. The company started taking pre-orders for the bionic prosthetic two years ago, and has since been making improvements and updates to the original model, even coming out with a 3D printed double hand device for the augmented human. Now, Youbionic has released its latest bionic product – the Youbionic One.
“We believe that technology at our disposal today can be used for the increase in human capabilities and intervention in the replacement of parts of our body which are not working properly,” Ciccarese wrote in an email.
“Youbionic is committed every day to create technologies that can elevate mankind to a higher level.”
Volvo is about to launch its first-ever commercial operation using its driverless truck technology. A deal with a Norwegian mining firm will see six of its autonomous vehicles carry limestone between the mine and a port in an operation aimed at boosting productivity and reliability, as well as safety.
All of today’s computing takes its root from the world of “bits”, where a transistor bit, which lies at the heart of any computing chip, can only be in one of two electrical states: on or off. When on, the bit takes on a value of “1” and when off, it takes on a value of “0”, constraining the bit to only one of two (binary) values. All tasks performed by a computer-like device, whether a simple calculator or a sophisticated computer, are constrained by this binary rule.
Eight bits make up what is called a “byte”. Today, our computing is based on increasing the number of bytes into kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and so on. All computing advances we have had thus far, including artificially intelligent programmes, and driverless cars are ultimately reduced to the binary world of the bit.
This is a natural extension of western thought; for centuries, western philosophy has followed the principles of Aristotelian logic, which is based on the law of identity (A is A), the law of contradiction (A is not non-A), and the law of the excluded middle (A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time, just as non-A cannot be both non-A and A at the same time).
The posthuman search for ‘actual’ eternal life seems the opposite of the argument of this unhelpful book, imo https://thewastedworld.wordpress.com/2018/11/24/dissolution-decay/ https://paper.li/e-1437691924
In closing, I wish to make some final remarks on the purpose of theorising a Posthuman Gothic. Far from being the joyous celebration of vitality, agency, and connection most touted by its proponents, under the Gothic sign the Posthuman takes on a far more ambivalent character. The Gothic looks to a world beyond us—even without us, or at least not for us—and so without knowing it, the Posthuman and the Gothic are already intertwined. Both look outside the human to the weird amalgamations of body and machine, spirit and dirt, and the eerie influences of systems far greater than we may know. The Posthuman project is twisted up not only in Gothic categories and aesthetics, but Gothic commitments: it displays a mixed fascination with the spectres of the past while looking to a future wrenched free from the decayed laws of the dead.
The Posthuman Gothic stands at a crossroads. On the one hand it sees the deep past emerging into the near future, as circuits of matter, whether technological or earthly, put to rest the myth of the autonomous human subject. On the other, it balances the experience of utter privation and dehumanisation with the escape from human finitude. Two angles arch away from the human, into that liminal space occupied by the Gothic, which keeps one foot grounded in the human, while the other hangs over the precipice. In short, the Posthuman Gothic makes known its haunting by a human past to better cast itself into futures more or less joyous, and more or less terrifying. Here the mixed feelings of the Gothic seep through the framework of the Posthuman. The Posthuman Gothic recognises that “there is an enjoyment in seeing the familiar and the conventional become outmoded,” and that it is only in the death of the present that other futures may be imagined (Fisher 2016, 13).
Bibliography.
Elon Musk promises ‘matrix’ system to link human brains with AI computers ‘probably’ within the next decade…
Elon Musk believes humans must link up with machines in order to fight the inevitable onslaught of artificial intelligence.
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO said his latest company Neuralink will have the technology ready to do this ‘probably’ within the next decade, according to Axios.
Neuralink has previously teased a product that would effectively connect human brains to computers using a tiny implanted chip.
A team of engineers at TRACLabs Inc. in the U.S. is making inroads toward the creation of a planetary base station monitoring system similar in some respects to Hal 9000—the infamous AI system in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this case, it is called cognitive architecture for space agents (CASE) and is outlined in a Focus piece by Pete Bonasso, the primary engineer working on the project, in the journal Science Robotics.
Bonasso explains that he has had an interest in creating a real Hal 9000 ever since watching the movie as a college student—minus the human killing, of course. His system is designed to run a base situated on another planet, such as Mars. It is meant to take care of the more mundane, but critical tasks involved with maintaining a habitable planetary base, such as maintaining oxygen levels and taking care of waste. He notes that such a system needs to know what to do and how to do it, carrying out activities using such hardware as robot arms. To that end, CASE has been designed as a three-layered system. The first is in charge of controlling hardware, such as power systems, life-support, etc.
The second layer is more brainy—it is in charge of running the software that controls the hardware. The third layer is even smarter, responsible for coming up with solutions to problems as they arise—if damage occurs to a module, for example, it must be sealed off from others modules as quickly as possible. The system also has what Bonasso describes as an ontological system—its job is to be self-aware so that the system can make judgment calls when comparing data from sensors with what it has learned in the past and with information received from human occupants. To that end, the system will be expected to interact with those humans in ways similar to those portrayed in the movie.
Researchers at Shree Devi Institute of Technology, in India, have recently carried out a study investigating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with deceased loved ones. Like in the chilling sci-fi fantasy foreshadowed by popular television series Black Mirror, AI tools could soon allow people to connect with virtual versions of deceased dear ones.
Shriya Devadiga and Bhakthi Shetty, the two researchers who carried out the study, wanted to further examine this fascinating and yet rather unsettling possibility. They particularly focused on Replica AI, an app designed to create duplicates of people’s digital personalities, allowing others to communicate with them.
“We got the basic idea for our study from Eugenia Kuyda, the founder of Replika AI,” Devadiga told TechXplore. “Replika’s basic purpose is to create a personal AI that can help people to express themselves through helpful conversations. Someday, you will die, leaving behind a lifetime of text messages, posts, and other digital ephemera. For a while, your friends and family may put these digital traces out of their minds, but then later feel out of place because they miss the loved ones. So our main objective was to explore ways of relieving the pain of this loss, at least bitwise.”
