Two-thirds of the world’s population doesn’t have access to medical imaging. A company called Butterfly Network is trying to change that.
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Category: robotics/AI
Have you ever lifted half a ton? With the Guardian GT, a set of robotic arms, you could do so with as little as two kilogram (five pounds) of force, allowing you to have superhuman strength.
Elon Musk recently made headlines asserting that, in order for us to both progress and survive as a species, we must merge with machines and become cyborgs. And, as climate change rages onwards and the biological difficulties of completing a human mission to Mars become ever more apparent, many are beginning to agree.
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Engineers from Harper Adams University in Shropshire are working on machines that can autonomously plant seeds, weed, water and spray without a farmer needing to venture into the field.
Professor Blackmore said: ‘I am trying develop a completely new agricultural mechanisation system based on small smart machines.
‘We are developing laser weeding, droplet application where only 100 per cent of the chemical goes onto the target leaf, selective harvesting where we can grade the product at the point of harvest.
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For now, at least, we have better things to worry about.
Sources:
https://economics.mit.edu/files/11563
https://www.aeaweb.org/full_issue.php?doi=10.1257/jep.29.3#page=33
http://voxeu.org/article/how-computer-automation-affects-occupations
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/future-work-lit-review-20150428.pdf
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF
https://www.vox.com/2015/7/27/9038829/automation-myth
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
Clips:
Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics have commentators worrying about the coming obsolescence of the human worker. Some in Silicon Valley are even calling for a basic minimum income provided by the government for everyone, under the assumption that work will become scarce. But many economists are skeptical of these claims, because the notion that the economy offers a fixed amount of work has been debunked time and time again over the centuries and current economic data show no signs of a productivity boom. Fortunately, we don’t need to divine the future of the labor market in order to prepare for it.
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com to get up to speed on everything from Kurdistan to the Kim Kardashian app.
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Letters from a time capsule opened in the Russian city of Novorossiysk have revealed that Soviet students in 1967 believed their peers in 50 years time would be living on other planets and eating ice cream for free, while their homework will be done by machines.
Hundreds of time capsules were laid across the USSR in 1967 as the country celebrated half a century since the Russian Revolution, which eventually led to the creation of the Soviet state. Those messages, containing the accounts of Soviet people’s lives and their messages to descendants, are being opened in Russia this year, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the events of 1917.
READ MORE: Cruiser Aurora fires at Winter Palace 100 years ago, signals peak of Russian Revolution.
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As if the mere phrase “killer robots” weren’t scary enough, AI researchers and policy advocates have put together a video that combines present-tense AI and drone technologies with future-tense nightmares.
The disturbing seven-minute movie is being released to coincide with a pitch being made on Monday in Geneva during talks relating to the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, or CCW.
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During the last few years, gaming technology has improved considerably, yet there’s been no actual revolution capable of completely changing and improving the gaming ecosystem. However, the introduction of Chimaera, a platform meant to allow game developers to build massive multiplayer online game worlds on top of the blockchain network, could change this.
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Chimaera’s main purpose is to have millions of players competing against one another in blockchain-based and decentralised virtual realities that run non-stop, and serverless. Apart from this, the platform’s second purpose is to allow the creation of blockchain assets and game currencies that players can securely trade for profit.
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Washington (AFP) — Police in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy “smart” cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a fugitive, missing child or straying senior.
The video feeds will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to identify vehicles by license plate or other features and “give an extra set of eyes” to officers on patrol, says David Hinojosa of Coban Technologies, the company providing the equipment.
“We are helping officers keep their focus on their jobs,” said Hinojosa, who touts the new technology as a “dashcam on steroids.”
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This sort of thing is rapidly going mainstream, and de Grey, if still a fringe thinker, seems increasingly less so. At the very least, medical science has progressed to the point where “negligible senescence” — eternal youth, more or less — is something it might be a good idea to start talking about before it is suddenly upon us without our having thought through the implications. As with most of the other miracle technologies that have turned our lives inside out over the past 100 years — rampant automation, nuclear power, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and so on — this one, as Shukan Gendai points out, has its dark side.
Is death inevitable? True, everyone born before Aug. 4, 1900, has proved mortal (the world’s oldest-known living person, a Japanese woman named Nabi Tajima, was born on that date). But the past is only an imperfect guide to the future, as the effervescent present is ceaselessly teaching us.
Must we die? We ourselves probably must. But our children, our grandchildren — or if not them, theirs — may, conceivably, be the beneficiaries of the greatest revolution ever: the conquest of death.
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