The film features Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence; Japanese roboticist, Hiroshi Ishiguro; Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human; Ben Goertzel, founder of Singularity.net; and Deepak Chopra, who is creating his own A.I. mind twin.
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the first trailer for Hot Docs opener Artificial Immortality by filmmaker Ann Shin.
The documentary explores the latest advancements in AI, robotics and biotech with visionaries who argue for a new age of post-biological life. It poses the questions: if you were able to create an immortal version of yourself, would you?; and will AI be the best, or the last thing we ever do as a species?
The largest-ever study of almost 2000 DNA samples carried out by researchers at Pompeu Fabra university (UPF) in Barcelona has confirmed the “genetic singularity” of the Basques in Europe. The investigation, however, found that this difference only began to emerge 2500 years ago in the Iron Age. “Our analyses confirm that Basques were influenced by the major migration waves in Europe until the Iron Age, in a similar pattern as their surrounding populations,” the authors explain in the study published in the journalCurrent Biology.
The origin of the Basques has fascinated the scientific community since the 19th century. The French anthropologist Paul Broca snuck into a Basque cemetery one night in 1862 to steal skulls he wanted to study for their supposed genetic differences. Juan José Ibarretxe, premier of the Basque regional government until 2009, proclaimed that the Basque people “have existed for 7000 years” to promote his vision of an independent Basque state. And the then-president of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Xabier Arzalluz, claimed in 2000 that the Basques were “the oldest inhabitants of Europe,” with “their own roots” since prehistoric times.
Although Basque genetic differences are noticeable, the study shows this is the result of centuries of isolation and inbreeding potentially caused by unique Basque dialects that have no crossover with other European languages, or indeed any other living language today.
Dr. Shawna Pandya MD, is a scientist-astronaut candidate with Project PoSSUM, physician, aquanaut, speaker, martial artist, advanced diver, skydiver, and pilot-in-training.
Dr. Pandya is also the VP of Immersive Medicine with the virtual reality healthcare company, Luxsonic Technologies, Director of the International Institute of Astronautical Sciences (IIAS)/PoSSUM Space Medicine Group, Chief Instructor of the IIAS/PoSSUM Operational Space Medicine course, Director of Medical Research at Orbital Assembly Construction (a company building the world’s first rotating space station providing the first artificial gravity habitat), clinical lecturer at the University of Alberta, podcast host with the World Extreme Medicine’s WEMCast series, Primary Investigator (PI) for the Shad Canada-Blue Origin student micro-gravity competition, member of the ASCEND 2021 Guiding Coalition, Life Sciences Team Lead for the Association of Spaceflight Professionals, sesional lecturer for the “Technology and the Future of Medicine,” course at the University of Alberta, and Fellow of the Explorers’ Club.
Dr. Pandya also serves as medical advisor to several space, medical and technology companies, including Mission: Space Food, Gennesys and Aquanauta, as well as the Jasper Dark Sky Festival Advisory Committee.
Dr. Pandya holds a Bsc degree in neuroscience from University of Alberta, a MSc in Space Studies from International Space University, an MD from University of Alberta, and a certification in entrepreneurship from the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University.
Dr. Pandya is currently completing a fellowship in Wilderness Medicine (Academy of Wilderness Medicine), was granted an Honorary Fellowship in Extreme and Wilderness Medicine by the World Extreme Medicine organization in 2021, and was one of 50 physicians selected to attend the 2021 European Space Agency Space Medicine Physician Training Course. Dr. Pandya was named one of the Women’s Executive Network’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada in 2021, and a Canadian Space Agency Space Ambassador in 2021.
Dr. Pandya was part of the first crew to test a commercial spacesuit in zero-gravity in 2015. Dr. Pandya earned her aquanaut designation during the 2019 NEPTUNE (Nautical Experiments in Physiology, Technology and Underwater Exploration) mission. She previously served as Commander during a 2020 tour at the Mars Desert Research Station. Her expeditions were captured in the Land Rover short, released with the Apollo 11: First Steps film. She previously interned at ESA’s European Astronaut Center and NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
The lives of infomorphs (or ‘cyberhumans’) who have no permanent bodies but possess near-perfect information-handling abilities, will be dramatically different from ours. Infomorphs will achieve the ultimate morphological freedom. Any infomorph will be able to have multiple cybernetic bodies which can be assembled and dissembled at will by nanobots in the physical world if deemed necessary, otherwise most time will be spent in the multitude of virtual bodies in virtual enviro… See More.
“I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the Universe.” — Buckminster Fuller
The term ‘Infomorph’ was first introduced in “The Silicon Man” by Charles Platt in 1991 and later popularized by Alexander Chislenko in his paper “Networking in the Mind Age”: “The growing reliance of system connections on functional, rather than physical, proximity of their elements will dramatically transform the notions of personhood and identity and create a new community of distributed ‘infomorphs’ — advanced informational entities — that will bring the ongoing process of liberation of functional structures from material dependence to its logical conclusions. The infomorph society will be built on new organizational principles and will represent a blend of a superliquid economy, cyberspace anarchy and advanced consciousness.”
The new post-Singularity system will inherit many of today’s structures but at the same time will develop new traits beyond our current human comprehension. The ability of future machines and posthumans alike to instantly transfer knowledge and directly share experiences with each other will lead to evolution of intelligence from the hive ontology of individual biological minds to the global hyperconnected society of digital minds.
Your Survival Depends On All Of Us — Support Open Sourcing Collective Superintelligence Basically, the point of the summit is Artificial Superintelligence or ASI is coming eventually. There are groups of organizations discussing the existential risk that ASI poses to humanity. Even if we only develop an AGI, AGI will still create ASI and we lose control at some point. Supporting the Open Sourcing of Collective Superintelligent systems is our only hope for keeping up and moves us forward before other technologies outpace our ability to keep up. Please support our Summit and help decide how to open source a version of the mASI (mediated Artificial Superintelligence) system, and the creation of a community-driven effort to make these systems better and better. Attendance helps to raise enough money to cover the costs of support services, cloud infrastructure, and the digital resources needed to get this open-source project up, covering publishing and support costs, while also making people aware of it. Papers and formal thinking also are really needed. This particular field of collective intelligence is poorly represented in terms of scientific papers and we hope this project can bring more prominence to this possibility of helping humanity become more than what we are and strong enough to contain AGI while we ourselves are able to become smarter and move to full digitization of humanity for those that want it. Then we can contain ASI safely and embrace the singularity. Please help, save yourself and humanity by support the Collective Superintelligence Conference. Sign up and attend here:
This is the early bird sign-up for the virtual summit held June 4th from 6 am PST to 4 pm PST via Zoom and Youtube. Speakers and Panelists, and workshops will be held in Zoom, and streaming will be done via Youtube.
Flux is unmatched in the quality, speed and quantity of neural activity that can record non-invasively and in real time. So far, all types of data that could be acquired directly from the human brain had serious limitations. To get the best hemodynamic or electric data, for example, the person and their brain needed to be almost perfectly immovable, usually by confinement in noisy and claustrophobic environments. And if the person was able to move freely and, of course, data quality quickly dropped until it was pointless. With the Flux, you will be able to: Step into a natural environment, put a helmet on your head and observe the real-time brain activity at the top speed your neurons are shooting; Talk, gesture and move naturally; Participate in a video conference, daydream, listen to music or read a book; Access your brain activity from the most electrophysiological sensor channels from all regions of the cortex. These capabilities open up new stimulating opportunities for understanding how and why the brain functions. In October 2020, Flow was announced, a full-coverage TD-FNIRS system, which is the first high-quality scalable brain imaging system of its kind and analyses the hemodynamic signs generated by the use of oxygen in the brain, a good proxy for neural activity Together, Flow and Flux capture two signs of the highest quality and most significant one can capture on the brain in a non-invasive way: blood oxygenation and direct neural activity. There are advantages and disadvantages to what each of these technologies reveals about the mysteries of the brain — together, however, Kernel Flux and Flow combine into the richest neural data sets in history, collected at a record speed. A new era is here. One where we will be reintroduced ourselves and each other in unique ways. With powers to advance to a new border.
Dr. John Torday, Ph.D. is an Investigator at The Lundquist Institute of Biomedical Innovation, a Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics/Gynecology, and Faculty, Evolutionary Medicine, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Director of the Perinatal Research Training Program, the Guenther Laboratory for Cell-Molecular Biology, and Faculty in the Division of Neonatology, at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Dr. Torday studies the cellular-molecular development of the lung and other visceral organs, and using the well-established principles of cell-cell communication as the basis for determining the patterns of physiologic development, his laboratory was the first to determine the complete repertoire of lung alveolar morphogenesis. This highly regulated structure offered the opportunity to trace the evolution of the lung from its unicellular origins forward, developmentally and phylogenetically. The lung is an algorithm for understanding the evolution of other physiologic properties, such as in the kidney, skin, liver, gut, and central nervous system. Such basic knowledge of the how and why of physiologic evolution is useful in the effective diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Dr. Torday received his undergraduate degree in Biology and English from Boston University, and his MSc and PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He did a post-doctoral Fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI.
Dr. Torday’s research has led to the publication of more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and 350 abstracts. More recently, he has gained an interest in the evolutionary aspects of comparative physiology and development, leading to the publication of 12 peer-reviewed articles on the cellular origins of vertebrate physiology, culminating in the book Evolutionary Biology, Cell-Cell Communication and Complex Disease.
Dr. Torday is also the co-author / co-editor on several volumes including: Evolution, the Logic of Biology, Evidence-Based Evolutionary Medicine, Morphogenesis, Environmental Stress and Reverse Evolution, and most recently, The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
Now cosmology inches towards the next paradigm shift: One of the most mind-boggling discoveries of modernity is that the fabric of spacetime is emergent from something beneath it. “[O]ne new theory says that Dark Matter may be ordinary matter in a parallel universe. If a galaxy is hovering above in another dimension, we would not be able to see it. It would be invisible, yet we would feel its gravity. Hence, it might explain Dark Matter,” in the words of Michio Kaku as an opening quote to this article. #DarkMatter #DarkEnergy #QuantumGravity #ComputationalPhysics #MTheory #DTheoryofTime #OmegaSingularity #pancomputationalism #multiverse #ontology
Dark Matter could be ordinary matter in the “probabilistic space” and “phase space” (5th and 6th dimensions of M-theory), possibly with “dark star systems” and life, imperceptible to us at our current level of development. In turn, Dark Energy could be a.
Foresight biotech & health extension group sponsored by 100 plus capital.
Accelerator applications are open now: https://foresight.org/biotech-health-extension-program.
Industry blindspots: Unincentivized work that could dramatically advance progress on aging.
SONIA ARRISON, 100 Plus Capital. Sonia Arrison is a best-selling author, analyst, entrepreneur, and investor. She is the founder of 100 Plus Capital, co-founder of Unsugarcoat Media (acquired by Medium), and associate founder and advisor to Singularity University in Mountain View, California. Her research focuses on exponentially growing technologies and their impact on society. Her most recent book, 100 Plus: How the Coming Guests Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith, addresses the social, economic, and cultural impacts of radical human longevity. It gained national bestseller status and keeps Sonia busy speaking all over the world. Sonia is a Board Member at the Thiel Foundation, Foresight Institute, and Woodland School. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia, and author of two previous books (Western Visions and Digital Dialog). She was previously a Director and Senior Fellow in Tech Studies at the Pacific Research Institute and a columnist at TechNewsWorld.
KARL PFLEGER, Agingbiotech.info. Karl Pfleger, PhD (Stanford CS, Machine Learning) now focuses on aging & longevity after a successful tech career (mySimon, Google). A long-time donor to the Buck Institute and SENS Foundation, he is also an angel investor who has backed over 15 agingrelated startups. He is the creator of AgingBiotech. info, a free public resource to track the commercialization progress of the aging biotech sector and related information.
MIKE WEST, AgeX Michael D. West, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of AgeX Therapeutics, Inc, which is focused on the development and commercialization of novel therapeutics targeting human aging. He received his Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 1989 concentrating on the biology of cellular ageing. He has focused his academic and business career on the application of developmental biology to agerelated degenerative disease. He was the founder and first CEO of Geron Corporation (Nasdaq: GERN), and from 1992 to 1998, he held various positions, including CEO, Director, and Vice President. From 1998 to 2007, Dr West held positions as CEO, President, and Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. (ACT), which was eventually acquired by Astellas Pharma, Inc. From 2007 to 2018, he was CEO/Co-CEO of BioTime, Inc. (NYSE American: BTX).
