Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: transportation

In a major step forward for self-driving cars and the industry seeking to manufacture them, US highway authorities have informed Google that its autonomous vehicle systems could qualify as a “driver” in the eyes of the law.

A letter addressed to the company from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last week suggests that if self-driving vehicles (SDVs) can satisfy a number of safety standards, the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is controlling the car – in the absence of any human controls – would not be a barrier to the car legally driving on US roads.

“We agree with Google its SDV will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years,” writes chief counsel for the NHTSA, Paul A. Hemmersbaugh. “If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the ‘driver’ as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving. In this instance, an item of motor vehicle equipment, the [SDS Self-Driving System], is actually driving the vehicle.”

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Over the last few years tech companies both large and small have developed programs that can “dream”; and understand and process information; and even write articles; but nothing has come close to the holy grail of artificial intelligence — developing software that can learn independently.

At least, not until now.

Helsinki might seem like an unlikely potential birthplace for this new era of intelligent machines. Yet it’s there — on a side street blocks from the central train station — that a team of roboticists, neuroscientists, and graphics programmers planted the seed that would become the new artificial intelligence software developer, The Curious AI Company.

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While curious minded people might like to understand exactly why something happens, there are many examples where you don’t have to understand everything that’s going on to fix the problem. After all, your average car might break down every few years but by replacing the parts you can keep it going for decades; you don’t have to redesign the car so it never breaks down again. This is where reparative strategies come in, aiming to rejuvenate and repair accumulated damage. These strategies are immensely challenging, but in comparison to an overhaul of the human genome, they’re arguably easier to implement and we’re already working on many of the tools that would be needed.

Out with the old, in with the new

Proposed by Francesco Cortese from the ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans and Dr. Giovanni Santostasi, from the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, WICT (Whole-body Induced Cell Turnover ) is a comprehensive strategy that involves replacing your entire body with shiny new cells, flushing the body of any old, damaged ones.

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Expensive travel bags should do more than look good, and German high-end luggage manufacturer Rimowa would seem to agree. The company has developed an electronic luggage tag which displays baggage info in the same format, size and appearance of typical paper labels, but on a digital screen built into the unit and located near the handle.

The Rimowa e-tag is similar to a device tested by British Airways in 2013, which allowed travelers to attach it to any piece of luggage.

Travelers these days can easily check into a flight and secure a boarding pass, printed or digital, before they step foot in the airport. Despite that convenience, they’re often forced to stand in line to check their bags. Those with a Rimowa electronic tag-enabled bag can send their digital boarding info via Bluetooth from their smartphone to check their bag before they leave home, with details appearing on the bag’s electronic display. After arriving at the airport, they simply hand it off at the airline’s automated check-in station, avoiding at least one line.

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Wider has completed the first sea trials of the Wider 150 superyacht, an all-aluminum ship with a hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system.

Designed by Fulvio de Simoni and overseen by Tilli Antonelli, the 150-foot yacht functioned smoothly throughout each test and achieved its forecasted goals.

Wider 150 reached a top speed of 15 knots in diesel-electric mode and utilized new technology to reduce sound and vibrations to a minuscule level.

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The Prius is an intentionally odd-looking car that gets odder with every generation; I’m pretty sure even ardent defenders of Toyota’s flagship hybrid could agree with me on that. So why not throw an equally odd paint color on top?

What you’re looking at here is the new Prius in “Thermo-Tect Lime Green,” which is more than your average upsettingly loud paint color. Toyota says that by removing the carbon black particles found in most paint and replacing them with titanium oxide, it has significantly increased the vehicle’s solar reflectivity — in other words, the car heats up less, which lessens the need for air conditioning, which in turn improves fuel economy. And fuel economy, of course, is what the Prius is all about.

White paint also does a good job of keeping the sun’s heat at bay, but Toyota actually says that its Thermo-Tect paint outperformed white in a two-hour summer test outdoors. Basically, this technology means that you might be able to get the color of your choice on your next car and still reduce your AC use. Granted, lime green may not be your first choice, but there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping Toyota from rolling it out to other colors as well.

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Robots could be considered legal drivers in the United States. This means human occupants inside the vehicle wouldn’t require a valid license in order to ride inside—the software would be the vehicle’s legal “driver.”

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