from the hilarious: A Basic Introduction to Singularity Skepticism

• It should be clear to everyone on here that some time in the near future the ever accelerating pace of technological development will inevitably lead us all to become giant pink heads floating in space, or something. The singularity is on its way, and once it has arrived we will break out of the present as if by magic and finally inhabit the future we could never quite catch up with. However it turns out that some people don’t get this idea at all and keep trying to find fault with it, even after you concede that they will probably get to pick their own colours for their floating space heads.
• This is going to be a basic rundown of singularity skeptics arguments, just an overview as there is no way I can document the long, in-depth fights nerds have about this stuff. If you’re looking for hard core material and discussion, look away.
• If you’re completely unfamiliar with the concept of the singularity there are  several videos around you can watch on the subject. Most will involve the incredibly talented and famous pill muncher Ray Kurzweil showing off his charts at great length. For those of you who don’t have a few hours available to listen to Mr. Kurzweil speak I have made this convenient summary of most of his talks…[above]

over 6 hours of videos from this past October’s conference in New York City on future tech like robotic children, consciousness studies, the singularity, causality, the growth of information technology, extreme longevity, etc.

Get up to spec!

research!

Video-to-Brain Rig built at MIT

• The implanted chip, according to the MIT team behind it, features a “microfabricated polyimide stimulating electrode array with sputtered iridium oxide electrodes” which is implanted into the user’s retina by a specially-developed surgical technique. There are also “secondary power and data receiving coils”.
• Once the implant is in place, wireless transmissions are made from outside the head. These induce currents in the receiving coils of the nerve chip, meaning that it needs no battery or other power supply. The electrode array stimulates the nerves feeding the optic nerve, so generating a image in the brain.
• The wireless signals, for use in humans, would be generated by a glasses-style headset equipped with cameras or other suitable sensors and transmitters tuned to the coils implanted in the head.
• A new implant design which would be suitable for humans has now been developed. The development team hope to begin trials within three years.

• Ray Kurzweil, the 61-year-old American, who has predicted new technologies arriving before, says our understanding of genes and computer technology is accelerating at an incredible rate.
• He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
• Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: “I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
• “Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
• “Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.
• “Heart-attack victims – who haven’t taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts – will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.
• “Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.
• “If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.
• “So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs.”

• “Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed,” writes the New York Times’ Charles Duhigg in a front page piece that’s been the talk of the town in New York and Washington. “High-frequency trading is one answer.” Duhigg writes, “High-frequency trading systems are so fast they can outsmart or outrun other investors, humans and computers alike.”
• The term “high-frequency” refers to fast entry and exit of trading positions, the process best executed by algorithms and dedicated computer programs employing artificial intelligence. However, this can turn into the intentional probing of the market with tiny orders that are immediately canceled at speeds that cannot be matched by individual human investors.
• While this isn’t quite the “intelligence explosion” of machines foreseen by I.J. Good in 1965 and dubbed “the Singularity” by Vernor Vinge in 1993, the speed and sophistication of Goldman Sachs computer algorithms are indeed leaving humans –- at least, individual investors –- in the dust.
• Flash orders allow certain members of these exchanges to obtain access to order flow information before that information is made available to the public,” writes Schumer. This allows “those members to use rapid trading programs to trade ahead of those orders and profit from advanced knowledge of buying and selling activity.”
• Regardless of the debate over how HFT is used in market trading, it’s clear that supercomputers can already “outrun and outsmart” individual investors. This isn’t quite the Singularity envisioned by Good and Vinge, but it raises some perplexing questions about the use of artificial intelligence to gain market advantage when individual humans “with slide rules” cannot compete.

• At the conference, held behind closed doors in Monterey Bay, California, leading researchers warned that mankind might lose control over computer-based systems that carry out a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting on the phone, and have already reached a level of indestructibility comparable with a cockroach.
• “These are powerful technologies that could be used in good ways or scary ways,” warned Eric Horvitz, principal researcher at Microsoft who organised the conference on behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
• According to Alan Winfield, a professor at the University of the West of England, scientists are spending too much time developing artificial intelligence and too little on robot safety.
• “We’re rapidly approaching the time when new robots should undergo tests, similar to ethical and clinical trials for new drugs, before they can be introduced,” he said.
• Robotic unmanned predator drones, for example, which can seek out and kill human targets, have already moved out of the movie theatres and into the theatre of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. While at present controlled by human operators, they are moving towards more autonomous control.
• They could also soon be found on the streets. Samsung, the South Korean electronics company, has developed autonomous sentry robots to serve as armed border guards. They have “shoot-to-kill” capability.
• Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at Sheffield University, warned that such robots could soon be used for policing, for example during riots such as those seen in London at the recent G20 summit. “Is this a good thing?” he asked.

• The Emotional Humanoid Robot can express seven different feelings, including delight, surprise, sadness and dislike. In addition to assuming different poses to match the mood, Kobian uses motors in its face to move its lips, eyelids and eyebrows into various positions, according to pinktentacle.
• To express delight, for example, the robot its hands over its head and opens it mouth and eyes wide.
• To show sadness, Kobian hunches over, hangs its head and holds a hand up to its face in a gesture of grief.
• Kobian can also walk around, perceive its environment and perform physical tasks. The robot features a double jointed neck that helps it achieve more expressive postures.
• It was developed and unveiled by researchers at Waseda’s Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering in Tokyo on Tuesday June 23.
  They were led by Professor Atsuo Takanashi, and worked with robot manufacturer Tmsuk, based in Kitakyushu, southern Japan.
• According to Kobian’s developers, the robot’s expressiveness makes it more equipped to interact with humans and assist with daily activities.
  There are plans for it to be further developed and then possibly deployed into the field of nursing.

• Artificial intelligence is already used to automate and replace some human functions with computer-driven machines. These machines can see and hear, respond to questions, learn, draw inferences and solve problems. But for the Singulatarians, A.I. refers to machines that will be both self-aware and superhuman in their intelligence, and capable of designing better computers and robots faster than humans can today. Such a shift, they say, would lead to a vast acceleration in technological improvements of all kinds.
• Profiled in the documentary “Transcendent Man,” which had its premier last month at the TriBeCa Film Festival, and with his own Singularity movie due later this year, Dr. Kurzweil has become a one-man marketing machine for the concept of post-humanism. He is the co-founder of Singularity University, a school supported by Google that will open in June with a grand goal — to “assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.”
• Not content with the development of superhuman machines, Dr. Kurzweil envisions “uploading,” or the idea that the contents of our brain and thought processes can somehow be translated into a computing environment, making a form of immortality possible — within his lifetime.…
• “Kurzweil will probably die, along with the rest of us not too long before the ‘great dawn,’ ” said Gary Bradski, a Silicon Valley roboticist. “Life’s not fair.”

azspot:

Today the thorniest questions about clon­ing extinct species may be less technical than ethical. “Mammoths, like elephants, were intel­ligent, highly social animals,” says Adrian Lister, paleontologist and mammoth expert at the Natural History Museum in London. “Cloning would give you a single animal, which would live all alone in a park, a zoo, or a lab—not in its native habitat, which no longer exists. You’re basically creating a curio.” Tom Gilbert, an expert in ancient DNA at Copenhagen University who with Schuster and Webb pioneered the harvesting of mammoth DNA from hair, admits that as a student of mammoths, he’d be the first to go see one trundle across a paddock. But he questions both the utility and the wisdom of cloning extinct species. “If you can do a mammoth, you can do anything else that’s dead, including your grandmother. But in a world in global warming and with limited resources for research, do you really want to bring back your dead grandmother?”

Bare Skin Safe Conductive Ink

• Bare is a conductive ink that is applied directly onto the skin allowing the creation of custom electronic circuitry. This innovative material allows users to interact with electronics through gesture, movement, and touch. Bare can be applied with a brush, stamp or spray and is non-toxic and temporary. Application areas include dance, music, computer interfaces, communication and medical devices. Bare is an intuitive and non-invasive technology which will allow users to bridge the gap between electronics and the body.

Have to say, much cooler than MIT’s Sixth Sense tech ‘cause at the very least you can be artistic with your painted-on-skin-diodes.

cultrvultr:

(via datn) This is some Michael Crichton shit for serious.

• A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body’s own immune system. They knew Old World monkeys had a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein called retrocyclin, which can prevent HIV from entering cell walls and starting an infection. So they began poring over the human genome, looking to see if humans had a latent gene that could manufacture retrocyclin too. It turned out that we did, but a “nonsense mutation” in the gene had turned it off at some point in our evolutionary history.

So the scientists turned on our ancestor gene and now it’s time to start up free love again.