Lifeboat Foundation

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It’s usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published August 10, 2010. We hope you enjoy it!

You don’t have a flying car, jetpack, or ray gun, but this is still the future. How do I know? Because we’re all surrounded by artificial intelligence. I love when friends ask me when we’ll develop smart computers…because they’re usually holding one in their hands. Your phone calls are routed with artificial intelligence.

Every time you use a search engine you’re taking advantage of data collected by ‘smart’ algorithms. When you call the bank and talk to an automated voice you are probably talking to an AI…just a very annoying one. Our world is full of these limited AI programs which we classify as “weak” or “narrow” or “applied.”

Continue reading “How Today’s Jungle of Artificial Intelligence Will Spawn Sentience” »

Stanford computer science student Joshua Browder, whose DoNotPay bot helps you fight parking tickets in London and New York (it’s estimated to have overturned $4M in tickets to date) has a new bot in the offing: a chatbot that helps newly homeless people in the UK create and optimise their applications for benefits.

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In austerity-wracked Britain, where the Tories have made things easier than they’ve ever been for landlords and harder than they’ve ever been for workers, repossessions and evictions are at an all-time high. So Browder — who was born in the UK — decided to add a homelessness navigation aid to his bot, which had already been expanded to handle fight-delay reimbursement applications. He’s also researching adding New York City homelessness form-completing to the bot’s repertoire.

Watson joins China’s research team.

China’s Hangzhou Cognitive Care has teamed up with IBM to bring Watson super computer to 21 hospitals in the country.

Singapore: In a bid to intensify its fight against cancer, China’s Hangzhou Cognitive Care has teamed up with IBM to bring Watson super computer to 21 hospitals in the country. The super computer is all set to play a crucial role in a new multi-year program being unveiled in China. This is IBM’s first partnership in China’s healthcare sector.

Continue reading “IBM’s foray into Chinese healthcare sector” »

Researchers have developed a wireless device small enough to be implanted in individual nerves, and capable of detecting the electrical activity of nerves and muscles deep within the body, according to DARPA, which funded the work.

The millimeter-scale sensor and external ultrasonic transceiver that powers the implant and communicates with it is called a “neural dust” system. The team, led by the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, completed the first in vivo tests of this technology in rodents and reported them in the journal Neuron.

The sensor can be implanted into either a nerve or muscle, and consists of a piezoelectric crystal, a single custom transistor, and a pair of recording electrodes. The system reported both electroneurogram (ENG) recordings from the sciatic nerve and electromyographic (EMG) recordings from the gastrocnemius muscle, according to the journal article.

Continue reading “New Tiny Implantable Devices Are Powered by Ultrasound” »

LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Technavio’s latest report on the global aircraft synthetic vision system (SVS) market provides an analysis on the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook from 2016–2020. Technavio defines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline.

Improved safety standards and changing regulatory scenario to boost the aircraft SVS market until 2020. Tweet this

An SVS is a computer-mediated reality system for aerial vehicles, which uses 3D technology to provide pilots with a clear understanding of their flying environment. It was developed by NASA and the US Air Force in the late 1970s and 1980s, in support of air safety and advanced cockpit research.

Continue reading “Improved Safety Standards and Changing Regulatory Scenario to Boost the Global Aircraft Synthetic Vision System Market Through 2020: Technavio” »

New discoveries about phase change memory show it can switch at picosecond scales — theoretically opening the door to a DRAM replacement thousands of times faster than our current memory technology.

Luv it; especially fabric to do time release meds, or bio release meds; or do communications via a shirt or jacket.

With the invention of technology-laden fabrics, otherwise known as smart textiles, we are able to benefit from multifunctional materials.

Smart textiles, also known as E-textiles, smart garments, tech fabrics, and smart fabrics, are materials based on technology that integrate advanced features beneficial to the wearer. In an interview with Forbes, Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, smart textiles and wearable technologies expert stated, “what makes smart fabrics revolutionary is that they have the ability to do many things that traditional fabrics cannot, including communicate, transform, conduct energy and even grow.” And as crazy as it might sound, having computers and technology literally integrated into our clothing is not only acceptable but may one day be the norm.

Continue reading “4 Smart Textiles Revolutionizing the Future of Fabric” »

Silicon chips can store data in billionths of a second, but phase-change memory could be 1,000 times faster, while using less energy and requiring less space.

Every single operating system developed by Google to date has one thing in common: they’re based on the Linux kernel. Chrome OS, Android, Chromecasts, you name it. Linux has powered Google hardware for years.

However, the Linux kernel is not ideal for every situation. Especially in the case of embedded devices like car dashboards or GPS units, full-blown desktop kernels like Linux impact performance and cause other issues. There’s a massive ecosystem of operating systems designed for embedded hardware, and Google may be working on their own.

Enter “Fuchsia.” Google’s own description for it on the project’s GitHub page is simply, “Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)”. Not very revealing, is it? When you begin to dig deeper into Fuchsia’s documentation, everything starts to make a little more sense.

Continue reading “Google is developing an OS called ‘Fuchsia,’ runs on All the Things” »