Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: education – Page 31

An exploration of Frank Herbert’s implicit and explicit warnings against the unmitigated advancement and dependence on AI (Artificial Intelligence), while also examining how these fundamental concerns, leading to AI’s prohibition, consistently resonate throughout the series. One of its less explored, but equally compelling, elements is its commentary on the rise of artificial intelligence. Dune is set in the far future taking place in an interstellar empire that is devoid of thinking machines after a universal ban against computing technology that is made in the likeness of a human mind. The reasons behind this prohibition not only serve as a caution against the perils of artificial intelligence, but they also underscore broader warnings present throughout Herbert’s Dune books.

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Intro track: honey juice by harris heller.

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Continue reading “The Butlerian Jihad: Frank Herbert’s Warning Against A.I. | Dune Lore Explained” | >

This is a sci-fi documentary, looking at what it takes to build an underground city on Mars. The choice to go underground is for protection, from the growing storm radiation that rains down on the surface every day. And to further advance the Mars colonization efforts.

Where will the materials to build the city come from? How will the crater be covered to protect the inhabitants? And what will it feel like to live in this city, that is in a hole in the ground?

It is a dream of building an advanced Mars colony, and showing the science and future space technology needed to make it happen.

Personal inspiration in creating this video comes from: The Expanse TV show and books, and The Martian.

Other topics in the video include: the plan and different phases of construction, the robots building the city, structures that are on the surface versus below the surface, pressurizing a habitat on Mars, the soil and how to turn it in Martian concrete, the art of terraforming, and the different materials that can be extracted from the planet. And the future plans of the Mars colony, from building upwards to venturing to the asteroid belt and Jupiter’s 95 moons.

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Continue reading “The Dream of Building an Underground City on Mars (Sci-Fi Documentary)” | >

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry have investigated how stress hormones affect the early development of brain cells in the cerebral cortex of the fetus. The cortex is the crucial area of the brain for thinking. The team was able to demonstrate causal links between stress hormones and altered brain structure, which relate to higher levels of educational attainment later in life.

The hormone group of glucocorticoids is crucial for the regulation of our metabolism and , but also for the development of organs such as the brain and lungs before birth. The hormones are released in response to stress and can travel from the mother to the fetus. One of the best-known is cortisol. Synthetic forms are prescribed, for example, in pregnancies at high risk for preterm delivery in order to help the maturation of the fetal lungs.

“We found that glucocorticoids, when present early in in the first or early second trimester, increase the number of a particular type of brain cells that are formed very early in development (called basal progenitor cells)”, reports Anthi C. Krontira, who led the study published in Neuron. “These are cells that are important for the growth of the cerebral .”

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GreenPower has delivered an electric purpose-built Type D BEAST school bus to Arizona, its first in the state.

GreenPower’s BEAST – “battery electric automotive school transportation” – is a 40-foot electric school bus that seats up to 90 passengers. It features an aluminum body on a high-strength steel truss chassis.

The BEAST has a 194 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery pack and a range of up to 150 miles, and standard dual port charging, with Level 2 charging rates of up to 19.2 kW and DC fast charging rates of up to 85 kW. Wireless charging is also available as an option.

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The University of Chicago Medicine is among the first 30 institutions in the country to offer tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy for advanced melanoma, immediately activating as an authorized treatment center after federal regulators approved the treatment on February 16, 2024.

Effortless, enjoyable productivity is a state of consciousness prized and sought after by people in business, the arts, research, education and anyone else who wants to produce a stream of creative ideas and products. That’s the flow, or the sense of being “in the zone.” A new neuroimaging study from Drexel University’s Creativity Research Lab is the first to reveal how the brain gets to the creative flow state.

The study is published in the journal Neuropsychologia.

The study isolated flow-related brain activity during a creative task: jazz improvisation. The findings reveal that the creative flow state involves two key factors: extensive experience, which leads to a network of brain areas specialized for generating the desired type of ideas, plus the release of control— letting go—to allow this network to work with little or no conscious supervision.

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An exotic electronic state observed by MIT physicists could enable more robust forms of quantum computing.

The electron is the basic unit of electricity, as it carries a single negative charge. This is what we’re taught in high school physics, and it is overwhelmingly the case in most materials in nature.

But in very special states of matter, electrons can splinter into fractions of their whole. This phenomenon, known as “fractional charge,” is exceedingly rare, and if it can be corralled and controlled, the exotic electronic state could help to build resilient, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

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Like Gates, Leslie doesn’t dismiss doomer scenarios outright. “Bad actors can take advantage of these technologies and cause catastrophic harms,” he says. “You don’t need to buy into superintelligence, apocalyptic robots, or AGI speculation to understand that.”

“But I agree that our immediate concerns should be in addressing the existing risks that derive from the rapid commercialization of generative AI,” says Leslie. “It serves a positive purpose to sort of zoom our lens in and say, ‘Okay, well, what are the immediate concerns?’”

In his post, Gates notes that AI is already a threat in many fundamental areas of society, from elections to education to employment. Of course, such concerns aren’t news. What Gates wants to tell us is that although these threats are serious, we’ve got this: “The best reason to believe that we can manage the risks is that we have done it before.”

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