Lifeboat Foundation

Skyfire claims it is offering the world’s first payment network designed to support fully autonomous transactions across AI agents, large language models (LLMs), data platforms and various service providers.

This development marks a significant step toward creating a new global economy where AI agents can function as independent economic actors, capable of making and receiving payments without human intervention.

“We really see that next million users for a lot of these [vendor] companies coming from AI agents being the customer,” said Sarhangi.

Researchers at a Swedish university have developed tiny robots that can kill cancerous tumours with deadly precision.

Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book.

The rise of the smaller models.

Common push puppet toys in the shapes of animals and popular figures can move or collapse with the push of a button at the bottom of the toys’ base. Now, a team of UCLA engineers has created a new class of tunable dynamic material that mimics the inner workings of push puppets, with applications for soft robotics, reconfigurable architectures and space engineering.

Inside a push puppet, there are connecting cords that—when pulled taut—will make the toy stand stiff. But by loosening these cords, the “limbs” of the toy will go limp. Using the same cord tension-based principle that controls a puppet, researchers have developed a new type of metamaterial, a material engineered to possess properties with promising advanced capabilities.

Continue reading “Engineers make tunable, shape-changing metamaterial inspired by vintage toys” »

Scientists are trying to build a new sort of satellite, and have recently tested their idea with the Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment, or “StarFOX.” You may be getting flashbacks to the retro Star Fox video game series — and you’d be right to imagine this experiment as a science fiction fantasy brought into reality. There are no space-faring animals here, though.

Basically, StarFOX is a quartet of small satellites that work in tandem — a satellite “swarm,” as it’s sometimes called. This concept isn’t entirely new, but there’s something that sets StarFOX apart from standard satellite swarms. Typically, these conglomerates need external help in terms of orientation — but StarFOX’s four satellites can gauge their own positions with onboard cameras, an ability that could allow them to operate autonomously well beyond Earth orbit.

Can a process as complex as science be automated?

Scientific discovery is one of the most sophisticated human activities. First, scientists must understand the existing knowledge and identify a significant gap.

Next, they must formulate a research question and design and conduct an experiment in pursuit of an answer.

Continue reading “Newly Created ‘AI Scientist’ Is About to Start Churning Out Research” »

Two years on, most of those productivity gains haven’t materialized. And we’ve seen something peculiar and slightly unexpected happen: People have started forming relationships with AI systems. We talk to them, say please and thank you, and have started to invite AIs into our lives as friends, lovers, mentors, therapists, and teachers.

We’re seeing a giant, real-world experiment unfold, and it’s still uncertain what impact these AI companions will have either on us individually or on society as a whole, argue Robert Mahari, a joint JD-PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Law School, and Pat Pataranutaporn, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. They say we need to prepare for “addictive intelligence”, or AI companions that have dark patterns built into them to get us hooked. You can read their piece here. They look at how smart regulation can help us prevent some of the risks associated with AI chatbots that get deep inside our heads.

The idea that we’ll form bonds with AI companions is no longer just hypothetical. Chatbots with even more emotive voices, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o, are likely to reel us in even deeper. During safety testing, OpenAI observed that users would use language that indicated they had formed connections with AI models, such as “This is our last day together.” The company itself admits that emotional reliance is one risk that might be heightened by its new voice-enabled chatbot.

Join Randal Koene, a computational neuroscientist, as he dives into the intricate world of whole brain emulation and mind uploading, while touching on the ethical pillars of AI. In this episode, Koene discusses the importance of equal access to AI, data ownership, and the ethical impact of AI development. He explains the potential future of AGI, how current social and political systems might influence it, and touches on the scientific and philosophical aspects of creating a substrate-independent mind. Koene also elaborates on the differences between human cognition and artificial neural networks, the challenge of translating brain structure to function, and efforts to accelerate neuroscience research through structured challenges.

00:00 Introduction to Randal Koene and Whole Brain Emulation.
00:39 Ethical Considerations in AI Development.
02:20 Challenges of Equal Access and Data Ownership.
03:40 Impact of AGI on Society and Development.
05:58 Understanding Mind Uploading.
06:39 Randall’s Journey into Computational Neuroscience.
08:14 Scientific and Philosophical Aspects of Substrate Independent Minds.
13:07 Brain Function and Memory Processes.
25:34 Whole Brain Emulation: Current Techniques and Challenges.
32:12 The Future of Neuroscience and AI Collaboration.

Continue reading “The Ethics, Challenges, and Future of Whole Brain Emulation & AGI | Deep Interview with Randal Koene” »