AI/Transhumanism Update

Evidence Suggests that your Past Isn't Set in Stone
The Huffington Post (2010-08-18) -- In 2002, a physics experiment demonstrated that particles acted on information "before it happened, and across distances instantaneously." More recently, scientists in France showed that they could retroactively change something that already happened.
huffingtonpost.com

Google and the CIA are Predicting the Future by Surfing the Web
Wired (2010-07-28) -- The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
wired.com

Beyond the Petaflop: DARPA wants Quintillion-speed Computers
NetworkWorld (2010-07-22) -- Researchers at DARPA this week announced a program aimed at building computers that exceed current peta-scale computers to achieve the mind-altering speed of one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second.
networkworld.com

Scientists Create First Self-Replicating Synthetic Life
Wired (2010-05-20) -- Man-made DNA has booted up a cell for the first time. In a feat that is the culmination of two and a half years of tests and adjustments, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute inserted artificial genetic material — chemically printed, synthesized and assembled — into cells that were then able to grow naturally.
wired.com

Japan Exposed Their Supermodel Robot HRP-4C
Robotics Technology Center (2010-02-19) -- Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology brought to the public their latest supermodel robot, HRP-4C. This battery-powered humanoid has 30 motors in her body for her to be able to move her arms and feet. She has 8 facial motors for her to smile, blink and express emotion similar to surprise and anger.
roboticstechnologycenter.com

Futuristic And Genetically-Engineered Families That Already Exist
i09 (2010-02-15) -- Science is creating families that seem to be ripped from the pages of science fiction, including children with three genetic parents, children with a birth father, and children whose genetic parents are both female.
io9.com

Is the Cyborg the Future of the Human Race?
Silicon (2010-02-08) -- Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at Reading University believes that "by 2050 that we will have gone through the Singularity and it will either be intelligent machines actually dominant - The Terminator scenario - or it will be cyborgs, upgraded humans. I really by 2050 can't see humans still being the dominant species."
silicon.com

Smart Dust is On the Way
New York Times (2010-01-30) -- Smart dust remains a ways off, but technology’s virtuous cycle of smaller, faster and cheaper has reached the point that experts say sensors may soon be powerful enough to be the equivalent of tiny computers. Some ambitious sensor research projects provide a glimpse of where things are headed.
newyorktimes.com

Chips in Crains to Control Computers in 10 years
Computerworld (2009-11-19) -- Intel researchers arae working to utilize human brain waves to be used to control computers, TVs, and cell phones. Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains would read the brain waves and perform the control functions. The team expects this technology to be available by 2020.
computerworld.com

Free Will is not an Illusion after all
NewScientist (2009-09-23) -- New Zealand researchers have developed an experiment that delves deeper than ever before into the issue of determining whether or not we have free will. The results seem to overturn the conclusions of Libet's landmark experiment in the 1980s and imply that we do indeed have free will.
newscientist.com

The Future of Human Evolution
Bedeutung (2009-09-01) -- Oxford philosopher and transhumanism expert Nick Bostrom speculates on the future of human evolution and the failure of the Panglossian view.
bedeutung.co.uk


AI/Transhumanism Archive