Category: news

from the I-will-gladly-pay-you-Tuesday-for-a-megaflop-today dept.
Yahoo has the story about a distributed computing project that pays you for those otherwise-unused cycles. Australian company ProcessTree Network plans to implement a scheme to pay money toward users' ISP bills in exchange for running a SETI@home-like distributed-computing client. (Windows-only for now…)

from the lots-of-foresight-out-there dept.
Most futurist journals aren't very useful — too short-term, too conservative. Here's a new one that has a chance: foresight® from Camford Publishing — no relation to Foresight Institute. Their board of editors includes at least two who "get it": Clem Bezold and Peter Schwartz. Overall, the publication has a European feel. The email digest is free. For the scope of the journal's topics, see More below.

from the bringing-it-all-back-home dept.
Anyone with notes from the Gathering who would like those notes incorporated into the Senior Associate website should send them to me at [email protected]. Photos are also welcome.

from the smarter-than-the-average-mechanism dept.
Eliezer Yudkowsky writes "Coding a Transhuman AI 2.0a has just been published. The paper is 179K; there is a summary. CaTAI discusses how to build a general intelligence, along with the specific issues associated with creating a self-modifying or "seed" AI (one that can understand and rewrite its own source code). I expect this paper to be extended considerably in the future, but the published sections are complete and self-contained. I may revise this paper further before the Foresight Conference, but the initial version is now available for review. "

Foresight Senior Associate Robert A. Freitas Jr. has just completed a lengthy technical risk analysis of some "gray goo" scenarios which may be relevant to our discussions of nanoreplicator safely and regulations. The title is Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations . (Thanks go to Senior Associate Robert Bradbury for getting this into html.) If you're coming to the Gathering, try to read or skim this first. Additionally, you may comment below or by using Crit; to do the latter, click here.

Christine Peterson writes "Various technical and political honchos endorse the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative on this page at the nano.gov site. It's not surprising that these folks would favor R&D spending, but for those of us in Foresight it is gratifying to see them endorsing our technical goals and/or our goals for applications (e.g. medical and environmental). Five of them get extra points for mentioning molecular-scale "machines": MIT's president, UCSB's chancellor, HP Labs' director, Material Research Society's president, and Newt Gingrich (!). "