My Robo Habilis post was picked up on by Michael Anissimov who wrote: (me:) It seems to me that one obvious way to ameliorate the impact of the AI/robotics revolution in the economic world, then, is simple: build robots whose cognitive architectures are enough different from humans that their relative skillfullness at various tasks will… Continue reading Do we need Friendly AI?
One of the species of early hominids is named Homo habilis, meaning “handy man,” after their significant advancement in tool use over previous hominids. One of the goals of the AGI Roadmap is to chart paths to full human intelligence, and one of the paths might follow the one that evolution took. The Wozniak Test,… Continue reading Robo Habilis
Foresight’s mission is essentially an educational one. In simplest terms we are here to point out foreseeable technological developments that not only will make the future different from the past, but make it different in ways that aren’t obvious and which everyone isn’t already planning for. Nanotechnology — true nanotech in Drexler’s original sense of… Continue reading AGI Roadmap meeting
Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel: While nanotechology might mean different things to different people, the term was originally coined to describe the building of things from the bottom up with… Continue reading Atomic precision as the goal of nanotechnology
The 2-millimeter dash was a nanobot race held as part of the 2009 RoboCup Nanosoccer Demonstration Competition. That was July; typically entry time, as for Robocup 2010 in Singapore, would be year end, but I can’t see any announcement for it on their page. Does anyone know any more details?
Special thanks to longtime Foresight member Monica Anderson for setting up this November 4 Bay Area talk by another longtime Foresight member, Keith Lofstrom: Server-Sky: Solar powered server and communication arrays in Earth orbit. http://www.server-sky.com The EPA predicts US data center power consumption in 2011 will be 120 billion kilowatt hours, or 3% of total… Continue reading Server Sky: solar powered server and communications arrays in orbit
I (and others) get interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio (podcast) about machine ethics… Robots: Our Future or Our End? | In the Loop | Minnesota Public Radio . Not deep but fun…
Lithographic Graphitic Memories. HPC Wire reports that advances by the Rice University lab of James Tour have brought graphite’s potential as a mass data storage medium a step closer to reality and created the potential for reprogrammable gate arrays that could bring about a revolution in integrated circuit logic design. (H/T Sander Olson) (H/T Brian… Continue reading Lithographic Graphitic Memories
In Singularity or Bust I discussed the work of econophysicist Didier Sornette et al in using oscillating hyperexponentials to predict the collapse of Chinese equity markets. They have a new paper out which tells a bit more about how they predict the point of collapse. H/t Physics arXiv Blog. By combining (i) the economic theory… Continue reading Singularity or Bust — update
IEEE Spectrum: Boston Startup iWalk Lands Funding for Robotic Prosthetics. If you wonder how soon we will have walking robots, remember that the technology underlying the Segway was developed for a stair-climbing wheelchair. From the article: I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Herr speak at an MIT robotics conference last November. At the time,… Continue reading IEEE Spectrum: Boston Startup iWalk Lands Funding for Robotic Prosthetics
