Lifeboat Foundation

COSPAR’s Planetary Protection Policy ensures scientific investigations related to the origin and distribution of life are not compromised.

Protecting the Earth from alien life sounds like the latest plot for a blockbuster thriller set in outer space. Whether it’s an invasion or a mysterious alien illness, the extraterrestrial threat to our planet has been well-explored in science fiction. But protecting the Earth from extraterrestrial contamination is not just a concept for our entertainment; as we explore further across our solar system and begin to land on our neighbouring planetary bodies, ensuring that we don’t bring potentially dangerous material home to Earth or indeed carry anything from Earth that may contaminate another planet is a responsibility we must take seriously.

So, who is responsible for ensuring that our space exploration is completed safely? Many nations around the world have their own space agencies, such as NASA and the European Space Agency, who run many different types of missions to explore space. States are responsible for their space activities under the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, including governmental and non-governmental actors. The Outer Space Treaty, among several provisions, regulates in its Article IX against harmful contamination. One of the core activities of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) is to develop, maintain, and promote a Policy on Planetary Protection, as the only international reference standard for spacefaring nations and in guiding compliance with Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty.

Continue reading “Planetary Protection Policy: For sustainable space exploration and to safeguard our biosphere” »

There they go again. Just a few months ago the US Department of Energy tapped a startup called Group14 Technologies for a multi-million dollar R&D grant to usher in a new generation of high performance EV batteries, and now here comes Group14 with another $17 million in series B funding spearheaded by the South Korean battery expert SK Materials. If you guessed that means scaling up production for the mass market, you’re right on the money. The bigger question is why the Energy Department is determined to support the US electric vehicle industry, considering that White House policy has been aimed at supporting the US oil industry. Any guesses?

It seems competition is increasing.

BEIJING – In a future driven by electric vehicles, China is poised to dominate if the U.S. does not transform its automobile industry in coming years.

While California-based Tesla captured popular attention for electric cars, national policy in Beijing encouraged the launch of several rivals in China, the world’s largest auto market. Already, sales of electric cars and other new energy vehicles hit a record in September in China. Even Tesla launched a factory there last year, and is planning to sell made-in-China cars to Europe.

Continue reading “China’s electric car strategy is starting to go global – and the U.S. is lagging behind” »

It seems some countries are now switching to drone swarms.

From Syria to Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh, this new method of military offense has been brutally effective. We are witnessing a revolution in the history of warfare, one that is causing panic, particularly in Europe.

Continue reading “‘Like horse-mounted cavalry against tanks’: Turkey has perfected new, deadly way to wage war, using militarized ‘drone swarms’” »

Popular media and policy-oriented discussions on the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into nuclear weapons systems frequently focus on matters of launch authority—that is, whether AI, especially machine learning (ML) capabilities, should be incorporated into the decision to use nuclear weapons and thereby reduce the role of human control in the decisionmaking process. This is a future we should avoid. Yet while the extreme case of automating nuclear weapons use is high stakes, and thus existential to get right, there are many other areas of potential AI adoption into the nuclear enterprise that require assessment. Moreover, as the conventional military moves rapidly to adopt AI tools in a host of mission areas, the overlapping consequences for the nuclear mission space, including in nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3), may be underappreciated.

AI may be used in ways that do not directly involve or are not immediately recognizable to senior decisionmakers. These areas of AI application are far left of an operational decision or decision to launch and include four priority sectors: security and defense; intelligence activities and indications and warning; modeling and simulation, optimization, and data analytics; and logistics and maintenance. Given the rapid pace of development, even if algorithms are not used to launch nuclear weapons, ML could shape the design of the next-generation ballistic missile or be embedded in the underlying logistics infrastructure. ML vision models may undergird the intelligence process that detects the movement of adversary mobile missile launchers and optimize the tipping and queuing of overhead surveillance assets, even as a human decisionmaker remains firmly in the loop in any ultimate decisions about nuclear use. Understanding and navigating these developments in the context of nuclear deterrence and the understanding of escalation risks will require the analytical attention of the nuclear community and likely the adoption of risk management approaches, especially where the exclusion of AI is not reasonable or feasible.

BOEM is responsible for offshore renewable energy development in Federal waters. The program began in 2009, when the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced the final regulations for the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Renewable Energy Program, which was authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). These regulations provide a framework for all of the activities needed to support production and transmission of energy from sources other than oil and natural gas. BOEM anticipates future development on the OCS from these general sources:

Offshore Wind Energy

Offshore wind is an abundant, domestic energy resource that is located close to major coastal load centers. It provides an efficient alternative to long-distance transmission or development of electricity generation in these land-constrained regions.

Microsoft Health-Tech Vision

Dr. James Weinstein, is Senior Vice President, Microsoft Healthcare, where he is in charge of leading strategy, innovation and health equity functions.

Continue reading “Dr. James Weinstein, SVP Microsoft — Creating Healthcare With Value, Outcomes & Equity For Patients” »

A small group of economists from Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. has published a Policy Forum piece in the journal Science suggesting that consumers need to be protected from collusive price setting by AI systems. They also outline some possible ways to solve the problem.

For most countries, price collusion is illegal. It is where two or more makers or sellers of goods get together and agree to charge higher than market prices for the goods or services they are selling. Such practices are illegal because consumers wind up paying higher prices than they would if prices were market based. In their paper the economists reveal that many large corporations have taken to using computer systems with an AI component to set their prices. Using computers to set prices is not new, of course, some companies sell hundreds of thousands of products. Using computers to help set prices saves a lot of time and money. But until now, such systems have been constrained by the laws in which the companies operate—such laws can be baked in. But now, the authors contend, things have begun to change. AI systems have found, through learned experience, that uncommunicated collusion can lead to higher profits.

Artificial intelligence is being applied to virtually every aspect of our work and recreational lives. From determining calculations for the construction of towering skyscrapers to designing and building cruise ships the size of football fields, AI is increasingly playing a key role in the most massive projects.

But sometimes, all we want to do is move a can of beans.

Continue reading “AI system finds, moves items in constricted regions” »