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Mar 28, 2017

Trump to unveil new White House office led by Jared Kushner

Posted by in categories: business, Elon Musk, government, law

The innovation office has a particular focus on technology and data, and it is working with such titans as Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, and Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk. The group has already hosted sessions with more than 100 such leaders and government officials.


The Office of American Innovation aims to overhaul government functions using ideas from the business sector. The president’s son-in-law will lead the Office of American Innovation, which wants to overhaul government by using ideas from the business sector.

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Mar 28, 2017

Elon Musk launches Neuralink, a venture to merge the human brain with AI

Posted by in categories: biological, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is backing a brain-computer interface venture called Neuralink, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company, which is still in the earliest stages of existence and has no public presence whatsoever, is centered on creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the eventual purpose of helping human beings merge with software and keep pace with advancements in artificial intelligence. These enhancements could improve memory or allow for more direct interfacing with computing devices.

Musk has hinted at the existence of Neuralink a few times over the last six months or so. More recently, Musk told a crowd in Dubai, “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” He added that “it’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.” On Twitter, Musk has responded to inquiring fans about his progress on a so-called “neural lace,” which is sci-fi shorthand for a brain-computer interface humans could use to improve themselves.

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Mar 28, 2017

Automated Industrial Drones

Posted by in categories: drones, robotics/AI

To address the unique needs of the world’s most complex industrial environments,

Airobotics has developed a platform that is fully automated, industrial grade, on-demand and multi-purpose.

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Mar 27, 2017

Musk Is Preparing to Release “Brain Hacking Tech,” And He’s Not Alone

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

Today, Elon Musk stated that updates regarding his neural lace, which is meant to augment the human mind, are coming next month. In October, Bryan Johnson announced a $100 million investment to put computers in our brains. And so, a race is on to hack human intelligence.

The age of the machine is well underway, and there is a very good chance that humanity will be left behind. Artificial intelligence is beating us at poker. It is beating us at Go. It is saving lives by identifying diseases when human doctors fail. It is running our grocery stores. It is driving our cars. AI is even making other AI.

Soon, very soon, our computers will surpass us in every skill imaginable.

Continue reading “Musk Is Preparing to Release ‘Brain Hacking Tech,’ And He’s Not Alone” »

Mar 27, 2017

Scientists convert spinach leaves into human heart tissue — that beats

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, food

If an overhyped vegetable existed before marketers coined the term superfood — and long before Oprah Winfrey chatted up acai berries with Dr. Oz — look no further than spinach. (Here’s to Popeye, eating the stuff by the can to inflate his biceps.) Spinach alone, of course, won’t pump anyone up. But it does have a few physical properties of the type that excite biomedical engineers. Spinach grows a network of veins, for instance, that thread through its leaves in a way similar to blood vessels through a human heart.

These leafy veins allowed researchers at Massachusetts’s Worcester Polytechnic Institute to give a new meaning to heart-healthy spinach. The tissue engineers, as they reported recently in the journal Biomaterials, stripped green spinach leaves of their cells. The spinach turned translucent. The scientists seeded the gaps that the plant cells left behind with human heart tissue. Heart cells, in clusters, beat for up to three weeks in this unusual environment.

The inspiration for the human-plant fusion came over lunch — and, yes, the leafy greens were involved — when WPI bioengineers Glenn Gaudette and Joshua Gershlak began to brainstorm new ways to tackle a deadly medical problem: the lack of donor organs. Of the more than 100,000 people on the donor list, nearly two dozen people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant.

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Mar 27, 2017

Immortal Stem Cells Let Scientists Create an Unlimited Supply of Artificial Blood

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Researchers have developed a line immortal stem cells that allow them to generate an unlimited supply of artificial red blood cells on demand.

If these artificial blood cells pass clinical trials, they’ll be far more efficient for medical use than current red blood cell products, which have to be generated from donor blood — and would be a huge deal for patients with rare blood types, who often struggle to find matching blood donors.

The idea isn’t for these immortal stem cells to replace blood donation altogether — when it comes to regular blood transfusions, donated blood still does the trick.

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Mar 27, 2017

Solar Powered e-Skin Could Take Prosthetics to the Next Level

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI, sustainability

Ingenious e-skin invented by scientists from the University of Glasgow improves the performance of prosthetic limbs through sensitive sensors.

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Mar 27, 2017

The lessons of violence and inequality through the ages

Posted by in categories: economics, neuroscience

History has shown us that only violence or huge disasters tend to reduce inequality. Which is frightening on it’s own.


The Great Leveller: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century By Walter Scheidel. Princeton University Press; 504 pages; $35 and £27.95.

AS A supplier of momentary relief, the Great Depression seems an unlikely candidate. But when it turns up on page 363 of Walter Scheidel’s “The Great Leveler” it feels oddly welcome. For once—and it is only once, for no other recession in American history boasts the same achievement—real wages rise and the incomes of the most affluent fall to a degree that has a “powerful impact on economic inequality”. Yes, it brought widespread suffering and dreadful misery. But it did not bring death to millions, and in that it stands out.

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Mar 27, 2017

Elon Musk Just Launched A Company To Merge Your Brain With A Computer

Posted by in categories: cyborgs, Elon Musk, robotics/AI

In case you missed it, Elon Musk is rather concerned about the fate of humanity, given the extreme advancements being made in artificial intelligence (AI). Ultimately, he fears that our AI will, one day, overtake us. When this happens, he claims that humans will likely become second class citizens (or slaves, or something even worse).

Now, reports have surfaced which assert that he is backing a brain-computer interface venture that was founded to allow humans to keep up with the advancements made in machines. The interface is intended to work by augmenting that which makes us human: our brains.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Just Launched A Company To Merge Your Brain With A Computer” »

Mar 27, 2017

Elon Musk Launches Neuralink to Connect Brains With Computers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, Elon Musk, neuroscience

Somewhere in his packed schedule, he has found time to start a neuroscience company that plans to develop cranial computers, most likely to treat intractable brain diseases first, but later to help humanity avoid subjugation at the hands of intelligent machines.

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