Lifeboat Foundation

Physicists at West Virginia University have overcome a long-standing limitation of the first law of thermodynamics.

Paul Cassak, a professor and associate director of the Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics at West Virginia University, and Hasan Barbhuiya, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, are investigating the conversion of energy in superheated plasmas in space. Funded by the National Science Foundation, their findings, published in the Physical Review Letters journal, are set to revolutionize the understanding of how plasmas in space and labs are heated and could have far-reaching implications in physics and other sciences.

We often imagine that human consciousness is as simple as input and output of electrical signals within a network of processing units — therefore comparable to a computer. Reality, however, is much more complicated. For starters, we don’t actually know how much information the human brain can hold.

As part of belt-tightening at the company, Google told staff it would cut back on some of its lavish perks, including reducing café hours.

Woah, we’re halfway there. The company behind the hotly anticipated eVTOL Cavorite X5 announced it has completed construction of a 50-percent-scale prototype of its stylish flying vehicle concept.

Horizon Aircraft impressed us last year when it unveiled the Cavorite X5, with the Toronto-based company showing that the usually utilitarian world of eVTOLs could afford a little more attractive form with its function. The sleek, canard-style plane can takeoff, soar and land like a conventional aircraft, but the wings can open to reveal 16 ducted fans that provide the aircraft’s vertical lift. Once at altitude, the wing closes as it transitions to cruising. This technology would allow the aircraft to fly 98 percent of its voyage in a low-drag configuration, much like a traditional aircraft. When Horizon builds its full-scale version of the eVTOL, it will be powered by a hybrid electric system that can recharge a battery in-flight.

Explore the history of artificial intelligence, from Alan Turing’s Turing Test to the latest breakthroughs in machine learning and natural language processing.

An experiment that probed particles called gluons, which contain most of the mass of a proton, has revealed that a proton’s radius alters depending on whether you look at the particle’s charge or mass.

By Alex Wilkins

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8
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GUEST BIO:
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a researcher, writer, and philosopher on the topic of superintelligent AI.

Continue reading “Eliezer Yudkowsky: GPT-4 should not be open sourced | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips” »

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In a sense, the extinct woolly mammoth has returned —as a meatball. On Tuesday, an Australian cultured meat start-up revealed a sphere of lab-grown meat, produced with a DNA sequence from the elephant-like mammal.

But you won’t find this product in grocery stores; the creation is not meant to be eaten, at least for now. Instead, the “mammoth meatball” aims to highlight the environmental impacts of standard agricultural practices and present cultured meat as a viable option for food production down the line.

Continue reading “This Massive Meatball Was Made With Woolly Mammoth DNA” »

Won’t that just make enemies of AI?

One of the world’s loudest artificial intelligence critics has issued a stark call to not only put a pause on AI but to militantly put an end to it — before it ends us instead.

In an op-ed for Time magazine, machine learning researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, who has for more than two decades been warning about the dystopian future that will come when we achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is once again ringing the alarm bells.

Continue reading “Machine Learning Expert Calls for Bombing Data Centers to Stop Rise of AI” »