Lifeboat Foundation

By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, April Koury, and Alexandra Whittington

Can human roles in retail survive the relentless march of the robots? Much of the current debate on automation focuses on the possible demise of existing jobs and the spread of automation into service and white-collar sectors – and retail is certainly one industry poised to follow this automation path in pursuit of the next driver of profits. From the advent of the steam engine and mechanisation of farming, through to the introduction of personal computing — jobs have always been automated through the use of technology. However, as new technologies have come to market, human ingenuity and the ability to create new products and services have increased the scope for employment and fulfilment. Retail has enjoyed enormous benefits from technology tools, but has the time come when automation poses a threat to jobs? Here we present two possible scenarios for retail 2020–2025: one where automation eliminates the majority of retail jobs and a second which sees the emergence of new paid roles in retail.

Scenario One: Robo-Retail Rules

By 2020, in-store robots walk the aisles to guide customers, help order from another branch, and bring goods to the checkout, or your car. Artificial intelligence (AI) personal assistants like Siri and Alexa have become personal shoppers, with perfect knowledge of customers’ tastes and preferences. This allows for development of retail algorithms to recommend the perfect item before shoppers even know they want it. The algorithms offer recommendations drawing on databases of consumer preferences (i.e. Amazon recommendations), social media, friends’ recent purchases, and analysis of emerging trends – with our AI assistants providing our profiles to help filter and select the appropriate offers.

Continue reading “Robo-Retail vs. Humanity at a Price? Two Possible Futures for Retail” »

The presence of senescent cells has been implicated in a wide range of age-related diseases and even conditions such as T1 diabetes. Today, we want to draw your attention to a new publication that explores the relationship between senescent cells and intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD).

It was already known that senescent cells increase during the progression of IDD, but it was not known if they were a driver or a consequence of IDD.

Most advanced-stage cancers mutate, resisting drugs meant to kill them. Now doctors are harnessing the principles of evolution to thwart that lethal adaptation.

Doctors feel that taking metformin is mostly safe, but cautioned about the lack of clinical studies.

A century ago, the periodic table looked much different than it does today! It had blank spots throughout, and the entire bottom row – the actinides – were not even part of the table as most of those elements did not exist in nature and had not been created in the lab. But researchers theorized their existence. And starting in the 1930s scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – or, the Rad Lab, as it was called then – began building the big machines and assembling the teams of scientists and engineers to chase those elements down.

Over the next several decades Berkeley Lab researchers were credited with discovering, Lab researchers were credited with discovering, or creating collaboratively with other labs, #16elements. Read more here.

Continue reading “16 Elements: Berkeley Lab’s Contributions to the Periodic Table” »

Today’s efforts in AI are somewhat less flashy, though still potentially revolutionary, and all seem to recognize one vital lesson: treating patients is both art and science. Rather than attempting to replace the physicians in medical practice, AI can, and should, say more experts, become a valuable tool in enhancing what doctors do.

Here’s where AI in medicine excels — and where it doesn’t yet measure up.

Hot off the press…

Barnes & Noble Press releases a new non-fiction book The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution by Alex M. Vikoulov as Hardcover (Press Release, San Francisco, CA, USA, March 22, 2019 11.00 AM PST)

Named “The Book of the Year” by futurists and academics alike, “# 1 Hot New Release” in Amazon charts in Physics of Time, Phenomenology, and Phenomenological Philosophy, the book has now been released by Barnes & Noble Press as hardcover in addition to ebook and paperback released earlier this year. In one volume, the author covers it all: from quantum physics to your experiential reality, from the Big Bang to the Omega Point, from the ‘flow state’ to psychedelics, from ‘Lucy’ to the looming AI Singularity, from natural algorithms to the operating system of your mind, from geo-engineering to nanotechnology, from anti-aging to immortality technologies, from oligopoly capitalism to Star-Trekonomics, from the Matrix to Universal Mind, from Homo sapiens to Holo syntellectus.

Continue reading “A New Must-Read Book on the AI Singularity from Barnes & Noble” »

NEW ORLEANS—Exposure to the widely used chemical bisphenol A (BPA) during pregnancy, even at levels lower than the regulated “safe” human exposure level, can lead to changes in circadian rhythms, according to a mice study to be presented Monday at ENDO 2019, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans, La. The researchers report these changes may be a contributing factor in hyperactivity seen in BPA-exposed mice.

“The hypothalamus, which we have identified as a brain region that is particularly susceptible to developmental disruption by BPA, contains the site of the clock cells that govern daily rhythms throughout the body,” said researcher Deborah Kurrasch, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Canada. “We have shown in previous research that BPA exposure in utero can cause defects to the development of hypothalamic nuclei and hyperactivity, and here we explored whether a shift in circadian biology might explain why the animals moved more.”

BPA is a chemical that is added to many commercial products, including water bottles, paper receipts, can liners and food storage containers. It is known as an endocrine-disrupting chemical—a chemical that interferes with the body’s hormones.

Humans have driver’s licenses and fingerprints, but cows have nose-prints and zebras have “StripeCodes”.