When Google DeepMind researchers trained a neural network to tackle a virtual maze, it spontaneously developed digital equivalents to the specialized neurons called grid...
Superconductors are among the most bizarre and exciting materials yet discovered. Counterintuitive quantum-mechanical effects mean that, below a critical temperature, they have zero electrical...
ROBOTICS
Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini Robot Dog Goes on Sale in 2019
Stephen Shankland | CNET
“The company has 10 SpotMini prototypes now and will work with manufacturing...
Understanding Earth’s species and ecosystems is a monumentally challenging scientific pursuit. But with the planet in the grip of its sixth mass extinction event,...
Optogenetics, neuroscience’s hottest mind-control tool, just got a major update.
Projecting 3D-light holograms—yes, holograms!—directly onto a mouse’s cortex, engineers at UC Berkeley instantaneously gained control...
By now, you’ve heard of CRISPR—the bacterial self-defense mechanism that can be used to modify the genome. From “biohackers” building the hype by injecting...
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
How Can We Be Sure AI Will Behave? Perhaps by Watching It Argue with Itself.
Will Knight | MIT Technology Review
“Having AI programs argue...
We are on the verge of transforming one of society’s most fundamental building blocks: manufacturing.
As new technologies enable manufacturers to customize everything, these same agents...
Optical communication has revolutionized long-distance data transfer, but scaling it down to microchips is tougher. Now, though, a new technique means optical components can...
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Let's Destroy Bitcoin
Morgan Peck | MIT Technology Review
"No one can copy an individual bitcoin, but anyone can copy the idea of Bitcoin. So how...
In an interview at Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine in San Diego, Eugene Borukhovich described how big companies like his can better embrace digital health technologies.
Borukhovich is the...
In March 2011, Japan was hit by a catastrophic earthquake that triggered a terrible tsunami. Thousands were killed and billions of dollars of damage...
Technology evangelists dream about a future where we’re all liberated from the more mundane aspects of our jobs by artificial intelligence. Other futurists go...
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Pedro Domingos on the Arms Race in Artificial Intelligence
Christoph Scheuermann and Bernhard Zand | Spiegel Online
“AI lowers the cost of knowledge by orders...
Denise Brosseau believes that leading in today’s complicated world requires clarity of intention, voice, and focus. In essence, it requires thought leadership. In Denise’s...
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI Learns a New Trick: Measuring Brain Cells
Robbie Gonzalez | Wired
“For three months, I spent three or four hours a day, five or...
One of the most exciting and frightening outcomes of technological advancement is the potential to merge our minds with machines. If achieved, this would...
Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Ready Player One depicts a future where VR technology can transport people into a completely realistic alternate universe. But how close...
As artificial intelligence advances, we’re encountering the same old questions. How much of what we consider to be fundamentally human can be reduced to...
CYBERNETICS
A Brain-Boosting Prosthesis Moves From Rats to Humans
Robbie Gonzalez | WIRED
“Today, their proof-of-concept prosthetic lives outside a patient's head and connects to the brain...
Right now it only exists on paper, in the form of a memorandum of understanding. But if constructed, the newly-announced solar photovoltaic project in...
