Monthly Archives: July, 2019

Moving Beyond Mind-Controlled Limbs to Prosthetics That Can Actually ‘Feel’

Shelly Fan - July 31, 2019

Brain-machine interface enthusiasts often gush about “closing the loop.” It’s for good reason. On the implant level, it means engineering smarter probes that only...

Exploring the Great Mysteries of Consciousness and Free Will With Annaka Harris

Singularity Hub Staff - July 30, 2019

For thousands of years, humankind has been plagued by to two essential questions: Why do I have this unique voice inside my head? And...

Scientists Just Released a New Playbook for Engineering Longer, Healthier Lives

Shelly Fan - July 30, 2019

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment anti-aging research morphed from quackery to an established science. Some say it’s 1939, when an experiment that...

Microsoft Invests $1 Billion in OpenAI’s Mission to Build Artificial General Intelligence

Edd Gent - July 29, 2019

Since its inception in 2015, OpenAI has been chasing the lofty goal of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of all. But...

First Human CRISPR Trial in the US Aims to Cure Inherited Blindness

Vanessa Bates Ramirez - July 28, 2019

Gene editing is advancing at a faster pace than most of us can keep up with. One significant recent announcement was gene editing tool...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 27)

Singularity Hub Staff - July 27, 2019

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Microsoft Invests $1 Billion in OpenAI to Pursue Holy Grail of Artificial Intelligence James Vincent | The Verge "i'The creation of AGI will be the...

Brain-Machine Interfaces Are Getting Better and Better—and Neuralink’s New Brain Implant Pushes the Pace

Robert Gaunt - July 26, 2019

Elon Musk grabbed a lot of attention with his July 16 announcement that his company Neuralink plans to implant electrodes into the brains of...

Introducing Singularity University Radio: The Home for SU Podcasts

Singularity University - July 25, 2019

In this gig-economy age of entrepreneurs and full-time hustlers, podcasts have become a signature way to stay up-to-date, inspired, and educated while on the...

Five Ways Buildings of the Future Will Use Biotech to Become Living Things

Martyn Dade-Robertson - July 25, 2019

What if our homes were alive? I don’t mean smart homes with the disembodied voice of Alexa deciding the setting for your living room...

Editing RNA Expands CRISPR’s Use Far Beyond Genetic Diseases

Shelly Fan - July 24, 2019

CRISPR advances have been coming so frequently that it’s hard to keep track. In just a few years, it’s evolved from a nifty genome word...

How Scientists Used Light to Incept Sensations and Memories in Mice

Shelly Fan - July 23, 2019

Last week, Elon Musk’s mysterious Neuralink finally revealed their master plan after two years of silence: to build high bandwidth, immune resistant, thread-like brain-machine...

Are Robots Coming for Our Jobs? Careful, It’s a Trick Question

Vanessa Bates Ramirez - July 22, 2019

The robots are coming, and they’ll probably take your job when they get here. Oh wait—have you heard that recently? As recently as, say, yesterday?...

Machine Learning vs. Climate Change: AI for the Greener Good

Thomas Hornigold - July 21, 2019

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Despite increasing global consensus about the urgency of reducing emissions since the...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 20)

Singularity Hub Staff - July 20, 2019

ROBOTICS Boston Dynamics' Robots Are Preparing to Leave the Lab—Is the World Ready? James Vincent | The Verge "After decades of kicking machines in parking lots, the...

A Layer of ‘Aerogel’ Could Make Mars Habitable and Even Enable Life to Develop There

Andrew Coates - July 19, 2019

Transforming the red planet to support life has long been a dream of science fiction. Mars is now too cold to support life. Its...

The First Complete Brain Wiring Diagram of Any Species Is Here

Shelly Fan - July 18, 2019

For a humble, microscopic worm with only 302 neurons, C. elegans has had a lot of firsts. It was the first multicellular animal to...

How Will We Store Three Septillion Bits of Data? Your Metabolome May Have the Answer

Shelly Fan - July 17, 2019

Thanks to the cloud, it’s hard to imagine that we’ll ever run out of data storage. But by 2040, we may be swarmed by...

How Tech Can Help Curb Emissions by Planting 500 Billion New Trees

Marc Prosser - July 16, 2019

Trees are a low-tech, high-efficiency way to offset much of humankind’s negative impact on the climate. What’s even better, we have plenty of room...

The Poker-Playing AI That Beat the World’s Best Players

Edd Gent - July 15, 2019

Poker is a powerful combination of strategy and intuition, something that’s made it the most iconic of card games and devilishly difficult for machines...

This Chatbot has Over 660 Million Users—and It Wants to Be Their Best Friend

Thomas Hornigold - July 14, 2019

Your New Best Friend? Making a new friend is a complex business. You might begin with small talk: introductions, explorations. Perhaps you bond over something...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 13)

Singularity Hub Staff - July 13, 2019

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 'Superhuman' AI Crushes Pros at Six-Player Texas Hold'em George Dvorsky | Gizmodo " said, 'Poker in particular has been an early sandbox for AI, and...

So Far Cultured Meat Has Been Burgers—the Next Big Challenge Is Animal-Free Steaks

Natalie Rubio - July 12, 2019

The meat you eat, if you’re a carnivore, comes from animal muscles. But animals are composed of a lot more than just muscle. They...

The Pentagon’s New Laser-Based Tool Uses Your Heartbeat to Track You

Shelly Fan - July 11, 2019

The government’s hefty arsenal of surveillance tools just welcomed a powerful new member. Rather than monitoring an external device—a bug or a smartphone—or even...

Cancer-Killing Living Drug Is Made Safer With a Simple Off Switch

Shelly Fan - July 10, 2019

When it comes to battling cancer, our most powerful weapon is also our most dangerous. You’ve heard of CAR-T: the cellular immunotherapy extracts a patient’s...

Alphabet Releases Its Master Plan for Toronto’s New Smart City

Edd Gent - July 9, 2019

Ever dreamed of living in a giant experiment? If so, Toronto may be the city for you. Sidewalk Labs has released blueprints for its...

Virtual Influencers Are on the Rise. How Far Will Their Influence Go?

Marc Prosser - July 8, 2019

In early April 2019, something was suddenly very different about Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Instagram account. In lieu of retro-style pictures of chicken, a decidedly...

How the US Will Get to a 50 Percent Renewable Electric Economy by 2030

Peter H. Diamandis, MD - July 7, 2019

By 2030, more than 50 percent of the US economy will run on electricity derived from renewables. What are the implications as we shift the...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 6)

Singularity Hub Staff - July 6, 2019

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Machine Learning Has Been Used to Automatically Translate Long-Lost Languages Emerging Technology from the arXiv | MIT Technology Review "Some languages that have never been...

Facebook Claims Libra Offers Economic Empowerment to Billions—an Economist Is Skeptical

Jay Zagorsky - July 5, 2019

Facebook is joining the cryptocurrency craze. Should we be concerned? The social network site on June 18 said it’s launching a new cryptocurrency called Libra...

Could Lab-Grown Brains Develop Consciousness?

Shelly Fan - July 3, 2019

There’s a very un-sexy view of consciousness: our rich, meaningful inner experience of self and other is nothing but electrical and chemical chattering inside...