KurzweilAI | Accelerating Intelligence.

Intel researchers are working on a 48-core processor for smartphones and tablets — making them many times more powerful than today’s desktop computers within the next five to ten years, reports Computerworld.

Intel is distributing 100 of the experimental 48-core chips so researchers can work on the advanced parallel-computing programming models and software need to support these cores.

Intel says it’s using a prototype of a ”single-chip cloud computer” to…

Topics: AI/Robotics | Computers/Infotech/UI | Electronics | Energy

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Let me propose to you four interesting statements about the future:

1. As I argue in this video, chemical brain preservation is a technology that may soon be validated to inexpensively preserve the key features of our memories and identity at our biological death.

2. If either chemical or cryogenic brain preservation can be validated to reliably store retrievable and useful individual mental information, these medical…

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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After an incredible decade, in which the number of planets known beyond our solar system increased from zero to several thousand, astronomers have detected an Earth-sized world orbiting between the two major stars nearest to our system, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B.

Much too hot to sustain life, it nevertheless will help in narrowing down the search space for others. (“News from Alpha Centauri.” Cool to say that!)

In a related…

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Singularity/Futures

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In February of this year, KurzweilAI.net’s Amara Angelica put me in touch with an enterprising young Ethiopian engineer named Getnet Aseffa, who was interested in advanced technologies and their implications, and especially in their potential application to help Ethiopia and other African nations.

After some email dialogue, Getnet arranged for me to give a talk via Skype to an audience at Addis Ababa Institute of Technology. The themes of…

Topics: AI/Robotics | Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social/Ethical/Legal

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This past weekend I attended the Alcor 40 conference, hosted by the cryonics organization Alcor to celebrate its 40th year of operation, and I was extremely impressed.

(Full disclosure: I am an Alcor member, signed up in 2005 so that in the unfortunate event my body comes to meet the criteria of legal death, they will preserve it in liquid nitrogen until the advance of…

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Singularity/Futures

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Finally: a brainwave-sensing gadget disguised as a stylish wearable headband that would fit right in with Google Glass … and not make you look like a Fringe experiment run amok.

InteraXon just announced its Muse tonight. It’s available for pre-order now on crowd-funding platform Indiegogo (to raise $150,000) and due out in Spring 2013, the company says.

It’s not clear to me yet how this gadget differs from other EEG…

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Woo hoo! 

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found that a starvation hormone markedly extends life span in mice without the need for calorie restriction.

Yes! I am sooo ready. I’ve waited years to have  fries!

Restricting food intake has been shown to extend lifespan in several different kinds of animals. But in the UT study, the researchers found transgenic mice that produced…

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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I’ve been sort of playing around with the concept — “Steal This Singularity” — for several months now. Prior to attending Singularity Summit 2012, I was thinking about it in political terms.

Letting “Singularity” represent, essentially, a buzz word for a future radically transformed by technology, my “Steal This Singularity” notion was simply that the transhuman future should not be dominated by big capital and/or authoritarian government; and that —…

Topics: Human Enhancement | Singularity/Futures

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Well, this might explain some of my wackier blog posts.

People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, especially writers, according to researchers at Karolinska Institute, whose large-scale Swedish registry study is the most comprehensive ever in its field.

Either that, or Swedes are crazier. Hey, I’m kidding!

Last year, researchers showed that artists and scientists were more…

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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In What our civilization needs is a billion-year plan, posted on KurzweilAI September 23, 2012, Lt Col Peter Garretson calls for a long-term plan to assure humanity’s survival, “moving everyone and everything we value off Earth.”

He cites the coming big extinction events for planet Earth, including asteroid collisions, the Sun engulfing the Earth during its transformation to a red giant, and ultimately, the heat death of the Universe. Human…

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Singularity/Futures | Space

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As we noted in a recent post, physicist David Deutsch said the field of “artificial general intelligence” or AGI has made “no progress whatever during the entire six decades of its existence.” We asked Dr. Ben Goertzel, who introduced the term AGI and founded the AGI conference series, to respond. — Ed.

Like so many others, I’ve been extremely impressed and fascinated by physicist David Deutsch’s work on quantum computation…

Topics: AI/Robotics

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Dale J. Stephens leads UnCollege, the social movement changing the notion that college is the only path to success. His first book, Hacking Your Education, will be published by Penguin in 2013. Also see the three related posts today (below).

Student/teacher interaction

“What about student/teacher interaction? What about building a social and professional network? How can you get a job without a degree? How will you know you’re succeeding without grades?”…

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Social Networking/Web/Education

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NASA landed a rover on Mars. So what’s the next step? Right: land a boat on Titan!

Hey, come on, it’s gotta be the ultimate travel destiny:

• A magical moon that’s actually more like a planet.
• One of the most Earth-like bodies in the Solar System.
• Has an atmosphere (OK, mostly nitrogen — so bring your own oxygen, stop kvetching).
• A vast network of

…

Topics: Biotech | Space

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Vice just posted an update to their “we’re living in a simulation“ interview with Dr. Rich Terrile of NASA JPL.

“I think our machines will wake up and take over our society,” he said. “They will become us, we will become them. We’ll merge with machines.

Take over? Now wait a minute there, rocket man….

“We have to wake the machines up. Humans look like…

Topics: AI/Robotics | Singularity/Futures

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Lt Col Garretson — one of the USAF’s most farsighted and original thinkers — has been at the forefront of USAF strategy on the long-term future in projects such as Blue Horizons (on KurzweilAI — see video), Energy Horizons, Space Solar Power, the AF Futures Game, the USAF Strategic Environmental Assessment, and the USAF RPA Flight Plan. Now in this exclusive to KurzweilAI, he pushes the boundary of long-term…

Topics: Energy | Environment/Climate | Human Enhancement | Physics/Cosmology | Singularity/Futures | Space | Survival/Defense

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