Human Performance EnhancementCan Human Mortality Really Be Hacked?Elmo Keep, Smithsonian Five Futuristic Applications of UltrasoundAndrew Feeney, The Conversation 3-D Printing the Way to Bionic HumansMarcus Woo, Inside Science Body Modifications You Can Expect in Next DecadeBody Modifications You Can Expect in Next DecadeElon Musk has called it: you're already a cyborg. Your smartphone enhances your mind, your spectacles enhance your vision, and your pacemaker (if you have one) regulates your heart...(full article) Will Government Allow DIY Biohacking?Will Government Allow DIY Biohacking?Josiah Zayner is a scientist and entrepreneur who quit his government job in a NASA lab to start The Odin, a synthetic biology company run out of his garage. For $150, anyone can n...(full article) Can Human Mortality Really Be Hacked?Can Human Mortality Really Be Hacked?It's just after 10:30 a.m. on a pleasant weekday morning at SENS, a biotech lab in Mountain View, California. I've come to speak to its chief science officer, Aubrey de Grey. I fin...(full article) Five Futuristic Applications of UltrasoundFive Futuristic Applications of UltrasoundUltrasound can do a whole lot more than create images of unborn babies. Since it first became a near-indispensable medical tool in the 1930s, technology that produces sound waves s...(full article) Most Recent ArticlesBody Modifications You Can Expect in Next Decade - Elise Bohan, Big ThinkElon Musk has called it: you're already a cyborg. Your smartphone enhances your mind, your spectacles enhance your vision, and your pacemaker (if you have one) regulates your heart... Will Government Allow DIY Biohacking? - Zach Weissmueller, ReasonJosiah Zayner is a scientist and entrepreneur who quit his government job in a NASA lab to start The Odin, a synthetic biology company run out of his garage. For $150, anyone can n... Can Human Mortality Really Be Hacked? - Elmo Keep, SmithsonianIt's just after 10:30 a.m. on a pleasant weekday morning at SENS, a biotech lab in Mountain View, California. I've come to speak to its chief science officer, Aubrey de Grey. I fin... Five Futuristic Applications of Ultrasound - Andrew Feeney, The ConversationUltrasound can do a whole lot more than create images of unborn babies. Since it first became a near-indispensable medical tool in the 1930s, technology that produces sound waves s... 3-D Printing the Way to Bionic Humans - Marcus Woo, Inside ScienceWearable technology may soon be at your fingertips -- literally. Researchers have developed a pressure sensor that can be 3-D printed directly on your hand. The device, sensitive e... Could A.I. Have Hallucinations? - Matthew Hutson, Science MagazineAs artificial intelligence (AI) allows machines to become more like humans, will they experience similar psychological quirks such as hallucinations or depression? And might this b... Brain Implant May Help Us Compete with A.I. - Kiki Sanford, NautilusSolar-powered self-driving cars, reusable space ships, Hyperloop transportation, a mission to colonize Mars: Elon Musk is hell-bent on turning these once-far-fetched fantasies into... The Biggest Myth About rBST-Free Milk - Ross Pomeroy, RealClearScienceYou probably didn't notice, but 2017 marked the "end of an era" in the dairy industry. At the closing of the year, a rare few dairy processors accepted milk produced by cows inject... Homo Naledi May Not Have Buried Its Dead - Kiona N. Smith, Ars TechnicaEvery human culture has a special way of laying its dead to rest. Some cremate the remains, some lay them beneath the open sky, and others place them in the ground. Regardless of i... Should We Embrace Transhumanism? - David Trippett, The ConversationBiological evolution takes place over generations. But imagine if it could be expedited beyond the incremental change envisaged by Darwin to a matter of individual experience. Such... Does My Algorithm Have a Mental Health Problem? - Thomas Hills, AeonIs my car hallucinating? Is the algorithm that runs the police surveillance system in my city paranoid? Marvin the android in Douglas Adams's Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy had a ... The Existential Case for Ditching Alexa - Brendan Canavan, The ConversationAlexa's creepy laugh is far from the most worrying thing about her. This is despite the fact that Amazon's digital assistant – which allows users to access the internet and c... The Case for Robot Relationships - John Danaher, Aeon MagazineThere is a heartbreaking scene in the middle of Blade Runner 2049 (2017). The hero of the movie, a replicant called K, lives a drab existence in a dystopian, future Los Angeles. Th... Anti-Glyphosate Activists Are 'Merchants of Doubt' - Cameron English, RCScienceAnti-GMO activists argue with religious certainty that the weedkiller glyphosate (Monsanto's Roundup) is dangerous, deadly even. But in the next breath, they whine that the 40-year... What if Energy Becomes Free in the Future? - Vanessa Bates Ramirez, Sing HubTechnology is making the cost of many things trend towards zero. Things we used to have to pay a lot for are now cheap or even free—think about how much it costs to buy a com... The Hyperloop Dream May Come True – and Soon - Kate Baggaley, NBC NewsElon Musk first described his idea for a futuristic transportation system that would send passenger pods through tubes at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour back in 2013. At the t... Pinker's New Book Is Poor Scholarship - George Monbiot, The GuardianOne of the curiosities of our age is the way in which celebrity culture comes to dominate every aspect of public life. Even the review pages of the newspapers sometimes look like a... Time to Take the Hyperloop Seriously? - Alice Bonasio, Ars TechnicaImagine traveling the length of the United Kingdom—from London to Edinburgh, 400-plus miles—in under an hour. A journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco would take les... Is China Seeking 'Quantum Surprise?' - Elsa B. Kania, Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsHype about artificial intelligence (AI) seems at or near a peak. A wave of hype is also emerging around quantum technologies, particularly quantum computing. When these two waves o... This Startup Will Make Everybody Love GMOs - Sarah Zhang, The AtlanticOut on an old Navy dry dock, a biotech company called Ginkgo Bioworks is growing genetically modified organisms by the billions, and it would very much like to tell you about them.... Bacteria Invented GE Crops – We Made the Controversy - Jenna Gallegos, Ally SciIn the past 50 years, three major discoveries have fueled the field of genetic engineering. Together, they've revolutionized medicine and agriculture. Individually, they've sparked... Robot Learns to Evolve Synthetic Protocells - James Urquhart, Chemistry WorldAn AI equipped robotic system that enables synthetic protocells to evolve could help unravel how complex life formed on Earth. The fully automated system, which make use of machine... A.I. Is the Weapon of the Next Cold War - Jeremy Straub, The ConversationIt is easy to confuse the current geopolitical situation with that of the 1980s. The United States and Russia each accuse the other of interfering in domestic affairs. Russia has a... Artificial Neurons Compute Faster Than Human Brain - Sara Reardon, NatureSuperconducting computing chips modelled after neurons can process information faster and more efficiently than the human brain. That achievement, described in Science Advances on ... Don't Fear the Robopocalypse - Lucien Crowder, Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsPaul Scharre, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, has pretty good credentials when it comes to autonomous weapons. If you've ever heard of Directive 3000.09,... The Scientists Trying to Prevent Human Extinction - Kai Kupferschmidt, SciencePhilosopher Nick Bostrom believes it's entirely possible that artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to the extinction of Homo sapiens. In his 2014 bestseller Superintelligence: P... When Will We Get More 'Treknology'? - Adam Frank, NPRWe live in a unique moment of human history where the tools our parents used are not the ones we take in hand.The pace of technological (and hence societal) change is so fast now, ... We May Be Creating a 'Digital Dark Age' - Adam Wernick, Public Radio InternationalYou may think that those photos on Facebook or all your tweets may last forever, or might even come back to haunt you, depending on what you have out there. But, in reality, much o... Former NASA Biochemist Advocates Biohacking - Tom Ireland, The GuardianJosiah Zayner, 36, recently made headlines by becoming the first person to use the revolutionary gene-editing tool Crispr to try to change their own genes. Part way through a talk ... The Promise & Peril of Bioengineering's Pandora's Box - T. Hornigold, SingularityWe're standing on the threshold of extraordinary capability in synthetic biology. CRISPR-Cas9, the genome editing technique discovered in 2014, is at the forefront of this newfound... Adapted CRISPR Could Treat Incurable Diseases - Hannah Devlin, The GuardianIncurable diseases such as diabetes and muscular dystrophy could be treated in future using a new form of genetic engineering designed to boost gene activity, according to scientis... Will Artificial Intelligence Become Conscious? - Subhash Kak, The ConversationForget about today's modest incremental advances in artificial intelligence, such as the increasing abilities of cars to drive themselves. Waiting in the wings might be a groundbre... The Scientist Striving to Revolutionize Sex Bots - Samantha Cole, MotherboardKate Devlin says she does, occasionally, get a little weary of being pigeonholed as “that sex robot woman.”Devlin, who was born in Northern Ireland, is a senior lecture... Progress in A.I. Isn't That Impressive - Will Knight, MIT Technology ReviewWith so much excitement about progress in artificial intelligence, you may wonder why intelligent machines aren't already running our lives.Key advances have the capacity to dazzle... Are Flying Cars Still Comically Unrealistic? - Steven T. Corneliussen, Physics TodayA question is emerging implicitly in the media: Is the “flying car” concept still comically unrealistic?The concept had already drawn decades of smirks and skepticism b... A.I. Should Be Governed by Star Trek's Prime Directive - Bartosz Bos, QuartzStar Trek has inspired many technologies we now take for granted. Communicators, touch screens, replicators, ultra-powerful computers, and artificial intelligence all feature promi... Genetically Modified Beetles Grow Working Third Eye - Dan Robitzski, Live SciWhen scientists deactivated the gene responsible in part for developing and shaping the heads of scarab beetles, the insects hatched with an extra set of compound eyes in the middl... Two Amazing Applications of Biotechnology - Cameron English, RealClearScienceA particular application of biotechnology, genetically-engineered crops, has dominated public debate of late. But often forgotten in the fiery fray is that biotechnology shows prom... There Are Good Reasons to Be Concerned About A.I. - Matthew Graves, SkepticThe human brain isn't magic; nor are the problem-solving abilities our brains possess. They are, however, still poorly understood. If there's nothing magical about our brains or es... USDA to Withdraw Unscientific Regulations on GM Crops - Paul McDivitt, GLPThe US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced yesterday that it is withdrawing a proposed rule to revise the agency's regulations of genetically engineered crops. The rule was ... We Can't Leave A.I. in the Hands of Big Tech - Perrin & Mikhailov, The GuardianFresh breakthroughs in artificial intelligence come thick and fast these days. Last month, Google's DeepMind revealed its latest Go-playing AI which mastered the ancient game from ... The Next Space Race Is Artificial Intelligence - Allen & Husain, Foreign PolicyNearly 60 years ago, then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson seized his colleagues with a stark Cold War warning: Whoever wins the space race, he predicted, would gain &ldquo... Advances Science Could Buy With Defense Budget - Ethan Siegel, ForbesThe United States spends more on military spending than the next ten nations combined: an estimated $600 billion annually. Meanwhile, the entire budgets of NASA and the National Sc... Will Robot Workers Spark a Human Revolt? - Kentaro Toyama, ConversationThe rise of artificial intelligence threatens to eliminate jobs once considered impossible to automate. One series of papers by Oxford researchers ranks jobs by their estimated sus... We Were Promised Fusion Energy - Michael Byrne, MotherboardFor the entirety of recorded history, humans have worshipped nuclear fusion. It's gone by different names over the millennia, of course: the Egyptians called it Ra, the Greeks call... How Do You Make a Conscious Robot? - Charles Q. Choi, Live ScienceYou've likely heard of conscious thought and subconscious thought, but humans may in fact possess three levels of consciousness, a new review suggests — and this concept coul... A.I. Can Be as Biased as Humans - Christina Couch, PBS NOVAIn a brightly lit office, Joy Buolamwini sits down at her computer and slips on a Halloween mask to trick the machine into perceiving her as white.For Buolamwini, a black PhD stude... Chinese Scientists Create Low-Fat Pigs With CRISPR - Rob Stein, NPRHere's something that may sound like a contradiction in terms: low-fat pigs.But that's exactly what Chinese scientists have created using new genetic engineering techniques.In a pa... Google Unveils A.I. That Learns on Its Own - Ian Sample, The GuardianGoogle's artificial intelligence group, DeepMind, has unveiled the latest incarnation of its Go-playing program, AlphaGo – an AI so powerful that it derived thousands of year... Using A.I. to Spot Hospitals' Silent Killer - Steven Ashley, PBS NOVABarbara, a 52-year-old woman, appears one morning at a Baltimore hospital emergency room complaining of a sore foot. After the EMS physicians examine her, they diagnose dry gangren... Why Researchers Tried to Create a 'Gaydar' - Heather Murphy, New York TimesMichal Kosinski felt he had good reason to teach a machine to detect sexual orientation.An Israeli start-up had started hawking a service that predicted terrorist proclivities base... How to Make A.I. Humanity's Best Invention - Max Tegmark, NPRMany leading AI researchers think that in a matter of decades, artificial intelligence will be able to do not merely some of our jobs, but all of our jobs, forever transforming lif... The Real Danger of AI: Turning Emotions Into Data - Adam Frank, NPREvery day, we are inching closer to some kind of artificial intelligence.At this point, it isn't so important whether we're talking about truly self-conscious machines or not. Adva... Why We'll Want Our Robots to Deceive Us - George Dvorsky, GizmodoAs robots and AI start to play an increasing role in our lives, the question of how we want them to behave gets more pressing with each passing breakthrough. In the new book, Robot... Is A.I. Riding a One-Trick Pony? - James Somers, MIT Technology ReviewI'm standing in what is soon to be the center of the world, or is perhaps just a very large room on the seventh floor of a gleaming tower in downtown Toronto. Showing me around is ... The Coming Machine Creativity Explosion - Melba Kurman, Singularity HubIt may appear so at first glance. Though machines can calculate, analyze, and even perceive, creativity may seem far out of reach. Perhaps this is because we find it mysterious, ev... What Artificial Brains Can Teach Us About Real Brains - Matt Hutson, ScienceStudying the human mind is tough. You can ask people how they think, but they often don't know. You can scan their brains, but the tools are blunt. You can damage their brains and ... Former Google Engineer Developing an A.I. God - Olivia Solon, The GuardianIntranet service? Check. Autonomous motorcycle? Check. Driverless car technology? Check. Obviously the next logical project for a successful Silicon Valley engineer is to set up an... Theory Cracks Open Black Box of Deep Learning - Natalie Wolchover, QuantaEven as machines known as “deep neural networks” have learned to converse, drive cars, beat video games and Go champions, dream, paint pictures and help make scientific... Brain Built From Atomic Switches Can Learn - Andreas von Bubnoff, QuantaBrains, beyond their signature achievements in thinking and problem solving, are paragons of energy efficiency. The human brain's power consumption resembles that of a 20-watt inca... Will A.I. Weapons Kill the Laws of War? - Herbert Lin, Bulletin of Atomic ScientistsOn September 1, Vladimir Putin spoke with Russian students about science in an open lesson, saying that “the future belongs to artificial intelligence” and whoever... Can a Machine Tell Whether You Are Gay? - Alva Noe, NPRDrawing on databases of images collected from an online dating site, a new study conducted at Stanford University concludes that faces carry information about sexual orientation.Th... Nine Misdirected Arguments Against GMOs - Layla Katiraee, Genetic Lit. ProjectWhen discussing and writing about GMOs, many arguments are put forth on why they are “bad” and should be avoided. However, many of these are not about GMOs, but rather,... Colonizing Space Will Require GMOs - David Warmflash, Genetic Literacy ProjectOver the last 12,000 years or so, human civilization has noticeably reshaped the Earth's surface. But changes on our own planet will likely pale in comparison when humans settle on... Will A.I. Enable Earth's Third Stage of Life? - Max Tegmark, Scientific AmericanThe question of how to define life is notoriously controversial. Competing definitions abound, some of which include highly specific requirements such as being composed of cells, w... Transhumanists Could Create Terrifying Social Order - S. Varghese, NewStatesIn a 2011 New Yorker profile, Peter Thiel, tech-philanthropist and billionaire, surmised that “probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive an... How to Build a Dyson Swarm Around the Sun - Ross Pomeroy, RCScienceTo anyone infatuated with science fiction, a Dyson sphere might be the Holy Grail. As physicist Freeman Dyson postulated and popularized more than half a century ago, an advanced, ... It's Too Late to Ban Killer Robots - Philip Ball, The GuardianOne response to the call by experts in robotics and artificial intelligence for an ban on “killer robots” (“lethal autonomous weapons systems” or Laws in th... Is A.I. More Threatening Than North Korean Nukes? - Alva Noe, NPROne of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's companies, the nonprofit start-up OpenAI, manufactures a device that last week was victorious in defeating some of the world's top gamers in an interna... Can the Government Keep Up With A.I.? - Bianca Datta, PBS NOVAWhen Amazon first debuted same-day delivery service in Boston, it seemed a promising alternative to poorly-stocked, overpriced, or low-quality supermarkets in neighborhoods like Ro... Did a GMO Almost Destroy the World? - Andrew Porterfield, Genetic LiteracyOnce upon a time, way back in 1990, a German company modified the genetics of a bacterium so it could efficiently ferment plant waste, turning the material into ethanol. There was,... GMO 'Super Coral' Proposed to Save Ecosystem - Kyle Frischkorn, SmithsonianA coral reef takes thousands of years to build, yet can vanish in an instant.The culprit is usually coral bleaching, a disease exacerbated by warming waters that today threatens re... How Transhumanism Could Turn Dystopian - Alexander Thomas, ConversationThe rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science – are giving rise to possibilities th... Gene Editing Produces 'True Blue' Chrysanthemums - Rachael Lallensack, NNRoses are red, but science could someday turn them blue. That's one of the possible future applications of a technique researchers have used to genetically engineer blue chrysanthe... Zuckerberg and Musk Are Both Wrong About A.I. - Annalee Newitz, Ars TechBack in 2015, a group of business leaders and scientists published an "open letter" about how controlling artificial superintelligence might be the most urgent task of the twenty-f... What an Artificial Intelligence Researcher Fears - Arend Hintze, The ConversationAs an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. It's perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the ent... IBM Is Clueless About A.I. Risks - George Dvorsky, GizmodoEarlier this week, David Kenny, IBM Senior Vice President for Watson and Cloud, told the US Congress that Americans have nothing to fear from artificial intelligence, and that the ... Robots Taking the Finance World by Storm - Kendall & Alam, ConversationThe year is 2030. You're in a business school lecture hall, where just a handful of students are attending a finance class.The dismal turnout has nothing to with professorial style... Artificial Brain Scans Galaxy for Speeding Stars - Andrew Masterson, CosmosAn artificial neural network capable of learning from its own observations is helping astronomers identify a rare type of star that might offer clues to both the formation of the M... 6 Things Quantum Computers Will Be Useful For - Mark Jackson, Sing HubComputers don't exist in a vacuum. They serve to solve problems, and the type of problems they can solve are influenced by their hardware. Graphics processors are specialized for r... AI Can Predict the Future of Congressional Bills - Matthew Hutson, SMThe health care bill winding its way through the U.S. Senate is just one of thousands of pieces of legislation Congress will consider this year, most doomed to failure. Indeed, onl... Space Colonies May Need Genetic Engineering - David Warmflash, GLPGenetic biotechnology is usually discussed in the context of current and emerging applications here on Earth, and rightly so, since we still live exclusively in our planetary cradl... Life Lessons From Einstein's Quirky Habits - Zaria Gorvett, BBCCelebrated inventor and physicist Nikola Tesla swore by toe exercises – every night, he'd repeatedly ‘squish' his toes, 100 times for each foot, according to the author... Designer Protein Keeps Flu at Bay - Robert Service, Science MagazineThere's a new weapon taking shape in the war on flu, one of the globe's most dangerous infectious diseases. Scientists have created a designer protein that stops the influenza viru... Computers Starting to Reason Like Humans - Matthew Hutson, ScienceHow many parks are near the new home you're thinking of buying? What's the best dinner-wine pairing at a restaurant? These everyday questions require relational reasoning, an impor... Meet the 'Eyeborg': The Man With a Camera Eye - Tia Ghose, Live ScienceThe cyborg revolution is coming — one glowing eyeball at a time.Rob Spence, a documentary filmmaker from Canada, has a prosthetic eye that doubles as a video camera.Spence, w... 'Open-Source' Plant Seeds Developed in Germany - Lucas Laursen, ScienceThere's open-source software, open-source pharma research, and open-source beer. Now, there are open-source seeds, too. Breeders from Göttingen University in Germany and Dotte... Venom-Enhanced GMO Fungus Combats Malaria - Jessica Snir, CMIn the global war against insecticide-resistant malaria-carrying mosquitos, a new super weapon may be at hand: an unassuming fungus.A research team from the University of Maryland ... Stop Using the Term "GMO" - Kevin Folta, Ag DailyIn science and medicine the terminology applied can be the difference between life and death, success and failure. Words have precise meanings, and a productive dialogue in the sci... When Will Robots Deserve Human Rights? - George Dvorsky, GizmodoFilms and TV shows like Blade Runner, Humans, and Westworld, where highly advanced robots have no rights, trouble our conscience. They show us that our behaviors are not just harmf... The Looming Danger of Unregulated AI - Andrew Masterson, CosmosThe notion of transparency is today central to policy-making and political discourse in democracies around the world. In the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, however... A.I. Will Beat Us at Everything by 2060 - Timothy Revell, NewScientistEnjoy beating robots while you still can. There is a 50 per cent chance that machines will outperform humans in all tasks within 45 years, according to a survey of more than 350 ar... Flower Sellers Destroy Illegal Gene-Edited Petunias - David Malakoff, SMThe U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that U.S. flower distributors have begun to destroy countless petunia plants after federal scientists confirmed that they ... The Future of Flying Cars - Jonathan Roberts & Michael Milford, The ConversationUber has shaken up the taxi industry and is trying to put driverless cars on our roads. Now the company aims to have flying ride-sharing vehicles in our skies by 2020.Uber is not a... We're Getting Closer to Mass Production of Organs - Adam Popescu, BloombergMedical researchers have been able to create certain kinds of living cells with 3D printers for more than a decade. Now a few companies are getting closer to mass production of hig... The Race to Build the World's First Sex Robot - Jenny Kleeman, The GuardianIn the brightly lit robotics workshop at Abyss Creations' factory in San Marcos, California, a life-size humanoid was dangling from a stand, hooked between her shoulder blades. Her... Why We Need Conscious Robots - Ryota Kanai, NautilusPeople often ask me whether human-level artificial intelligence will eventually become conscious. My response is: Do you want it to be conscious? I think it is largely up to us whe... Science Has Outgrown the Human Mind - Ahmed Alkhateeb, AeonScience is in the midst of a data crisis. Last year, there were more than 1.2 million new papers published in the biomedical sciences alone, bringing the total number of peer-revie... Engineering the Perfect Astronaut - Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology ReviewAt the International Astronautical Congress last September, in Guadalajara, Mexico, Elon Musk convinced many die-hard space engineers he could get a fleet of private rockets f... No, Russia Isn't Sending a 'Terminator' to the ISS - Eric Berger, Ars TechThe reports this weekend were breathless. Mashable said Russia was sending a "death dealing" robot with the power to shoot guns to the International Space Station. Pravda reported ... AI Outperforms Doctors at Predicting Heart Attacks - Matthew Hutson, SMDoctors have lots of tools for predicting a patient's health. But—as even they will tell you—they're no match for the complexity of the human body. Heart attacks in par... The Future of Human Augmentation - Rob Tracinski, RealClearScienceIn most of our science fiction and our projections of the future, everything has changed—we have robots, flying cars, artificial intelligence, warp speed, laser swords--but w... A.I. Will Eliminate Millions of Jobs. Time to Prepare. - Krista Jones, Pol OptionsThe artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has begun, and it's going to take all of us — government, businesses and employees — to steer through the resulting workforc... How Artificial Intelligence Can Aid Authoritarians - Joshua Kopstein, VocativIn 1796, German physiologist Franz Joseph Gall thought he had made a world-altering discovery. By carefully measuring the contours of the human skull, he hypothesized, one could in... How A.I. Is Like Electricity - Vanessa Bates Ramirez, Singularity HubWhat's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘artificial intelligence'? For those raised on a steady diet of big budget Hollywood sci-fi, the answer to that questi... Can Futurists Predict the Year of the Singularity? - Peter Rejcek, Singularity HubThe end of the world as we know it is near. And that's a good thing, according to many of the futurists who are predicting the imminent arrival of what's been called the technologi... Understanding Animals Can Help Us Develop A.I. - Heather Roff, ConversationEvery day countless headlines emerge from myriad sources across the globe, both warning of dire consequences and promising utopian futures – all thanks to artificial intellig... The Anti-Aging Pill We've Been Waiting For? - Antonio Regalado, MIT Tech ReviewCan a pill make you younger?One of the few drug studies ever carried out in an attempt to address this question was reported by Novartis on Christmas Eve 2014. The company had soug... Star Trek's Holodeck Closer Than You Think - Fabio Zambetta, ConversationMany of the technological advances predicted in Star Trek's fictional universe have become reality, such as the mobile communicator and hand-held tablet computers.Others, such as t... Volcanic Eruptions Automatically Imaged by NASA - Kacey Deamer, Live SciWhen a volcano in Ethiopia erupted in January, volcanologists hoped a NASA satellite would be able to train its eyes on the explosive event and capture photos. It turned out that a... The Rise of a New Species of Human - Raya Bidshahri, Singularity HubToday, what survives on Earth can be determined entirely by human beings. We can alter the genetics of almost any life form and potentially design entirely new ones. According to r... The Weird World of Cyborg Animals Is Here - Edd Gent, Singularity HubRoboticists frequently turn to nature for inspiration for their inventions, reverse engineering the traits that evolution has developed over millennia. Others are taking a shortcut... Would You Become an Immortal Machine? - Marcelo Gleiser, NPRPicture this: You are in the bathroom, doing your usual thing after breakfast, when you notice blood in the water sitting in your white, porcelain toilet.Scared, you schedule an ap... Algorithms Teach Self-Driving Cars to 'See' at Night - Signe Brewster, SMToday's autonomous cars can already harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) software to drive from Los Angeles, California, to New York City without any human input, as l... We're Going to Be Half-Man, Half-Machine - Lucy Ingham, Factor MagazineRead the magazine If you've got an iPad, check out our app. It's completely free to download and subscribe, and you can enjoy this and every other issue in all its interactive glor... Giving Feelings to A.I. Could Backfire - Matthew Hutson, Science NewsIn the recent movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the face of the character Grand Moff Tarkin was constructed digitally, as the actor who had originally played him had died. Some w... Can Human Evolution Be Controlled? - William Hurlbut, Big QuestionsEarlier this month, an international initiative convened by the national science academies of the United States, China, and the United Kingdom released a major report on the implic... Future of Computing May Be Inside Our Skulls - Nick Statt, The VergeFor Bryan Johnson, the founder and CEO of neuroscience startup Kernel, the question is when, not if, we all have computer chips inside of our brains. Kernel, founded last fall with... Not All Forms of A.I. Are Equally Scary - Sean Illing, VoxHow worried should we be about artificial intelligence?Recently, I asked a number of AI researchers this question. The responses I received vary considerably; it turns out there is... Could A.I. Replace Student Testing? - Michael Byrne, MotherboardTo call standardized testing a contentious issue would be an understatement. It's more like political trench warfare, in which one group of parents laments the organic student-cent... |