I’m starting a local chapter of Giving What We Can here in the Bay Area to help build the local effective altruism movement. Come to Berkeley for a yummy, home-cooked pesto pasta dinner where…
Joshua Tenebaum’s early research on concept learning might be useful for FAI development. His PhD thesis A Bayesian Framework for Concept Learning contains an approach to locating concepts that is designed to allow AIs to…
Interesting new weight-loss drug — first one approved by the FDA since 1999. The placebo controlled, cross-over design on Belviq’s studies look excellent. I totally believe this stuff works… and works well. Main downsides:…
Anyone have other good ethical meats to recommend? See on www.slate.com
It all started a couple of years ago when IBM’s Watson, the computer voted most likely to destroy us when the technological Singularity strikes, was given access to the Urban Dictionary. Watson, during the…
Story starts out: “As a culture, we don’t have a lot of warm fuzzy feelings when we contemplate a future in which artificially intelligent machines are a reality. Our fiction seems to regard them as…
Stephen LaConte, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, says brain-computer interfaces now enable us to eavesdrop on previously undetectable mental activities. Researchers find a straightforward way to improve signal-to-noise ratio…
Learn to sing with instant visual feedback. A complete voice and ear training program for singers of all levels from absolute beginner to advanced. Many people have asked me what app I used to…
On October 15th from 4:30-5:30pm, MIRI workshop participant Paul Christiano will give a technical talk at the Harvard University Science Center, room 507, as part of the Logic at Harvard seminar and colloquium. If you’re…
Documentary filmmaker James Barrat has written an engaging new book about the risks inherent in what is sure to be the most transformative technology of them all: machine superintelligence. Best explanation yet of the coming intelligence…
With persufflation, helium is used to replace blood in a donated organ. This allows the organ to cool at a rapid rate, requiring less antifreeze. Since pockets of tissue are separated by helium, the…
Beyond Meat closes in on the perfect fake chicken, turns heads, tastebuds I’ve had some Beyond Meat and it’s pretty good. Looking forward to it being rolled out to more than just Whole Foods….
In some application domains it is not enough to build reliable software systems, one wants proved-correct software. Andrew W. Appel’s lab at Princeton appears to be working on something that could be both instructive…
A new botulinum toxin poses a security risk because available treatments don’t work for it. Last year, researchers too greedy for academic prestige ignored warnings from advisory boards and went ahead and published information…
Facebook is developing deep learning software to understand what its users say and do online. “Following research breakthroughs about five years ago, leading tech companies, including Microsoft, IBM and Google, have begun investing big…
Predicting an end to Moore’s law sometime in the next 20 years is probably foolish right now. The next 3 manufacturing nodes are all down to engineering. So predicting an end before 2020 is…
CFAR is a non-profit organization dedicated to harnessing breakthroughs in the study of cognition to improve human decision-making. If you’re in Pittsburgh, my friend Julia Galef will be giving a presentation on “How to…
Laser fusion experiment yields record energy at Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility. NEWS FLASH: Nuclear fusion tests are now net energy positive. LLNL has been working on this since 2010. In early 2012, they…
I wonder how well peer review works? Let’s see! 304 journals had bogus research papers submitted to them in a recent sting operation. Over 150 happily accepted the paper even though it was obviously…
Friendly AI isn’t meant to give 100% guarantees. See on intelligence.org
