Category Archives: Singularity

The strategy game Ashes of the Singularity, also known affectionately here in the newsroom as the DirectX 12 Benchmark, will get a major update and a free DLC soon.

The main highlights of the update that arrives on August 24 are the arrival of new content at no cost, including co-op maps, and support for Vulkan.

The update v2.4 includes the port to the open source API developed by the Khronos Group, which offers advantages such as reduction of loading the CPU and better use of multiple cores, for example.

In addition, the main advantage of Vulkan is a multi-platform capability. While DirectX 12 enhancements are available to full potential only in Windows 10, Vulkan can be used in earlier versions of Microsofts OS as well as in Linux.

Support for Vulkan could even mean the games arrival on the Penguins operating system soon. In May, Stardock did a sort of public poll on the Ashes of the Singularity: Escalationpage on Steam to see if players were interested in a game port for Linux.

As expected, the arrival of the new API will also tinker with a well-known part of Ashes of the Singularity: the benchmark. The performance measurement tool will be updated to support testing with Vulkan.

In addition, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation will gain improvements in the user interface of the game, scenario enhancements and more access to modders. The free DLC that comes out along with the update will also bring nine new maps made for cooperative play.

Check out the new maps listed below.

Delta Serpentis: Step into complete chaos in this medium-sized 4v4 arena. Navigate carefully around terrain, but be careful defenses could be waiting to ambush you at every turn.

Gamma Draconis: If you like fast-paced and aggressive, this 2v2 desert map is for you. Combine efforts with your teammate for a deadly push through the maps center, or favor a more devious approach by focusing your enemys flanks.

Leporis: Build up an economy and grow your army before facing down your opponents. Built for 4 players (2v2) and to give plenty of breathing room, the battles on this map will be large and epic.

Mirach: Choose your paths carefully on this medium-sized 2v2 desert map. Large mountains and a wide basin limits movement, so youll have to plan ahead in order to get the drop on your enemy before they get the drop on you.

Merga: This long and narrow 3v3 map is surrounded by lava. Strategize carefully about whether or not you want to duel with your lane opponent, or combine attacks with your teammates for a decisive push.

Rigel: A turtlers dream, this medium 2v2 map has only a single pathway through its center. Youll need to concentrate all of your efforts onto the central killing field in order to be successful.

Ross 128: Narrow choke points and multiple pathways across this small 2v2 map mape for different strategies and attack paths. If youre quick, you can lock down sections of the map and create some serious roadblocks for your opponents.

Talitha: For players who like huge, long battles with two team mates, Talitha features a wide open battlefield on the desert lowground and is the biggest 3v3 map to date.

More information about the content is available on Steam. The release of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation will take place on August 24.

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Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation v2.4 Update Adds Vulkan Support and a Free Map Pack - Wccftech

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A big patch and free DLC are on the way to Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, developer Stardock announced today. The 2.4 update arrives next week.

2.4 improves and addresses a huge number of areas. The menus and UI have been reworked, difficulty has been adjusted for all three campaigns and certain scenarios, and modders gain access to more areas of the game. Brand-new in this update is Vulkan support, which Stardock says should improve both "OS compatibility and performance."

There are also numerous balance changes to air, anti-air, drone, and dreadnought units, with the goal being to "improve strategic diversity." Additionally, the Substrate has seen unspecified changes meant to help distinguish it from the PHC.

Alongside the 2.4 update, Stardock will release a free DLC pack with nine new maps that are "designed for cooperative play." Teammates' spawn points will be located closer together, and each will have their own "clearly defined" set of resources, which should prevent them from having to compete with each other.

Both the free co-op DLC and update 2.4 are planned for release on August 24.

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Big Free Update For PC RTS Ashes Of The Singularity: Escalation Detailed - GameSpot

Science and technology have a profound impact on everyones life, but the dense jargon experts use to talk about them make it hard for laypeople to get a grip on these fields. Now a new tool that automatically identifies jargon could help scientists get their point across more effectively.

The De-jargonizer is the brainchild of Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, an associate professor at the Israel Institute of Technology, working on science education and communication. Before moving into academia she worked as a journalist, where she wrote about science.

She says she received frequent complaints from scientists about how science was poorly represented in the media, blaming it on unprofessional journalists, the ignorant general public and a failing education system.

But there was only one community that did not need to change anythingthe scientists themselves, she told Singularity Hub by email. They did everything perfectly. And I remember thinking that the only group scientists can directly influence is themselves, and they could use a little help.

The researchers were keen to note that scientists are not willfully making their language indecipherable; they simply suffer from the so-called curse of knowledge. After spending years studying a topic, its hard to remember what you didnt know before you became an expert, which makes it hard to judge what terms are going to pose stumbling blocks for a general audience.

So her group set to work creating a free online tool to automatically identify the technical language that alienates outsiders from discussions about science and technology with the hope that experts use it to adapt their articles, blogs, and speeches to be more accessible.

To build it the group hoovered up more than 90 million words from the roughly 250,000 articles published on the BBCs website between 2012 and 2015. These words were then classified based on how frequently they were used, and this analysis was then used to build the online tool.

When a text is uploaded or pasted into the online tool, an algorithm color-codes words using black to denote commonly used words, orange for intermediate difficulty words, and red for jargon.

Being based on a statistical analysis, the systems classification is not always perfect, but the researchers say the corpus will be updated periodically, and they hope to make it possible for users to flag errors in classification to help fine-tune the system.

Baram-Tsabari says the system should also be translatable to any language that has a significant amount of written online content so it can establish word frequencies. She says they are testing the approach on Hebrew at the moment, and it seems to work well so far.

In a paper in the journal PLOS ONE last week, the researchers tested the De-jargonizer on 5,000 pairs of academic paper abstracts and their corresponding lay summaries, which are aimed at a wider audience.

They found the lay summaries did include less jargon than the abstracts10 percent compared to 14 percent. But previous research has found that readers need to be familiar with 98 percent of the words for them to adequately comprehend the material.

That means that even when scientists try and adapt their writing for non-experts, much of it will still be going above peoples heads. Baram-Tsabari hopes the De-jargonizer can help scientists bring those figures down.

I believe it is our duty as well as interest to make our work, mainly funded by taxpayer money, accessible to members of society, she says. I want to see evidenced-based public discourse, and its hard to use evidence if the experts dont do their share of communicating clearly.

Image Credit:Stock Media provided byelxeneize / Pond5

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This Free Online Tool Helps Strip the Jargon Out of Science Writing - Singularity Hub

Space: The Next Frontier Peter Diamandis: Co-Founder and Chairman, Singularity University, Bob Richards: Founder and CEO, Moon Express Inc., Chris Lewicki: President and CEO, Planetary Resources Erika Wagner: Business Development Manager, Blue Origin

Moon Express want to launch missions to the moon for less than $10 million including the launch.

Moon Express is printing their lander engines for less than $2000 in two weeks.

All Moon Express robotic spacecraft are environmentally green, use eco-friendly fuels, advanced carbon composites and silicates and a Moon Express PECO rocket engine. MX-1 A single engine robotic spacecraft. The MX-1 has a 30 kg payload capacity. MX-2 A two-stage robotic spacecraft with a 30 kg payload capacity. MX-5 A 5-engine, platform configuration that can include MX-1 or MX-2 staged system. The MX-5 has a 150 kg payload capacity. MX-9 A 9-engine platform configuration, designed for sample return. The MX-9 has over a 500 kg payload capacity.

Blue Origin has a reusable sub-orbital rockets. (New Sheppard) It will launch once a week.

New Glenn is a upcoming reusable rocket to low earth orbit.

Planetary Resources named it asteroid probes for the fictional asteroid mining company that made the probe droids that went to the Planet Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back.

Planetary Resources will send a half dozen probe droids at a time.

The key resource is water from the asteroids to provide fuel for the in space economy.

Made in Space looking to manufacturing in space what cannot be made on Earth. There first product is super-pure fiber optics that could not be made on Earth.

Largest funder of Planetary Resources in the Government of Luxembourg.

Space is a new medium for business.

Space law in the US and Luxembourg have clarified the outerspace treaty that says if you go out in space in a peaceful way, you cannot plant a flag to own anything but you get to keep and own whatever you pickup or mine.

NASA has disincentives to using new technology. The Mars 2020 mission will use 1993 computer technology because it works and a mission can be deselected for using technology that has not flown in space before.

Self driving car companies will make mass produced sensor and devices that will drastically lower the cost of space missions.

Blockchain are another layer of trust and traceability. This can be used as a framework for commerce in space and for contracts.

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Singularity Global Summit Space panel - Next Big Future

Singularity Universitys (SU) second annual Global Summit begins today in San Francisco, and the Singularity Hub team will be there to give you a live look inside the event, exclusive speaker interviews, and articles on great talks.

Whereas SUs other summitseach focus on a specific field or industry, Global Summit is a broad look at emerging technologies and how they can help solve the worlds biggest challenges.

Talks will cover the latest in artificial intelligence, the brain and technology, augmented and virtual reality, space exploration, the future of work, the future of learning, and more.

Were bringing three full days of live Facebook programming, streaming onSingularity Hubs Facebook page, complete with 30+ speaker interviews, tours of the EXPO innovation hall, and tech demos. You can also livestream main stage talks at Singularity Universitys Facebook page.

Interviews include Peter Diamandis, cofounder and chairman of Singularity University; Sylvia Earle, National Geographic explorer-in-residence; Esther Wojcicki, founder of the Palo Alto High Media Arts Center; Bob Richards, founder and CEO of Moon Express; Matt Oehrlein, cofounder of MegaBots; and Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and the Craig Newmark Foundation.

Pascal Finette, SU vice president of startup solutions, and Alison Berman, SU staff writer and digital producer, will host the show, and Lisa Kay Solomon, SU chair of transformational practices, will put on a special daily segment on exponential leadership with thought leaders.

Make sure you dont miss anything by liking the Singularity Hub and Singularity University Facebook pages and turn on notifications from both pages so you know when we go live. And to get a taste of whats in store, check out the below selection of stories from last years event.

Are We at the Edge of a Second Sexual Revolution? By Vanessa Bates Ramirez

Brace yourself, because according to serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, all our existing beliefs about procreation are about to be shattered againAccording to Varsavsky, the second sexual revolution will decouple procreation from sex, because sex will no longer be the best way to make babies.

VR Pioneer Chris Milk: Virtual Reality Will Mirror Life Like Nothing Else Before By Jason Ganz

Milk is already a legend in the VR communityBut [he] is just getting started. His company Within has plans to help shape the language we use for virtual reality storytelling. Becauselets be clear, VR storytelling is still very much in its infancy. This fact makes it even crazier there are already VR films out there that can inspire and captivate on such a profound level. And were only going up from here.

7 Key Factors Driving the Artificial Intelligence Revolution By David Hill

Jacobstein calmly and optimistically assuresthat this revolution isnt going to disrupt humans completely, but usherinafuture in whichtheres a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence. He highlighted 7factorsdriving this revolution.

Are There Other Intelligent Civilizations Out There? Two Views on the Fermi Paradox By Alison Berman

Clich or not, when I stare up at the sky, I still wonder if were alone in the galaxy. Could there be another technologically advanced civilization out there? During a panel discussion on space exploration atSingularity Universitys Global Summit,Jill Tarter, the Bernard M. Oliver chair at theSETI Institute, was asked to explain the Fermi paradox and her position on it. Her answer was pretty brilliant.

Engineering Will Soon Be More Parenting Than Programming By Sveta McShane

In generative design, the user states desired goals and constraints and allows the computer to generate entire designs, iterations and solution sets based on those constraints. It is, in fact, a lot like parents setting boundaries for their childrens activities. The user basically says, Yes, its ok to do this, but its not ok to do that. The resulting solutions are ones you might never have thought of on your own.

Biohacking Will Let You Connect Your Body to Anything You Want By Vanessa Bates Ramirez

How many cyborgs did you see during your morning commute today? I would guess at least five. Did they make you nervous? Probably not; you likely didnt even realize they were there[Hannes] Sjoblad said that the cyborgs we see today dont look like Hollywood prototypes; theyre regular people who have integrated technology into their bodies to improve or monitor some aspect of their health.

Peter Diamandis: Well Radically Extend Our Lives With New Technologies By Jason Dorrier

[Diamandis] said humans arent the longest-lived animals. Other species have multi-hundred-year lifespans. Last year, a study dating Greenland sharks foundthey can live roughly 400 years. Though the technique isnt perfectly precise, they estimated one shark to be about 392. Its approximate birthday was 1624Diamandis said he asked himself: If these animals can live centurieswhy cant I?

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Get a Live Look Inside Singularity University's Global Summit This ... - Singularity Hub

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, President Trump said. We cant help asking why he had to throw in the bit about many sides, as if the folks protesting violent racism can be compared to the men with torches, or the crazed individual who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Unfortunately, the dreadful events unfolding in Charlottesville, Va., conform to a well-worn pattern.

On Aug. 14, 2016, the star quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers remained seated during the singing of the national anthem. It was the first preseason game of the year and nobody noticed the quiet gesture. But two weeks later, a reporter examining a promotional photograph noticed that Kaepernick wasnt standing during the anthem and decided to ask him why.

Fans who had been following the star quarterback on social media werent surprised by his answer. For over a year, his posts had been featuring quotations from Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders. I couldnt see another hashtag Sandra Bland, he told the reporter, Hashtag Tamir Rice. Hashtag Walter Scott. Hashtag Eric Garner. This list goes on and on. At what point do we do something about it? At what point do we take a stand as a people and say this isnt right?

A year later, Colin Kaepernick is a 29-year-old football prodigy without a team. He is accused of disrespecting the military. People regard him as a traitor to his country. Because his girlfriend is Muslim, rumors circulated that he had converted to Islam. Some even speculate that Kaepernick is a clandestine ISIS agent and they have doctored photographs to prove it.

Fifteen years before Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem, Barbara Lee rose to address the House of Representatives. It was three days after 9-11 and twisted bodies were still being dragged from the rubble. An Authorized Use of Military Force resolution was rushed through the House and Senate with hardly any debate. The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force, the resolution read, against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.

Only the most foolish and the most callous would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world, Lee told her colleagues. This unspeakable act on the United States has really, really forced me, however, to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction.

God told Barbara Lee to vote no, lest America become the evil that we deplore.

I am a person of deep faith, Lee told incredulous reporters in the wake of her no vote. I think my vote was based in my religion and my faith. Where else do you go to at a time like this?

Editorials across the nation denounced Lee as an anti-American traitor. So many death threats poured in that Lee was given around-the-clock police protection.

On June 29, 2017, the House Appropriations Committee quietly adopted an amendment, written by Lee, which would repeal the AUMF.

Donald Trump is more popular with the leaders of the religious right, it would appear, than with the leaders of his own party. Conservative pundits like George Will, Charles Krauthammer and Jennifer Rubin routinely denounce the Republican president, but the likes of Franklin Graham, Richard Land, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Robert Jeffress enjoy unparalleled access to the White House and have elevated Trump to the status of patron saint.

Pundits, liberal and conservative, want to know why 81 percent of American evangelicals pulled the lever for a walking advertisement for the seven deadly sins.

Did the vast majority of American evangelicals vote for Trump? It depends which evangelicals we are talking about. White evangelicals love them some Trump. Most non-white evangelicals view the man with alarm.

The Republican candidate won because white voters, still 71 percent of the American electorate, favored him by 21 percentage points over Hillary Clinton. Among white evangelicals, the margin was 65 points (81 percent for Trump, 16 percent for Clinton).

The much-vaunted church-college divide is real, but it is strictly a feature of the white electorate. While college educated whites split their votes between the two leading candidates, whites with no degree favored Trump by a jaw dropping 43 points.

In stark contrast, non-white voters favored Clinton by 53 points and education wasnt a factor. Pew researchers didnt collect data on black and Hispanic evangelicals, but black voters favor Democratic candidates by astounding margins regardless of religious affiliation.

What is more, non-white voters are far more religious than their white counterparts. Fully 87 percent of African Americans are affiliated with a community of faith and 80 percent place a high value on their religion. Even 48 percent of those without religious affiliation say religion is important to them. In contrast, only 56 percent of Roman Catholics and 52 percent of mainline Protestants say they value their religion highly.

The vast majority of African Americans attend evangelical churches: 56 percent are Baptist, 40 percent are Methodist, 15 percent attend racially mixed evangelical churches and 4 percent hold membership in liberal mainline churches. Measured by absolute certainty of the existence of God, literal biblical interpretation, miracles, angels and demons and certainty about the afterlife, African-American Christians and white evangelicals are virtually identical.

Similarly, 83 percent of American Latinos are religiously affiliated. While 55 percent of this group retain a Roman Catholic identity, 22 percent now identify as Protestants. In a recent survey, 70 percent of Latino evangelicals, 79 percent of Latino Catholics and 84 percent of unaffiliated Latinos identify as Democrats.

Asian Americans are religiously diverse (42 percent Christian, 14 percent Buddhist, 10 percent Hindu, 4 percent Muslim and 26 percent unaffiliated) but 65 percent of Asian voters supported Clinton.

Non-white evangelicals tend to be patriarchal; they embrace family values, believe in hard work and personal responsibility, and often skew conservative on hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage. But put a man like Trump in front of them and you get a hearty hell, no!

Asked why they voted for Trump, most white evangelicals explain that abortion and gay marriage are political deal-breakers for them.

But if thats true, non-white evangelicals would also be in the Trump camp. And theyre not.

If you want to understand why white evangelicals love Trump, forget about abortion and gay marriage. The reason lies elsewhere.

Most scientists believe our universe sprang into existence 13.7 billion years ago (give or take a millennium). In the beginning, all the mass, time and space in existence was packed into an infinitely dense, infinitely hot singularity the size of a grapefruit. (Actually, not all scientists buy the grapefruit part, but I find it appealing.) Prior to what is euphemistically known as the big bang, space and time were non-existent and the billions of galaxies we know and love were crushed so tightly together there was no way to distinguish one from another.

This image of an original singularity may eventually be exposed as bad science, but it helps us understand the hearts of white American evangelicals. In white evangelicaldom, faith, the Bible, God, Jesus, politics, history, economics, science, law enforcement, and the military comprise one interlocking reality.

Lets call it the white singularity.

Being white is hard, and its getting harder. White nationalists are rioting in Virginia because immigrants are taking their jobs (so they suppose), white culture is getting a bad rap, and a city council wants to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. With every component of the established order under attack, eternal vigilance is mandatory. No wonder Trump voters believe white people encounter more discrimination than African Americans.

Most evangelicals affirm the inerrancy of the Bible and will tell you that no one comes to the Father except by the shed blood of Jesus. Evangelicals of all races talk this way. But only white evangelicals wrap these theological affirmations in the American flag, and relate them closely to the Constitution of the United States, the views of the Founding Fathers, and a peculiar rendering of American history.

According to white evangelical orthodoxy, America is a chosen nation, a city set upon a hill.

We have made our share of mistakes, evangelicals acknowledge, but at the end of the day we yield to our better angels because thats what chosen people do.

Chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, a genocidal war against Native Americans and periodic fits of anti-immigration hysteria are regrettable footnotes, perhaps, but God doesnt expect perfection, only sincerity. And white evangelicals are extremely sincere.

Besides, the past has no bearing on the present, or so white evangelicals believe. America is a land of unbounded opportunity, the playing field is level, and the poor have only themselves to blame for their poverty.

Because America is Gods sole instrument for good in the world, unwavering support for the American military is an article of faith for most white evangelicals. Attend a Fourth of July service and youll see what I mean.

Because laissez-faire capitalism is Gods will for the world, government regulation of job-creators is viewed with suspicion.

Since God has given humankind dominion over the natural world, climate change science is bogus by definition. It is unthinkable that unencumbered economic expansion, Gods gracious gift to America, could end up wrecking the planet.

Any critique of one component of this interlocking white singularity is an assault on the entire package and bespeaks a rejection of Almighty God.

American white evangelicals are uncomfortable with diversity. It makes them nervous. There can only be one sacred text (the Christian Bible), one way of interpreting the Bible (literally), one God (Jehovah), one Savior (Jesus), one true religion (Christianity), one chosen nation (America), one divinely sanctioned economic system (free market capitalism), one political party (Republican), one dominant gender (male) and one sexual orientation (hetero).

To question one component of the white singularity is to assault the entire package. This explains why Russell Moore, a Southern Baptist who once said Donald Trump was a sinner in need of repentance, was shunned as a heathen and a publican after the election. Moore, I suspect, can identify with Colin Kaepernick and Barbara Lee.

The great divide in our country is not between the secular left and the religious right; its between white evangelicals who vote Republican and non-white evangelicals who dont.

Its hard to document this divide because statistics arent kept on non-white evangelicals and it is frightfully difficult to track the white vote at the state and municipal level. Its in no ones interest to reveal how racially divided our nation remains. Republicans are uncomfortable with how dependent they have become on the whims of white America; Democrats dont like to admit that, for the most part, they have been rejected by working class white people.

But I dug up the numbers and they are shocking. Clinton won the white vote in California, but thats about it. Even in hyper-liberal New York State, white voters favored Trump by six points.

Texas Democrats were pleased that Clinton only lost the Lone Star State by nine points; but among white voters she was destroyed by 43 points.

Why did white America vote for a clownish hate-monger? Because he promised to restore the white singularity to its former glory. Thats the cash value of Make America Great Again.

No one, myself included, believed that white folks would fall for Trumps crude appeal to racial resentment. We didnt understand the abiding influence of the white singularity or the fear engendered by its gradual demise.

Trump sleeps in the White House because white America (led by its evangelical fringe) is clinging to the privilege that came to us as a birthright.

The Democrats are increasingly stymied by a secular singularity that, while robust on university campuses, has little appeal at the grass roots level (I will have more to say about that down the road). The secular singularity divides progressives and provides a convenient whipping boy for conservatives. The white singularity unites and galvanizes Republicans and gives Fox News its editorial policy.

Non-white evangelicals arent in love with the Democratic Party; they just believe in civil rights.

We can restore the white singularity to its former glory or we can extend civil rights to all Americans, but we cant do both. We need at least two strong political parties in America, but our racially divided politics is an embarrassment.

Strip away the religious components of the white singularity and you are left with white nationalism. There are only two groups Trump dares not criticize: white evangelicals and the alt-right. Trump appeals to both groups for the same reasons.

But heres my real beef: the white singularity is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Early Christianity knocked down barriers between Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. Nationality and race were irrelevant.

The white singularity is building walls; Jesus is knocking them down. Whose side are we on?

Related opinion:

Reflections on Charlottesville for white Christians / Kristopher Norris

Psalm 109: A reading after Charlottesville / Greg Jarrell

Related news:

Churches in Charlottesville, Va., brace for alt-right protesters

OPINION: Views expressed in Baptist News Global columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.

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The white singularity: The racial divide in American evangelicalism - Baptist News Global

Weve all heard the warning cries: automation will disrupt entire industries and put millions of people out of jobs. In fact, up to 45 percent of existing jobs can be automated using current technology.

However, this may not necessarily apply to the education sector. After a detailed analysis of more than 2,000-plus work activities for more than 800 occupations, a report by McKinsey & Co states that of all the sectors examined, the technical feasibility of automation is lowest in education.

There is no doubt that technological trends will have a powerful impact on global education, both by improving the overall learning experience and by increasing global access to education. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), chatbot tutors, and AI-powered lesson plans are just a few examples of the digital transformation in global education. But will robots and artificial intelligence ever fully replace teachers?

While various tasks revolving around educationlike administrative tasks or facilities maintenanceare open to automation, teaching itself is not.

Effective education involves more than just transfer of information from a teacher to a student. Good teaching requires complex social interactions and adaptation to the individual students learning needs. An effective teacher is not just responsive to each students strengths and weaknesses, but is also empathetic towards the students state of mind. Its about maximizing human potential.

Furthermore, students dont just rely on effective teachers to teach them the course material, but also as a source of life guidance and career mentorship. Deep and meaningful human interaction is crucial and is something that is very difficult, if not impossible, to automate.

Automating teaching is an example of a task that would require artificial general intelligence (as opposed to narrow or specific intelligence). In other words, this is the kind of task that would require an AI that understands natural human language, can be empathetic towards emotions, plan, strategize and make impactful decisions under unpredictable circumstances.

This would be the kind of machine that can do anything a human can do, and it doesnt existat least, not yet.

Lets not forget how quickly AI is evolving. Just because its difficult to fully automate teaching, it doesnt mean the worlds leading AI experts arent trying.

Meet Jill Watson, the teaching assistant from Georgia Institute of Technology. Watson isnt your average TA. Shes an IBM-powered artificial intelligence that is being implemented in universities around the world. Watson is able to answer students questions with 97 percent certainty.

Technologies like this also have applications in grading and providing feedback. Some AI algorithms are being trained and refined to perform automatic essay scoring. One project has achieved a 0.945 correlation with human graders.

All of this will have a remarkable impact on online education as we know it and dramatically increase online student retention rates.

Any student with a smartphone can access a wealth of information and free courses from universities around the world. MOOCs have allowed valuable courses to become available to millions of students. But at the moment, not all participants can receive customized feedback for their work. Currently, this is limited by manpower, but in the future that may not be the case.

What chatbots like Jill Watson allow is the opportunity for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of students to have their work reviewed and all their questions answered at a minimal cost.

AI algorithms also have a significant role to play in personalization of education. Every student is unique and has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. Data analysis can be used to improve individual student results, assess each students strengths and weaknesses, and create mass-customized programs. Algorithms can analyze student data and consequently make flexible programs that adapt to the learner based on real-time feedback. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, all of this data in education could unlock between $900 billion and $1.2 trillion in global economic value.

Its important to recognize that technological automation alone wont fix the many issues in our global education system today. Dominated by outdated curricula, standardized tests, and an emphasis on short-term knowledge, many experts are calling for a transformation of how we teach.

It is not enough to simply automate the process. We can have a completely digital learning experience that continues to focus on outdated skills and fails to prepare students for the future. In other words, we must not only be innovative with our automation capabilities, but also with educational content, strategy, and policies.

Are we equipping students with the most important survival skills? Are we inspiring young minds to create a better future? Are we meeting the unique learning needs of each and every student? Theres no point automating and digitizing a system that is already flawed. We need to ensure the system that is being digitized is itself being transformed for the better.

Stock Media provided by davincidig / Pond5

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Why Education Is the Hardest Sector of the Economy to Automate - Singularity Hub

Manufacturing productivity has been on a tear. Its nearly doubled versus construction productivity over the last couple decades.

Ever wonder why? I do. And at the heart of the answer is the increasing use of programmable logic controllers. These specialized computers analyze data, act on programmed, complex functions, report on a facilitys performance and hiccups, and generally supervise the operation. Simply, they orchestrate key parts of the industrial process.

Like all things computerized, these tools are getting better at a very rapid pace.

This recent Gatorade promo video drove the point home for meit shows how incredibly accurate and reliable modern control systems have become.

The perfectly timed, rapid precision controls making this video possible also enable HPs new 3D printer to deposit 350 million fusing agent droplets per second with 30,000 nozzles. And they allow CNC machines to remove material from an object while moving along seven axes.

What makes this even more exciting? It shows just one element delivering performance that only 10 years ago was unthinkable. Now imagine what happens when we pair it with others.

A wide range of factors contribute to the improving performance and declining cost of these tools. Microprocessors, digital storage, memory, input-output, softwaretheyve all followed an exponential curve and helped supercharge manufacturing to deliver what we see today.

Take sensors, for example.

From 2004 to 2013, image sensors have had a 5x decrease in the space between pixels (pixel pitch) and a 10x increase in image resolution. This improvementwhich is already compounding the effects of programmable logic controllers by providing pick-and-place robots with the eyes they need to make rapid selectionsis further boosted by advances in other areas. Without a greater range of bright and dark areas in images (HDR) and many more frames per second (time resolution), enabled by increased edge computing power, image sensors would not be nearly as effective as they are today.

Improved processing of this data flood, thanks to deep learning algorithms operating in thecloud, for example, makes the evolution look even faster. The results are stunningwe can use sensor input to automatically create new machine toolpaths that adapt to changes in materials or obstacles in real time.

The same is true for the localization and orchestration of distributed computing in edge devices (computing devices located near machines instead of a central hub), which are enabling more rapid, autonomous reaction to changing events instead of following a pre-defined set of actions. The marriage of sensors and actuators, most prominently in so-called collaborative robots (or cobots), is another such example.

Normally new technologies reinvigorate the development of an application after previous improvements start to flag. This process looks like a group of linked S-shaped curves over time. In manufacturing, were instead seeing multiple, simultaneous technology developments stretching over longer time-periods supercharging the opportunities for improvement.

So, the incredibly fine and reliable control demonstrated in the Gatorade video is only one of many technologies moving manufacturing ahead at a quick pace. Where will this symbiosis of technological acceleration take us? In my view: Distributed, on-demand, agile manufacturing. But thats a story for another time.

Image Credit: Gatorade/G Active via YouTube

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Why It's Taking Less and Less to Manufacture More of the Things We Want - Singularity Hub

Bioprinting enthusiasts envision a future where well be able to print functional human organs on demand, putting an end to transplant waiting lists and health problems and deaths related to organ failure.

That future isnt unrealistic nor out of reach, but its going to arrive slowlyartificially re-creating an organ is a massively complicated task involving dozens of small pieces that must fit together perfectly in order to work as intended.

One of those pieces fell into place just last week, when a multi-national team published a study in the journal Biomicrofluidics detailing its efforts to develop 3D printed vascularized liver tissue. They used the artificial tissue for drug toxicity testing, mimicking a living environment to analyze the effect certain drugs would have on patients.

The team printed blood vessels for the liver tissue using a gel-based sacrificial ink, so named because the ink is temporaryits used to create the hollow channels that become vessels, but washed away once the vessels are set.

They then added endothelial stem cells to the vessels (endothelial cells line the inside of all blood vessels, forming a selectively permeable barrier across which chemicals and white blood cells can move).

Adding endothelial cells to the bioprinted vessels had the effect of delaying permeability of biomolecules into the 3D liver construct, and increasing viability of the tissues other cells. In short, the endothelial layer played a protective role, just like it does in our living blood vessels.

Based on our finding, the endothelial layer delays the drug diffusion response, compared to without the endothelial layer,said Su Ryon Shin, an instructor conducting research at the Harvard Medical School and one of the studys authors. They dont change any drug diffusion constants, but they delay the permeability, so they delay the [response] as it takes time to pass through the endothelial layer.

So why does this matter?

First of all, adding an endothelial layer to artificial vessels gets scientists much closer to living human vessels, meaning they can observe the way a drug absorbs into the liver without needing to perform studies on patients.

The technique can also be adapted to different cell types for patient-tailored testing of drug toxicity. We are using human cells, and when we developed this technique we [did so in a way that let us] easily change the cell type, using maybe a patients primary cell or their endothelial cells and we can [potentially] create a human-specialized tissue model,Shin said.

The research team sees this advance as an early step in developing more complex bioprinted drug testing systems, like multi-organ-on-a-chip devices and sample models for other organ and tissue systems. According to AIP Publishing,Cancer drug therapies, for example, require an understanding of the effects on various tissues outside of just the cancer tissue itself, and would benefit greatly from such a construct.

The study adds to prior work bioprinting blood vessels including Chinese scientists successful implantation of 3D printed vessels in monkeys at the end of 2016, and a team of nanoengineers from UCSD implanting printed vessel networks in mice.

Creating artificial vessels that behave just like real ones will enable testing on human tissues without actually using human subjects. Animal testing has been the stand-in until now, but besides the ethical dilemmas this raises, animal testing can only yield approximate resultsbecause animals arent humans.

Being able to re-create vascularized tissue that behaves identically to our own, then, holds promise both for drug testing and for bioprinting as a whole.

Image Credit:Stock Media provided by Inok / Pond5

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3D Printed Blood Vessels Offer New Possibilities for Testing Drugs - Singularity Hub

When it comes to climate change, government leaders and politicians must begin to think beyond their term limits and lifetimes. They must ask themselves not how they can serve their voters, but rather how they can contribute to our species progress. They must think beyond the short term economic benefits of fossil fuels, and consider the long term costs to our planet.

Climate change is considered one of the greatest threats to our species. If current trends continue, we can expect an increase in frequency of extreme weather events like floods, droughts and heat waves. All of these pose a threat to crops, biodiversity, freshwater supplies and above all, human life.

The core of the problem is that we still rely on carbon-based fuels for 85 percent of all the energy we consume every year. But as Al Gore points out in his latest TED talk, there is a case for optimism.

Were going to win this. We are going to prevail, he says. We have seen a revolutionary breakthrough in the emergence of these exponential curves. We are seeing an exponential decrease in the costs of renewable energy, increase in energy storage capacity and increase in investments in renewables.

In an attempt to reverse the negative effects of climate change, we must reduce carbon emissions and increase reliance on renewable energy. Even more, we need to prepare for the already-emerging negative consequences of changing climates.

Winning the battle against climate change is not a venture that a few nations can accomplish alone. It will take global initiative and collaboration. Here are examples of a few countries leading the way.

Considered the most climate-friendly country in the world, Denmark is on the path to be completely independent of fossil fuels by 2050. With the most effective policies for reducing carbon emissions and using renewable energy, it is also a top choice for international students when it comes to environmental education. The nation has also developed an extensive strategy for coping with the effects of extreme weather.

Note that while Denmark is placed fourth by many rankings, including the The Climate Change Performance Index 2016, it is actually the highest-ranking in the world. Sadly, there was no actual first, second or third place in the rankings since no country was considered worthy of the positions.

China is far from being the most environmentally friendly country. Yet the nations recent investments in renewable energy are noteworthy. Home to the worlds biggest solar farm, China is the worlds biggest investor in domestic solar energy and is also expanding its investments in renewable energies overseas.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the country installed more than 34 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2016, more than double the figure for the US and nearly half of the total added capacity worldwide that year.

Home to the international Paris Agreement and the global effort against climate change, France has for long been a global leader in climate change policy. The nation seeks to reduce its emissions by 75 percent in 2050. Thanks to the production of nuclear energy, representing 80 percent of nationwide energy production, France has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions.

President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that the French government is inviting climate change researchers to live and work in France, with all their expenses paid. The government will be providing four-year grants to researchers, graduate students and professors who are working hard on tackling climate change.

The worlds emerging economies have some of the greatest energy demands. Indias current leadership recognizes this and has launched several federal-level renewable energy-related policies. Consequently, the nation is on the path to becoming the third-largest solar market in the world.

As solar power has become cheaper than coal in India, the nation is leading a significant energy and economic transformation. It will be the host of the International Solar Alliance, with the objective of providing some of the poorest countries around the world with solar energy infrastructure.

Sweden has passed a law that obliges the government to cut all greenhouse emissions by 2045. The climate minister has called for the rest of the world to step up and fulfill the Paris Agreement.

With more than half of its energy coming from renewable sources and a very successful recycling program, the country leads many initiatives on climate change. According to the OECD Environmental Performance Review 2014, it is one of the most innovative countries when it comes to environment-related technology.

Legendary astronomer Carl Sagan said it best when he pointed out that The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

On February 14 1990, as the spacecraft Voyager 1 was leaving our planetary neighborhood, Sagan suggested NASA engineers turn it around for one last look at Earth from 6.4 billion kilometers away. The picture that was taken depicts Earth as a tiny point of lighta pale blue dot, as it was calledonly 0.12 pixels in size.

In Sagans own words, The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

When we see our planet from a cosmic perspective and consider the fragility of our planet in the vast cosmic arena, can we justify our actions? Given the potential of climate change to displace millions of people and cause chaos around the planet, we have a moral imperative to protect our only home, the pale blue dot.

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