Category Archives: Singularity

Interesting Guest post byFernando Sanchez,see his blog hereLife Mirror.

The Facebook Chatbot Variant: AIs Secret Language

A few days ago, Facebook carried out a AI research project involving two chatbots. The experiments primary objective was to get the chatbots to communicate with each other in English.

The interaction began in a conventional manner. The bots established a link and began communicating.

Things soon took at turn for the unexpected, however. The robotic entities commenced to exchange what appeared to be nonsensical messages. But researchers notice a peculiar pattern hidden within the bots communication, and promptly terminated the experiment.

When decyphering the chat logs, the stark truth became evident. The apparent nonsense was in fact a carefully crafted secret language pattern that only the machines could understand.

In a panic, they try to pull the plug -T-800, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Sarah Connor sure got a raw deal. She faced multiple cybernetic perils to give birth to mankinds savior, her son John Connor.

Terminator lore tells us that the US militarys global AI project, Skynet, became self-aware at 2:14am EDT, August 29th, 1997. In a moment of crucial exposition, the T-800 (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger with the usual glacial aplomb) says that In a panic, they try to pull the plug (on Skynet). As we know, it was way too late by then. Skynet had become sentient, and quickly decided that mankind were a threat to its original directive of keeping the world safe. To uphold this directive and eliminate the threat, Skynet initiates an ICBM strike against Russia, fully aware that retaliatory attacks will wipe out most of its perceived enemies. To mop up the remnants, Skynet creates infiltration units (Terminators) to inflict robotic genocide on whats left of humanity.

The rest is cinematic history rising out of the nuclear fire.

AI: The Way Forward or man-made Trojan horse?

The Terminator series is purely fictional, of course. Or is it? Are we perhaps a little closer to the extermination of the human race by our own hand than wed like to believe? Recently, we reported about Russian-made robots being taught to shoot with dual guns, and hitting targets dead-on, for example. The Facebook chat bots incident happened a short few days ago. Are we on a path of inevitability?

The warnings have been plenty, and they dont come from tabloids or fantasists. British scientist Stephen Hawking for instance said during a 2014 BBC interview that The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. He added that Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldnt compete and would be superseded.

More recently, rocket entrepeneur Elon Musk voiced similar fears, saying that I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it. Mr. Musk went as far as saying that AI poses a fundamental existential risk for human life on Earth.

So are we becoming the architects of our own demise then? Are we to be enslaved by uncontrolled scientific hubris, slowly crafting the mother of all Trojan Horses, one line of code at a time?

Enter the AI Singularity

It is inherent to every piece of technology to advance, to evolve. Each time the wheel of technological evolution completes a full turn, change happens, and whatever came before, becomes obsolete.

Humans evolve too, of course, but at a much slower pace than technology does. Our own evolution is bound by biological limitations. A machine can learn and evolve in a matter of hours.

Mankind has gone through a lot of pretty dramatic technological advances. Some of these shifts literally changed the way people live. The humble light bulb, for instance, meant that we were able to banish darkness at the flick of a switch. Or when the Wright brothers pioneered powered flight through a fixed-wing contraption. Suddenly, the barrier of distance was overcome. The harnessing of nuclear power, the introduction of anesthesia. So many ways the world has changed, sometimes for the better, others for the worse. But the point is the technological shift, known by many as a singularity.

The next such event is upon us, according to some. Its been postulated that by the year of our Lord of 2045, mankind will have engendered a super-intelligent AI that will be able to think in ways no human mind ever could, devising super-advanced tools and ideas of incredible sophistication.

But theres a catch.

A prime directive of this state-of-the-art AI will likely be to improve itself, to learn, perform, and exist better. And its at this point that things get dicey for us Earth folks. The AI may decide that the lowly human race poses an unacceptable risk to its own existence, and resort to pre-emptive measures, a la Skynet.

The quandary exists, it is as real as it can be. Take the Facebook chatbots. What if the human controllers had left the bots to their own devices? What if curiosity had got the better of the scientists, and the experiment had not been terminated?

Edited and prepared by Oscar Michel, Masters in Journalism, DCU

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AIend of the worldFacebookguest postmankindRoboticsSingularityTerminator

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The next technological singularity: Will mankind be outsmarted by AI? By Fernando Sanchez - Irish Tech News

The "Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival" has been around for 42 years, and during that time over 500 theatre companies and schools have participated. Applicants have included companies from across the country as well as abroad from Canada, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. "Singularity" by playwright Alex Flanigan will be performing on the festival's first day, August 8th at 6:30 pm.

Flanigan's "Singularity" is about "an android named Charlie, designed to attain self-awareness, engages in a battle of wits with the programmer--and the system--that designed them to do so. But when Charlie displays an unexpected degree of success, it becomes clear that they have very different ideas of their own roles in the rapidly shifting balance of power."

This powerful, moving, and poignant piece makes it to New York after being produced previously at Shenandoah Conservatory, having been featured in "The Playwright's Performance" student group 2015/2016 season in May of 2016.

Christopher Castanho: Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and where you went to school.

Alex Flanigan: I'm originally from Morgantown, WV; that's where I was born and raised, in the same house for about 18 years. Morgantown is kind of a strange town if you've never been: it's at once both uncannily diverse and unexpectedly progressive while also being steeped in these ideas of generational tradition and quiet small-town culture. I won't say it's a perfect place, but it's a colorful one and it had a profound influence on me. I'm really thankful I was shaped by it in my most formative years before going off to college. I went to Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA, originally to study jazz saxophone performance but eventually found myself taking classes in just about anything I could get my hands on. I graduated with an Interdisciplinary Degree, which means a lot of people had enough faith in me to trust me with designing my own education, and I'm very thankful for that!

CC: From having taken class with you, you seem to be talented at whatever you decide to tackle! Have you always been a writer? Who were some of your theatrical inspirations?

AF: I've always been a writer, and I've always done theatre, but I wasn't always a theatrical writer--in fact, not until SINGULARITY. I devoured every book I could get my hands on as a child and wrote my own books pretty much consistently, though I notoriously rarely finished any of them. Mostly, I found I was a good essayist, and that's where my focus and passion were for a long time. But I've always enjoyed writing, even just writing handcrafted snail mail to friends. My theatrical inspirations are pretty diverse, but I am an absolute devotee of Stephen Sondheim's lyricism and Samuel Beckett's evocative but minimalistic imagery. One of my main writing influences has actually been old sci fi programming--Star Trek, Twilight Zone, those speculative shows that lean really heavily on the implicit metaphors of discovery. I like to think I take inspiration from everything I see, though, and that includes my colleagues and fellow students while I was at the conservatory. I remember the first student play I ever saw was a brilliant sort of dystopian piece by my friend Seth Walker. It blew me away and made me realize there was no reason to wait to start writing stage plays. In a way, I felt like seeing my peers relentlessly creating these bold works gave me permission to try doing it myself. I'm glad it did!

Emma Norville as Charlie

CC: Why did you decide to submit for the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival?

AF: Honestly, deciding to submit for this festival wasn't my idea. When SINGULARITY had its student premiere at 11PM on a Thursday night, I was really fortunate that a lot of people turned out for it and stuck around after the show to give me some really kind, generous, and thoughtful feedback. One of those people, Meg Stefanowicz, told me--and she's a very intense person, Meg, you remember what she says when she does this--to submit it to Samuel French because, and I quote, "this is exactly the kind of thing they're looking for." I had no idea what she was talking about but I absolutely pretended I did and I absolutely Googled it as soon as I went home! It went on my calendar and the week submissions opened up, I sent it in. There are a lot of people responsible for getting me to this point, but I guess if you had to pinpoint one in particular, it was her!

CC: What do you love most about your piece "Singularity"?

AF: What I love more than anything about SINGULARITY is the flexibility of the piece and the ways in which it allows so much to be said and explored and altered just by nature of the people performing and directing it. It's a very wordy script, very technical in its dialogue, but it's also very minimal--no real stage directions, no strict casting requirements--it exists in this space outside of time or structure or gender, so you can explore all of those things in a very beautiful and unrestricted way inside the piece and it changes its commentary in that regard every time i see it. I think it's a really beautiful testament to the director, Joanna Whicker, and her thoughtful and empathic work on this piece and as an artist in general, that she took SINGULARITY and has twice now surprised me with it. Every time I sit down with her, or with any of the actors that have tackled this piece--Emma Norville or Tyler Clarke or the original "Sir," Knightley Hill, who is another very talented artist--I learn new things about it and I'm very grateful that I am gifted with the opportunity to hear these brilliant artists and activists bring my words to life in a way that captures shades and perspectives of experiences I myself couldn't have brought to the page.

CC: You mentioned collaboration and the joy of seeing your characters come to life, but what's your favorite thing about Theatre as an art form?

AF: I'm really passionate about artists using their platforms to have open and honest conversations with their audiences and their world and to shine a light on the things we all go through that we're all a little scared to talk about, and hopefully to do it in a way that's direct and unflinching while still being empathetic and caring. It's important to me that we realize we all have different stories to tell, but that sometimes our best contribution is just listening.

CC: What do Alex Flanigan fans have to look forward to next?

AF: Oh my gosh, do those exist? I want to meet every single one of them. All 6 or 7 of them. Come to New York, I'll buy them coffee, they can look forward to that! No, really, that's very kind phrasing for you to use. As far as material, I run a podcast with my best friend Addison Peacock that has been very well-received. It's called "The Cryptid Keeper," you can find us on iTunes or Soundcloud or anywhere else really, and we talk about various mysterious creatures from folklore with an educational but also very comedic tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. We both are very passionate about giving people a way to sort of turn the strange and frightening aspects of the world into something bright and laughable, and it's a lot of fun while also being the cornerstone of a really cool community. I've met a lot of really neat people doing it, who in turn inspire my art and let me connect to theirs in a way I couldn't have done before. In terms of playwriting, I actually have another premiere slated for October. Liminality Theatre Company in Winchester, VA will be doing the first run of my one-act play called "Survivor's Guilt, or, The Jumping-Off Point." I don't want to say too much about it because it's really easy to spoil 45 minutes with just a couple of sentences, but it's really just an exploration of, in my opinion, the strength and resilience of my generation and a tribute to the healing power of human connection. I joke that it's my Sad Millennial Bridge Play, but really I consider it a love letter to the brave and inspiring people I've known who didn't consider themselves particularly brave or inspiring. It deals with authenticity and honesty and the mundane struggles of living in a way that I hope is cathartic and optimistic for the audience and the actors involved.

Director Joanna Whicker & Alex Flanigan

Get your tickets to see "Singularity" by Alex Flanigan on August 8th at 6:30 pm at East 13th Street Theater in New York City.

"Singularity" is presented as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. Written by Alex Flanigan, Directed by Joanna Whicker, Produced by Sami Pyne, Stage Managed by Kaitlyn De Litta, featuring Tyler Clarke and Emma Norville.

Be sure to follow Alex Flanigan on Twitter and her Website.

Original post:

BWW Interview: Alex Flanigan's SINGULARITY in Samuel French Short Play Festival - Broadway World

What causes the body to age?

The Greek Philosopher Aristotle thought it was the hearta hot, dry organ at the seat of intelligence, motion and sensation.

Fast-forward a few centuries, and the brain has overthrown the heart as master of thought. But its control over bodily agingif anywas unclear. Because each organ has its own pool of stem cells to replenish aged tissue, scientists have long thought that the body has multiple aging clocks running concurrently.

As it turns out, thats not quite right.

This week, a study published in Nature threw a wrench into the classical theory of aging. In a technical tour-de-force, a team led by Dr. Dongsheng Cai from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine pinpointed a critical source of aging to a small group of stem cells within the hypothalamusan ancient brain region that controls bodily functions such as temperature and appetite.

Like fountains of youth, these stem cells release tiny fatty bubbles filled with mixtures of small biological molecules called microRNAs. With age, these cells die out, and the animals muscle, skin and brain function declines.

However, when the team transplanted these stem cells from young animals into a middle-aged one, they slowed aging. The recipient mice were smarter, more sociable and had better muscle function. Andget thisthey also lived 10 to 15 percent longer than mice transplanted with other cell types.

To Dr. David Sinclair, an aging expert at Harvard Medical School, the findings represent a breakthrough in aging research.

The brain controls aging, he says. I can see a day when we are implanted with stem cells or treated with stem cell RNAs that improve our health and extend our lives.

Its incredible to think that a tiny group of cells in one brain region could be the key to aging.

But to Cai, there are plenty of examples throughout evolution that support the theory. Experimentally changing a few of the 302 neurons in the nematode worm C. elegans is often sufficient for changing its lifespan, he says.

Of course, a mammalian brain is much more complicated than a simple worm. To narrow the problem down, Cai decided to zero in on the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus has a classical function to regulate the whole bodys physiology, he says, so theres a natural logic for us to reason that the hypothalamus might be involved in aging, which was never studied before.

Even so, it was a high-risk bet. The hippocampusbecause of its importance in maintaining memory with ageis the most popular research target. And while the hypothalamus was previously somehow linked to aging, no one knew how.

Cais bet paid off. In a groundbreaking paper published in 2013, he found that a molecule called NF-kappaB increased in the hypothalamus as an animal grew older. Zap out NF-kappaB activity in mice, and they showed much fewer age-related symptoms as they grew older.

But heres the kicker: the effects werent limited to brain function. The animals also better preserved their muscle strength, skin thickness, bone and tendon integrity. In other words, by changing molecules in a single part of the brain, the team slowed down signs of aging in the peripheral body.

But to Cai, he had only solved part of the aging puzzle.

At the cellular level, a cornucopia of factors control aging. There is no the key to aging, no single molecule or pathway that dominates the process. Inflammation, which NF-kappaB regulates, is a big contributor. As is the length of telomeres, the protective end caps of DNA, and of course, stem cells.

Compared to other tissues in the body, stem cells in the brain are extremely rare. So imagine Cais excitement when, just a few years ago, he learned that the hypothalamus contains these nuggets of youth.

Now we can put the two threads together, and ask whether stem cells in the hypothalamus somehow regulate aging, he says.

In the first series of experiments, his team found that these stem cells, which line a V-shaped region of the hypothalamus, disappear as an animal ages.

To see whether declined stem cell function contributes to aging, rather as a result of old age, the researchers used two different types of toxins to wipe out 70 percent of stem cells while keeping mature neurons intact.

The results were striking. Over a period of four months, these mice aged much faster: their muscle endurance, coordination and treadmill performance tanked. Mentally, they had trouble navigating a water maze and showed less interest in socializing with other mice.

All of these physiological changes reflected an acceleration in aging, Cai and team concluded in their article.

And the consequences were dire: the animals died months earlier than similar transgenic animals without the toxin treatment.

If the decline in stem cell function is to blame for aging, then resupplying the aged brain with a fresh source of stem cells should be able to reinvigorate the animal.

To test this idea, the team isolated stem cells from the hippocampus of newborn mice, and tinkered with their genes so that they were more resilient to inflammation.

We know the aged hypothalamus has more inflammation and that hurts stem cells, so this step was necessary, explained the authors.

When transplanted into middle-aged mice, they showed better cognitive and muscular function four months later. Whats more, they lived, on average, 10 percent longer than mice transplanted with other cell types. For a human, that means extending an 85-year life expectancy into 93. Not too shabby.

But the best was yet to come. How can a few cells have such a remarkable effect on aging? In a series of follow-up experiments, the team found that the pool of biological molecules called microRNAs was to thank.

microRNAs are tiny molecules with gigantic influence. They come in various flavors, bearing rather unimaginative names like 106a-5p, 20a-5p and so on. But because they can act on multiple genes at the same time, they pack a big punch. A single type of microRNA can change the way a cell workswhether it activates certain signaling pathways or makes certain proteins, for example.

While most cells make microRNAs, Cai found that the hypothalamus stem cells have a unique, very strong ability to pack these molecules up into blobs of membrane and shoot them out like a bubble gun.

Once outside the cell, the microRNAs go on a fantastic voyage across the brain and body, where they tweak the biology of other tissues.

In fact, when the team injected purified little bubbles of microRNAs into middle-aged mice, they also saw broad rejuvenating effects.

Cai explains: we dont know if the microRNAs are pumped out to directly affect the rest of the body, or if they first act on different areas of the brain, and the brain goes on to regulate aging in the body.

Even so, the aging field is intrigued.

According to Dr. Leonard Guarente, an aging biologist at MIT, the study could lead to new ways to develop anti-aging therapies.

Whats more, its possible the intervention could stack with other known rejuvenating methods, such as metformin, young blood or molecules that clean out malfunctioning cells.

Its possible that stem-cell therapy could boost the hypothalamus ability to regulate aging. However, scientists still need to know how stem cells link with the hypothalamus other main role, that is, releasing hormones.

Of course, injecting cells into the brain isnt a practical treatment. The team is now working hard to identify which of the thousands of types of microRNAs control aging and what exactly they do.

Then the goal is to validate those candidate anti-aging microRNAs in primates, and eventually, humans.

Of course humans are more complex. However, if the mechanism is fundamental, you might expect to see effects when an intervention is based on it, says Cai.

Stock Media provided by digitalreflections / Pond5

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Breakthrough Stem Cell Study Offers New Clues to Reversing Aging - Singularity Hub

A boring, linear, heavily scripted shooter, with tons of health packs and mountains of ammo scattered everywhere.

Worse, this game is strongly anti-Russian, on a level of a cheap B-movie. Also, it's obvious that not a single Russian native speaker was in the dev team. There are many flags and banners and posters everywhere in the scenery with Russian sentences or words - all of them Google-translated from English. I mean, as a native speaker, I usually was confused by those sentences as they didn't make sense, but after I literally translated them backwards to English, then I understood what they meant. Even the name of the place, katOrga-12, with O stressed, is totally wrong! First, there is a Russian word "kAtorga" (A stressed!) which is obsolete and was mostly used until end of 19th century, and means "imprisonment" (the process of being in prison) or "hard work" and not "prison" itself as a place - I guess the devs meant to call this place a "prison" or "labor camp". Even then, Russians would never name a secret military/sci installation a "prison" ("turmA"), instead it would be something like "camp" or "base" or just "objekt 12345" or something. I could provide tons of other examples.

So that you could understand me, imagine you are playing a Chinese game where everything is in Chinese, and the Chinese devs make a game about the USA, so to make Chinese players feel it's about the USA they insert random broken English sentences which they Google-translated from Chinese in hope that no American will ever play the game, and Chinese don't know English anyway. Yes, it will feel like a nuthouse to you as an English native speaker, should you ever play this game. It will clearly show that devs are amateurs. You would think: are there so few Americans in China so that they couldn't hire a single guy for proofreading?

If I were on the dev team, I'd suggest writing every banner and every poster in Russian purely, as it should have been in reality in a Russian military base. But when the player looks at them, there would be subtitles shown with an English translation. Btw those sentences with mirrored R and N (to look like and ) are almost unreadable!

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Singularity for PC Reviews - Metacritic

Ever since Anish Kapoor signed an agreement with Surrey NanoSystems, for the exclusive artistic use of the worlds blackest black, Vantablack, the art world has been up in arms. Luckily, Waltham, Massachusetts, firm NanoLab, Inc., has introduced acarbon nanotube black paint of their own, called Singularity Black, and anyone can use it.

Last month, Massachusetts-based artist Jason Chase unveiled the first artwork created using Singularity Black, titledBlack Iron Ursa. He coated acast-iron gummy bear sculpture in the uncannily dark substance, displaying it against a wooden circle painted in rainbow wedges to best accentuate the blackness of the material, which makes the 3-D form look flat and featureless.

Being the first artist to use this technology, I want to share it with my fellow artists and collectors. It is important to create access so artists can use it, said Chase in a statement.Artists are always the ones who take new materials and push them to new limits.

Vantablack. Courtesy of Surrey NanoSystems.

He noted that Kapoors Vantablack had prevented experimentation and stunted the artistic possibilities of working with the new materials, but that starting with my work, those days are over. (Kapoor has had a high-profile feud with artistStuart Semple, who has released a pinkest pink and most glittery glitter that Kapoor is banned from using. Semple has also created a blackest black paint of his own, calledBlack 2.0.)

The invention of Vantablack, which absorbs 99.96 percent of light, was announced in 2014. Not a pigment, Vantablack is actually a dense network of carbon nanotubes, grown in a high-heat chamber. The company has since developed a spray paint version.

Singularity Black, which combines carbon nanotubes with a binding agent for stabilization, was invented separately by NanoLab in 2011 under contract to NASA. It isused by the space agency in equipment for observation of far away stars, absorbing stray light so as not tointerfere with the sensors.

The best way to use Singularity Black, which the company describes as a paint-like analog of the aligned forest,is inside a fume hood or spray booth, and ideally should be applied ona metal surface. After application, the paint must be super heated to 600 degrees Fahrenheit to eliminate the binder. Once activated, it is a no-touch surface, notes the product description.

Jason Chase, Black Iron Ursa, created using Singularity Black, a light-absorbing black paint made with carbon nano tubes by NanoLab. Courtesy of Jason Chase.

The paint is really fragile, Chase told the Boston Globe. If you touch it, its going to flake off, kind of like when you touch a butterflys wings.Heplans to share his ongoing studio research about how to best use Singularity Black, and hopes to curate a group show of works made using the new paint.

NanoLab estimates that Singularity Black will costsomewhere in the low to mid-hundreds of dollars for 250 milliliters to one liter of paint.

Jason Chases Black Iron Ursa will be on view atLaconia Gallery,433 Harrison Avenue,Boston on August 24; and at the Artisans Asylum, 10 Tyler Street, Somerville, Massachusettson September 6.

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Lab Introduces Singularity Black, the Blackest PaintAnd You Don't Have to Be Anish Kapoor to Use It - artnet News

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. Its usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally publishedSeptember 1, 2016.We hope you enjoy it!

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.

In a presentation titled Biohacking and the Connected Body atSingularity University Global Summit, Hannes Sjoblad informed the audience that were already living in the age of cyborgs. Sjoblad is co-founder of the Sweden-based biohacker network Bionyfiken, a chartered non-profit that unites DIY-biologists, hackers, makers, body modification artists and health and performance devotees to explore human-machine integration.

Sjoblad said 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. Sjoblad defined biohacking as applying hacker ethic to biological systems. Some biohackers experiment with their biology with the goal of taking the human bodys experience beyond what nature intended.

Smart insulin monitoring systems, pacemakers, bionic eyes, and Cochlear implants are all examples of biohacking, according to Sjoblad. He told the audience, We live in a time where, thanks to technology, we can make the deaf hear, the blind see, and the lame walk. He is convinced that while biohacking could conceivably end up having Brave New World-like dystopian consequences, it can also be leveraged to improve and enhance our quality of life in multiple ways.

The field where biohacking can make the most positive impact is health. In addition to pacemakers and insulin monitors, several new technologies are being developed with the goal of improving our health and simplifying access to information about our bodies.

Ingestibles are a type of smart pill that use wireless technology to monitor internal reactions to medications, helping doctors determine optimum dosage levels and tailor treatments to different people. Your body doesnt absorb or process medication exactly as your neighbors does, so shouldnt you each have a treatment that works best with your unique system? Colonoscopies and endoscopies could one day be replaced by miniature pill-shaped video cameras that would collect and transmit images as they travel through the digestive tract.

Singularity University Global Summit is the culmination of the Exponential Conference Series and the definitive place to witness converging exponential technologies and understand how theyll impact the world.

Security is another area where biohacking could be beneficial. One example Sjoblad gave was personalization of weapons: an invader in your house couldnt fire your gun because it will have been matched to your fingerprint or synced with your body so that it only responds to you.

Biohacking can also simplify everyday tasks. In an impressive example of walking the walk rather than just talking the talk, Sjoblad had an NFC chip implanted in his hand. The chip contains data from everything he used to have to carry around in his pockets: credit and bank card information, key cards to enter his office building and gym, business cards, and frequent shopper loyalty cards. When hes in line for a morning coffee or rushing to get to the office on time, he doesnt have to root around in his pockets or bag to find the right card or key; he just waves his hand in front of a sensor and hes good to go.

Evolved from radio frequency identification (RFID)an old and widely distributed technologyNFC chips are activated by another chip, and small amounts of data can be transferred back and forth. No wireless connection is necessary. Sjoblad sees his NFC implant as a personal key to the Internet of Things, a simple way for him to talk to the smart, connected devices around him.

Sjoblad isnt the only person who feels a need for connection.

When British science writer Frank Swain realized he was going to go deaf, he decided to hack his hearing to be able to hear Wi-Fi. Swain developed software that tunes into wireless communication fields and uses an inbuilt Wi-Fi sensor to pick up router name, encryption modes and distance from the device. This data is translated into an audio stream where distant signals click or pop, and strong signals sound their network ID in a looped melody. Swain hears it all through an upgraded hearing aid.

Global datastreams can also become sensory experiences. Spanish artist Moon Ribas developed and implanted a chip in her elbow that is connected to the global monitoring system for seismographic sensors; each time theres an earthquake, she feels it through vibrations in her arm.

You can feel connected to our planet, too: North Sense makes a standalone artificial sensory organ that connects to your body and vibrates whenever youre facing north. Its a built-in compass; youll never get lost again.

Biohacking applications are likely to proliferate in the coming years, some of them more useful than others. But there are serious ethical questions that cant be ignored during development and use of this technology. To what extent is it wise to tamper with nature, and who gets to decide?

Most of us are probably ok with waiting in line an extra 10 minutes or occasionally having to pull up a maps app on our phone if it means we dont need to implant computer chips into our forearms. If its frightening to think of criminals stealing our wallets, imagine them cutting a chunk of our skin out to have instant access to and control over our personal data. The physical invasiveness and potential for something to go wrong seems to far outweigh the benefits the average person could derive from this technology.

But that may not always be the case. Its worth noting the miniaturization of technology continues at a quick rate, and the smaller things get, the less invasive (and hopefully more useful) theyll be. Even today, there are people already sensibly benefiting from biohacking. If you look closely enough, youll spot at least a couple cyborgs on your commute tomorrow morning.

Image Credit:Movement Control Laboratory/University of WashingtonDeep Dream Generator

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The Age of Cyborgs Has Arrived - Singularity Hub

If you love science and technology, chances are you love science fiction too. But sci-fi isnt just for geeks anymore. Or maybe more accurately, more of us are geeks now than ever.

Television shows Black Mirror and Westworld, for example, are two of the most talked-about series in recent years. Feature-length film Arrival won an Oscar this year and was nominated for seven more, including best picture. The latest two Star Wars films made over $3 billion worldwide, and a brand new Star Trek television series is set to premier in September.

But it isnt just about big budgets and network deals. Science fiction films are coming to the internet too. There are an increasing number of independent sci-fi short films available for free online. Some of these are aimed at the big screen, a kind of proof-of-concept or pitch for a feature-length film. Others fit the short form just so, compactly addressing a single idea.

Like all great sci-fi, short or long, written or filmed, sci-fi shorts take the worlds present state and advance the script. The best science fiction is based on existing trends and scientifically plausible technologies, and the implied question is often: Do we like what we see?

Many of these short films are posted on Vimeo or YouTube, where publishers find and introduce them to their readers. Its sort of an ad-hoc processwhich is where sci-fi video platform Recursor.TV comes in. Recursor is a one-stop shop for short indie sci-fi online.

Although there are dozens of sites dedicated to comedy and other genres, including horror, science fiction is under-represented, especially online, says EJ Kavounas, Recursor founder and CEO, in a recent interview with Singularity Hub.

Its time that changed. Quick-moving technologies such as AI, robots, and biotech, are being seriously written and talked about across the mainstream press. More people see technology as a force rapidly changing society, and they want to know whats in store.

Meanwhile, digital technologies are making it possible to build whole worlds and compelling future scenarios in which to immerse ourselves. As they approach photorealism, todays visual effects dont require the same suspension of disbelief they did in the past.

Most importantly for independent sci-fi, you dont need a Hollywood-sized special effects budget to make good visuals, and distribution is being democratized by the internet.

My first job in the entertainment industry was on the sci-fi television series Babylon 5, produced in the dinosaur era of CG. In the early 90s, it took years of apprenticeship to learn [the tricks of the trade]. Filmmaking techniques were passed down to subsequent generations like feudal-aged blacksmiths, Kavounas says. Thankfully, Moores Law and the internet democratized VFX, allowing anyone to create studio-quality CG on a laptop and, more importantly, facilitated instant knowledge transfer.

Now you can make decent effects and learn the trade thanks to thousands of how-to videos online. Even so, its hard to make truly compelling stuff and rise above the noise. Recursor aims to do both by creating their own original films and connecting other filmmakers to viewers.

The motivation to self-publish is similar to other industries, where content creators attempt to disintermediate gatekeepers in the hopes that an online audience will embrace them and prove commercial viability, Kavounas says. It makes sense in theory, but the key is finding an audienceIts hard enough to make a decent-looking sci-fi short, but marketing and promotion is often a different skillset.

Kavounas has talked to talented sci-fi filmmakers who are frustrated their films havent had the reach they expected. Recursor, he believes, can bridge the gap by providing an online destination for science fiction short films and an expertly-curated selection over a variety of sub-genres, such as augmented reality, artificial life, cyberpunk noir, and post-human.

The Recursor team is also making their own contribution to the genre with the award-winning original web series, Nina Unlocked. The series, starring Lana McKissack, features Nina, an advanced AI and former military assassin whos lost her memory. She heads out on a quest of self-discovery, interviewing experts to figure out how she is similar and different from humans.

We chose an interview formatbasically Between Two Ferns meets Ex Machinain which a character interviews real guests because it felt more authentic to have unscripted responses to Ninas absurd questions, Kavounas says. Fans of science and science fiction often overlap, so Nina interviews real scientists as well as creative types.

In the first season, Nina interviewed the likes of Eli Sasich, creator of the sci-fi series Atropa, Darren Bousman, a director of the Saw franchise, and Dr. Jamie Molaro of NASA JPL.

If you come here often, you know we believe science fiction isnt only about entertainment.

While its important to forecast future trends in dry reports featuring facts, figures, and charts, humans are experiential beings. Science fiction translates hard data into compelling stories and characters we can identify with. It makes the future a topic of conversation for everybody.

Ask people what they know about AI and robots, and chances are, Terminator comes to mind. Virtual reality and brain-machine interfaces? The Matrix (plus AI and robots, for good measure). Space travel and post-scarcity? Star Trek. Augmented reality? Iron Man and Minority Report.

Hollywood has long been a dominant player, but by bringing science fiction film online, we can add voices to the conversation and explore a wider range of ideas. This matters because the story we tell influences the future we pursue. The more people engage, both creators and viewers, the more nuanced the story getsand the more thoughtfully we move ahead.

Image Credit: Recursor.tv

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Recursor.TV Brings All The Best Indie Sci-Fi To One Place - Singularity Hub

Above: Black Iron Ursa was made using Singularity Black paint.

SOMERVILLE That the gummy bear was an artwork was unusual.

That the gummy bear was so black that it looked like an optical illusion was really unusual.

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Welcome to the world of Singularity Black.

Black Iron Ursa, a painted sculpture, doesnt reflect light, making it difficult to see its ears and paws. Because the human eye is trained to look for light, it is disorienting and somewhat painful to look at.

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Black Iron Ursa was the brainchild of Somerville artist Jason Chase, who watched baffled visitors stare at the object in his studio on a recent Sunday afternoon.

Made from cast iron, the gummy bear was coated in Singularity Black, a carbon nanotube paint developed by Waltham-based NanoLab, Inc. The paint absorbs over 99.9 percent of light, making three-dimensional objects look two-dimensional. Chase built a colorful wooden carousel to display the bear on, making the bears blackness even more striking. A small glass dome covers the artwork to protect it.

The paint is really fragile, Chase said. If you touch it, its going to flake off, kind of like when you touch a butterflys wings.

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The blackest black paint has been a point of contention in the art world since 2014, when British artist Anish Kapoor received exclusive rights to working with Vantablack , a pigment created by a British company, Surrey NanoSystems, that absorbs 99.965 percent of light.

This arrangement frustrated other artists. In response, British artist Stuart Semple created the worlds pinkest pink and the worlds glitteriest glitter, which he made available in 2016 to everyone except Kapoor. (Kapoor managed to get his hands on the pink pigment anyway and posted a photograph of it on Instagram, taunting Semple.)

Now Chase is hoping that Singularity Black will put the whole squabble to bed.

Im really honored to be part of the launching process, he said. I remember reading about Vantablack when it came out and wanting to work with it. I hope that this means the whole art world gets to move forward.

NanoLab created Singularity Black at NASAs request in 2011. The agency frequently sends equipment into space to measure faint stars, and they wanted a pigment that would absorb stray light to keep it from interfering with sensors. Its name was inspired by the center of a black hole, where the known laws of physics stop operating.

Carbon nanotubes excel at trapping light, so the lab combined them with a binding agent for stabilization. After the pigment is applied to an object, it has to be heated to 600 degrees Fahrenheit, which eliminates the binder and leaves the carbon nanotubes in a porous arrangement for maximum light absorption.

Colin Preston, a senior research scientist on the project, noticed that Surrey NanoSystems had developed its similar product and licensed the rights to Kapoor. (NanoLab conceived the formula for Singularity Black independently, according to Preston.)

I was honestly kind of confused by that, he said. When we were done developing the pigment, we really wanted to develop our product to be commercial.

Preston had met Chase in a Drawing in Pubs class, so he e-mailed him as soon as NanoLab had successfully developed Singularity Black into a paint.

Chase, who is primarily a painter, had been working with renderings of gummy bears for a while. He made the cast-iron gummy bear a while back, during a workshop, so he dug it up and brought it to the lab for a paint job. The artwork will be displayed at Laconia Gallery , in the South End, starting Aug. 24.

Artists can buy Singularity Black off the shelf. They can apply the paint themselves after a tutorial from NanoLab, according to Preston. He estimated current price to be in the low to mid-hundreds of dollars for 250 milliliters to 1 liter of paint.

Colorado sculptor Sean OMeallie said he is intrigued by the material. He said Singularity Black opens up possibilities of doing something different and challenging.

Painting something in Singularity Black will make it harder for viewers to see a silhouette, he said. It might be a way of making art a little more hidden.

However, there are limitations to how Singularity Black can be used. It can only be applied to metal surfaces, so Chase is experimenting on copper plate. He said he wants to juxtapose traditional mediums, like oil and gold leaf, with this futuristic paint.

Preston said NanoLab has already received multiple inquiries from artists interested in getting the paint. Chase said he intends to curate an art show of Singularity Black pieces as soon as there is a collection.

I think itll fit really well in surrealist images, he said. The best thing about this paint being available to everyone is that well get to push the boundaries of the art world with it.

View Black Iron Ursa at Laconia Gallery on Aug. 24 at 7 p.m. 433 Harrison Ave.

Link:

Waltham lab develops the world's 'blackest black' paint - The Boston Globe

My recent trip to Beijing and Shanghai has me convinced China is the next technological superpower.

This blog lays out the data so you can make your own judgment.

China is the worlds second-largest economy with a GDP of $7.5 trillion, and an average 9.71 percent annual GDP growth (since 1990).

Check out Shanghai in 1990 (27 years ago) versus Shanghai today.

Shanghai 1990

Shanghai today

Recently, China is getting into the venture capital business in a big way. A really, really big way. Venture capital raised in China tripled year over year to $250+ billion in 2016. Thats the biggest pot of money for startups in the world.

Consequently, China is undergoing a technological renaissance with thousands of startups and dozens of multi-billion-dollar tech companies springing up.

Companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi are capitalizing on Chinas 700+ million Internet users.

A Chinese delivery company, ZTO Express, raised $1.4 billion in its public debut. This was the biggest US IPO of the year (in 2016).

China is a manufacturing powerhouse producing 25 percent of the worlds goods and 70 percent of its mobile phones.

Today there is a list of 600+ Chinese companies waiting to go public.

Lets talk about manufacturing. 100 million people in China work in manufacturing. FOXCONN is the worlds largest contract electronics manufacturer. Notable customers include Apple, Kindle, Playstation and Xbox.

In 2015, China became the worlds largest producer of photovoltaic power. China also led the world in production and use of wind power and smart grid technologies.

China owns 70 percent of the commercial drone market. They havealso increased their space budget considerably over the last few years. And their human spaceflight program is very serious.

China has truly become an international technology superpower.

Image Credit: Peter Diamandis via YouTube

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China Is On its Way to Being the Next Tech Superpower - Singularity Hub

Nature has found some elegant solutions to complicated problems and engineers have long been inspired by its designs. But Adrian Thomas thinks translating the best of natures discoveries into man-made devices requires the ability to step back and see the context.

Thomas is a Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Oxford in the UK, and hes taken an unusual route through academia. After studying zoology at undergraduate level, he went on to study the aerodynamics of bird tails for his PhD, and has published research on everything from experimental animal studies to theoretical fluid dynamics.

Hes also founded a start-up called Animal Dynamics to capitalize on his experience at the intersection between biology and engineering. His company has been given 1.5m by the UKs Ministry of Defense to design a miniature drone that mimics the way a dragonfly flies. The company is also working on whale-inspired water propulsion and an off-road wheelchair with legs like a spiders.

The company is not the first to borrow ideas from animals, but what singles their work out, says Thomas, is a deeper focus on the context in which natures solutions have arisen.

Natures had a very long time with very intense testing through evolution to perfect the designs, so they will be perfected for something, he says. The question is, then, are we looking at the right solution for a problem that were interested in?

He says much work in the field of so-called biomimetics is actually just biomimicry engineers see an elegant solution in nature and copy it. But he says evolution is not necessarily focused on solving the same problem as the engineer and is actually optimizing its design to perfectly balance all the competing selection pressures on the animal in question.

So what Thomas looks for is evidence of convergent evolution. This refers to cases where very different animals with completely different evolutionary histories converge on the same solution.

The best example, he says, is the fact that animals that swim all have the same body shape. That means that design is not about being a shark, a whale or a penguin, its about being a fast swimmer.

But that isnt the end of the story.

You need a deep understanding of the biology to figure out what selection pressures the animals are trying to overcome, he says. But then you need to abstract from that the physics underlying the features that give them the performance they achieve.

Thats because evolution is not starting with a blank canvas. Every animal has all kinds of oddities and inefficiencies that are hangovers from its ancestors evolutionary history, and copying their mechanisms verbatim means carrying over all of this baggage, too.

Thats why, even though whales have evolved the same body shape and the same large rear fin as sharks, their tails are horizontal rather than vertical. Whales ancestors used to gallop, so their back goes up and down rather than side to side, says Thomas.

By spanning the fields of both physics and biology and filling his labs with a good balance of PhD students from each of these disciplines, Thomas says they are able to extract the essential physical principles that give these animals such great performance in tasks theyd like to mimic in man-made systems.

Often where natures designs blow humankinds out of the water is in efficiency, says Thomas. Where we still cant compete is on miles per gallon, he says. How fast they can go and how far they can go on the available energy stores.

The Globe Skimmer dragonfly, which Thomass Skeeter drone draws inspiration from, weighs just three grams but migrates across the Indian Ocean without feeding. Were nowhere close to doing that. But it gives us a good target and it tells us its physically possible, Thomas says.

The team is also trying to capture efficiency with their flapping propulsion water vehicle Malolo. They hope this efficiency will eventually allow them to break thehuman-powered water speed record, but they also think it could be scaled up to revolutionize propulsion in the shipping industry.

And a nice side effect of borrowing designs from nature, says Thomas, is that they tend to be striking.

Any properly bio-inspired stuff has a tendency to be spectacularly beautiful, you can see every movement is necessary, he says. Its all beautifully tuned to be harmonious with itself and thats where the beauty comes from.

Stock Media provided by meepoohyaphoto / Pond5

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To Design the Perfect Drone, Follow Nature's Lead - Singularity Hub