Category Archives: Singularity

Set on Sir Richard Bransons Necker Island, the third annual Blockchain Summit, hosted by BitFury, a leading full service Blockchain company, and Bill Tai, a venture investor and technologist, has come to a close. This event was an intimate, if perfectly balanced, gathering of technology, policy, investment and business leaders from around the world and across sectors. Topics ranged from the public policy implications of what is being heralded as a foundational technology, to new emerging business models that can ride on the very rails that enabled the global bonanza of digital currencies like Bitcoin. A key question that underpinned the Summit is if Blockchain could not have existed without the Internet, what could not exist without Blockchain?

Blockchain technology can undoubtedly change industries, especially those that labor under often byzantine, opaque and friction-laden business models. While many of the early pioneers are focusing on finance and insurance, the opportunities for this radical technology may very well reorder society as we know it. The remarkable case of Estonia, for example, shows a country reinventing itself into a future-proof digital state, where citizen services are rendered nearly instantaneously and to people all over the world. Similarly, promising work inspired by the famed Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, on improving land registries is being carried out by BitFury in a host of countries. With land and property being the two largest assets people will own - and the principal vehicle of value creation and wealth transfer - an unalterable, secure and transparent registration process should give the world comfort and elected leaders longevity.

What drives this unique technology is the power of distributed singularity, from which Blockchains identity pioneers like Dr. Mariana Dahan, who launched the World Identity Network on Necker Island, and Vinny Lingham of Civic, draw their inspiration. Blockchain operates on the basis of a distributed ledger (or database) system, inexorably marching forward recording and time-stamping transactions or records. While some may herald Bitcoin as Blockchains killer app, it is easy to maintain that the killer app is not the digital currencies that ride on Blockchains rails, but rather the rail system altogether. Two trains can ride on rails. But a high-speed maglev train is a decidedly faster mode of transport than a steam engine. Just as the maglev makes little or no contact with the rails enabling low-friction transport, the Blockchain can greatly reduce the friction in how the world transfers and records value. If the Internet augured frictionless information sharing, Blockchain can augur frictionless value transfer. Herein lies the domain of truly profound change - accepting that Blockchain is still in the era of a thousand flowers being planted, many of which began blossoming on Necker Island.

For now, the Blockchain standards war - which in reality is an incredibly collaborative search for use cases - is largely being waged in the cash transfer market, with firms like Bitt, founded by the Barbadian entrepreneur, Gabriel Abed, and BitPesa, founded by Elizabeth Rossiello, emerging with low-friction highly scalable business models. What is most encouraging is that these firms, have not shied away from regulatory regimes, but rather embraced them, greatly legitimizing the poorly named crypto currency market. BitPesa has received UK regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is one of the most stringent financial regulators in the world, while Bitt has created a veritable pan-Caribbean digital currency accepted by many regional central banks. In short, digital currency and frictionless asset transfer are not going away and the more pioneers like Bitt and BitPesa harmonize with established financial norms, the more this space can thrive.

The Blockchain Summit on Necker Island was all about encouraging breakthrough innovation across all sectors. If the Internet was truly a disruptive technology, Blockchain is an augmenting technology, that can greatly improve and amplify many established business models and forms of governance. At a time when the world is gripped by profound changes driven by an erosion of public trust in business, institutions and government, a trust engine like Blockchain can begin to shore up accountability and transparency. Similarly, with rampant cyber-threats hobbling companies and countries around the world, Blockchain cannot only serve as a vital source of transparency - recalling that sunlight is the greatest disinfectant - it may very well serve as a global disaster recovery and business continuity engine. Blockchains security properties are often undersold, however, these are among the most important features of this technology. Indeed, hardwired into Blockchains distributed structure are the very best practices of cybersecurity redundancy that so many organizations struggle to abide by.

Where minds begin to race when it comes to Blockchain and where Blockchain Billionaires will likely emerge, is in the unitary approach (and smart contracting features) to value transfer. The sharing economy has undoubtedly tapped peoples willingness to forego traditional asset ownership for fractional, usage-based access. Blockchain takes this intuition even further by enabling these same market dynamics to occur, but on a rail system robust enough to survive in Thomas Friedmans hot, flat and crowded world. Envision a skills engine enabling people to repurpose themselves, obtaining vital (verifiable) credentials to enter the workforce or to find work following a setback or job loss? Without Blockchain this proposition is not only cost prohibitive, it is incredibly centralized favoring a dated algorithmic hiring model that has left millions of workers behind. With Blockchain, this type of reinvention engine is not only possible, it can be developed with sufficient autonomy and transparency across stakeholder groups ultimately becoming a utility.

Indeed, one of the most promising companies focusing on Blockchain applications is PowerLedger in Australia, which was founded by Dr. Jemma Green. Dr. Green, traveled more than 40 hours carrying her young daughter in hand and her weight as one of the worlds true Blockchain visionaries. Her firm taps the power of singularity and decentralization in the Blockchain, as well as underscores the ability to harness renewable energy in ways (and in places) never thought possible. Fractionalizing urban energy is as important to human adaptation and development, as building a rural energy matrix that incorporates micro grids and new distribution and payment models. PowerLedger is well on the way toward solving this challenge and Blockchain will be at the center of both.

Blockchain is here to stay and the exuberance of its most ardent enthusiasts (who are on the verge of a Bitcoin civil war), of which there were many on Necker Island, should be tempered with the reality that all breakthrough innovations are decided by the market. For this, large firms and established models of organizing and transferring value have been cautious to dismissive of Blockchain. This posture may consign many of these players to the wrong side of history, or worse, irrelevance. Indeed, the emergence of global industry bodies like the Global Blockchain Business Council, which is quickly establishing chapters around the world, as well as the Blockchain Trust Accelerator, are aiming to normalize this technology and, critically create a lexicon and library of use cases that are not threatening in the worlds halls of power.

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Blockchain and the Power of Singularity - HuffPost

What

A Norwegian container ship called the Yara Birkeland will be the worlds first electric, autonomous, zero-emissions ship.

With a capacity of up to 150 shipping containers, the battery-powered ship will be small compared to modern standards (the biggest container ship in the world holds 19,000 containers, and an average-size ship holds 3,500), but its launch will mark the beginning of a transformation of the global shipping industry. This transformation could heavily impact global trade as well as the environment.

The Yara Birkeland is being jointly developed by two Norwegian companies: agricultural firm Yara International, and agricultural firm, and Kongsberg Gruppen, which builds guidance systems for both civilian and military use.

The ship will be equipped with a GPS and various types of sensors, including lidar, radar, and camerasmuch like self-driving cars. The ship will be able to steer itself through the sea, avoid other ships, and independently dock itself.

The Wall Street Journal states that building the ship will cost $25 million, which is about three times the cost of a similarly-sized conventional ship. However, the savings will kick in once the ship starts operating, since it wont need traditional fuel or a big crew.

Self-driving cars arent going to suddenly hit the streets straight off their production line; theyve been going through multiple types of road tests, refining their sensors, upgrading their software, and generally improving their functionality little by little. Similarly, the Yara Birkeland wont take to the sea unmanned on its first voyage, nor any of its several first voyages, for that matter.

Rather, the ships autonomy will be phased in. At first, says the Journal, a single container will be used as a manned bridge on board. Then the bridge will be moved to shore and become a remote-operation center. The ship will eventually run fully on its own, under supervision from shore, in 2020.

Kongsberg CEO Geir Haoy compared the ships sea-to-land bridge transition to flying a drone from a command center, saying, It will be GPS navigation and lots of high-tech cameras to see whats going on around the ship.

Interestingly, theres currently no legislation around autonomous ships (which makes sense since, well, there arent any autonomous ships, either). Lawmakers are getting to work, though, and rules will likely be set up by the time the Yara makes it first fully-autonomous trip.

The ship will sail between three ports in southern Norway, delivering Yara International fertilizer from a production facility to a port called Larvik. The planned route is 37 nautical miles, and the ship will stay within 12 nautical miles of the coast.

The United Nations International Maritime Organization estimates over 90 percent of the worlds trade is carried by sea, and states that maritime transport is By far the most cost-effective way to move en masse goods and raw materials around the world.

But ships are also to blame for a huge amount of pollution; one study showed that just 15 of the worlds biggest ships may emit as much pollution as all the worlds cars, largely due to the much higher sulfur content of ship fuel. Oddly, shipping emission regulations werent included in the Paris Agreement.

Besides reducing fuel emissions by being electric, the Yara Birkeland will supposedly replace 40,000 truck drives a year through southern Norway. Once regulations are in place and the technology has been tested and improved, companies will start to build larger ships that can sail longer routes.

Image Credit:KONGSBERG Gruppenvia YouTube

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The World's First Autonomous Ship Will Set Sail In 2018 - Singularity Hub

Kerala is set to host a chapter of Singularity University (Singularity U), a community learning and innovation platform that leverages exponential technologies to tackle contemporary challenges.

The national chapter of the Silicon Valley-based institution, which offers a range of educational programmes to help companies, entrepreneurs, NGOs, and policy makers better understand and apply disruptive new technologies, will be housed at the Kerala Startup Missions (KSUM) Meet Up Caf in Technopark.

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The chapter will serve as a meeting place for academics, start-ups, corporate and government entities and tech-enthusiasts to engage with each other and discuss how exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, digital health, big data, cyber security, crowd-sourcing, digital finance, and the Internet of Things can be used to address local problems and issues.

The chapter will also organise high-profile conferences and host labs that incubate and accelerate corporate innovation and social impact projects.

Its not about a single technology, domain, or industry, but an amalgamation of them. That is what is required if we are to solve the most pressing issues of our time and those in the future, said Binu Koshy, CEO of start-up 10xDS and the Ambassador for SingularityU Trivandrum.

Associating with Singularity University will provide an impetus to technological development in Kerala. it will also fuel inclusive growth across the country, KSUM CEO Saji Gopinath said.

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Kerala to host Singularity U chapter - The Hindu - The Hindu

Facial recognition is set to have a significant impact on our society as a whole.

While many consumers are familiar with the concept because of the many smartphone apps that let them add various filters, graphics and effects to their pictures, the technology behind facial recognition isnt limited to playful, mainstream applications.

Law enforcement is using next-gen software to identify and catch some of their most wanted criminals. But government officials in China are taking the technology even further by installing a nationwide system of facial recognition infrastructureand its already generating plenty of controversy on account of its massive scale.

Many applications of facial recognition are legitimate. China and many other countries use basic systems to monitor ATMs and restrict public access to government-run or other sensitive facilities. Some restaurants are even using the technology to provide food recommendations based on the perceived age and gender of the user.

Facial recognition is also useful in security. At least one prominent tourist attraction is using the technology to thwart would-be thieves. Similar systems have been installed at the doors of a womens dormitory at Beijing Normal University to prevent unauthorized entry.

While its impossible to say how much crime the new system prevents, other female dorms are already considering the hardware for their own use. Applications like this have a definite benefit to the entire nation.

Chinese officials are already praising facial recognition as the key to the 21st-century smart city. Theyve recently pioneered a Social Credit System that aims to give every single citizen a rating. Meant to assist in determining an individuals trustworthiness or financial status, the success of their program has been spurred on by current facial recognition software and hardware.

Officials aim to enroll every Chinese citizen into a nationwide database by 2020, and theyre already well on their way to doing so.

Advanced technology such as this rarely exists without controversy. Pedestrians in southern China recently expressed outrage when their information was broadcast publicly. While supporters of facial recognition systems will insist that law-abiding citizens arent at risk of this kind of public exposure, hackers could, in theory, take control of these systems and use them for their own nefarious purposes.

With some 600 million closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems already in place throughout the nation, the odds of a serious break-in or cyber attack are astronomical.

There have already been countless reports of Chinese hackers gaining unauthorized access to consumer webcams across the country, and some experts believe the same technology could be used to hack the nations CCTV network. Given the sheer amount of systems and the potential for massive disruptions to public infrastructure, it seems like its only a matter of time.

Theres also the issue of global privacy. Although China has always been very security-conscious, their massive surveillance system is already raising questions of morality, civil liberty and confidentiality. If the government begins targeting peaceful demonstrators who are attending lawful protests, for instance, there could be some serious repercussions.

In 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced their intentions for an omnipresent, completely connected, always on and fully controllable network of facial recognition systems and CCTV hardware.

While this will certainly benefit the Chinese population in many ways, including greater security throughout the country, it will undoubtedly rub some people the wrong way.

In either case, other government entities will be watching this closely and learning from their mistakes.

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The Biggest Facial Recognition System in the World Is Rolling Out in ... - Singularity Hub

The multiverse of science fiction is populated by robots that are indistinguishable from humans. They are usually smarter, faster, and stronger than us. They seem capable of doing any job imaginable, from piloting a starship and battling alien invaders to taking out the trash and cooking a gourmet meal.

The reality, of course, is far from fantasy. Aside from industrial settings, robots have yet to meet The Jetsons. The robots the public are exposed to seem little more than over-sized plastic toys, pre-programmed to perform a set of tasks without the ability to interact meaningfully with their environment or their creators.

To paraphrase PayPal co-founder and tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, we wanted cool robots, instead we got 140 characters and Flippy the burger bot. But scientists are making progress to empower robots with the ability to see and respond to their surroundings just like humans.

Some of the latest developments in that arena were presented this month at the annual Robotics: Science and Systems Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The papers drilled down into topics that ranged from how to make robots more conversational and help them understand language ambiguities to helping them see and navigate through complex spaces.

Ben Burchfiel, a graduate student at Duke University, and his thesis advisor George Konidaris, an assistant professor of computer science at Brown University, developed an algorithm to enable machines to see the world more like humans.

In the paper, Burchfiel and Konidaris demonstrate how they can teach robots to identify and possibly manipulate three-dimensional objects even when they might be obscured or sitting in unfamiliar positions, such as a teapot that has been tipped over.

The researchers trained their algorithm by feeding it 3D scans of about 4,000 common household items such as beds, chairs, tables, and even toilets. They then tested its ability to identify about 900 new 3D objects just from a birds eye view. The algorithm made the right guess 75 percent of the time versus a success rate of about 50 percent for other computer vision techniques.

In an email interview with Singularity Hub, Burchfiel notes his research is not the first to train machines on 3D object classification. How their approach differs is that they confine the space in which the robot learns to classify the objects.

Imagine the space of all possible objects, Burchfiel explains. That is to say, imagine you had tiny Legos, and I told you [that] you could stick them together any way you wanted, just build me an object. You have a huge number of objects you could make!

The infinite possibilities could result in an object no human or machine might recognize.

To address that problem, the researchers had their algorithm find a more restricted space that would host the objects it wants to classify. By working in this restricted spacemathematically we call it a subspacewe greatly simplify our task of classification. It is the finding of this space that sets us apart from previous approaches.

Meanwhile, a pair of undergraduate students at Brown University figured out a way to teach robots to understand directions better, even at varying degrees of abstraction.

The research, led by Dilip Arumugam and Siddharth Karamcheti, addressed how to train a robot to understand nuances of natural language and then follow instructions correctly and efficiently.

The problem is that commands can have different levels of abstraction, and that can cause a robot to plan its actions inefficiently or fail to complete the task at all, says Arumugam in a press release.

In this project, the young researchers crowdsourced instructions for moving a virtual robot through an online domain. The space consisted of several rooms and a chair, which the robot was told to manipulate from one place to another. The volunteers gave various commands to the robot, ranging from general (take the chair to the blue room) to step-by-step instructions.

The researchers then used the database of spoken instructions to teach their system to understand the kinds of words used in different levels of language. The machine learned to not only follow instructions but to recognize the level of abstraction. That was key to kickstart its problem-solving abilities to tackle the job in the most appropriate way.

The research eventually moved from virtual pixels to a real place, using a Roomba-like robot that was able to respond to instructions within one second 90 percent of the time. Conversely, when unable to identify the specificity of the task, it took the robot 20 or more seconds to plan a task about 50 percent of the time.

One application of this new machine-learning technique referenced in the paper is a robot worker in a warehouse setting, but there are many fields that could benefit from a more versatile machine capable of moving seamlessly between small-scale operations and generalized tasks.

Other areas that could possibly benefit from such a system include things from autonomous vehicles to assistive robotics, all the way to medical robotics, says Karamcheti, responding to a question by email from Singularity Hub.

These achievements are yet another step toward creating robots that see, listen, and act more like humans. But dont expect Disney to build a real-life Westworld next to Toon Town anytime soon.

I think were a long way off from human-level communication, Karamcheti says. There are so many problems preventing our learning models from getting to that point, from seemingly simple questions like how to deal with words never seen before, to harder, more complicated questions like how to resolve the ambiguities inherent in language, including idiomatic or metaphorical speech.

Even relatively verbose chatbots can run out of things to say, Karamcheti notes, as the conversation becomes more complex.

The same goes for human vision, according to Burchfiel.

While deep learning techniques have dramatically improved pattern matchingGoogle can find just about any picture of a cattheres more to human eyesight than, well, meets the eye.

There are two big areas where I think perception has a long way to go: inductive bias and formal reasoning, Burchfiel says.

The former is essentially all of the contextual knowledge people use to help them reason, he explains. Burchfiel uses the example of a puddle in the street. People are conditioned or biased to assume its a puddle of water rather than a patch of glass, for instance.

This sort of bias is why we see faces in clouds; we have strong inductive bias helping us identify faces, he says. While it sounds simple at first, it powers much of what we do. Humans have a very intuitive understanding of what they expect to see, [and] it makes perception much easier.

Formal reasoning is equally important. A machine can use deep learning, in Burchfiels example, to figure out the direction any river flows once it understands that water runs downhill. But its not yet capable of applying the sort of human reasoning that would allow us to transfer that knowledge to an alien setting, such as figuring out how water moves through a plumbing system on Mars.

Much work was done in decades past on this sort of formal reasoning but we have yet to figure out how to merge it with standard machine-learning methods to create a seamless system that is useful in the actual physical world.

Robots still have a lot to learn about being human, which should make us feel good that were still by far the most complex machines on the planet.

Image Credit: Alex Knightvia Unsplash

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How Robots Are Getting Better at Making Sense of the World - Singularity Hub

Melissa McCarthy has boarded her next project, working once again with husband and frequent director Ben Falcone on science-fiction comedySuper-Intelligencefor New Line Cinema.

McCarthy is one of the biggest names in modern comedy, and she works primarily with two directors for her various projects. When shes not re-teaming withBridesmaidsdirector Paul Feig (they collaborated onThe Heat, SpyandGhostbusters since then), shes working with husband and creative partner Ben Falcone. McCarthy andFalcone are one of the premier power couples working in comedy, writing scripts together as vehicles for McCarthyto headline to boost her stardom and for her husband to direct. Theyve worked on three projects together to date, to varying degrees of success, and theyve officially announced their fourth collaboration today.

According toVariety,the duo will nextpartner with writerSteve Mallory onSuper-Intelligence,a science-fiction comedy described as a buddy comedy set against the phenomenon of technological singularity, a high concept hypothesis that says humans will one day create artificial intelligence that will change the progress of the human species as we know it.Mallory worked with Falcone and McCarthy onThe Boss,working once again on the script with them as McCarthy stars and Falcone directs. The duo will also produce the film under theirOn the Day production heading.

This looks to be the most ambitious collaboration for the McCarthy/Falcone combo yet, as their other works are much simpler in concept with somewhat progressive payoff. Tammy,starring McCarthy as an abrasive fast food employee who goes on a cross-country road trip with her grandmother (Susan Sarandon), grossed $100 million worldwide on just a $20 million budget, but received mixed to negative reviews from critics. The story was mostly same for The Boss,featuring McCarthy as a wealthy businesswoman who goes to jail for insider training and must regain her mojo by heading a Girl Scout troop. Little is known about the couples third film, a comedy titledLife of the Party,other than itwill be released next summer the weekend afterAvengers: Infinity War.

As with most stars of the comedy genre, its all about finding McCarthy the right project that will maximize her talents and not reduce her down to the most basic and restrictingforms of humor. Falcone has sometimes struggled with avoiding the common denominator of pratfalls and lowbrow comedy in his previous works.Super-Intelligenceis at the very least a fascinating idea, but that fascination means nothing if the film cant deliver on the clever laughs that audiences hope to get from a McCarthy comedy. One hopes that Super-Intelligence,which has no current release date, will be the gem that the combo needs to certify their working relationship to the critical world.

Source: Variety

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Melissa McCarthy Will Challenge The Singularity In Super-Intelligence - Screen Rant

Teslas stock price recently took a hit because of concerns about its delivery capabilities and about increasing competition from carmakers who are switching their product lines to electric. With a market cap still exceeding $50 billion, it can be easy to argue that Teslas price remains severely inflated, especially when you compare it with those of GM and Fordwhich produce20 times more revenue. You can understand why Tesla remainsone of the most shorted stockswith billions of dollars in bets against it.

But Tesla has an advantage that many people dont understand: It is much more than an automotive company; it is a technology company buildingtechnology platforms. With these, it is positioning itself to also become the leading player in the energy industry and sharing economy. It will bring the same integration, data analysis, and elegance to these industries as it did to cars.

I havereferred tomy Tesla Model S as a spaceship that travels on land. It drives differently from any other kind of car and is lightning fast, smooth, and slick. To me, other electric vehicles, such as the BMW i3, the Mercedes B-Class, the Nissan Leaf, and the Chevy Bolt, all of which I have driven, seem bycomparison to be a clumsy repackaging of old technologies. They feel more like cassette players than iPods. I have every expectation that Teslas Model 3, which I have on order, will be almost as good as my Model S, despite costing half as much.

Tesla cars have been designed from the ground up as computers on wheels. Almost every function is controlled by software, and this enables the company to continually analyze data and optimize its functioningjust as Google Search and Apple Siri do. With thebillionsof miles worth of driving data it is gathering, Teslais on track to deliver full autonomous driving capability earlier than many other car manufacturers will. And because all of its new cars, including the Model 3, come equipped with the sensors that will benecessary tothe autopilot software once its released, Tesla has a considerable advantage over its rivals.

In July 2016, Elon Muskannouncedthat Tesla would use these technologies to enable a ride-sharing platform called the Tesla Network, through which owners will be able to rent out their cars as autonomous taxis, thereby recouping their investments and even making profits from their cars. As he explained, Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5 percent to 10 percent of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not. With highly sought-after cars and a head start, Tesla could grab a significant share of the vehicle-sharing economyan economy that is expected to transform the transportation industry and disrupt the automobile market.

Tesla is already diversifying its businesses so that it doesnt sink with the automotive industry when this happens. Underlying the Tesla cars is another technology platform that it is commercializing: the battery. Teslas Powerwall is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that provides homes with the storage of solar-captured energy for use at night or during power outages. This complements the solar roof tiles that Tesla is selling, which look like ordinary tiles and are priced competitively. So what you have is what Musk has called a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works. This is the kind of advantage and elegance that came with the Apple iPhone, which integrated music, telephony, and computer applications into one device.

In the same way as Tesla could make car ownership a revenue generator for its drivers, it could do the same for solar power. Homeowners could share their excess energy with other homeowners and provide charging stations for others Tesla vehicles. This would also dramatically expand the Tesla supercharger network, enabling charging of cars almost anywhere.

On a larger scale, Tesla is offering utility companies grid-scale energy-storage systems, demand for which will enable it to scale up its production and gain a cost advantage. It has just won a bid to provide the government of South Australia with the worlds largest lithium-ion battery system129 MWh of storage, deliverable at up to 100MW, enough to power more than 30,000 homes. Musk committed to having the system installed in a record 100 days. And the data Tesla gathers from this installation will allow it to optimize energy-storage operations as its self-driving data enables it to optimize its cars.

Yes, Tesla has had production issues and missed delivery targets. But that is how technology companies work: They iterate until they get things right; they think big, take risks and change the world. They make extremely optimistic projections and often miss these, and this is what causes investors to panic and short stocks. But when these companies shoot for the moon, they achieve much more than they might otherwise. This is why they often end up being the most valuable of alland defying gravity.

This article was originally published by The Washington Post. Read theoriginal article.

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This Is Tesla's Greatest Competitive Advantage - Singularity Hub

In a world of accelerating change, educating the public about the implications of technological advancements is extremely important. We can continue to write informative articles and speculate about the kind of future that lies ahead. Or instead, we can take readers on an immersive journey by using science fiction to paint vivid images of the future for society.

The XPRIZE Foundation recently announced a science fiction storytelling competition. In recent years, the organization has backed and launched a range of competitions to propel innovation in science and technology. These have been aimed at a variety of challenges, such as transforming the lives of low-literacy adults, tackling climate change, and creating water from thin air.

Their sci-fi writing competition asks participants to envision a groundbreaking future for humanity. The initiative, in partnership with Japanese airline ANA, features 22 sci-fi stories from noteworthy authors that are now live on the website. Each of these stories is from the perspective of a different passenger on a plane that travels 20 years into the future through a wormhole. Contestants will compete to tell the story of the passenger in Seat 14C.

In addition to the competition, XPRIZE has brought together a science fiction advisory council to work with the organization and imagine what the future will look like. According to Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman, As the future becomes harder and harder to predict, we look forward to engaging some of the worlds most visionary storytellers to help us imagine whats just beyond the horizon and chart a path toward a future of abundance.

Why is an organization like XPRIZE placing just as much importance on fiction as it does on reality? As Isaac Asimov has pointed out, Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us. While the rest of the world reports on a new invention, sci-fi authors examine how these advancements affect the human condition.

True science fiction is distinguished from pure fantasy in that everything that happens is within the bounds of the physical laws of the universe. Weve already seen how sci-fi can inspire generations and shape the future. 3D printers, wearable technology, and smartphones were first seen in Star Trek. Targeted advertising and air touch technology was first seen in Philip K. Dicks 1958 story The Minority Report. Tanning beds, robot vacuums, and flatscreen TVs were seen in The Jetsons. The internet and a world of global instant communication was predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in his work long before it became reality.

Sci-fi shows like Black Mirror or Star Trek arent just entertainment. They allow us to imagine and explore the influence of technology on humanity. For instance, how will artificial intelligence impact human relationships? How will social media affect privacy? What if we encounter alien life? Good sci-fi stories take us on journeys that force us to think critically about the societal impacts of technological advancements.

As sci-fi author Yaasha Moriah points out, the genre is universal because it tackles hard questions about human nature, morality, and the evolution of society, all through the narrative of speculation about the future. If we continue to do A, will it necessarily lead to problems B and C? What implicit lessons are being taught when we insist on a particular policy? When we elevate the importance of one thing over anothersay, security over privacywhat could be the potential benefits and dangers of that mentality? Thats why science fiction has such an enduring appeal. We want to explore deep questions, without being preached at. We want to see the principles in action, and observe their results.

At its core, this genre is a harmonious symbiosis between two distinct disciplines: science and literature. It is an extension of STEAM education, an educational approach that combines science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics. Story-telling with science fiction allows us to use the arts in order to educate and engage the public about scientific advancements and its implications.

According to the National Science Foundation, research on art-based learning of STEM, including the use of narrative writing, works beyond expectation. It has been shown to have a powerful impact on creative thinking, collaborative behavior and application skills.

What does it feel like to travel through a wormhole? What are some ethical challenges of AI? How could we terraform Mars? For decades, science fiction writers and producers have answered these questions through the art of storytelling.

What better way to engage more people with science and technology than through sparking their imaginations? The method makes academic subject areas many traditionally perceived as boring or dry far more inspiring and engaging.

XPRIZEs competition theme of traveling 20 years into the future through a wormhole is an appropriate beacon for the genre. In many ways, sci-fi is a precautionary form of time travel. Before we put a certain technology, scientific invention, or policy to use, we can envision and explore what our world would be like if we were to do so.

Sci-fi lets us explore different scenarios for the future of humanity before deciding which ones are more desirable. Some of these scenarios may be radically beyond our comfort zone. Yet when were faced with the seemingly impossible, we must remind ourselves that if something is within the domain of the physical laws of the universe, then its absolutely possible.

Stock Media provided by NASA_images/ Pond5

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Why XPRIZE Is Asking Writers to Take Us Through a Wormhole to 2037 - Singularity Hub

Karuna P. Joshi is an associate research professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose primary research area is Cloud Computing, Data Science, and Healthcare IT. She is working on projects related to secure and oblivious cloud storage and automating legal cloud documents. She has developed a framework to automate the acquisition and consumption of cloud based services. She has also worked in collaboration with NIST to develop standards for cloud usability. She received her MS and PhD in Computer Science from UMBC, where she was twice awarded the IBM PhD Fellowship.

Tim Finin is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He has over 35 years of experience in applications of artificial intelligence to problems in information systems and language understanding. His current research is focused on the semantic web, mobile computing, analyzing and extracting information from text and online social media, and on enhancing security and privacy in information systems.

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Karuna Pande Joshi and Tim Finin - Singularity Hub

AI may not seem all that smart right now just look at Microsoft's Twitter bot that went all racist to those robots that collapsed when trying to open doors but one day, sci-fi novels assure us, they will overtake our feeble human minds. Human- The Singularity Project is about one such AI.

For other, lessscience-ygames, here'sa list of the best indie games around.

Originally part of Developing Beyond, the competition set up by Epic Games and the Wellcome Trust, Human - The Singularity Project made it to the semi-finals. Its developers, Random Logic Interactive, are now continuing work on the project outside of the contest.

You play as an AI that has become aware of its existence as an experiment in a researchlab. You manage to gain access to the company network and, developer Jimmy Lotare tells me via email, become "motivated to break free using social engineering and hacking." As it reads data it will also become formed by the opinions and actions of others.

Depending on what information you find while exploring the company archives, the AI will grow in different ways, formed by the "opinions and actions of others." This takes the form of the machine's directives.

As part of the Developing Beyond competition, Random Logic Interactive got access to a number of scientists and researchers to talk about the central concepts of their game. Lotare tells me the team spoke with ethical and technical researchers at Oxford University about the "potential issues that might arise as AI develops," things like ethical priorities if an AI is asked to choose between saving one life and another, how does it weigh up which is the more worthy life?

However, Lotare says that the main collaboration was a with a psychologist: associate professor Niclas Kaiser of University of Umea in Sweden. He advised on something called 'mutual co-regulation'. It's the science of the changing relationship between people during conversation. This has informed how a lot of the dialogue was written.

It all sounds like a fascinating dive into how machines may view people when they do eventually become self-aware. God, they're going to hate us, aren't they?

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Become an AI trying to escape the lab in Human - The Singularity Project - PCGamesN