Category Archives: Singularity

Would your burger taste as delicious if it was made by a robot?

Youll soon be able to find out at CaliBurger restaurants in the US and worldwide.

Cali Group partnered with Miso Robotics to develop Flippy the burger robot, which made its debut this week at the Pasadena, California CaliBurger.

Miso and Cali Group arent calling Flippy a mere robot, though; its a robotic kitchen assistant. And its not the first of its kind. San Francisco-based Momentum Machines has also been working on a burger bot for a few years.

Flippy brings some fresh tech to the table (no pun intended). Whereas in the past a typical assembly line robot (say at a car factory) needed everything lined up perfectly in front of themprecisely and consistently positionedto do their work, robots like Flippy are using the latest round of machine learning software to locate and identify whats in front of them and learn from experience.

That is, Flippys flexibility is a great example of robots becoming more flexible, in general.

Misos CEO compared Flippy to a self-driving car because of the way both use feedback loops to reach higher levels of performance.

Flippy doesnt look much like how you may imagine a robot either. Its body is a small cart on wheels, and it has no legs and just one arm. The arms six axes give it a wide range of motion and allow it to perform multiple functions (as opposed to simply moving up and down or back and forth).

Theres an assortment of detachable tools the bot can use to help it cook, including tongs, scrapers, and spatulas, and a pneumatic pump lets it swap one tool for another, rather than a human having to change it out.

Combined with its AI software, these tools will allow Flippy to eventually expand its chefdom beyond just burgersit could learn to make items like chicken or fish.

Some of Flippys key tasks include pulling raw patties from a stack and placing them on the grill, tracking each burgers cook time and temperature, and transferring cooked burgers to a plate.

Flippy cant single-handedly take a burger from raw to ready, though. Rather than adding extra ingredients itself, the bot alerts human cooks when its time to put cheese on a grilling patty. People also need to add sauce and toppings once the patty is cooked, as well as wrap the burgers that are ready to eat. Reportedly, Momentum Machines is working to include some of these additional burger assembly steps into its system.

Sensors on the grill-facing side of the bot take in thermal and 3D data, and multiple cameras help Flippy see its surroundings. The bot knows how many burgers it should be cooking at any given time thanks to a system that digitally sends tickets back to the kitchen from the restaurants counter.

Two of the bots most appealing features for restaurateurs are its compactness and adaptabilityit can be installed in front of or next to any standard grill or fryer, which means restaurants can start using Flippy without having to expand or reconfigure their kitchens.

CaliBurger has committed to using Flippy in at least 50 of its restaurants worldwide over the next two years.

What does this mean for the chains current line cooks, and for the future of low-skilled jobs in the restaurant industry?

Misos CEO acknowledged that his companys product may put thousands of people out of work, but he also said, Tasting food and creating recipes will always be the purview of a chef. And restaurants are gathering places where we go to interact with each other. Humans will always play a very critical role in the hospitality side of the business given the social aspects of food. We just dont know what the new roles will be yet in the industry.

Cali Groups chairman envisions Flippy working next to human employees, not replacing them completely. But he also noted that the bot is part of a "broader vision for creating a unified operating system that will control all aspects of a restaurant, from in-store interactive gaming entertainment to automated ordering and cooking processes, 'intelligent' food delivery and real-time detection of operating errors and pathogens."

As more restaurant operations become automated, demand for low-skilled jobs like line cooks will decline, but there may be a jump in demand for high-skilled workers like engineers. Even if the number of total jobs stays more or less stable, though, it will be difficult to bridge the resulting skills gap. One possible solution is for the same companies whose technology is eliminating jobs to invest resources in retraining displaced workers to fill newly created jobs that mayrequire different skills.

Meanwhile, robot-made burgers may bring benefits both to consumers and to the restaurant industry; money saved on wages can be applied to sourcing better-quality ingredients, for example, and having machines take over a kitchens most hazardous tasks will improve overall safety and efficiency.

Image Credit: Miso Robotics

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New Burger Robot Will Take Command of the Grill in 50 Fast Food Restaurants - Singularity Hub

March is objectively the worst month in New York City for several reasons, mostly involving weather. But theres one bright spot for brooding New Yorkers this month, and thats The Metrographs latest film series, The Singularity.

The Singularity is a mini sci-fi film festival of sorts, running from March 17th to April 3rd. The series will feature an impressive range of films: classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, campier movies like RoboCop and The Terminator, and art house features like Wong Kar-Wais 2046 and Lynn Hershman-Leesons Teknolust.

Youve got 10 days to prepare

A Metrograph press release says the series contemplates the ever-encroaching future moment when artificial superintelligence will overtake human intelligenceknown as the coming Singularitywith films spanning ninety years of moving image history.

Beginning on March 24th, the theater will also run a one-week revival of Mamoru Oshiis 1995 film Ghost in the Shell in advance of the Scarlett Johansson remake out the following week.

The theater hasnt yet announced times for The Singularity screenings, but the entire lineup is here.

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NYC's Metrograph theater is running a sci-fi film series featuring Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and Metropolis - The Verge

3D printing is being used to produce more and more novel items: tools, art, even rudimentary human organs. What all those items have in common, though, is that theyre small. The next phase of 3D printing is to move on to things that are big. Really big. Like, as big as a house.

In a small town in western Russia called Stupino, a 3D printed house just went up in the middle of winter and in a days time.

Pieces of houses and bridges have been 3D printed in warehouses or labs then transported to their permanent locations to be assembled, but the Stupino house was printed entirely on-site by a company called Apis Cor. They used a crane-sized, mobile 3D printer and a specially-developed mortar mix and covered the whole operation with a heated tent.

The 38-square-meter (409-square-foot) house is circular, with three right-angled protrusions allowing for additional space and division of the area inside. Counter-intuitively, the houses roof is completely flat. Russias not known for mild, snow-free winters. Made of welded polymer membranes and insulated with solid plates, the roof was designed to withstand heavy snow loads.

Apis Cor teamed up with partners for the houses finishing details, like insulation, windows, and paint. Samsung even provided high-tech appliances and a TV with a concave-curved screen to match the curve of the interior wall.

According to the company, the houses total building cost came to $10,134, or approximately $275 per square meter, which equates to about $25 per square foot. A recent estimate put the average cost of building a 2,000 square foot home in the US at about $150 per square foot.

Since these houses are affordable and fast to build, is it only a matter of time before were all living in 3D printed concrete circles?

Probably notor, at least, not until whole apartment buildings can be 3D printed. The Stupino house would be harder (though not impossible) to plop down in the middle of a city than in the Russian countryside.

While cities like Dubai are aiming to build more 3D printed houses, what many have envisioned for the homes of the future are environmentally-friendly, data-integrated smart buildings, often clad with solar panels and including floors designated for growing food.

Large-scale 3D printing does have some very practical applications, though. Take disaster relief: when a hurricane or earthquake destroys infrastructure and leaves thousands of people without shelter, 3D printers like Apis Cors could be used to quickly rebuild bridges, roads, and homes.

Also, given their low cost and high speed, 3D printed houses could become a practical option for subsidized housing projects.

In the US, tiny houses have been all the rage among millennials latelywhat if that tiny house could be custom-printed to your specifications in less than a week, and it cost even less than youd budgeted?

Since software and machines are doing most of the work, theres less margin for human errorgone are the days of the subcontractor misread the blueprint, and now we have three closets and no bathrooms!

While houses made by robots are good news for people looking to buy a basic, low-cost house, they could be bad news for people employed in the construction industry. Machines have been pouring concrete for decades, but technologies like Apis Cors giant printer will take a few more human workers out of the equation.

Nonetheless, the company states that part of their mission is to change the construction industry so that millions of people will have an opportunity to improve their living conditions.

Banner Image Credit: Apis Cor

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See How This House Was 3D Printed in Just 24 Hours - Singularity Hub

In BriefTrying to get children to understand artificial intelligenceis a feat in its own right. Explaining how it could one day becomesmarter than us is an entirely different challenge. Supercomputers to Superintelligence

Heres an experiment that fits all ages: approach your mother and father (if theyre asleep, use caution). Ask them gently about that time before you were born, and whether they dared think at that time that one day everybody will post and share their images on a social network called Facebook. Or that they will receive answers to every question from a mysterious entity called Google. Or enjoy the services of a digital adviser called Waze that guides you everywhere on the road. If they say they figured all of the above will happen, kindly refer those people to me. Were always in need of good futurists.

The truth is that very few thought, in those olden days of yore, that technologies like supercomputers, wireless network or artificial intelligence will make their way to the general public in the future. Even those who figured that these technologies will become cheaper and more widespread, failed in imagining the uses they will be put to, and how they will change society. And here we are today, when youre posting your naked pictures on Facebook. Thanks again, technology.

History is full of cases in which a new and groundbreaking technology, or a collection of such technologies, completely changes peoples lives. The change is often so dramatic that people whove lived before the technological leap have a very hard time understanding how the subsequent generations think. To the people before the change, the new generation may as well be aliens in their way of thinking and seeing the world.

These kinds of dramatic shifts in thinking are called Singularity a phrase that is originally derived from mathematics and describes a point which we are incapable of deciphering its exact properties. Its that place where the equations basically go nuts and make no sense any longer.

The singularity has risen to fame in the last two decades largely because of two thinkers. The first is the scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who wrote in 1993 that

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

The other prominent prophet of the Singularity is Ray Kurzweil. In his book The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil basically agrees with Vinge but believes the later has been too optimistic in his view of technological progress. Kurzweil believes that by the year 2045 we will experience the greatest technological singularity in the history of mankind: the kind that could, in just a few years, overturn the institutes and pillars of society and completely change the way we view ourselves as human beings. Just like Vinge, Kurzweil believes that well get to the Singularity by creating a super-human artificial intelligence (AI). An AI of that level could conceive of ideas that no human being has thought about in the past, and will invent technological tools that will be more sophisticated and advanced than anything we have today.

Since one of the roles of this AI would be to improve itself and perform better, it seems pretty obvious that once we have a super-intelligent AI, it will be able to create a better version of itself. And guess what the new generation of AI would then do? Thats right improve itself even further. This kind of a race would lead to an intelligence explosion and will leave old poor us simple, biological machines that we are far behind.

If this notion scares you, youre in good company. A few of the most widely regarded scientists, thinkers and inventors, like Steven Hawking and Elon Musk, have already expressed their concerns that super-intelligent AI could escape our control and move against us. Others focus on the great opportunities that such a singularity holds for us. They believe that a super-intelligent AI, if kept on a tight leash, could analyze and expose many of the wonders of the world for us. Einstein, after all, was a remarkable genius who has revolutionized our understanding of physics. Well, how would the world change if we enjoyed tens, hundreds and millions Einsteins that couldve analyzed every problem and find a solution for it?

Similarly, how would things look like if each of us could enjoy his very own Doctor House, that constantly analyzed his medical state and provided ongoing recommendations? And which new ideas and revelations would those super-intelligences come up with, when they go over humanitys history and holy books?

Already we see how AI is starting to change the ways in which we think about ourselves. The computer Deep Blue managed to beat Gary Kasparov in chess in 1997. Today, after nearly twenty years of further development, human chess masters can no longer beat on their own even an AI running on a laptop computer. But after his defeat, Kasparov has created a new kind of chess contests: ones in which humanoid and computerized players collaborate, and together reach greater successes and accomplishments than each wouldve gotten on their own. In this sort of a collaboration, the computer provides rapid computations of possible moves, and suggests several to the human player. Its human compatriot needs to pick the best option, to understand their opponents and to throw them off balance.

Together, the two create a centaur: a mythical creature that combines the best traits of two different species. We see, then that AI has already forced chess players to reconsider their humanity and their game.

In the next few decades we can expect a similar singularity to occur in many other games, professions and other fields that were previously conserved for human beings only. Some humans will struggle against the AI. Others will ignore it. Both these approaches will prove disastrous, since when the AI will become capable than human beings, both the strugglers and the ignorant will remain behind. Others will realize that the only way to success lies in collaboration with the computers. They will help computers learn and will direct their growth and learning. Those people will be the centaurs of the future. And this realization that man can no longer rely only on himself and his brain, but instead must collaborate and unite with sophisticated computers to beat tomorrows challenges well, isnt that a singularity all by itself?

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Singularity: Explain It to Me Like I'm 5-Years-Old - Futurism - Futurism

What

On February 27, Elon Musks SpaceX announced plans to fly two non-astronauts, or private citizens, on a loop around the moon.

No one except Elon Musk and the two moon-explorers-to-be know who they are yet. SpaceX has stated only that the individuals approached the company asking to be flown around the moon (as opposed to the company recruiting them), that theyre not linked to Hollywood in any way, and that theyll be paying SpaceX a large sum for the journey.

Since Apollo 8, the first voyage to the moon in 1968, only 24 people have flown to the moon, and 12 have walked on its surface. Theyve all been American, and theyve all been men. If either of the moon mission passengers are female, SpaceX will make history in more than one way.

Interestinglyand terrifyinglyMusk said the mission will be completed on autopilot, without a trained astronaut or technician on board. The two passengers will be on their own.

Passengers will ride in SpaceXs Dragon 2 capsule, powered by itsFalcon Heavy rocket.

At 230 feet high, 40 feet wide, and more than five million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the company claims Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.

Its important to note, though, that the rocket hasnt been tested yetthats scheduled to happen this summer.

Dragon 2 is similar to the Dragon capsule SpaceX currently uses to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

The mission will need a license from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Falcon Heavy will launch from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida.

More specifically, it will take off from launch pad 39A, which was used by the Apollo program for its lunar missions in the late 60s and early 70s.

The flights estimated distance is 300,000-400,000 miles into space, which would put humans farther from Earth than ever before.

SpaceX is aiming for the mission to take place as soon as late 2018. But this timeline is highly ambitious. As noted above, Falcon Heavy has yet to be tested. Anything short of a seamless performance would likely push the moon mission back by months, if not years.

Similarly, the crew version of Dragon is scheduled to make its first voyage at the end of this year, in automatic mode and without any passengers on board. Pending success of that trip, a manned flight would travel to the ISS in the second quarter of 2018.

Even if these tests are successful, it would seem more time would be needed to prepare both rocket and capsule for the much-longer moon orbit.

Though exact figures havent been disclosed, Musk called the cost comparable to that of sending astronauts to the International Space Station. That number was recently estimated to be over $70 million per person, going up to $81 million by 2018. The cost went up dramatically after NASA retired its own fleet in 2011 and began contracting with private companies and the Russian space agency to send people and cargo to and from the ISS.

In 2001, American multimillionaire Dennis Tito became the worlds first space tourist, booking a trip on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS for an estimated price tag of $20 million. Since then, six more wealthy individuals have gone to space because, well, they wanted to, and they could.

Besides being a high-profile test of its ability to get beyond Earth orbit, SpaceX's moon mission could serve as a stepping stone for future Mars missions. The unmanned Red Dragon Mars mission also plans to use a Falcon Heavy rocket and Dragon 2 capsule.

Theres a lot of speculation that the SpaceX announcement will set off the first public/private space race, pitting private companies against NASA. But SpaceX stated that NASA has encouraged private missions, as through them long-term costs to the government decline and more flight reliability history is gained, benefiting both government and private missions." NASAs Commercial Crew Program funded Dragon 2s development.

However, NASA did announce that it will be looking to put non-astronauts on its Space Launch System rocket, and the associated crew capsule, Orion.

If a public/private space race does ensue, NASA has decades of experience under its belt. But private companies like SpaceX have the advantage of less oversight, and manufacturing thats not politically-driven.

Space race or no space race, forget formerly exotic-seeming places like Bali or Fijiit seems the moon is set to become mankinds coveted tourist destination of the future.

Banner Image Credit: SpaceX

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What You Need to Know About Elon Musk's Plan to Fly People to the Moon - Singularity Hub

The renowned Silicon Valley-based think-tank Singularity University has announced plans to establish a new innovation hub in Copenhagen.

The hub will be located at a 5,000 sqm space in Copenhagen Science City and will aim to provide a lift to Danish digitalisation, innovation and entrepreneurship.

When I visited Silicon Valley last week, Singularity University was the first item on my agenda and with good reason, said the foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen.

SU bridges the gap between global challenges and technological solutions, which is important tous if we want to keep one step ahead of the future.

READ MORE: Denmark stepping up tech diplomacy in Silicon Valley

CPH nails it The new innovation hub will become just the second to be established by Singularity University outside its headquarters in Silicon Valley. According to Samuelsen, this underlines Denmarks position as an elite location for innovation and digitalisation.

SingularityU Denmark, as the hub will be called, will offer a number of education and innovation courses that combine latest trends within exponential technology with future business arenas.

According to Rob Nail, the global head of Singularity University, the choice of Denmark was not a coincidence.

Denmark is a recognised global leader in many areas of technology, including green tech, biotech, pharmaceutical sciences, telecommunications, ITand design. We all know the successes born in Denmark: LEGO, Universal Robots and Skype to name just a few, said Nail.

Our intent with the new business venture is to build on these achievements and create new opportunities. I was told that LEGO is short for leg godt, and SU wants to play well in Denmark.

Read more about the project here (in English).

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Singularity University opening organisation in Denmark The Post - The Copenhagen Post - Danish news in english

From time to time, the Singularity Hub editorial team unearths a gem from the archives and wants to share it all over again. It's usually a piece that was popular back then and we think is still relevant now. This is one of those articles. It was originally published March 6, 2016.We hope you enjoy it!

A cognitive neuroscientist and his team at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California, seem to have achieved the impossible.

According to a press release, the team measured the brain activity patterns of six commercial and military pilots, and then transmitted these patterns into novice subjects as they learned to pilot an airplane in a realistic flight simulator.

If youre picturing people downloading knowledge directly into the brain Matrix-style, sorry to hand you the blue pill its utter nonsense.

Which is a total shame, because the brain-boosting technique used in the study transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, is nothing short of fantastical.

Hook up some wires with a 9-volt battery, and you have a state-of-art thinking cap that activates select regions of the brain of your choosing. By directly tinkering with the brains electrical field no surgery required tDCS has the potential to treat depression, anxiety, chronic pain, OCD and motor symptoms in Parkinsons disease.

A handful of small studies including the HRL Laboratories research also tantalizingly suggest that it could heighten creativity, enhance spatial learning, boost math skills and language acquisition and even trigger lucid dreams sometimes weeks after the initial stimulation.

It seems to give you any kind of benefit you want, says Dr. Flavio Frohlich, a neurobiologist at the University of North Carolina and expert in tDCS-assisted cognition.

Sound too good to be true? Perhaps. Ask its doubters, and the only thing that tDCS is good at is giving people a nasty electrical burn.

Its high-tech brain gain riding the hype cycle train. Herere the facts and the fiction lets see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The short answer: no one really knows.

The techniques brain-boosting effects were discovered serendipitously. At the turn of the last century, Drs. Walter Paulus and Michael Nitsche at the University of Gttingen in Germany popularized the technique while studying motor learning and working memory. They carefully placed two electrodes over motor regions of the brain, using gel to ensure full contact with the scalp. This generates a weak electrical current about 1 or 2 milliamps, low enough to be powered by a 9-volt battery.

To the teams surprise, participants receiving the stimulation learned faster than those who received only sham stimulation a placebo zap to trick them into thinking they were getting the treatment. Almost all later studies followed this protocol, including the aforementioned flight simulator study.

So whats happening to the brain?

The tDCS current itself is too weak to activate neurons; instead, it changes the ability of neurons to respond to stimuli, such as learning a new task. There are two types of stimulation: anodal stimulation primes neurons to be more excitable and thus more likely to fire, boosting signal; cathodal stimulation makes it harder for neurons to fire, decreasing noise.

In this way, tDCS can modulate the signal-to-noise ratio in a select brain region and tweak information processing. The word tweak here is key. tDCS doesnt transfer meaningful information it only improves the ability of subjects to learn.

At the same time, the current jolts plasticity-related molecules into action in neurons, changing their ability to respond to neurotransmitters.

But it goes even deeper than that. In another study, scientists at the Office of Naval Research found that tDCS in mice strips away certain molecular markers on their DNA. This causes neurons to pump out more BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), a major vitality-boosting protein that promotes synaptic plasticity and the birth of new neurons and nurtures the brain.

These molecular changes could be why tDCS has long-lasting effects that linger for weeks, suggested the authors in their paper.

That said, its currently impossible to precisely target neural networks with tDCS in the way that optogenetics can. The current only flows in superficial layers of the cortex, rarely reaching deeper brain regions such as the hippocampus, a central hub for learning and memory.

And what happens to the rest of the brain during stimulation? Your guess is as good as mine.

Given the uncertainty in how tDCS works, its perhaps not surprising that it doesnt always work.

Several past meta-analyses cast serious doubt on the techs brain-boosting powers. Two such papers, both from the University of Melbourne, found that single-session tDCS had little-to-no reliable effect on executive function, language or memory in healthy young volunteers.

There are also disheartening reports that in some cases, zapping the brain impedes cognition.

Last year, Frohlich and colleagues published a report suggesting stimulation lowers IQ scores. His team measured the IQ of 40 healthy volunteers, then zapped them with either sham or real tDCS for 20 minutes over frontal areas of the brain specifically, the prefrontal cortex involved in flexible thinking and higher reasoning. When retested, people receiving tDCS performed worse than the non-stimulated controls.

Another team found that although tDCS could speed up the learning process associating Egyptian-like symbols with numbers it impaired the volunteers from automatically using this new knowledge in subsequent tests. The authors dubbed their finding the mental cost of cognitive enhancement.

Despite potential perils, optimism for the tech remains sky high.

The promise is so great that tDCS was featured in the prestigious academic journal Nature this week, with scientists warning against overzealous DIY use, already commercially available to biohackers for about $150 a pop.

Stimulating is easy, but doing it right is not, said Frohlich. Commercially available units arent regulated, and it takes at least some training to be able to correctly place the electrodes without injuring the scalp.

And since we still dont understand the long-term effects (not to mention potential side-effects) of tDCS, its far too early to call the technique totally safe.

People may well be damaging their brains, said Frohlich.

For now, the benefits arent worth the risk. As the story continues, however, that could change.

Electrodes get smaller all the time, making it increasingly possible to more precisely modulate brain activity. Although at the moment its hard to imagine targeting only a handful of neural networks using tDCS, its conceivable that next-gen non-invasive brain stimulation could dramatically improve in specificity.

More specific brain stimulation means more specific behavior outcomes.

There are already hints of this possibility: transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which uses magnetic fields to modulate brain activity, is already used in brain-to-brain communication, where scientists stimulate a receivers brain with EEG waves recorded from an encoder performing simple tasks.

Theres a hell lot of controversy, but preliminary (published) results show that the encoders brain waves contain enough information to cause specific motor responses in the receiver, such as moving his hand in a certain way.

Now imagine an experts brain waves teaching a novice on complicated tasks.

Here, tDCS will prime the novices brain to better encode and retrieve new information. This is, in fact, what the press release mentioned earlier hinted at: that expert pilots brain waves helped newbies master a flight simulator.

Thats not the case the tDCS used in that study was run-of-the-mill steady currents, not fancy EEG recordings. But in a few decades? We probably still wont be able to download knowledge or program learning directly into our brain.

Well just be learning really, really fast.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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Does Zapping Your Brain Actually Help You Learn Faster? - Singularity Hub

In the first week that US scientists recruited the public to help identify a possible ninth planet in our solar system, more than 20,000 people volunteered to join the search. About 50,000 people around the world have signed up to allow Australian astronomers to siphon off a bit of their computing power to study the universe. Thousands more are expected to help capture a mega-movie of a major solar eclipse this summer.

It seems that astronomers, astrophysicists and others who study life, the universe and everything are turning to citizen scientists to help them collect and even analyze data. Its possible that one of these amateur scientific sleuths might find the answer is something other than 42. Or, at the very least, spot a brown dwarf or a galaxy cluster.

Citizen science has a very promising outlook because of the way that so many research areas are becoming data-driven, says University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) postdoctoral researcher Aaron Meisner. Meisner is a physicist on a quest to discover the so-called Planet 9, hypothetically as large as Neptune but on an orbit so distant around the sun that its nearly impossible to detect. The researchers also hope to identify nearby, low-density stars called brown dwarfs.

What Meisner has is loads of data: millions of infrared images captured by NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope. Meisner has his teamincluding researchers from Arizona State University, NASA, American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimorehave created a website called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9.

The idea is for volunteers to log onto the website and analyze flipbooksshort movies made up of four or more frames, each taken from the entire sky several times during the last seven yearsto detect objects that appear to move or change appearance. The images have too much noise for an automated search by computer.

Meisner tells Singularity Hub that citizen scientists have already made nearly two million classifications, representing about 10 percent of the entire database.

At any given time, we'll have something like 250 to 500 users classifying data, and they're actually classifying so quickly that were racing to upload enough flipbooks to keep pace, he says. Our team has been blown away by the response.

The project coordinators promise to include the names of volunteers who contribute to a possible discovery on any published papers.

Some citizen scientists have enjoyed even more fame. Last year, two amateur astronomers helped discover one of the biggest galaxy clusters ever identified. The Matorny-Terentev Cluster RGZ-CL J0823.2+0333 now bears their name, and the duo also got credit in a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Citizen scientists arent just relegated to analyzing fuzzy pictures of distant celestial objects.

Researchers are recruiting amateur astronomers and photographers across the US to record a total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. Photos from the participants on the ground will be stitched together into a movie documenting the entire path of the event, from the coast of Oregon until the moons shadow falls over the east coast off South Carolina.

The ubiquity of technology like smartphone cameras with GPS help make projects like the Eclipse Megamovie possible, according to UC Berkeley solar physicist Hugh Hudson, who proposed the Megamovie idea in 2011, along with Scott McIntosh of the National Center for Atmospheric Researchs High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.

We hope to extract different movies from what we expect will be a huge and diverse database, Hudson says by email to Singularity Hub. We realized a couple of years ago that we could augment the good imagery, as obtained by our better-equipped volunteers, as well as programs such as Citizen CATE, with simple smartphones.

The Megamovie Project isnt just about making a cool-looking film. Hudson and his team hope to learn about the interactions between the suns outermost layer, the corona, and another layer of the suns atmosphere called the chromosphere. The thin chromosphere is difficult to observe, lost in the glare of another layer called the photosphere.

The technical advantage of an eclipse is that one can see right down to the chromosphere, Hudson says.

And the technical advantage of citizen scientists?

There are many questions about complex databases that require human ingenuity and insight, as well as patient observation, Hudson says, speaking more generally. Id say the main benefit to science is thus to generate unique facts about the database that otherwise would have gone unrecognized. For the Megamovie database, we have a list of things that we would offer the volunteers, but we are expecting them to generate ideas as well.

A project out of Australia called theSkyNet, with a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Terminator movies, isnt asking for brain power, but computing power. The International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has run the citizen science project since 2011. Its 50,000 volunteers allow astronomers to connect their computers via the internet, basically creating a mid-range supercomputer.

Researchers use theSkyNet supercomputer to process data from various radio telescopes, which collect information on a different wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum. The research is diverse, from studying the evolution of the early universe to the formation of stars.

It turns out citizen science isnt just good for research. It can also be therapeutic.

Scientists showed in a paper just published by the journalPublic Library of Science (PLoS) that patients requiring physical therapy did betterand were more engagedwhen the exercises involved participating in a citizen science project.

In the case of the study published in PLoS, participants helped map a polluted canal in New York with a miniature instrumented boat. The boat was remotely controlled through physical gestures using a low-cost motion capture system. Scientists got environmental data, patients received needed exercise, and the researchers validated a new approach to physical therapy.

Our methodology expands behavioral rehabilitation by providing an engaging and fun natural user interface, a tangible scientific contribution, and an attractive low-cost markerless technology for human motion capture, says Maurizio Porfiri, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, in a press release.

Technology isnt just leading to new breakthroughs in space exploration and other fields, its enabling regular people to participate in scientific discovery at scales never before possible. Enlisting tens of thousands of people to engage in research to nearby stars and beyond is truly exponential.

Image Credit: NASA

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Citizen Science Means Anyone Could Discover Planet NineEven You - Singularity Hub

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jami Attenberg's funny-sad 'All Grown Up' all about the singularity Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Andrea's friends are all asking her the same question: Has she read the book, the one about being single? Her mother buys her a copy. Old college friends post reviews on her Facebook page. I've been single for a long time, she says, there is nothing ...

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Jami Attenberg's funny-sad 'All Grown Up' all about the singularity - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Video: AI Is Getting Smarter, Says Singularity University's Neil Jacobstein Wall Street Journal (subscription) (blog) Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Chair at Singularity University Neil Jacobstein talks about some recent achievements where AIs have been able to solve complex problems. He speaks with WSJ's Scott Austin at the WSJ CIO Network event in San ... and more »

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Video: AI Is Getting Smarter, Says Singularity University's Neil Jacobstein - Wall Street Journal (subscription) (blog)