Category Archives: Futurism

He's not kidding, is he?Bones Day

Stanford professor Garry Nolan grew up reading sci-fi, and made his name debunking a supposed alien skeleton he saw posted online, publishing a paper discrediting the claim that the tiny skeleton was an alien baby using genetics and biology.

The UFO community didnt like me saying that, said in the recent Vice interview. But you know, the truth is in the science.

Nolan doesnt seem quite as skeptical about the alleged unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) thats the governments preferred term for whats usually called a UFO evidence hes inspecting now. After the CIA approached Nolan, he says, the government asked him to examine data from pilots who had gotten close to putative UAPs.

You didnt even have to be an MD to see that there was a problem,he told Vice. Some of their brains were horribly, horribly damaged. And so thats what kind of got me involved.

Nolan tells Vice that hes also analyzed about 10 or 12 recovered metal fragments from purported UFO crashes on behalf of the government, and he says some of the samples dont play by the rules of human-created materials leading to the tantalizing, if remote, possibility that they might be bits of technology we dont yet understand.

Lets say we didnt have transistors today and one of these objects dropped a big chunk of germanium doped with other elements, or, you know, these little transistors, he toldVice. We would not have a clue as to the function, and we would ask why would anyone put arrays of germanium with these strange impurities in them what is this thing?'

Nolan told Vice that the government often holds onto records of weird or unique medical cases and analyzes them later, when enough similar cases have come in to provide clues. Of course,just because the feds are collating info on mysterious phenomena doesnt mean theres not a perfectly reasonable explanation for them.

Color us skeptical, but it is worth investigating. According to Vox, the Pentagon even agrees. We just want more than sample analysis and MRIs before well sign onto the idea that actual aliens have visited Earth.

More on UFO shenanigans: New Pentagon Group Accused of Trying to Bury UFOs Again

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Stanford Professor Says He's Been Testing Materials Recovered From UFO Crashes - Futurism

A team of researchers who definitely arent vampires have discovered new evidence that the blood of the young could be the secret to actually staying young.

In a new study published in the prestigious journal Nature Aging, the team found that particles in mouse blood called extracellular vesicles (EV) send instructions for a longevity protein called Klotho to muscle cells, according to a press release from the University of Pittsburgh. As the mice age, the EVs seemingly become weaker and send fewer instructions for the protein as a result.

However, when the team gave older mice the blood of younger mice, their cells and tissue began to take on more youthful features like enhanced muscle regeneration. When the EVs were removed from the blood, though, the effect faded.

In other words, it sounds a bit like the vampires of folklore, with the blood of the youthful sustaining the aged.

Whether the effect could translate to humans, of course, remains unclear. Attempts to bring the treatment to actual patients have been met with harsh criticism and inconclusive results.

But the Pittsburgh team hopes their research could lead to new treatments to sustain and enhance longevity during the aging process for humans.

In one way, it helps us understand the basic biology of how muscle regeneration works and how it fails to work as we age, Fabrisia Ambrosio, associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Pitt and lead author of the study, said in the release. Then, taking that information to the next step, we can think about using extracellular vesicles as therapeutics to counteract these age-related defects.

Other research has suggested that the blood of young mice can help boost cognitive performance in older mice, according to the release. That means that EV treatments could theoretically help slow down or even prevent cognitive decline as we age.

Much more research is needed before we can expect drop-in blood-of-the-young transfusion clinics. However, if this study is any indication, it turns out Dracula might have had the right idea after all.

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Scientists: Stealing the Blood of the Young May Make You More Youthful - Futurism

What is Keanu Reeves planning to do with VR? The Other Blue Pill

The Matrix is everywhere. Even in video games.

Later this month, the fourth installment in Matrix series hits theaters. The Matrix Resurrections isnt a reboot, and will seemingly bring back stars Keanu Reeves as Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity. Before you see the movie in theaters, though, fans can play a surprise open-world game called The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience.

According to Kotaku, its more of an immersive experience than a playable game. All told, it sounds a fun exploration of virtual worlds and whats really real, which are classic topics from the Matrix franchise.

And riffing on that topic in a video interview with the Verge, the affable Reeves even went as far as to say that hed be open to VR porn in which fans could have sex with him without really having sex with him, of course.

Think of how much money is in porn, Reeves said in the interview.You wouldnt even have to be there, and people could have digital sex with your digital avatar.

Moss, however, was not on board.

I, on the other hand, say no thank you, Moss laughed.

Could we see raunchy, digitally-created porn with Reeves in the future? Well have to wait and see, but we know Reeves is likely to come up with some wild content since he already holds a bit of crypto, has a VR headset and is fascinated by VR storytelling and the Metaverse.

The real world is almost ahead of our science fiction, Reeves said in the video. Wow.

More on the Metaverse: AR Pioneer Warns that Metaverse Could Make Reality Dissapear

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Keanu Reeves Says He'd Be Cool With Fans Having Sex With Him in VR - Futurism

"Its built to outlive us all."Apocalypse Cam

If or when human civilization collapses, what will remain? Maybe parts of some cities. Or the Statue of Liberty, a la Planet of the Apes. Overall, though, there might not be a lot of evidence left behind about what humanity accomplished or what resulted in its downfall.

One team of researchers wants to change that. Their solution? A massive, indestructible box thatll record scientific data to give future civilizations insight on how exactly humanity fell.

The project, dubbed Earths Black Box, will be an immense steel monolith installed in a remote location in Tasmania. Its akin to the black boxes that are designed to survive airplane crashes and provide investigators valuable data on what led to the disaster except on a planetary scale.

The project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Tasmania, marketing agency Clemenger BBDO, and creative agency The Glue Society.

The team is designing the box to record climate data such as atmospheric CO2 levels, sea temperatures, and energy consumption levels. Itll also gather contextual information like news headlines and social media posts.

The idea is if the Earth does crash as a result of climate change, this indestructible recording device will be there for whoevers left to learn from that, Jim Curtis, the executive creative director at Clemenger BBDO, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The box itself will be made from three-inch-thick steel and cantilevered off granite. Inside will be a system of Internet-connected storage drives powered by solar panels on the boxs roof.

Its built to outlive us all, Jonathan Kneebone, cofounder of the Glue Society, told ABC. If the worst does happen, just because the power grids go down, this thing will still be there.

The biggest issue for the team now is how to help future civilizations access the information it contains. After all, theyll just find a mysterious monolith out in the middle of nowhere and we know how that worked out for us already.

READ MORE: Earth is getting a black box to record our climate change actions, and its already started listening [Australia Broadcasting Corporation]

More on doomsday boxes: Oreo Built a Doomsday Vault to Protect Its Cookies from a Harmless Asteroid

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Scientists Are Building a "Black Box" to Record the End of Civilization - Futurism

Alphabets AI research company DeepMind has released the next generation of its language model,and it says that it has close to the reading comprehension of a high schooler a startling claim.

It says the language model, called Gopher, was able to significantly improve its reading comprehension by ingesting massive repositories of texts online.

DeepMind boasts that its algorithm, an ultra-large language model, has 280 billion parameters, which are a measure of size and complexity. That means it falls somewhere between OpenAIs GPT-3 (175 billion parameters) and Microsoft and NVIDIAs Megatron, which features 530 billion parameters, The Verge points out.

Such a system could allow us to safely and efficiently to summarize information, provide expert advice and follow instructions via natural language, according to a statement.

In a test, the model was able to score highly enough on a high school reading comprehension test to approach human-level performance, according to DeepMinds paper. Its math and reasoning skills, however, left something to be desired, showing less of an improvement.

The more parameters, the more accurate, generally speaking. But there are other issues, like reading comprehension or perpetuating harmful stereotypes, that are proving more difficult to overcome, despite the models sheer size.

Algorithms like Gopher have been used in the past for commercial products like digital assistants and translators. In a test, Gopher was able to have a full dialogue with a human with a surprising level of coherence, according to DeepMind.

But DeepMind isnt looking to commercialize its algorithm.

Thats not the focus right now, Koray Kavukcuoglo, DeepMinds vice president of research,told Fortune.

In an attempt to get ahead of criticism that its algorithm regurgitated ethnic or gender stereotypes often a product of the texts these algorithms were fed DeepMind published an accompanying paper about the steps researchers took to maintain ethical integrity.

For instance, the team built a tool called Retrieval-Enhanced Transformer, a massive two trillion word database to cross-reference its sources.

But even then, the DeepMind team admitted that research on how language models perpetuate harmful stereotypes is still in early stages.

As AI tools become better and better at interpreting text, researchers are increasingly turning to stickier problems, like the potential for spreading misinformation or propaganda.

Even with all the texts on the internet, helping language models like Gopher read between the lines is proving much harder than many AI researchers like to admit.

READ MORE: DeepMind debuts massive language A.I. that approaches human-level reading comprehension [Fortune]

More on AI tools: Researchers Create Narc Neural Network to Help Cops Predict New Designer Drugs

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DeepMind Says Its New AI Has Almost the Reading Comprehension of a High Schooler - Futurism

China has succeeded in literally changing the weather, a new study claims.

As the South China Morning Post reports, researchers say that during the Chinese Communist Partys centennial celebration over the summer, weather authorities successfully modified the weather above Beijing to clear the sky and reduce pollution for the tens of thousands gathered for a commemorative ceremony in Tiananmen Square.

They did so using cloud seeding technology, a long-studied but controversial process that involves shooting silver iodide particles into the clouds, with the idea of attracting water droplets to modify the weather.

The paper, by researchers at Chinas Tsinghua University, comes a year after reports that China was dramatically expanding its weather modification program to a test area of a whopping 5.5 million square miles by the year 2025. As Futurism noted last December, thats bigger than the entire country of India, and could end up raising serious issues with Chinas neighbors.

Though this isnt the first time China has used cloud-seeding technology its been dabbling since as early as the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics this appears to be both one of the most successful and also largest-scale tests conducted not just by the CCP, but in the world.

It was also not publicized, and part of the Tsinghua researchers paper focused on the evidence they found that cloud seeding had actually taken place, which included eyewitness reports of rockets being launched into the sky from the mountains outside of of Beijing before the July 1 centennial, and accounts of rocket debris after the fact.

According to theSCMP, there were a number of hurdles that weather officials had to jump to have successfully changed the weather. Pollution leading up to the CCP centennial was especially bad, the report noted, and it was Chinas wettest recorded summer as well. Nevertheless, reports indicated that Beijings pollution on July 1 went from moderate to good, and the mid-day rain did in fact appear to be artificial.

Though areas of the United States and other countries have tried to use cloud seeding technology to change the weather, professional China-worriers have expressed concern that the CCP may use it for nefarious military ends even though the US military has been trying to make it rain since at least 1967.

This successful and large-scale operation in Beijing does, however, raise important questions both about potential military usage of the tech. If one country is able to control its own weather, it could in theory do so elsewhere which is unwelcome news for anyone who isnt invested in forever wars.

Moreover, while cloud seeding is often touted as a potential solution for the megadroughts of the not-so-distant-future, the technology hasnt been successful for long enough to measure how it affects natural weather patterns, nevermind its impact on climate change.

For now, though, lets just marvel at the fact that it now seems possible to literally make it rain on command.

READ MORE: China modified the weather as Communist Party marked centenary in Beijing [South China Morning Post]

More on cloud seeding:A Bunch of US States Are Now Using Weather Modification Technology

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Scientists Say They Caught China Successfully Changing the Weather - Futurism

The feds are looking intro cryptocurrencies, and apparently have been since the Trump administration.

This revelation came during the Wall Street Journals uberhyped CEO Summit on Monday, whereasVicereported, CIA Director William Burns admitted that his agency has a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency.

He went on to say that he inherited the agencys crypto maneuvers from his predecessor, a likely reference to the ghoulish Gina Haspel, who was the last to lead the CIA during Donald Trumps presidency.

My predecessor had started this, but had set in motion a number of different projects focused on cryptocurrency and trying to look at second- and third-order consequences as well and helping with our colleagues in other parts of the U.S. government to provide solid intelligence on what were seeing as well, Burns said.

Translation: the CIA is surveilling crypto networks and platforms, and trying to figure out how important a priority it is for so-called national security.

Burns fedspeak admission came in response to an audience question about the growing problem of ransomware attacks, which are an admittedly very real and serious threat that partially led to a real-life gas shortage,the alleged death of a newborn infant, and possibly even issues with the US beef supply chain.

Crypto, Burns said, could have enormous impact on the heists because one of the ways of getting at ransomware attacks and deterring them is to be able to get at the financial networks that so many of those criminal networks use and that gets right at the issue of digital currencies as well.

AsVice noted, Burns, ahem, cryptic remarks have reinvigorated blockchain bro rumors that Bitcoins mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto was an intelligence asset, though asVice noted, that line is mostly just a meme.

While it will likely remain unclear what exactly the CIA and other alphabet soup intelligence agencies are looking at with regards to crypto, this admission is stunning if for no other reason than that its yet another example of a normally-cagey government agency confirming longstanding rumors about its work after years of a steady declassification drip from the Defense Department confirming the existence of UFOs.

Indeed, former CIA acting director Michael Morrell said back in April that the blockchain is a boon for surveillance in a white paper meant to encourage governments to embrace crypto.

We probably wont know for decades what the CIA and its fellow intelligence agencies are up to with crypto, but at least we now know that theyre up tosomething.

READ MORE: The CIA Is Deep Into Cryptocurrency, Director Reveals [Vice]

More on government and crypto:The U.S. Government Has Held Over $1 Billion in Seized Cryptocurrency

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The Head of the CIA Says It's Been Doing Mysterious Cryptocurrency Work - Futurism

Hes been talking about it for years now but nobodys listening.Inching Toward Extinction

Theres no question things are a bit dire right now when it comes to climate change but there is some good news: a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist says were on the brink of mass extinction.

Wait, no. Thats horrible news.

Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at MIT, has spoken about his predictions of a new mass extinction event in the past. He reiterated his Cassandran concerns in a recent interview with The Times of Israel, saying that human disruptions to the carbon cycle will ultimately result in calamity.

Every time there has been a major event in the history of life, there has also been a major perturbation of the environment, Rothamn told the newspaper. These things tend to come together.

Rothman reached his conclusions by observing past mass extinction events, during which there was an increased rate in carbon cycle change. In short, he says, theres only so much carbon that can be injected into the atmosphere and oceans in a geological time frame before we reach an extinction-level tipping point.

For example, according to his calculations, the threshold for carbon in the ocean is roughly 300 gigatons which is disconcerting because humans are on track to add up to 500 gigatons of carbons into the oceans by 2100. In his analysis, that puts the Earth squarely on the path towards a mass extinction event.

Luckily, there is some hope. Global leaders are beginning to take the issue of climate change more seriously than ever before. International efforts such as the recent UN Climate Change Conference are a big step in the right direction.And there have already been some rudimentary steps toward geoengineering.

Still, theres a lot more that countries can and should be doing to deal with the greatest existential threat of our time.

Its, I think, frankly a more difficult problem than the sort of stuff I work on because Im just trying to figure out what the truth is, Rothman told the newspaper. One would like to see more but good people are doing their best.

READ MORE: Headed for a sixth mass extinction? MIT geophysicist warns oceans are on the brink [The Times of Israel]

More on extinction: Scientist Says That Humans Are Almost Certainly Going Extinct

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MIT Scientist Says We're on the Brink of a Mass Extinction Event - Futurism

Looks like he's already packing his bags for Mars.No Homes

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has officially sold off his last remaining home, for a cool $30 million. That means his only official abode is a small, $50,000 prefab hes renting at his space companys headquarters near Boca Chica, Texas.

Back in June, Musk tweeted that hed decided to sell my last remaining house. Just needs to go to a large family who will live there.

Its a special place, he added.

Initially, he put the house, a massive California mansion that used to belong to Gene Wilder, on sale for $37.5 million which turned out a little steep, even for the one percent. He tried again with a different agent in October, Insider reports,where itfinally sold.

Musk is,ostensibly, fully committed to building a city on Mars. And that means he needs cash and lots of it. Earlier this year, Musk said that hewas selling almost all physical possessions, in an effort to devote myself to Mars and Earth.

His plans couldnt be more ambitious.The concept is for afleet of 1,000 Starship spacecraft to populate a Martian metropolis with one million people by the year 2050.

Musk is looking to invest heavily in the venture himself.And even if real estate is only a tiny piece of that pie, its something.

I want to be able to contribute as much as possible to the city on Mars, he told Mathias Dpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, last year. That means just a lot of capital.

READ MORE: Elon Musk sold a San Francisco mansion, which was his last remaining home, for $30 million [Insider]

More on Elon: Elon Musk Says That Immortality Tech Would Be Very Dangerous

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Elon Musk Just Sold His Final Home to Live in a Small Prefab Box - Futurism

A less tolerant world

Despite the proliferation of strong and loud opinions on social platforms, 42% of people say they wont speak up about their beliefs if they think others will disagree with themand that number was even higher among Gen Z respondents. Worldwide, 64% of adults agree that In the future, people will be less tolerant of opposing viewpoints than they are today.

When asked last year, mid-pandemic, when life would return to normal, 8% of respondents said never. What got Connellys attention: This year the number is even higher, with 13% of people saying that life will never return to normal. Work is the most likely element of life influencing that number, but its more than that. Some 12% of respondents said travel will never return to normal, and 11% said the same about retail, she said.

Across the globe, 81% of respondents say climate change makes them worried about the future. Even more startling, a large percentage of womenmore than 40% in Canada, and more than 30% in France and Indiasay they dont want to have children in a world whose future is jeopardized by climate change.

At the same time, 70% of people say they are changing their behaviors to fight climate change. But when we dug deeper, we found that people might say, Sure, Ill give up my plastic straw or Ill carry my own bags to the grocery store, but theyre not willing to make any sacrifice thats inconvenient to them, Connelly says. In terms of electric vehicles, she and Ford hope that consumers lukewarm interest will heat up with a broader and more affordable portfolio of EVs. The all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E crossover, for instance, tells car buyers they can have beautiful design with zero emissions, she says. Its how we can meet consumers where they are.

The future of transportation, of course, is of prime interest to Ford. In looking at private ownership of cars, Connelly says, When we think about the future, there are signals to suggest that people are becoming less dependent on it. For instance, she says, 31% of Gen Z and millennial respondents say todays kids will not need to learn how to drive. And when asked about owning or sharing a vehicle, one in four among that age group said theyd rather use some sort of car-sharing option in the future, instead of owning a carassuming cost neutrality.

People love cars. Were enchanted by this romantic vision of putting the pedal to the metal. But the reality is that the average speed traveled around the world is about 30 miles per hour. When youre stuck in traffic, it comes down to thinking: Ive got better things to do with my time, Connelly says. And although the industry has suffered from bad publicity connected to self-driving technology, consumers acknowledge the fact that human error is the biggest factor in traffic accidents. Some 45% of consumers say they think theyll feel safer in a self-driving vehicle, and two-thirds of parents say theyd rather have their children driven in a self-driving vehicle than by a stranger.

Respondents expect more changes in their personal lives. Some 52% of Gen Zers and millennials believe that gender assignments will be gone within their lifetimeand 46% of that group say marriage will become an outdated concept by 2035. Among Gen Zers and millennials who dont yet have children, 27% say they dont want to have children, with 61% saying theyre just not interested in being a parent.

One final headline for marketers looking ahead to 2022: Connelly says brand values and purpose matter for consumers. Our relationships with brands can be really important when this chaos exists around us, she says. Brands can be a lighthouse in the storm. She goes on to say to marketers, The values of your brand and your organization are going to be increasingly important in terms of who wants to work for you, buy from you, be part of your supplier network. They need to know where you stand. For decades, people thought it was safe to stay on the sidelines during contentious political or religious or social debates. But today, people want to know your values. And when you find yourself caught in the crosshairs, brands dont have time to figure it out.

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Ford's futurist on consumer trends to watch in 2022 - AdAge.com