#SingularityHub

[media-bias-fact-check]

Daily Source Bias Check: SingularityHub

Daily Source Bias Check: SingularityHub

PRO-SCIENCE These sources consist of legitimate science or are evidence-based through the use of credible scientific sourcing.  Legitimate science follows the scientific method, is unbiased, and does not use emotional words.  These sources also respect the consensus of experts in the given scientific field and strive to publish peer-reviewed science. Some sources in this category may have a…

[renovatio06]

ChatGPT Can’t Think – Consciousness Is Something Entirely Different to Today’s AI | SingularityHub

Does brain activity correlates as measured by fMRIs really tell us all we need to know about how consciousness is facilitated by our brain? Apparently not, as Philip Goff explains in his piece on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and pondering, whether or not it might be considered “conscious”. Source: ChatGPT Can’t Think—Consciousness Is Something Entirely Different to Today’s AI And here’ another…

[cheshirecat-rabbit]

Researchers from Columbia University have demonstrated a new approach that can directly convert digital electronic signals into genetic data stored in the genomes of living cells. That could lead to a host of applications both for data storage and beyond, says Harris Wang, who led the research published in Nature Chemical Biology.

“Imagine having cellular hard-drives that can compute and physically reconfigure in real time,” he wrote in an email to Singularity Hub. “We feel that the first step is to be able to directly encode binary data into cells, without having to do in vitro DNA synthesis.

“This is perhaps the hardest part of all DNA storage approaches. If you can get the cells to directly talk to a computer, and interface its DNA-based memory system with a silicon-based memory system, then there are lots of possibilities in the future.”

The work builds on a CRISPR-based cellular recorder Wang had previously designed for E. coli bacteria, which detects the presence of certain DNA sequences inside the cell and records this signal into the organism’s genome.

The system includes a DNA-based “sensing module” that produces elevated levels of a “trigger sequence” in response to specific biological signals. These sequences are incorporated into the recorder’s “DNA ticker tape” to document the signal.

In this new work, Wang and colleagues adapted the sensing module to work with a biosensor developed by another team that reacts to electrical signals. Large populations of the bacteria were then placed in a device made up of a series of chambers that enabled the team to expose them to electrical signals.

When they applied a voltage, levels of the trigger sequence were elevated and recorded into the DNA ticker tape. Stretches with high proportions of trigger sequence were used to represent a binary “1” and their absence a “0,” allowing the researchers to directly encode digital information into the bacteria’s genome.

The amount of data that a single cell can hold is pretty small, just three bits. So the researchers devised a way to encode 24 separate populations of bacteria with different 3-bit chunks of data simultaneously for a total of 72 bits. They used this to encode the message “hello world!” into the bacteria, and showed that by sequencing the combined population and using a specially-designed classifier, they could retrieve the message with 98 percent accuracy.

[edgeperspectives]

Will Artificial Intelligence Become Conscious?

Are human beings creative enough to design adaptive self-organizing machines capable of consciousness?

[humanrightsconnected]

4 New Human Rights for When Our Brains Are Hooked Up to Computers

Rapid advancements in neuroscience and neurotechnology mean the human-machine mind meld - or singularity - isn't too far off. But what does this mean for our human rights? A neuroethicist and a human rights lawyer propose 4 new human rights to safeguard us from such technology.

[hkformalengwriting]

How Scientists Influenced Monkeys’ Decisions Using Ultrasound in Their Brains A few years ago, in a pitch black room at Stanford University, a monkey sat silently in his custom-made chair, utterly bewildered.

[transhumanitynet]

Simulation Hypothesis

Are we living in a simulated reality? Are we merely simulated quantum instances inside a holographic substrate? Is the cosmos an advanced computer simulation created by a future technologically mature human civilization? Who are the original simulators and what are they looking for? Could our reality be the product of a lonely quantum Artificially Intelligent machine stranded on the outer edges of our galaxy in the distant future? If we are inside of a simulation, does it even need a creator or could the digital simulation be a naturally emergent infinite fractal, with no beginning and no end?

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Watch my other videos

The Simulated Future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX9FY​…

Digital Twin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjJzC​…

Conscious Machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtq1G​…

Transhumanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8lE-​…

Dream Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33VoQ​…

Quantified Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMHDo​…

The future is a portal inward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpfwI​… Gray Scott is a futurist, philosopher, and artist. Gray is frequently interviewed by the Discovery Channel, History Channel, Forbes, CBS News, Vanity Fair, VICE MOTHERBOARD, Fast Company, The Washington Post, and SingularityHub.

Originally posted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZivDrWM1sbA

  Simulation Hypothesis was originally published on transhumanity.net

[script-a-world]

Do you have any existing examples of world building a future that's actually accurate and predictive of the future? Say, ones that have depicted the last 5 years with some accuracy but created over 15 years ago. Or perhaps some future ones that aren't extreme sci fi writing genetically modified humans with superpowers or time travel in the next 50 years.

Tex: The Simpsons sure did give things a go (Metro, Business Insider).

That said, I could throw out some arguments in the line of “100% predictions are plausibly from time-travellers and would skew the time-line, likely creating catastrophic effects on spacetime as we know it” or something, but that would very quickly derail your question.

More realistically, Star Trek did a damn good job on the technological front (The Portalist, Quartz), and their cultural impact has been so significant that there’s a wiki on it. In this instance, I would argue rather more that the genre of sci-fi in particular has inspired our current technological advances - when we have an idea posited to us, it no longer becomes “impossible”, merely “improbable”.

Humans have historically liked a good challenge (or on the flip-side, really dislike being told no), so I would say that eventually most sci-fi things are created by sheer stubbornness. A warp drive, for example, has been talked about since at least the 1960s, but we’re slowly getting there in terms of real-world development (ScienceAlert, Universe Today).

We might not have the superpowers thing down yet (though that might take some paradigm changes, re: quantum entanglement in the brain and related topics - let’s scale our expectations of a “superpower” gradually), but we do already have genetically modified humans. Germ-line therapies (also known as somatic gene therapy, ScienceDirect) have existed for a while, and have many ethical issues arising from it (SingularityHub, National Academy of Sciences).

I do my best to keep up with as many STEM fields as I can, but in the past decade we’ve had a boom in development - I think if you asked someone in 2000 what sort of scientific and technological developments would exist by 2020, a good half of them might be wrong due to the simple fact that many fields just didn’t exist.

Given how long it took us to posit the theory of cellphones (in 1917 by Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt), to how long the first commercially available mobile phone was sold (by Motorola in 1973) - never mind flip phones (first posited in 1964 by Star Trek: The Original Series, first seen in real life via the Motorola StarTAC in 1996) - I would challenge anyone to bring a concept from drawing board to production line within ten years and have it be a commercial success!

There’s approximately 46 listed fields of engineering in this wiki, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that seven out of ten of the largest STEM fields were computer related in 2017 - the first concept of the modern computer was by Alan Turing in 1937 (Wikipedia), the first realization of this concept was with the Ferranti Mark 1 in 1951 (Wikipedia), and the first mobile computer was the IBM 5100 in 1975 (Wikipedia) - between Alan Turing in 1937 and the job statistics of 2017, a full 80 years had passed. I won’t delve more into the details of things like the history of social media, the Dot-com bubble, or literally anything about the 2000s, but suffice to say:

Description: Exponential Growth in STEM? Articles Published Worldwide, 1900?2011. Source: SPHERE project database of SCIE publications (Thomson Reuters' Web of Science).

STEM is likely increasing at an exponential pace (ResearchGate). I don’t know whether this means we’ll see things like the Enterprise, a TARDIS, or even Spiderman within our lifetime, but I distinctly would not preclude their possibilities just because our literature and scientific experiments didn’t have a palatable success rate. We got cell phones and 3D printing! I’m sure humans might be able to see things like superpowered humans or time-travel eventually, if not in our lifetime.

Delta: I’d also recommend The Martian by Andy Weir if you haven’t read it. It’s not super advanced sci-fi, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s an extremely realistic look at near-future space travel and Mars missions (realistic in every way, that is, except for the privatization of the American space industry; Weir wrote publicly funded space travel, which is looking less and less likely to be the case).

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, is less sci-fi and more apocalypse/dystopia fiction, but takes a realistic, hard look at how humanity would actually react to an apocalypse, and is disturbingly familiar in 2020 (the main plot is a pandemic, so read with caution). Similarly, Octavia Butler wrote a great deal of similar future dystopia fiction; I’m particularly thinking of Parable of the Sower (warnings for rape, violence, riots, looting, etc.).

Mary Doria Russel’s The Sparrow is another good one. The timeline is a bit outdated, things didn’t happen as quickly as she thought, but her ideas about everything from space travel in asteroids to continuing violence in the middle east are more or less shaping up the way she predicted. She also takes a realistic look at what “first contact” would actually be like, as well as the actual ramifications of relative time caused by space travel. (While Russel is herself Jewish, Roman Catholic Christianity plays a very important role both thematically and in the plot, so this won’t be everyone’s cup of proverbial tea).

(On a related note, the movie Arrival by director Dennis Villeneuve is another sci-fi story that’s a very realistic (if somewhat trippy) look at “first contact,” but is set in the present day, rather than the future, so it’s not necessarily what you’re looking for, but I think very highly of it because of its realism and creative restraint, so it felt worth a mention.)

[xoiyoideas-blog]

Cuando tu hablas de tendencias.... when you talking about trends....When you think of trends.. 

vía #singularyhub

[kburrow]

Startup Time!! 1st day of lecture with a full class of enthusiastic to-be entrepreneurs at Keio University... a pure global and diverse group from 18 countries. Ready to learn business model innovation, design Thinking and value proposition design with an exponential mindset to create exponential value for X times growth #Singularityuniversity #bmgen #keio #singularityhub

[transcendtouch]

A new lightweight, flexible, and wirelessly-powered synthetic skin could soon change that. Developed at Northwestern University, the 15-centimeter-square patch can be stuck onto any part of the body and uses actuators that vibrate against the skin to simulate tactile sensations. ‘Virtual reality is a very important emerging area of technology,’ John Rogers, who co-led the research, said in a press release. 'Currently, we’re just using our eyes and our ears as the basis for those experiences. The community has been comparatively slow to exploit the body’s largest organ: the skin. Our sense of touch provides the most profound emotional connection between people.’

Gent, Edd. “Synthetic ‘Skin’ Is Bringing a Sense of Touch to Virtual Reality.” SingularityHub. November 25, 2019. https://singularityhub.com/2019/11/25/synthetic-skin-is-bringing-a-sense-of-touch-to-virtual-reality/.

[agentdavidjoseph]

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 31)

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 31)

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 31) — Read on singularityhub-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/singularityhub.com/2021/07/31/this-weeks-awesome-tech-stories-from-around-the-web-through-july-31/amp/

[johnpearcestuff]

Carbon Nanotube Transistors May Soon Give Waning Moore's Law a Boost https://singularityhub.com/2020/06/01/carbon-nanotube-transistors-may-soon-give-waning-moores-law-a-boost/#.XtY2T5Ap7MM.twitter via @singularityhub

[snapzuhealth]

Penicillin, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine, was a product of chance. After returning from summer vacation in September 1928, bacteriologist Alexander Fleming found a col… via Snapzu : Health & Body