Autonomous cars are set to take over the world’s roads, transforming the way we travel.
Leading the pack is Robocar, a futuristic self-driving electric vehicle from British start-up Roborace.
Roborace demonstrated its robot’s capabilities by taking the car to 282.42 km/h (175.49 mph) – an average confirmed by the UK Timing Association – at RAF Elvington, Yorkshire, UK, claiming the record for fastest autonomous car.
‘You can enjoy having the car to yourself’
Waymo, the self-driving division of Alphabet, is about to put more passengers its fully driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans. The company emailed its customers in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, to let them know that “completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way.” It’s a sign that Waymo is growing confident enough in its technology to increase the frequency at which it allows passengers to ride in autonomous vehicles without a safety driver behind the wheel.
Continue reading… “Waymo tells riders that ‘completely driverless’ vehicles are on the way”
The theory of Dunbar’s number holds that we can only really maintain about 150 connections at once. But is the rule true in today’s world of social media?
If you’ve ever been romantically rejected by someone who just wanted to be friends, you may have delivered a version of this line: “I’ve got enough friends already.” Your implication, of course, being that people only have enough emotional bandwidth for a certain number of buddies.
It turns out that’s not just an excuse. There are well-defined limits to the number of friends and acquaintances the average person can retain. But the question about whether these limits are the same in today’s digital world – one in which it’s common to have social media profiles, or online forums, with thousands of followers – is more complicated.
Continue reading… “Dunbar’s number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships”
Detail from The Fountain of Youth (1546) by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Courtesy Wikipedia
Immortality has gone secular. Unhooked from the realm of gods and angels, it’s now the subject of serious investment – both intellectual and financial – by philosophers, scientists and the Silicon Valley set. Several hundred people have already chosen to be ‘cryopreserved’ in preference to simply dying, as they wait for science to catch up and give them a second shot at life. But if we treat death as a problem, what are the ethical implications of the highly speculative ‘solutions’ being mooted?
Of course, we don’t currently have the means of achieving human immortality, nor is it clear that we ever will. But two hypothetical options have so far attracted the most interest and attention: rejuvenation technology, and mind uploading.
Continue reading… “What are the ethical consequences of immortality technology?”
The rate at which a startup grows has long been a big determinant of startup success. While growth matters, over 70% of startups fail because of premature scaling. This finding and 10 more listed below will help you make wiser decisions based on previous failures, successes and data-backed conclusions.
Continue reading… “11 surprising and insightful statistics about startups”
“What are the odds that these animals contain the tastiest, most nutritionally rich food offerings?”
The term “cultivated meat” is industry’s preferred language for the admittedly unappetizing-sounding “lab-grown meat,” and it has the potential to actually change the world.
This lab-grown meat could reduce the various impacts of raising animals for slaughter, which is the second-largest source of global warming emissions, as well as save sentient beings from needless cruelty.
The technology behind cultivating meat involves taking stem cells from the muscle of a living animal, which are then fed a serum rich in nutrients. This causes the cells to proliferate and transform into muscle cells. That’s when lab technicians step in and encourage these multiplying cells to take shape and form fibers. The fibrous material is then placed in a vat, which provides the ideal conditions to stimulate growth. Eventually, the tissue grows to the point where it can be cooked and eaten.
Voila, you’ve got yourself a lab-grown hamburger.
Continue reading… “Lab-grown meat also creates an unexpected benefit: Ethical zebra burgers”
Production of lithium batteries for environmentally friendly electric cars future of energy
While solar and wind power are rapidly becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in areas with lots of sun and wind, they still can’t provide the 24/7 power we’ve become used to. At present, that’s not big a problem because the grid still features plenty of fossil fuel plants that can provide constant baseload or ramp up to meet surges in demand.
But there’s broad agreement that we need to dramatically decarbonize our energy supplies if we’re going to avoid irreversible damage to the climate. That will mean getting rid of the bulk of on-demand, carbon-intensive power plants we currently rely on to manage our grid.
Alternatives include expanding transmission infrastructure to shuttle power from areas where the wind is blowing to areas where it isn’t, or managing demand using financial incentive to get people to use less energy during peak hours. But most promising is pairing renewable energy with energy storage to build up reserves for when the sun stops shining.
The approach is less complicated than trying to redesign the grid, say the authors of a new paper in <emJoule, but also makes it possible to shift much more power around than demand management. A key question that hasn’t been comprehensively dealt with, though, is how cheap energy storage needs to get to make this feasible.
Continue reading… “How cheap must batteries get for renewables to compete with fossil fuels?”
HireVue claims it uses artificial intelligence to decide who’s best for a job. Outside experts call it ‘profoundly disturbing.’
This video by HireVue explains the tech firm’s artificial intelligence-driven assessments for potential job candidates. (HireVue)
An artificial intelligence hiring system has become a powerful gatekeeper for some of America’s most prominent employers, reshaping how companies assess their workforce — and how prospective employees prove their worth.
Designed by the recruiting-technology firm HireVue, the system uses candidates’ computer or cellphone cameras to analyze their facial movements, word choice and speaking voice before ranking them against other applicants based on an automatically generated “employability” score.
HireVue’s “AI-driven assessments” have become so pervasive in some industries, including hospitality and finance, that universities make special efforts to train students on how to look and speak for best results. More than 100 employers now use the system, including Hilton and Unilever, and more than a million job seekers have been analyzed.
Continue reading… “A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job”
‘This achievement is the result of years of research and the dedication of many people,’ Google engineering director Hartmut Neven said in a blog post
(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it’s built a computer that’s reached “quantum supremacy,” performing a computation in 200 seconds that would take the fastest supercomputers about 10,000 years.
The results of Google’s tests, which were conducted using a quantum chip it developed in-house, were published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.
“This achievement is the result of years of research and the dedication of many people,” Google engineering director Hartmut Neven said in a blog post. “It’s also the beginning of a new journey: figuring out how to put this technology to work. We’re working with the research community and have open-sourced tools to enable others to work alongside us to identify new applications.”
The idea behind quantum computing is to exponentially improve the processing speed and power of computers to be able to simulate large systems, driving advances in physics, chemistry and other fields. Rather than storing information in binary 0s or 1s like classical computers, quantum computers rely on “qubits”, which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously, dramatically increasing the amount of information that can be encoded.
Speaking at a quick series of interviews with commercial space companies at this year’s annual International Astronautical Congress, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell shed a little more light on her company’s current thinking with regards to the mission timelines for its forthcoming Starship spacefaring vehicle. Starship, currently in parallel development at SpaceX’s South Texas and Florida facilities, is intended to be an all-purpose successor to, and replacement for, both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, with a higher payload capacity and the ability to reach the Moon and eventually Mars.
“Aspirationally, we want to get Starship to orbit within a year,” Shotwell said. “We definitely want to land it on the Moon before 2022. We want to […] stage cargo there to make sure that there are resources for the folks that ultimately land on the Moon by 2024, if things go well, so that’s the aspirational time frame.”
That’s an ambitious timeline, and as Shotwell herself repeatedly stated, these are “aspirational” timelines. In the space industry, as well as in tech, it’s not uncommon for leadership to set aggressive schedules in order to drive the teams working on projects to work at the limits of what’s actually possible. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is also known for working to timelines that often don’t match up with reality, and Shotwell alluded to Musk’s ambitious goal setting as a virtue in another part of her onstage interview at IAC.
Google’s Sycamore chip powers a quantum computer
The era of practical quantum computers has begun — at least on one speed test showing “quantum supremacy.”
A Google quantum computer has far outpaced ordinary computing technology, an achievement called quantum supremacy that’s an important milestone for a revolutionary way of processing data. Google disclosed the results in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The achievement came after more than a decade of work at Google, including the use of its own quantum computing chip, called Sycamore.
“Our machine performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output,” Google researchers said in a blog post about the work.
Continue reading… “Google quantum computer leaves old-school supercomputers in the dust”
Mobile-accessible cryptocurrency, AI and ML oversight, blockchain to counter deepfake technology and an Internet of Behavior are all among the predictions for the near future.
Technology is creating ever-changing expectations for people, and Gartner’s top predictions for 2020 reflect these new challenges.
The predictions were revealed at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2019 in Orlando, which runs through October 24. More than 9,000 IT leaders and CIO’s are in attendance at the conference.
“Technology is changing the notion of what it means to be human,” said Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president and Gartner Fellow. “As workers and citizens see technology as an enhancement of their abilities, the human condition changes as well. CIOs in end-user organizations must understand the effects of the change and reset expectations for what technology means.”
Continue reading… “Gartner’s top 10 strategic predictions for 2020”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.