Artificial intelligence is not a threat, it’s a tool

AI

It’s a mistake to worry about us developing malevolent AI anytime soon.

Rodney Brooks – There has been several articles in the press recently, and several high profile people who are in tech but not AI, speculating about the dangers of malevolent AI being developed, and how we should be worried about that possibility. Should we be worried?

 

 

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Will robot brains catch up to human-level intelligence in 25 years?

robot brain

Computers are improving at an exponential rate.

Futurists started predicting that in just a few decades machines would be as smart as humans soon after computers evolved in the 1940’s. Every year, the prediction seems to get pushed back another year. The consensus now is that it’s going to happen in … you guessed it, just a few more decades.

 

 

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Here’s how time travel may actually be possible

time travel

For centuries, time travel’s been one of man’s wildest fantasies. It has been a popular trend in movies and fiction for a long time, inspiring everything from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine to the Charlton Heston shrine that is The Planet of the Apes. And with the opening of  the movie Interstellar—n0t to spoil anything—we’re about to fantasize about it even more. (Video)

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How the NFL uses Zebra Technologies’ RFID chips to track everything on the field but the ball

football

RFID tags can be found inside the uniforms of NFL players.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips are usually used as security tags on clothes in stores, but this year they can also be found inside the uniforms of NFL players. As the Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions descended upon London this weekend, accompanying them were executives from Zebra Technologies, the company behind the RFID-based motion tracking system that the league is implementing this season. (Video)

 

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The future of the auto industry

cars-future

Will the automobile keep its soul as the industry transforms itself?

At the 1964 New York World’s Fair automakers were center stage. General Motors exhibited the Firebird IV concept car. GM explained how it, “anticipates the day when the family will drive to the super-highway, turn over the car’s controls to an automatic, programmed guidance system and travel in comfort and absolute safety at more than twice the speed possible on today’s expressways.” Ford introduced a vehicle for the more immediate future: the Mustang. With an eye toward the segment that would later be named the baby boomers, the Ford Division’s general manager (a not-yet-40-year-old engineer named Lee Iacocca) explained that the car brought “total performance” to a “young America out to have a good time.” Ford estimated it would sell 100,000 Mustangs during that first year; in fact, it would sell more than 400,000.

 

 

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Health tech’s promise to patients – pay doctors for results, not treatment

healthtech

Thanks to technological advancements in health care, the industry has made remarkable progress in the understanding, detection and treatment of disease, in recent decades.  Given that the majority of Americans are healthy most of the time, one might expect that medical progress would dramatically reduce the cost of health care due to preventative education, early detection and more effective treatments.

 

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Cities using innovation and imagination in their infrastructure

louisville bridge

Louisville’s Big Four Bridge, built in 1895 and later known as “The Bridge to Nowhere,” reopened to pedestrian and bicycle traffic after a $30 million-plus renovation.

Ron Littlefield: Recently, I visited two cohort communities of the City Accelerator, a program sponsored in part by Governing, sister publication to Government Technology: Louisville and Nashville. I expect to be in the third city, Philadelphia, before the end of the year. The purpose of these visits is to meet face to face with the mayors and their principal innovation staff, to experience how their innovation efforts fit within the context of the community and to see how the City Accelerator project is affecting the overall climate for innovation. In simple terms, I want to sense the air of change and creativity in each place.

 

 

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