Week in Review - April 2nd

Hey there!

Hardly one week goes by without Elon Musk being in the news. This week he launched a new company and made history by reusing a rocket. I'm such a fan of this man. Such a role model!
He is founding companies in all different fields and even if he has no knowledge on the topic that's not a problem.. Have an idea? Just go for it! Articles, blogs, youtube is right there in the tips of your hand. Just do the work, within 6 months you can be anywhere.

On a personal side this week has been a very exciting and joyful week.
I'm up to some really interesting things that I look forwards to share with you. But first, let's have a look at the awesome stories of this week!

Hope this sparks good conversations. 

Wish you a wonderful Sunday!


SPACE

30th of March SpaceX made history by successfully relaunching and re-landing a used Falcon 9 rocket booster for the first time. SpaceX's orbital rocket system is already the most affordable in the world, but reusability could save companies more than $18 million per launch which is 30 % cheaper.

AI

Elon Musk just launched a company to merge your brain with a computer.
The company which is called Neuralink. Its ultimate goal is to create a series of devices that can be implanted in the human brain.  
"For a meaningful partial brain interface, I think we're roughly 4-5 years away" Elon Musk Says.
 

AUGMENTED HUMANS

Brain implants have allowed a quadriplegic to move his arm.
He used a system combining a brain-computer interface (BCI) and Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) technology to move his arms again just by thinking.
 

MEDICINE

Research shows that 40 % of all cancers are entirely preventable.
Scientists have published new research suggesting that up to 60% of cancers could be caused by random DNA mutations, rendering those cancers completely unavoidable. The other 40%, could be prevented via diet, exercise, and other environmental factors.

 

BIOLOGY

Researchers from Worcester Polytechnic create working heart tissue from a spinach leaf!!
Plants could eventually help us treat heart attack patients or others whose hearts have difficulty contracting.

PHYSICS

The U.N. Met To Negotiate A Complete, Global Ban on Nuclear Weapons.
This week, over 3,400 scientists came together in support the United Nations' nuclear ban negotiations, signing a document by the Future of Life that calls for a total disarmament. Notable signees include Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, and Daniel Dennett. More than 2,500 scientists from 70 countries have signed an open letter in support of the nuclear disarmament negotiations. Neuroscience professor and Nobel Laureate, Edvard Moser, believes nuclear weapons represent one of the biggest threats to our civilization.

SOCIETY


US Congress voted to allow internet providers to sell your browsing history/data.
 

ARCHITECTURE

Another skyscraper concept entered the news this week. Architects propose an insane skyscraper suspended from an orbiting asteroid.
Could we survive on it?

Skyscrapers of the future. You gotta check these out! I could definitely live in one of those, as long as it was co-living focused.

Dubai is going to be the home for the world's first 3D printed skyscraper. Construction firm Cazza Technologies is behind it.

INTERNET OF THINGS

Any surface can be a touch screen with this new device.

FUTURE OF FOOD


Impossible Foods  (looking like a real burger, having the texture as one and tasting like one - but is plant based) are ready to scale up and bought a huge factory in Oakland (!!) This new facility of 60,000 square feet will make 12 million pounds of plant based burgers a year.  By the end of the year they are aiming to be in 1000 restaurants all over US.
The “meat,” developed by a team led by former Stanford biochemistry professor Patrick Brown.

Still fancy "old-fashioned" meat? Why not chose Memphis Meats, it's the same meat you eat from the animal, the exception is that the animal is left out of the whole process. We are 5 years away from lab grown meat hitting store shelves. Its healthier, cheaper and way better for our planet.

CARS

You can now design your own car and change it as much as you want.

SingularityHubs Top 5 Picks of The Week

Week in Review - March 26th

There are way too many awesome stories around the web every week and especially this week I had a hard time picking. But I managed to choose a few things.

So, here we go. 

Hope this sparks good conversations.

SPACE

"I said YES immediately"
Stephen Hawking is going to outer space! This week Hawking accepted the invetation by Virgin Galactic to take him to space, for free. If there is one person I'd like to see going to space, of course he is the guy.
At 75 years of age, Hawking won’t be the oldest astronaut ever (that designation belongs to John Glenn, who went to space at the age of 77), but he will definitely be the first person to go to space with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis(ASL) disease.
"Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the people I admire most in the world, an undisputed genius who has opened our eyes to the wonders of the universe, while also happening to be a kind and delightful man. He is the only person I have given a free ticket with Virgin Galactic, and he is signed up to fly as a Future Astronaut with us if his health permits it." Sir Richard Branson says.

AUTOMATION

Swedish Startup Wheelys opens up its first test store in Shanghai, its the world's first unmanned Convenience Store.
No Clerks Required in World's First Unmanned Convenience Store
"The customer installs an app on their phone, which allows them to access the store. When inside they simply scan the bar code of the goods they want and upon leaving the store their credit card will be charged for their purchases. ...Much like Wheelys' strategy selling its bike-cafes, the company's ultimate goal is to license the technology so any retailer can integrate it into their pre-existing stores. In the company's words, "What Uber did for taxis, we do for retail."

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Google created an AI that can learn almost as fast as humans. 
Their method mimics the processes of learning that occur in human and animal brains.

MOSTLY HUMAN: Dead, IRL
If you could create a digital version of yourself to stick around long after you've died, would you want to?
If you've binged on all the episodes in Black Mirror you probably remember the one where the boyfriend dies and his girlfriend decides for a company to collect all his data and recreate his personality virtually. Well, not fiction anymore. This service exist in our reality too.
"In November 2015, Eugenia Kuyda's best friend Roman unexpectedly passed away. She created an experiment to bring parts of him back to life...Using artificial intelligence, she created a computerized chatbot based off his personality."


Chatbots are getting more and more real.

• A startup are creating humanly realistic virtual faces for their customer service chatbots. And they've also go the ability to read yours.
   
• Lonely? Hugging Face is another chatbot which apparently makes you feel you've got a friend.
   

IBM Infographics
I love the company IBM, to me it seems like they are in the forefront within every field, from machine learning, quantum computers, blockchain, medical research etc everything. 
This week Futurism published an infographic, so I give you the pleasure to check it out!

An emotionally intelligent computer might already have an EQ higher than yours.


EARTH & ENERGY

A river in New Zealand was just granted the same legal rights as a human being.

 

VIRTUAL REALITY

Disney Researchers Catch a Real Ball in Virtual Reality
Disney is in the forefront of technology and dedicated to Mixed Reality
Now Disney's researchers have made catching a real ball while immersed in VR possible.
"It's very difficult to convey touching something in the virtual world with physical feedback. But what if you could interact with real world objects that appear in the virtual world. Disney Research decided to carry out just such an experiment by asking the question: can you catch a real ball in virtual reality?"

You can now control your VR game with your brain waves

BLOCKCHAIN

Blockchain is helping us feed the poor.
"The World Food Programme (WFP) is using the Ethereum blockchain to securely and transparently distribute cash assistance to the hungry.
The WFP's pilot program, Building Blocks, is demonstrating how blockchain can empower humanitarian organizations to quickly and safely send aid to undeveloped nations."
Blockchain will revolutionize every industry. I'm certain of that.


BIOTECH

The world's firt head transplant will take place in December 2017..

MEDICINE

The Amazing Hela Cells
I found the story about the Hela cells great and important. And I can't help but wonder how come we didn't learn about this study in school. In fact, 

Breast Cancer
A new drug destroys breast cancer tumor within 11 days without the use of chemotherapy.

Longevity
An anti aging drug might be on the market within 2020. 

ROBOTICS

Animal cyborgs

SOCIETY

According to a recent study done by UN Norway is the happiest country in the world. Well I got lucky. I'm a citizen of this beautiful country but I'm not sure where all this happiness is, I'd rather say we are content. Perhaps thats also why we are not the most innovative country?

COMMUNICATION

Researchers created a new type of Li-fi system thats 100 times faster than Wi-fi. So, it might replace Wi-fi in not too long hopefully...

SingularityHubs Top 5 Picks of The Week

Communication Gets Easier With New Translation Tools

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Nooo more.

For as long as humans have existed communication across cultures and countries has been a challenge. Many times our only communication method has been interpretation of body language. Even though body language has 80 % to say in a conversation those last 20 % is pretty important if we don't speak the same language. It's such and unnecessary and sad barrier keeping us at a distance from each other.
There are roughly 6,500 languages in the world of today and only a few know english. Damn it has been hard to travel sometimes, I guess we all can sign up on that. 

But things are rapidly changing, more and more gadgets are entering the market helping us to fulfill this need. Because of this, some of us now have the opportunity to communicate clearly and efficiently in an instant. Live time. Great, huh!

However, hopefully there will be a universal language in the near future, preferably english..

Here are some of the gadgets thats available on the market now

Megaphonyaku is a translation service that uses a megaphone-shaped translator. For now it is only available to translate from Japanese to english, chinese and korean.

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Made by Megaphonyaku

• ili is the worlds first wearable translator for instant communication aimed towards travelers, it's created by the Japanese Company called Logbar. At the moment it only works with English, Japanese, and Chinese but more languages will be added over time. You have to sign up for a waiting list to get one. If you travel much to Asia, this might be the perfect tool for you.

• Waverly Labs is developing an earbud translator. It's called Pilot and it's the world’s first smart earpiece language translator available in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English next May 2017. The founder fell in love with a french girl and this is how the idea crossed his mind.
  Waverly Lab is a tech startup in NYC at the convergence of wearable technology and machine translation. 
  

• Good old Google Translate is also getting better with AI and can translate more and more languages. Google can also translate voice to text in controlled environments.

• Skype also has instant translation

• There are also several apps, for instance this Translator App
   
• In Ear Computers translates to 40 languages in real time !

Week In Review - March 19th

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South By South West, an annual festival that should be high up on priority if you are interested in tech and future, music and film. Latest news and the pioneers in the field will be there.

Hope this weekly wrap-up sparks great conversations!

The annual SXSW was held in Austin this week, which is one of the ultimate festivals to go to. Ive been wanting to go for years but it's way to expensive if you dont travel for business purpose. I have a goal to be able to go there in 2018.
Haven't heard of it? Well you should definitely put that on the map travel destination if you are into tech, film and music. Its a massive festivals and the whole of California camp in Austin for a week to participate and get an update on the latest news in the field and where we are heading. If you are working on something, this is the best place to go to show case. Luckily many of the talks were live streamed so if you have some time, go watch a few!

Want more in dept information and news? Sign up to my weekly newsletter!

Space

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China unveils working on a rocket that will land people on the moon by the early 2020s
Their announcement comes shortly after the US announced plans to fly two private citizens around the Moon by late 2018, under private aerospace company SpaceX.
China is working to develop a new spaceship that can both fly in low-Earth orbit and land on the moon.

NASA release the first images of the Trappist-1s planets
The Earth Like planet was discovered by the Kepler telescope as part of its K2 mission.

AI

At the SXSW he announced for the masses that the singularity will take place in 2045 and human level intelligence will be reached by 2029. For people who's been diving into Ray Kurzweils material this is nothing new, but now it seems to have been picked up by the masses as its been all over the news. 
The Singularity happens when the Artificial Intelligence in machines surpass human intelligence.
He us super optimistic, and so am I :)

Sustainable Energy

We can officially collect solar energy without solar panels.
Science has now figured out a molecular "leaf" that can harvest sun power.
The molecular leaf is the most efficient method of carbon reduction to date.

Lab Grown Chicken by Memphis Meats, one of the many startups focusing on lab grown meat production. The firm's approach to what it calls “clean meat” is to culture animal cells in the lab, feed them nutrients until they grow into pieces large enough to cook and eat. Fried chicken might never be guilt-free. But you may soon be able to remove at least part of the remorse the next time you chow down, because it might not have required a single bird to be harmed.

Biology

Scientist are fully close to creating a fully human genome by the end of the year.
Prior to this announcement, the team had been able to completely synthesize one of yeast’s 16 chromosomes. And now they have discovered 5 more. They say they’re on track to finish the remaining ten chromosomes to form a completely synthetic genome by the end of this year.

DNA-editing
“What if a cell’s DNA could be edited just like the text of a document so that you could actually erase letters, you could erase whole sentences, [you could] replace sentences, and you could do things that would enable scientists to change the mutations that might cause genetic disease, make changes that allow us to understand the function of DNA and different kinds of organisms and perhaps, enable us to really direct the way that organisms are evolving on the planet?”
Watch Jennifer Doudna's talk at SXSW

Medicine

It's now possible to detect cancer through a blood test.
It screens the DNA through dying blood cells which then detects tumor and where it is.

Nanotech gets smaller and smaller, so the nano boots get better and better. Swimming in your bloodstream and entering molecules and cells. Pretty amazing. Read a detailed article about it here.

Assisted suicide? This roller coaster will make you die blissful.

Please make these ambulance drones mainstream asap!

Fashion-tech

The Levis and Google collaboration has been released. It's a smart denim jacked where you can answer calls and lower the volume and etc..
The future of wearable is no more devices but its smart clothes.
 

Automation

An AI just completed 360 000 hours of finance work in seconds.
In June, JP Morgan Chase & Co, the biggest bank in US, started implementing a program called COIN, which is short for Contract Intelligence. COIN runs on a machine learning system that’s powered by a new private cloud network that the bank uses.
The Bank has more than 240 000 employees, some of those employees are lawyers and loan officers who spend a total of 360,000 hours each year. Now, the company has managed to cut the time spent on this work down to a matter of seconds using machine learning.

Here is the weekly sum-up video of this weeks happenings by Singularity Hub!
 

The first AI Art Director

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Yep it has happened, yep it is a fact. AI is eating its way through all of our professions from lawyers(Ross) to account workers, factory workers, to surgeons and now, yep, already occupying a creative profession. Which people did not see coming. Or perhaps, didn't want to see coming? The first Robot was just hired as an Art Director. Yep an Ad company now has the word's first AI Creative Director. (Awesome right? At least I think so) The company's name is McCann Japan and the employer is Shum Matsuzaka who wanted to test his personal theory that an Artificial Intelligence could serve as the creative director of a television commercial.

People have been saying that an AI won't be able to do art. That no one can do art as humans do. Meaning it won't be good. Cause machines doesn't have feelings and compassion and art is all about expressing humanly sensations and experiences. Well, that has always left me a bit puzzled with the thoughts of well is that really entirely true? How come they are so staunchly certain of that? Even though an AI wont have feelings to begin with it doesn't mean it can't be creative, does it? And how do they know that an AI won't get feelings? Creativity isn't something that only belongs to humans is it? No, we see it in other animals as well, so they mean it only belongs to biological beings? I think its just another excuse, just another way of resistance of what the future beholds.
Resisting by believing we are the special ones, the kings of the world. That we, we are the holy creators(?). Well, here is one for you, humans estimated average IQ is 100. Do you know where AI will end up in a few decades? With an AI of 10.000+. So it will en up with trillions times trillions times trillions times ++++++++++ in IQ because of the moores law. We will never beat that? Will we? Are we really that special? If you say we are you are living in denial. You honestly say pretty clear that you can't cope with change. Well, it's a fact. So the arrival of the first AI Creative Director has come, and guess what, by the two of those commercials added in the article to distinct human made and AI made, the AI one is the one I remember, sadly I can't even remember what the other one was about. So, the dooms day of humans in creative professions is not as far away either..
The future is inevitable, we will be newbies all of us, for ever. AI is here to stay, and wipe out all of our professions related to productivity, creativity, production and efficiency.
Acceptance is the only way to continue on a good path.

Can you guess which one was made by the AI Art Director and which one was human made? 

It's the first one, later today, think which one you happen to remember, the one you remember will always be the best ad.

Week in Review - March 12

This week has been as educational, eye-opening and inspirational as usual.
Hope this post will spark some great conversations! If you'd like more of the weekly goodies and news sign up for my weekly newsletter to get a good read!

Space

Congress passes an act requiring NASA to get humans to Mars by 2033. With this transformative development, the space agency got a lot more than just $19.508 billion in funding. They also got a very clear mandate: Get humanity to Mars.

Robotics

Humans can now scold a robot with their minds.
It's no longer only our body we can control with our thoughts but now also machines.
MIT developed a system to instantly tell a robot when it makes an error through brainwaves.

Automation

The Burger-Grilling Robot And Kitchen Assistant "FLIPPY" by Miso Robotics was introduced to us this week. CEO and co-founder David Zito says, 'We focus on using AI and automation to solve the high pain points in restaurants and food prep. That’s the dull, dirty and dangerous work around the grill, the fryer, and other prep work like chopping onions. The idea is to help restaurants improve food quality and safety without requiring a major kitchen redesign.'"

Automation

An AI just completed 360 000 hours of finance work in seconds.
In June, JP Morgan Chase & Co, the biggest bank in US, started implementing a program called COIN, which is short for Contract Intelligence. COIN runs on a machine learning system that’s powered by a new private cloud network that the bank uses.
The Bank has more than 240 000 employees, some of those employees are lawyers and loan officers who spend a total of 360,000 hours each year. Now, the company has managed to cut the time spent on this work down to a matter of seconds using machine learning.

3D printing

In just 24 hours a 38 m2 house was 3D printed with the cost of only $10.000.

Biology

Scientist have grown the first synthetic self-developing embryo.
A team of scientists from the University of Cambridge were able to synthesize mice embryos outside the womb. With the use of embryonic stem cells, developmental biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and her team at the University of Cambridge were able to replicate a living mouse embryo.

Cybersecurity

WikiLeaks Releases Trove of Alleged C.I.A. Hacking Documents
"The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first installment in a larger collection of secret C.I.A. material, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments, many of them partly redacted by WikiLeaks editors to avoid disclosing the actual code for cyberweapons. The entire archive of C.I.A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, the group claimed."

Future Society

The area of ownership is over. In the 20th century we got used to a certain way of thinking: if you needed something, you bought it. We are exponentially moving away from that, and that will be good for both us and the environment.

Environment

Tesla Unveils an Enormous Solar Farm to Replace 1.6M Gallons of Fuel a Year 
Tesla has plans for a solar plant in Kauai, Hawaii. The Kauai plant, commissioned by the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, includes a 13 megawatt SolarCity solar farm and a 52 megawatt-hour battery installation. 

Environment

A New Clean Energy Record Was Just Set in the U.S. For the first time ever, a North American power grid produced over half its energy from wind power.

Tech Gadgets

The Return of the 3310. The Iconic Nokia 3310 mobile phone is back. Will you buy it?
The price range will be around $49. It will be available in a few months, you can pre-registrer here. 

Mixed Reality

I'd love to check out this exploration game from Doraemon in VR.