If you have not read “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks” and “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk“, I recommend reading them. They are excellent book chapters from SIAI Research Fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky, forthcoming in the edited volume Global Catastrophic Risks from Oxford University Press (Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic eds.). If you do not have time to read both, I recommend reading the conclusion of the first, repeated below, and reading the second in its entirety.
The paper shows that it is not possible to make a self-replicating quantum mechanical device because of the linearity of quantum mechanics, the no cloning theorems and the conservation of entanglement. The unitariness of quantum mechanics is not very favorable towards replication: a real replicator needs to convert arbitrary states into states corresponding to a copy, but quantum mechanics is information preserving. We need decoherence to replicate. Presumably one could construct an approximative replicator that does not achieve perfect self-replication but only “good enough” replication (the Patil paper shows that one can make a replicator that produces a finite number of generations, and mentions the possibility of indeterministic replicators).
To some, it seems “obvious” that significant human intelligence augmentation will come before human-level AI. To others, it’s the reverse that’s obvious. I don’t think either is obvious, but I believe there’s a strong likelihood AI will come first.
3D images of individual molecules may soon be possible thanks to a breakthrough in holography by Swiss scientists. The technique would be useful to biologists interested in how the shapes of proteins and other components of life relate to their function.
Scientists working to build a life form from scratch have applied to patent the broad method they plan to use to create their “synthetic organism”.
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The J Craig Venter Institute’s US patent application claims exclusive ownership of a set of essential genes and a synthetic “free-living organism that can grow and replicate” made using those genes.
India’s largest automaker is set to start producing the world’s first commercial air-powered vehicle. The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine’s pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets in August of 2008.
“The name of the game is simply to saturate strategic targets with missile firepower in order to render the Patriots and other defenses useless,” said Hassan Fahs, a journalist and political analyst based here.
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In the past few months, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has shown off new weapons in testing or deployment: ballistic missiles such as Scud variants and the Shihab-3, anti-ship cruise missiles such as the Chinese C-802 and Silkworm, a new high-speed torpedo and spying drones. Guards troops displayed several of the weapons in war games in the past few months, and broadcast on local TV channels and some government-run Web sites what it called UAV-shot footage of the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier.
Posted by olepetergalaasen
Posted by olepetergalaasen
Posted by olepetergalaasen
