The myth of “being forever young” goes back as long as we can trace human history, but that does not make it anymore true, actually, having been pursued for so long with no effect might cast a serious doubt on the hope of fulfilling that desire. Yet, if we look …
Read More »The convergence of Humans and Machines
Technology is not just evolving our machines, it is creating a bridge between us and them. Bio-Interfaces are enabling seamless communications between our body, our mind, and machines. This is clearly being exploited by better prosthetics that fit naturally to replace a lost functionality as well as future prosthetics that …
Read More »The evolution of … Machines
The Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative has completed its first WhitePaper (it will become available through the SAS website by the middle of November once the cleaning up is complete). It is an interesting document and in its concluding remarks it shows the possible, expected, evolution of machines towards awareness over …
Read More »Who is in charge?
We are used to amazing sights, like the one in the picture with thousands of starlings performing complex choreographies and we are temped to ask ourselves who is in charge for that? Is there a “master” starling directing the choreography? Similarly if we look at a swarm of bees. The …
Read More »Humans not needed …Inflection point?
A Google team has published a paper on Nature describing the new generation of AlphaGo. Well, the very name of the new generation is significant: AlphaGo Zero. One would have expected that the new generation would have been named “Old + 1”, yet they decided to start from scratch and …
Read More »Leveraging on bacteria to build sensors
Living beings are amazing builders: they build themselves in many ways, mixing organic and inorganic substances to create constructions that are extremely well suited to fit and operate in a given environment. More than that: they do that using very little energy, far less than what we would use with …
Read More »Lending your brain to a robot
Leonardo (daVinci) is a robot that has been in use for quite a while allowing surgeons to perform operations that go beyond their “physical” capability. With Leonardo a surgeon can make incisions at the sub mm level, suture capillaries and so on. This feat is made possible on the one hand …
Read More »How would you like an extra hand?
I have often wished I could have an extra hand as I was doing some manual work at home, and probably that happened to you too. It was clearly an impossible wish, but technology seems to be on the way to grant us that wish, as it did with many …
Read More »Life 3.0
In my search for information relevant to the recently launched Symbiotic Autonomous Systems Initiative I stumbled onto a fascinating book written by Max Tegmark, Life 3.0. When discussing on life from a scientific point of view the first question coming to the fore is what is meant by life, in …
Read More »Cybathlon: symbiotic automous systems competing for gold
Brain Computer Interfaces and interfaces between muscles and computers have reached the stage of usability for patients. Although a lot of research is still needed, and a lot is going on, several patients disabled by various trauma or diseases are now able to augment their functionalities reaching in several cases …
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