Latest AI Articles:

What would you do for a chance at immortality? Would you want to be immortal? Don't just give the quick answer. Think about the question for a moment. How would immortality change the face of humanity?

What is intelligence? Is it possible to create intelligence, and if so, what will be our role be as the stewards of what we create? Will our creation eventually come to dominate us? The ramifications of the creation and shaping of consciousness itself are impossible to understate, and it can be argued, to understand. It is an ethical question that is potentially vaster by orders of magnitude than any other question humanity has ever faced.

Bacteria Could be Used to Grow Healing Materials

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have tweaked bacteria, enabling it to grow living materials that may one day be used for healing purposes. Inspired by natural materials such as teeth and bone, the research team reprogrammed bacteria Escherichia colibacterial to excrete special proteins.  This allowed scientists to control the type of materials made by the bacteria. This technology could eventually lead to the development of self-healing materials that could detect damage and repair it.

In this episode, I interview Howard G. Zaharoff from Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton. With over 30 years in business law, intellectual property & technology  - Howard helps companies not only secure their assets from infringement but also secure various licensing & distribution channels and other strategic alliances.

The Atlantic razor clam has the ability to burrow vertically into the sand at a rapid pace, using very little energy. Inspired by this creature, Amos Winter, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT has developed a device known as the RoboClam, which can dig itself into the ground.

Dan Bacher has always been fascinated by two things: electrical engineering and neuroscience. While these interests may seem divergent, the synthesis of them led him to Brown University’s BrainGate Group, where he is the Senior Research and Development Engineer. Says Bacher, “applying technology to the area of neuroscience just always fascinated me.”

Researchers Develop Thinking Cap

In the not too distant future, you may be able to put on a real thinking cap to improve your ability to learn. A research team at Tennessee's Vanderbuilt University recently conducted a study that may help people wanting to increase their learning ability and may also help to treat medical conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia.

Remember Dolly the sheep? As the first mammal to be successfully cloned, Dolly created a firestorm of controversy, leading many governments to preemptively pass legislation banning human cloning. If nothing else, this proves that technology and ethics cannot be separated from each other. Though many ethicists argue that technology itself is inherently value neutral, being used by humans raises ethical considerations.

When it comes to complex tasks like building a house, many people with different skills work together to accomplish a single, larger goal. Instead of trying to create a perfect robot capable of building a house solo, could scientists replicate how humans function and make a “swarm” of imperfect robots capable of working together to accomplish complex tasks?

Dan Bacher is a Senior Research and Development Engineer at Brown University. He is also the Founder of the Speak Your Mind Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that emerged out of the BrainGate lab at Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital.