Lifeboat Foundation

A futuristic plan for Shenzhen, China proposes self-driving car tunnels and drone-specific highway lanes.

“Be very, very afraid. As this extraordinary book reveals, we are fast sailing into an era in which big life-and-death decisions in war will be made not by men…and women, but by artificial intelligence” — @stavridisj’s review of @paul_scharre upcoming book Pre-order yours now:

A Pentagon defense expert and former U.S. Army Ranger explores what it would mean to give machines authority over the ultimate decision of life or death.

What happens when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Or when a weapon that can hunt its own targets is hacked? Although it sounds like science fiction, the technology already exists to create weapons that can attack targets without human input. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in emerging weapons technologies, draws on deep research and firsthand experience to explore how these next-generation weapons are changing warfare.

Continue reading “Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War” »

‘Google should not be in the business of war’: Over 3,000 employees pen letter urging CEO to pull out of the Pentagon’s controversial AI drone research, citing firm’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto…

More than 3,000 Google employees have penned an open letter calling upon the internet giant’s CEO to end its controversial ‘Project Maven’ deal.

Continue reading “Google employees pen letter denouncing controversial AI drone project” »

The Robots are Coming!

After taking over deliveries for 20 percent of rural Rwanda’s blood supply, Zipline is introducing its drone fleet to the rural United States.

Continue reading “Zipline’s Bigger, Faster Drones Will Deliver Blood in the United States This Year” »

O n the outskirts of Beijing, a policeman peers over his glasses at a driver stopped at a motorway checkpoint. As he looks at the man’s face, a tiny camera in one of the lenses of his glasses records his features and checks them with a national database.

The artificial intelligence-powered glasses are what Chinese citizens refer to as “black tech”, because they spot delinquents on the country’s “blacklist”. Other examples include robots for crowd control, drones that hover over the country’s borders, and intelligent systems to track behaviour online. Some reports claim the government has installed scanners that can forcibly read information from smartphones.

In the last two weeks, Facebook has been mired in a privacy storm in the UK and US over potential misuse of personal data. But such an event might baffle many in China, where the country’s surveillance culture eclipses anything Facebook has done.

Continue reading “No-limits China sets its sights on AI top spot” »

To ensure the safety of larger aircraft carrying pilots and passengers, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, can’t be flown higher than 400 feet so they don’t enter national airspace. Regulations in Russia, however, aren’t as strict, enabling drone pilot Denis Koryakin to fly his homebuilt, 2.3-pound craft to a staggering height of almost 33,000 feet.

For comparison, a 747 has a maximum ceiling of just over 45,000 feet, but most airliners will cruise at around the same altitude this tiny drone managed to reach. As amazing as the view is from 33,000 feet, it’s certainly a dangerous stunt and will get you in heaps of trouble in the US if you get caught. But Koryakin’s flight took place near the city of Strejevoï, in Siberia, which is notoriously frigid and sparsely populated. Russia also doesn’t appear to have any regulations on how high a drone can be flown, but hopefully stunts like this don’t become too commonplace.

[YouTube via DPReview].

Continue reading “Flying a Tiny Drone to a Staggering 33,000 Feet Gives You the Ultimate Bird’s-Eye View” »

Autonomous weapon bans (previously) are currently being debated, but in the meantime, the US Department of Defense continues work with its Perdix Micro-Drone project. Ostensibly for surveillance, it’s clear these could easily be modded with lethal weaponry.

F/A-18 Super Hornets deploy the drones, which can then perform a series of tactical maneuvers based on post-launch commands.

Elevation — How Drones Will Change Cities

Drones will transform cities, revolutionising how people travel, how goods are delivered and how buildings look and are constructed, according to a documentary by Dezeen.

Continue reading “Dezeen presents ELEVATION: a film about how drones will change cities” »

A previously-used Falcon 9 booster soared to life at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Sunday for its Static Fire test ahead of lifting the fifth set of Iridium-NEXT communications satellites on Thursday, marking the start of a string of Falcon 9 missions lined up for March and April. Liftoff is targeting 14:19 UTC on March 29 to boost the number of Iridium-NEXT satellites in orbit to 50 as the Virginia-based communications company continues pushing toward having the full Iridium-NEXT constellation in operation by the end of summer.

Sunday’s Static Fire test occurred near the opening of the day’s test window at 7 a.m. and was expected to run for seven seconds to exercise the nine previously-flown Merlin 1D engines of Booster 1041, gearing up for its second Low Earth Orbit mission. The booster was first in action for the third Iridium-NEXT mission in October 2017 and successfully returned via a Drone Ship landing in the Pacific Ocean as SpaceX has yet to conduct its first return-to-launch-site recovery from Vandenberg.