Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief

• Your thoughts are your own, right? Perhaps not. New technology is bringing that day closer when the unscrupulous may actually be able to hack human thoughts.
• It raises a number of new ethical concerns for this brave new world we’re entering with each rotation of the Earth.

Everyone is familiar with the concept of hacking. It is why we all strive to protect our computers and smartphones from nefarious outside sources trying to break in to steal information, implant malware, etc. Hackers pose a threat to everyone from teenage smartphone users to the computer databases of government organizations. Hacking is a threat that we are all familiar with, and something that many know how to protect against. But, as the line between science and science fiction blurs, even hacking is getting a futuristic upgrade. Recently, at the Enigma Security Conference, University of Washington researcher and lecturer Tamara Bonaci revealed technology that could be used to essentially “hack” into people’s brains.

She created this technology around a game called Flappy Whale. While people played the game, the technology was able to covertly extract neural responses to subliminal imagery in the game like logos, restaurants, cars, etc. Now, hacking into people’s underlying feelings and thoughts about seeing a fast food restaurant doesn’t seem like it could cause much harm, but this technology has the potential to gather much more intimate information about a person like their religion, fears, prejudices, health, etc. This technology could evolve from an interesting way to understand human response to a military device. The possibilities range from an incredibly useful research tool to a potentially frightening interrogation device.

Continue reading “Hacking the Human Brain—New Tech Could Make It a Reality” »

(Credit: NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts)

By Brent Ziarnick, Peter Garretson, Everett Dolman, and Coyote Smith

President-elect Donald Trump often says that Americans no longer dream and must do so again. Nowhere can dreams be more inspiring and profitable than in space. But today, expanding space enterprise is not foremost on the minds of Americans or military strategists. As a recent CNN special showed, defense thinkers feel embattled in space, focused on protecting our existing investments rather than developing new ones that seize strategic advantage.

Artificial intelligence boosters predict a brave new world of flying cars and cancer cures. Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords. Veteran AI scientist Eric Horvitz and Doomsday Clock guru Lawrence Krauss, seeking a middle ground, gathered a group of experts in the Arizona desert to discuss the worst that could possibly happen — and how to stop it.

Their workshop took place last weekend at Arizona State University with funding from Tesla Inc. co-founder Elon Musk and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. Officially dubbed “Envisioning and Addressing Adverse AI Outcomes,” it was a kind of AI doomsday games that organized some 40 scientists, cyber-security experts and policy wonks into groups of attackers — the red team — and defenders — blue team — playing out AI-gone-very-wrong scenarios, ranging from stock-market manipulation to global warfare.

Horvitz is optimistic — a good thing because machine intelligence is his life’s work — but some other, more dystopian-minded backers of the project seemed to find his outlook too positive when plans for this event started about two years ago, said Krauss, a theoretical physicist who directs ASU’s Origins Project, the program running the workshop. Yet Horvitz said that for these technologies to move forward successfully and to earn broad public confidence, all concerns must be fully aired and addressed.

Continue reading “AI Scientists Gather to Plot Doomsday Scenarios (and Solutions)” »

Should the US be concerned when China tells us that our F35s are already obsolete to their own next generation fighter jets now that China has their new radar capability that can detect stealth technology 100 km away?

CHINA claims it has a radical new ‘quantum’ radar capable of detecting stealth fighters at great distances. Does this mean our ultra-expensive new F-35 is obsolete, even before we get it?

The RAAF’s first F-35’s will be making their debut Australian appearance at the Avalon air show this week. It’s not a combat-capable aircraft, yet, though the first partially operational US squadron of the type was deployed to Japan earlier this year.

Continue reading “China claims our to-be-delivered F35s are already obsolete” »

Chinese scientists build the world’s longest range quantum radar, foolproof against stealth aircraft- so far in laboratories.

Congrats Dr. Happer.

I’ve been waiting to find out who will be Pres. Trump’s science adviser. It appears to be physicist Dr. William Happer, a physicist currently teaching at Princeont University, and former Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science from 1991–1993. He’s no slouch as a scientist. His work for the Air Force on the sodium guidestar laser platform for the military’s missile defense program provided information on the tropopause layer in the upper atmosphere, which is where atmospheric wave fronts distort both starlight and laser emissions, and where heat either begins to leak into space or does not, depending on how much and what kind of gas is blocking heat radiation.

The tropopause is the boundary between the troposphere, where we live and where weather takes place, and the stratosphere. The layers above that are the stratosphere, where stratocirrus clouds form as floating clouds of ice, the mesosphere, the thermosphere and the top, very thin layer, the exosphere. Beyond that is space.

Continue reading “Pres. Trump Chooses Science Advisor” »

The wave of automation that swept away tens of thousands of American manufacturing and office jobs during the past two decades is now washing over the armed forces, putting both rear-echelon and front-line positions in jeopardy.

“Just as in the civilian economy, automation will likely have a big impact on military organizations in logistics and manufacturing,” said Michael Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor and one of the globe’s foremost experts on weaponized robots.

Not too shock by this given other transplant patient’s stories of memories, etc.

There are a lot of outrageous claims being made within the halls of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Whether exaggerations, wishful thinking, the dreams of the egocentric and megalomaniacal to be immortal, or just drumming up funding for a never-ending round of “scientific investigation,” the year 2045 seems to always be cited as a target date.

Continue reading “Company Claims Brain Transplants Could Bring Back the Dead by 2045” »

Could bionic eyes restore sight to the blind and give the U.S. military super sight?

Bionic implanted eyeballs, “Star Trek”-style visors, telescopic contact lenses … these are just a few of the many exciting projects underway to both restore and provide enhanced sight.

Significant strides have been made in tech that will restore and transform lives — replacing white canes, service animals, braille machines and more for the visually impaired.

Continue reading “‘Bionic’ eye on the future: From ‘Star Trek’ visors to ‘Mission Impossible’ contact lenses” »