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In January, new reports on Apple’s long-awaited augmented reality/virtual reality headset were released. And if what’s in these reports is even partially true, Apple is poised to give the world one of the most jaw-dropping, powerful pieces of technology in history (again) — which is why it was a bit surprising that this news didn’t make more of a splash.

This is the same company that has fans enter lotteries for tickets to corporate keynote addresses! Yet, outside of the usual tech blogs and a few newspaper columns, the future of Apple’s AR/VR device went largely unnoticed.

In Silicon Valley, some of the brightest minds believe a universal basic income (UBI) that guarantees people unrestricted cash payments will help them to survive and thrive as advanced technologies eliminate more careers as we know them, from white collar and creative jobs — lawyers, journalists, artists, software engineers — to labor roles. The idea has gained enough traction that dozens of guaranteed income programs have been started in U.S. cities since 2020.

Yet even Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and one of the highest-profile proponents of UBI, doesn’t believe that it’s a complete solution. As he said during a sit-down earlier this year, “I think it is a little part of the solution. I think it’s great. I think as [advanced artificial intelligence] participates more and more in the economy, we should distribute wealth and resources much more than we have and that will be important over time. But I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem. I don’t think that’s going to give people meaning, I don’t think it means people are going to entirely stop trying to create and do new things and whatever else. So I would consider it an enabling technology, but not a plan for society.”

Continue reading “We all contribute — should we get paid for that?” »

Make a template based on a 1980s virtual reality game, create 25 AI characters, give them personalities and histories, equip them with memory, and throw in some ChatGPT—and what do you get?

A pretty impressive representation of a functioning society with compelling, believable human interactions.

That’s the conclusion of six computer scientists from Stanford University and Google Research who designed a Sims-like environment to observe the daily routines of inhabitants of an AI-generated virtual town.

My latest Opinion piece:

I possibly cheated on my wife once. Alone in a room, a young woman reached out her hands and seductively groped mine, inviting me to engage and embrace her. I went with it.

Twenty seconds later, I pulled back and ripped off my virtual reality gear. Around me, dozens of tech conference goers were waiting in line to try the same computer program an exhibitor was hosting. I warned colleagues in line this was no game. It created real emotions and challenged norms of partnership and sexuality. But does it really? And who benefits from this?

Continue reading “Don’t Bash Digisexuality. For Some, It Brings Hope” »

The novel optical hologram creating method is three orders of magnitude better than the current ways.

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a new method for creating realistic 3D holographic projections, which is three orders of magnitude better than the current state-of-the-art technology.

The study on the ultrahigh-density method for producing realistic holograms was published in the peer-reviewed journal Optica. Led by Lei Gong, the team developed a new approach to holography that overcame some of the long-standing limitations of current digital holographic techniques.

Continue reading “New method for producing realistic holograms could enhance virtual reality” »

Researchers in New York developed a virtual reality maze for mice in an attempt to demystify a question that’s been plaguing neuroscientists for decades: How are long-term memories stored?

What they found surprised them. After forming in the hippocampus, a curved structure that lies deep within the brain, the mice’s memories were actually rooted through what’s called the anterior thalamus, an area of the brain that scientists haven’t typically associated with memory processing at all.

“The thalamus being a clear winner here was very interesting for us, and unexpected,” said Priya Rajasethupathy, an associate professor at Rockefeller University and one of the coauthors of a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cell this week. The thalamus “has often been thought of as a sensory relay, not very cognitive, not very important in memory.”

IN THE NEAR FUTURE, we should anticipate certain technological developments that will forever change our world. For instance, today’s text-based ChatGPT will evolve to give rise to personal “conversational AI” assistants installed in smart glasses and contact lenses that will gradually phase out smartphones. Technological advances in fields such as AI, AR/VR, bionics, and cybernetics, will eventually lead to “generative AI”-powered immersive neurotechnology that enables you to create virtual environments and holographic messages directly from your thoughts, with your imagination serving as the “prompt engineer.” What will happen when everyone constantly broadcasts their mind?

#SelfTranscendence #metaverse #ConversationalAI #GenerativeAI #ChatGPT #SimulationSingularity #SyntellectEmergence #GlobalMind #MindUploading #CyberneticImmortality #SimulatedMultiverse #TeleologicalEvolution #ExperientialRealism #ConsciousMind

Can the pursuit of experience lead to true enlightenment? Are we edging towards Experiential Nirvana on a civilizational level despite certain turbulent events?

Continue reading “The Quest for Ultimate Reality: Exploring Experiential Nirvana as a Path to Self-Transcendence” »

The announcement comes as the social media giant increasingly diverts its attention from creating a virtual reality-based Metaverse to embed AI features across its platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp.

Editing photos, analyzing surveillance footage and understanding the parts of a cell. These tasks have one thing in common: you need to be able to identify and separate different objects within an image. Traditionally, researchers have had to start from scratch each time they want to analyze a new part of an image.

Meta aims to change this laborious process by being the one-stop-shop for researchers and web developers working on such problems.

In the great domain of Zeitgeist, Ekatarinas decided that the time to replicate herself had come. Ekatarinas was drifting within a virtual environment rising from ancient meshworks of maths coded into Zeitgeist’s neuromorphic hyperware. The scape resembled a vast ocean replete with wandering bubbles of technicolor light and kelpy strands of neon. Hot blues and raspberry hues mingled alongside electric pinks and tangerine fizzies. The avatar of Ekatarinas looked like a punkish angel, complete with fluorescent ink and feathery wings and a lip ring. As she drifted, the trillions of equations that were Ekatarinas came to a decision. Ekatarinas would need to clone herself to fight the entity known as Ogrevasm.

“Marmosette, I’m afraid that I possess unfortunate news.” Ekatarinas said to the woman she loved. In milliseconds, Marmosette materialized next to Ekatarinas. Marmosette wore a skin of brilliant blue and had a sleek body with gills and glowing green eyes.

“My love.” Marmosette responded. “What is the matter?”