I’m not worried about depressed robots. But I am worried about masses of people being depressed about robots. Or any other form of autonomous system, for that matter. How we use them, how we communicate and interact–and ultimately control them–is critical. IEEE, ever in the forefront of maintaining standard practices and ethical approaches to technology, is directly in the fray on this one, with its Initiative on Symbiotic Autonomous Systems. Roberto Saracco, a noted computer scientist and educator from Turin, Italy, is co-director of the initiative; he joins me for this episode of Seeking Delphi.™
Maybe NDT is right–NASA didn’t directly give us GPS as in Global Positioning System. But they are going to directly give us–or at least their astronauts–GPS as in Galactic Positioning System. What that portends for the ratings for Lost in Space is beyond the foresight of this blog. But hey, the plausibility of that series was already next to zero.
While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook
Here’s a very brief video with a very basic explanation of what CRISPR does.
Coming Attractions: The next Seeking Delphi podcast features Roberto Saracco on Social Robotics and the IEEE Initiative On Symbiotic Autonomous Systems.
Happy Friday the 13th. With that cheerful note, we go straight to the foibles of the U.S. Congress. Did you really think that Senators that look and sound more like stuffed dinosaurs than live human beings could really extract anything meaningful from hearings with Mark Zuckerberg? Really? I didn’t think so. My audience is more with it than that.
While you’re reading the future news of the week, don’t forget that the Seeking Delphi™ podcast is available on iTunes, PlayerFM,blubrry, and has a channel on YouTube. You can also follow us onTwitter and Facebook.
Is privacy dead? The answer may be more indifferent than you suspect. Gray Scott says it’s becoming irrelevant. People and politicians may squawk, but if you look at their behavior, it looks as if they just don’t really care. It seems we’d rather have free content–even at the cost of privacy–than pay even nominal amounts to access online materials. In this wide ranging interview, conducted just hours before Mark Zuckerberg’s senate testimony in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data breach, Gray provides us with his nuanced view of the state of privacy, both present and future.
NDT is absolutley correct, but TS Eliot? Maybe not so much. The latest theory of how the universe will end is most decidedly with a bang: a second big bang, to be precise. But it’s probably a few trillion years in the future–assuming the math is correct.
While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook
Cosmology–According to a new Harvard study, the universe might end with a second big bang, caused by changes to the Higgs Boson. While the process may have already begun in some distant galaxy, it’s most likely to occur trillions of years in the future. So return those overdue library books now.