H+ Weekly - Issue #99

Apr 28, 2017

This week - a lamb in an artificial womb, cyborgs, Neuralink explained, another AI-powered time waster by Google and more!

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MORE THAN A HUMAN

Neutralink and the Brain’s Magical Future
Tim Urban from Wait but Why blog explains the brain, the intelligence and the Neuralink. It's a long read, but worth your time.

The Eyeborg
It's an older video, but I think it is worth bringing it back. Rob Spence lost his eye in an accident. Instead of covering his loss, he decided to become something more. He implanted a camera into his empty eye socket and become the Eyeborg.

Swedish cyborgs increase tenfold in two years
Sweden is a nation of cyborgs! Over 1,000 Swedes have microchips implants under their skin, containing personal passwords, their health details, and their professional identity, Sverige Radio reports.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The Myth of Superhuman AI
This long article takes five assumptions about intelligence and takes them one by one, proving that intelligence is not as simple as people think. It also looks at these assumptions in the context of creating artificial intelligence and how it changes the picture.

AutoDraw by Google
Another AI-powered time waster by Google. Just draw something and let the machine guess what did you intend to draw.

David Hasselhoff Stars in a New Short Film—and All His Lines Were Written by AI
The Hoff is back! The stars in a short film titled It’s No Game, where all his lines were written by an AI trained on Knight Rider and Baywatch scripts. Others lines were written by the same AI, but trained on Shakespear's works or on Hollywood's golden age scripts.

Are we heading toward an AI winter?
An interesting view at the current AI hype. The main point of this article is that we might expect too much from AI, because why not? Everything is going well, new technological breakthroughs are happening every month or even every week. What can go wrong?

ROBOTICS

4 Things Robots Need to Learn Before Working With Humans
The robots are coming and soon it might be your coworker or your assistant. But before robots go into the wild world and interact with people, they need to learn four things. These things are: anticipation, transparency, customisation and setting the right goal.

Controlling Robot Swarms With Augmented Reality
This is an interesting project. Engineers at NYU have built an augmented reality app to operate robots in the real world. The system uses the device’s camera to capture details from a scene and overlay virtual objects, as other AR applications do. But in this case, you can simply tap and swipe on the screen to make the robots move or pick up objects.

Russia Announces Testing Of Countrywide Drone Control Network, Paving Way For Commercial Boom
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has announced that it will begin testing a vast drone control network that will run across the nation. The network, which is based on the country’s extensive existing satellite system, will allow small UAVs to safely operate in massive numbers within Russian airspace.

BIOTECHNOLOGY

Artificial womb sustains premature baby lambs for weeks
Scientists have created an artificial womb, or "biobag", that was able to sustain premature baby lamb for four weeks. I encourage you to check the photo of the biobag. It looks amazing and disturbing at the same time.

CRISPR Pill May Be Key in Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance
Antibiotics saved countless lives, but because we are using them everywhere, the bacteria started to become immune to them. That's a bad news. But some researchers are looking into using CRISPR to fight these nasty superbugs. The idea is simple - use viruses to inject a DNA that tricks the bacteria into cutting its own genes.

VIRTUAL WORLDS

Hands-On with Dexmo VR Haptic Exoskeleton
Guys from Tested got their hands on Dexmo VR exoskeleton. Dexmo is a wireless exoskeleton controller that tracks individual fingers and promises to provide haptic feedback to let you actually feel objects in VR.

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Conrad Gray (@conradthegray)

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