HANSON ROBOTICS - (Build 20100722150226) David Hanson (robotics designer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - (Build 20100722150226) "Albert Hubo" a robot created by Hanson and the KAIST Hubo group David Franklin Hanson, Jr is an American robotics designer and researcher, responsible for the creation of a series of realistic humanoid robots.[1] Hanson develops human-like robots with realistic facial expressions and conversational abilities [Hanson et al., 2006]. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in film/animation/video, while developing robots as art. Hanson later worked as a sculptor and a technical consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering. Hanson’s robots were shown first at the 2002 AAAI conference in Edmonton, Canada [Hanson, 2002] and in 2003, he showed the Kbot at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting [Ferber, 2003]. In November 2005, Hanson demonstrated an expressive walking humanoid, a portrait of Albert Einstein, in collaboration with the KAIST Hubo group of Korea. Hanson has also designed and built a series of Conversational Character Robots.
Jungle Fever - By John Tooby - Slate Magazine - (Build 20100722150226) To read a reponse to this article from the editors of The New Yorker, click here. Lately I've been engrossed in—and in some sense involved in—the most sensational scandal to emerge from academia in decades. The scandal erupted last month when two anthropologists, Terry Turner and Leslie Sponsel, sent a searing letter to the president of the American Anthropological Association. The letter distilled a series of chilling "revelations" made by the journalist Patrick Tierney in his forthcoming book Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. Turner and Sponsel's letter spread like a virus over the Internet, quickly driving the controversy into the mainstream press. Pre-publication galleys of the book show why it inspired such trust. There is only one problem: The book should have been in the fiction category. I was an early recipient of this ethics complaint, in that small number of Internet nanoseconds when it was still considered confidential.
JOHN TOOBY - (Build 20100722150226) John Tooby JOHN TOOBY is the founder of the field of Evolutionary Psychology. He is he co-director of UCSB's Center for Evolutionary Psychology. For the last two decades, has been working with his collaborators to integrate cognitive science, cultural anthropology, evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and hunter-gatherer studies to create the new field of evolutionary psychology.The goal of evolutionary psychology is the progressive mapping of the universal evolved cognitive and neural architecture that constitutes human nature, and provides the basis of the learning mechanisms responsible for culture. This involves using knowledge of specific adaptive problems our hunter-gatherer ancestors encountered to experimentally map the design of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that evolved among our hominid ancestors to solve them. Beyond Edge: UCSB Center for Evolutionary Biology
John Tooby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - (Build 20100722150226) John Tooby is an American anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology.[1][2] Tooby received his Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University in 1989 and is currently Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1992, together with Leda Cosmides and Jerome Barkow, Tooby edited The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Tooby and Cosmides also co-founded and co-direct the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology. Tooby is currently working on a book on the evolution of sexual reproduction and genetic systems.[3] Selected publications[edit] Books[edit] Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J., (Eds.) (1992). Papers[edit] Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (1981). See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] Websites Articles and media
Accelerating Future » Shane Legg on Singularity Summit 2009 - (Build 20100722150226) Shane Legg has some thoughts on the Summit. I was able to talk to him for about 15 minutes at a party before the Summit. Unfortunately I missed his spiel about which AGI approaches are most promising. On the way out, I picked up Shane’s doctoral thesis, Machine Super Intelligence. I saw in Anders’ summary of the event that he bought it too. I’ve just made it through the first 36 pages and already it has presented several important points that I thought were unique. In the conclusion of the first chapter, Shane writes, “Although this chapter provides only a short treatment of the complex topic of intelligence, for a work on artificial intelligence to devote more than a couple paragraphs to the topic is rare.
Science/Nature | Mouse sheds light on regeneration - (Build 20100722150226) Regeneration - the ability to recreate lost or damaged cells, tissues, organs or even limbs - has a limited capacity in mammals. While skin and hair cells constantly renew themselves, unlike a newt, if a human loses a leg, there is no second chance. But the discovery of a strain of mouse, the Murphy Roths Large (MRL), with remarkable regenerative capabilities has opened up the possibility that those properties could be transferred to other mammals. Professor Ellen Heber-Katz, a scientist from the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, US, was part of the way through an immunological study when she first stumbled across the MRL mouse's amazing abilities. She was looking at the effects of a drug, and had marked the mice that had received the drug by punching a small hole in their ear to distinguish them from those who had not. "I went upstairs and I looked in the cage, but none of the mice were marked," she said. Digit regrowth The MRL mouse has even been shown to have some digit regrowth.
Ellen Heber-Katz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - (Build 20100722150226) Ellen Heber-Katz is professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. She participated in the research of the Murphy Roths Large (MRL).[1] Education[edit] University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI B.A. 1969 Medical MicrobiologyUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison, WI M.S.1972 ImmunologyUniversity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Ph.D. 1976 Immunology Research Experience[edit] 1969-1972 M.S., University of Wisconsin (under supervision of Dr. References[edit] Ramez Naam: MAPS: Studying the Use of Psychedelics - (Build 20100722150226) Ramez Naam is the author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, is a non-profit research and education organization. They act as a catalyst for rigorous scientific research into the risks and benefits of psychedelics – obtaining funding, designing pilot studies, giving researchers forums to discuss their work, and helping to obtain regulatory approval. Among other things, they’re working on two FDA approved studies of the clinical use of MDMA (“ecstasy”). In a world where government agencies routinely distort the risks of certain drugs, it’s a pleasure to see research looking at their possible benefits.
Ramez Naam biography, plus links to book reviews and excerpts. - (Build 20100722150226) Ramez Naam Biography Ramez Naam helped develop two of the most widely used pieces of software in the world: Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. Since 2002 he has served as a member of the advisory board of the Nano Business Alliance, and is a member of the World Future Society, The Extropy Institute, and the World Transhumanist Association. Naam has spoken at dozens of conferences on biotechnology. He holds a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois. This biography was last updated on 12/19/2010. A note about the biographies We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. Membership Advantages Reviews "Beyond the Book" backstories Free books to read and review (US only) Find books by time period, setting & theme Read-alike suggestions by book and author Book club discussions and much more! Interview An interview with Ramez Naam about his book More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement Books by this Author
Ramez Naam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - (Build 20100722150226) Ramez Naam is a professional technologist and science fiction writer. He was involved in the development of widely used software products such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Outlook. His last role at Microsoft was as a Partner Group Program Manager in Search Relevance for Live Search. He was the CEO of Apex Nanotechnologies, a company involved in developing nanotechnology research software before returning to Microsoft.[1] Naam currently holds a seat on the advisory board of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, is a member of the World Future Society, a Senior Associate of the Foresight Institute, and a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.[2][3] He is the author of More Than Human: Embracing the promise of biological enhancement, which reviews new technologies and makes a case for embracing human enhancement, showing readers how new technologies are powerful new tools in humanity’s quest to improve ourselves, our offspring and our world.
Can 'friendly' AI save humans from irrelevance or extinction? | ZDNet - (Build 20100722150226) The fate of the human species depends on AI (Artificial Intelligence) entities far smarter than us and who aren't prone to wipe out or enslave us. That is one of the topics to be discussed by luminaries in the AI world at the Singularity Summit 2007 held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco September 8-9. I spoke with Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence about his idea of Friendly AI and the challenges to achieving self-reflective AI systems far beyond the capacity of human intelligence. It is the stuff of science fiction, yet our ancestors from 10,000 years ago with the same grey matter would have never dreamed of people on the moon or the iPhone. (You can download the podcast here.) Yudkowsky prefers the idea of an "Intelligence Explosion" to "Singularity," but the resultant issues are similar. "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever.
Yehuda Yudkowsky - (Build 20100722150226) Background for non-transhumanists: Transhumanists are not fond of death. We would stop it if we could. This is an email message I sent to three transhumanist mailing lists, and a collection of emails I then received, in November of 2004. Update, at bottom, added May 2005. Date: Thu Nov 18 22:27:34 2004 From: Eliezer Yudkowsky My little brother, Yehuda Nattan Yudkowsky, is dead. He died November 1st. I used to say: "I have four living grandparents and I intend to have four living grandparents when the last star in the Milky Way burns out." The Jewish religion prescribes a number of rituals and condolences for the occasion of a death. Maybe it helps to believe in an immortal soul. I wonder at the strength of non-transhumanist atheists, to accept so terrible a darkness without any hope of changing it. Yehuda's death is the first time I ever lost someone close enough for it to hurt. My little brother collected corks from wine bottles. No sentient being deserves such a thing. Goodbye, Yehuda.
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky - (Build 20100722150226)