Week 5 [04.12-10.12.17] New computers could delete thoughts

Go to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/delete-thoughts-read-your-mind-without-your-knowledge-neurotechnology-new-human-rights-laws-a7701661.html and read the article. Comment on it on our blog. Share with us your experiences and observations.

Week 4 [20-26.11] In vitro meat

Since the beginning of the mankind meat was always in our menu. First, people were just hunters, then they became farmers. But during last 100 years farming got far more industrial. Nowadays just in US 10 billion animals are killed every year. That’s a lot of meat! And meat needs a lot of stuff to be produced like a lot of water, grains and grass. As you probably know, it’s really bad for the environment. Most of the air pollution is not caused by cars, it’s caused by cows. Cows and other animals are being fed with antibiotics. Perfect solution for this situation would be if everyone became vegan. Unfortunately, as we know it’s not gonna happen. However, one of proposed solutions is: in vitro meat. Produced entirely in a lab. It sounds a little gross but instead of killing animals scientists could take steam cells from every animal we want to eat. Then put it in kind of a nutrition soup, add some electricity and wait till it grows. Then we can make sausages or hamburgers. In theory, a single cell would be enough for the entire population. It can be 100% pure meat muscle without side products. Creating it in a lab gives us possibility to add healthy things like vitamins or exchange bad saturated fats for stuff like Omega3. We could make a healthy hamburger. In vitro meat is far more ecological than the classic one. Its production requires 99% less land, 45% less energy, 96% less gas emission and 96% less water. In 2050 our population will hit 9 billion.

Till that time we must look for an alternative for traditional meat production.

TED:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFL3P89T1Hk

Read more:

http://www.futurefood.org/index_en.php

1. Have you heard about and would you try this kind of meat or similar products?

2. Do you know any other ways to fight bad effects of our consumption level?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat
http://www.futurefood.org/in-vitro-meat/index_en.php
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4648904/

Week 4 [20-26.11] Boston Dynamics

I've recently been tracking the development of the Boston Dinamics robots. After a few months of silence the company decided to boast about its achivements. On their YouTube channel began to appear videos, we first saw an improved version of the SpotMini machine, which reminds me of a mechanical dog and they presented the progress of the robot Atlas. I remember the first presentation of this robot. His movements were quite sluggish and slow. Today the robot jumps and performs exercises that would be hard to do for many of us. (including me 😉 ).

 

Atlas looks very much like a man, probably because of that his fitness are scary to me 😉. Its construction, (two legs and hands) make this robot can be designed (as claimed by Boston Dynamics) for warehouse work. Here is an example:
 https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=65

His stability and sense of balance are unbelivable. The new Atlas is almost perfect to master stepping and jumping between them, there are no problems with rotation of up to 180 degrees, and if there is not enough, he can ... make a backflip.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRj34o4hN4I

Engineers say they owe much to 3d printing technology. Thanks to it, components such as arms and legs can be modeled on structures found in animals.

These recent videos made me wonder how it would affect our lives in the future. First thoughts are of course black scripts from Sci-fi movies. Robots dominating the world. Stephen Hawking, a well-known astrophysicist, also has a number of concerns regarding artificial intelligence and robots. He also claims that artificial intelligence at a high level can even surpass man in thinking and that robots will begin to build their own world or will improve the one that was created by humans. The most important thing in all of this is that humanity always has the ability to control what "thinks" the robot, what conclusions it is, and what intentions it may have.

Great presentation of Boston Dynamics on Ted Talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO4In7d6X-c 

1.      What do think, how life would be like in the future with robots and AI? 
2.      Would you like to have SpotMini as a pet? 😊

Sources:

https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRj34o4hN4I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO4In7d6X-c

https://www.bostondynamics.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(robot)