Lifeboat Foundation

If you are interested in artificial general intelligence (AGI), then I have a panel discussion to recommend. My friend, David Wood, has done a masterful job of selecting three panelists with deep insight into possible regulation of AGI. One of the panelists was my friend, Dan Faggella, who was eloquent and informative as usual. For this session of the London Futurists, David Wood selected two other panelists with significantly different opinions on how to properly restrain AGI.

As research around the world proceeds to improve the power, the scope, and the generality of AI systems, should developers adopt regulatory frameworks to help steer progress?

Continue reading “Regulating the rise of Artificial General Intelligence” »

Historian Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, answers questions from the South China Morning Post on how the coronavirus pandemic poses unprecedented challenges in biometric surveillance, governance and global cooperation.

Yuval Harari says that unlike our ancestors battling plagues, we have science, wisdom and community on our side.

Continue reading “Homo Deus author has pandemic lessons from past and warnings for future” »

Singapore’s floating city could be real in 10 years.

Do you feel like Singapore is getting more crowded by the day? Apartment blocks are rising quickly everywhere, yet securing a home is still difficult for many.

Our land shortage problem is an age-old conundrum and having taller buildings isn’t going to help much anymore.

Boards and management teams can easily find themselves either stepping on each other’s toes – or, conversely, functioning in parallel universes. So how do you find the perfect balance? Top tips on achieving a Venn-like state from Patrick Dunne – a serial social entrepreneur, chair of the EY foundation and the author of a new book on governance.

The human microbiome is an important emergent area of cross, multi and transdisciplinary study. The complexity of this topic leads to conflicting narratives and regulatory challenges. It raises questions about the benefits of its commercialisation and drives debates about alternative models for engaging with its publics, patients and other potential beneficiaries. The social sciences and the humanities have begun to explore the microbiome as an object of empirical study and as an opportunity for theoretical innovation. They can play an important role in facilitating the development of research that is socially relevant, that incorporates cultural norms and expectations around microbes and that investigates how social and biological lives intersect. This is a propitious moment to establish lines of collaboration in the study of the microbiome that incorporate the concerns and capabilities of the social sciences and the humanities together with those of the natural sciences and relevant stakeholders outside academia. This paper presents an agenda for the engagement of the social sciences with microbiome research and its implications for public policy and social change. Our methods were informed by existing multidisciplinary science-policy agenda-setting exercises. We recruited 36 academics and stakeholders and asked them to produce a list of important questions about the microbiome that were in need of further social science research. We refined this initial list into an agenda of 32 questions and organised them into eight themes that both complement and extend existing research trajectories. This agenda was further developed through a structured workshop where 21 of our participants refined the agenda and reflected on the challenges and the limitations of the exercise itself. The agenda identifies the need for research that addresses the implications of the human microbiome for human health, public health, public and private sector research and notions of self and identity. It also suggests new lines of research sensitive to the complexity and heterogeneity of human–microbiome relations, and how these intersect with questions of environmental governance, social and spatial inequality and public engagement with science.

A creature so rare that it has only a few recorded sightings across the world has been caught on camera by stunned scientists.

The benthic siphonophore, which looks like a single animal, is actually a “floating city” of many smaller organisms working together.

The creatures are so rarely seen that their ecology is almost unknown, though they are thought to make their home at depths of up to 3000m.

The World Economic Forum on Friday announced the first global consortium focused on designing a framework for the governance of digital currencies, including stablecoins.

The Global Consortium for Digital Currency Governance will aim to increase access to the financial system through innovative policy solutions that are inclusive and interoperable.

The opportunities for financial inclusion will only be unlocked if the space is regulated properly and includes public-private cooperation across developed and high growth markets, the WEF said while announcing the new initiative on the last day of its 50th annual meeting after extensive consultation with the global community.

Continue reading “WEF forms first global consortium for digital currency governance” »

The IAmTranshuman (ist) web site is about the stories of transhumanists, from professors to artists and everything in between from all walks of life. IAmTranshuman is about helping humanity grow and be more then what we were through the responsible use of technology.