Are robots and AI really ready for us to begin depending on them?
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Creators of artificial intelligence measure how well machines can imitate human qualities like empathy, listening, affirmation, and love. Don’t reciprocate, says Sherry Turkle.
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Find out how eco-friendly and humane products can be popular and pricier at the same time.
Edward Snowden and his allies are lobbying President Obama to pardon him.
Scientists will combine stem cells, lasers, and other techniques to (hopefully) reanimate the brain stems of 20 brain dead patients. The technique has promise, and perhaps unforeseen pitfalls.
A report by a team of scientists highlights the dangers of “gene drive” technology that can eliminate unwanted species.
Your brain is the neural battleground of science and religion, with religious people and atheists differing in intelligence and empathy. Can the two extremes reconcile?
According to neuroscience, fear is killing us.
Spanish scientists utilize a revolutionary new technique to create sperm from skin in a potential cure for infertility.
Why can’t we marshal the enthusiasm we have for exploring Mars to solve problems on planet Earth? Bill Nye says we’re natural explorers and that potential discoveries on Mars have captured our imagination.
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This discovery could lead to a whole new class of drugs for psychiatric disorders.
According to environmental activist and author Bill McKibben, the third world war is well underway: it is a battle between human beings and a changing climate, and the humans are losing. But there’s still hope.
Charlie comes to Bill with a question about the balance between the ethics of scientific concepts and those scientific concepts in and of themselves. In response, the Science Guy demonstrates how the two ideas — an idea and its ethical implications — are innately inseparable.
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The evolution of driving might disconnect us from each other even more.
Neither happiness nor success “can be pursued,” says Viktor Frankl. These states of being must “ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.”
Implanting false memories could cure Alzheimer’s, PTSD, and depression. It could also make scapegoating easier, allow for witness tampering, or give those under a brutal dictatorship false patriotism.
Mark Zuckerberg recently reiterated that brain-to-brain interfacing is our species future. Today, scientists can have participants move things on a screen with their mind and signal to one another across vast distances. It may someday have therapeutic uses for ADHD, give us sense experiences not akin to our species, and even allow advertisers to invade our minds.
If free will doesn’t exist, is it healthier to believe it does?
Set self-driving car to “kill.”
An old fight between philosophy and science has flared up again. Fortunately we have Rebecca Newberger Goldstein to help us sort out what’s going.
Sigmund Freud said the two great protections we all had against inevitable human suffering were love and work. Will we lose work in the second machine age?
It’s a brave new world.
The ethics and realities of autonomous cars.
Many who make New Year’s resolutions of the “less vice, more virtue” variety might benefit from some background on the history and logic of certain skills that flourishing depends on.
Free markets aren’t like gravity. They’re ruled by neither laws of nature nor commandments carved in stone. Delegating our ethics to markets risks costly error. All things are not equally auctionable.
So, he helped fund a nonprofit.
Questioning the power of individual choice.
Self-driving cars aren’t the only emerging technology facing major questions about ethics and accountability.
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“I’m sorry Dave; I’m afraid I can’t do that.”