You predict we’ll reach a point with artificial intelligence that you call the singularity. How will that affect us?

By the time we get to the 2040s, we’ll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that’s singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter. We’ll be online all the time. Search engines won’t wait to be asked.

Probably nothing new here for those well-versed in Kurzweil’s ideas, but it’s still neat to see transhumanist ideas being published in a magazine with as wide a circulation as TIME.

When Microsoft recently released its Xbox 360 peripheral, called Kinect, they intended it to be primarily used for gaming. However, a number of enterprising hardware hackers have re-purposed Kinect for a variety of non-gaming uses, ranging from robotic telepresence to augmented reality shadow puppets. Earlier this week, the wizards at Evoluce, who design and create multi-touch and gesture based displays, released video of their work with the Kinect. While we still have a way to go on the holographic display piece, they’ve made significant progress on creating a workable interface that responds to gestures. They’re not too far off from what was imagined in Minority Report, particularly when it comes to navigating a 3D map or sorting a series of images.

(Via Engadget)

Many people around the world (and in the United States) do not have reliable access to medical care. This may be due to geographical factors, financial factors, cultural factors, or a combination thereof. However, mobile phone adoption continues to grow rapidly in both developed and underdeveloped countries.

With fast rates of adoption and increasing levels of computing power available through mobile phones to people around the world, the X PRIZE Foundation is looking to “inspire creation” of “The AI Physician X PRIZE,” which would use artificial intelligence to “diagnose patients better than board certified doctors.”

While this technology would certainly be a boon for many, a diagnosis is only the first part in healing a patient. Those without access to care would still be left without a means of actual treatment due to the same three factors that would prevent them from getting diagnosed. Gotta crawl before you walk, though, I suppose.

(Via Scope)

In order to assist with deciphering writing systems, researchers and students at MIT have developed software that can decipher unknown scripts by comparing them to those we understand:

A computer successfully deciphered an ancient language Ugaritic in just a couple of hours.

Regina Barzilay, an associate professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Ben Snyder, a grad student in her lab, and the University of Southern California’s Kevin Knight are the creators. [...]

The system makes certain assumption of the language’s similarity to another, Hebrew in this case. It also depends on a systematic way to map the alphabet of one language on to the alphabet of the other.

And it assumes a similar mapping for parts of words. A word like “overloading,” for instance, has both a prefix – “over” – and a suffix – “ing.”

“We iterate through the data hundreds of times, thousands of times and each time, our guesses have higher probability, because we’re actually coming closer to a solution where we get more consistency,” said Snyder.

While the software isn’t threatening to put human deciphers out of work, the developers say it does have the potential to make their jobs a bit easier.

No word on when Book Place will be going live, although a a “coming soon” page is already online.