AI

Diginauts 0024 — New Trivia App, AI begets AI, Driverless Car Testing

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  • segment 1, Most Disruptive — Wifi Security (0:00): In our new show format, Deron & Eric start out the show by comparing their takes on which tech headlines from the last week will have the biggest impact… ON HUMANITY!!!  New HQ trivia app from Vine founders?  Dangerous flaw in Wi-Fi security standards?
  • segment 2, Juris Prudent — Graffiti Artists’ Rights (18:20):  A New York court case about ownership, art, landmarks, and culture.
  • segment 3, D.O.O.O.o.M.E.D. — Fresh Water Run-off (25:52): A chemical breakthrough in the process of desalinization could mean increased efficiency and reduced cost.
  • segment 4, Let’s Dig Some More. — CA Allows Driverless Testing (36:59): The Russians are even using our video games to manipulate America?  Would you eat human flesh if it’s grown in the lab?  Police on hooverbikes(!) in Dubai.  You might see test cars on the streets of California — sans drivers.
  • segment 5, Always in Motion Is The Future — Techpocalypse (51:30): Will humans destroy themselves with their own technology?  Runaway artificial intelligence? Nuclear war?  Tiny nanobots reducing us to goo?  We evaluate a DigitalTrends article predicting six ways humanity might end.

Tweet @DigitalDeron or @efader with your opinions, or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0021 — Artificial Meat, Driverless Car Ethics, Sexuality Auto-Detection

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Tweet to us at @digitalderon or @efader.  Or you can leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0019 — Living Forever, a River Reverses, Microbes on Saturn’s Moon?

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  • segment 1, Top of Mind — No One Understands AI (0:00): The folks who are on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence admit they know longer quite get how it works.
  • segment 2, Let’s Hash It Out — #NASA (10:41): A paper details revelations about Saturn’s moon Enceledus.  Chemicals exist that could host life… maybe?
  • segment 3, Future File — Immortality! (23:36): Tests on rodents using “chemical torpedos” have eliminated the cells that invite disease.
  • segment 4, Let’s Dig Some More (32:21): A river starts flowing the opposite direction because of climate change.  What company has been running autonomous vehicles longer than anyone thinks about?  Russia is definitely NOT building a terminator.

Call us!  Tweet us!   Let us know what you think!  Give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255, or tweet @efader or @digitalderon.

Diginauts 0007 — Election Results, Mining Asteroids for Minerals, Robots Programmed to Kill

Diginauts -- episode 0007
Diginauts -- episode 0007

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:09 — 86.3MB) | Embed

  • segment 1, Top of Mind — Election Results (0:00): Rightly or wrongly, we tried to record this episode as the results were coming in on election night.  Drumpf defeats Clinton.  We let our politics show a little.  (Oh, and here’s that Michael Moore article about Trump never wanting to be president in the first place.)
  • segment 2, Let’s Review (31:21):  New updates on our previous topics include a government effort to design drones that can take out insurgent fighters and and Atlantic reporter attempted to find out how long a device can sit at a random IP address before hacking attempts try to co-opt it for DDoS purposes.
  • segment 3, Future File — Mining the Asteroids (50:01): A U.S. company has received grants from the Government of Luxembourg to find mineral wealth in the asteroid belt, bringing commerce to space.

Tweet @DigitalDeron or @efader with your opinions, or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0003 — Google is listening, Irreversible Global Warming, Mourning Death Digitally

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  • segment 1, Top of Mind–Carbon Tipping Point (0:00): Earth’s atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration is now above 400ppm.  Is there any way we’ll ever get back below that number?  Scientists are pretty sure that for the immediate future, the answer is no.
  • segment 2, Future File–Log In with Your Brain Waves (15:06): In the future, you might be able to authenticate into your computer by having your brain scanned.  But will scanning your brain introduce even more of a privacy concern?  One thing is sure, the way we do it now is wrong, all wrong.
  • segment 3, Let’s Hash It Out–Google’s Hardware Launch Event (28:37):  Google previewed it’s Pixel phones, a new Chromecast update,   In particular, Google Home is here, and it’s ready to listen to your every word.  They say they’re building a personalized Google for each individual.  We say they’re making a big grab into privacy.  What do you think?
  • segment 4, What’s Your Take?–Digital Afterlife (45:10): When her friend Roman died in a tragic car accident, San Francisco entrepreneur Eugenia Kudya decided to task her AI start-up with creating a chatbot based on his personality.  She saw it as a digital monument to him, and a way to deal with her loss.  Some of her friends find it a “disturbing” and “half-baked,” but others found it therapeutic.  Would you want such a monument left behind after your death? Can computers come anywhere close to capturing a human personality?  What’s your take?

Tweet us!  We are @efader and @DigitalDeron.  Or give us a call and leave a voice message for us to include in the show.

Diginauts 0002 — Songs from Machines, False Memories, & Mechanical Emotion Detection

Diginauts 0002
Diginauts 0002

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:02:35 — 86.4MB) | Embed

  • segment 1, Top of Mind–False Memories (0:00): A researcher has demonstrated that she can elicit from people memories of things that never happened.  She has managed to convince everyday people that they committed a petty crime in their childhood.  What are the implications for our criminal law system?
  • segment 2, Future File–Music Composed by AI (11:47): Researches at a Sony laboratory in Paris have used software to analyze the style of musicians and use this knowledge to compose original pieces of music.  We react live to these machine-created songs…  Maybe don’t expect robots to headline Coachella any time soon.
  • segment 3, Most Disruptive–Tardigrade Proteins or Transiting the Solar System (24:45): Each of us selected a story from this month that he thought would have the greatest long-term impact on humanity.  One of us picked Elon Musk’s release of plans to travel to Mars and beyond.  The other said that research identifying the  “damage suppressing” protein in tardigrades could change medicine.
  • segment 4, Mailbag (39:21): Time to share some of what you said about the previous episode.
  • segment 5, What’s Your Take?–WiFi That Detects Your Emotions (52:24):  MIT researchers have developed a technology called EQ-Radio, which uses standard wi-fi to monitor heart and breathing rate in humans, and from that gauge their emotional state with 87% accuracy.  Do you see this as a boon to industries like entertainment and medicine? Or is it another example of machine invasiveness into human life?

Tweet us!  Deron is @DigitalDeron and Eric is @efader.

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