Episode 3: Can science defeat ageing? CRISPR for CF; How will autonomous cars change our cities?
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Category Archives: Technology
The AI robot doctor will see you now
My doctor is an algorithm: ‘Medicine has always welcomed new technology’
With the advance of artificial intelligence, medical practises are being overtaken. Could the GP become a relic of a bygone age
‘Good afternoon, the AI will see you now.” This could be the future of family practice medicine as machines become better equipped to do many of the things that traditionally made up the GP’s job description.
Machines have always threatened human jobs, but up to the 21st century they were only a serious threat to repetitive, low-skilled jobs. Times have changed and the higher skilled jobs today are threatened by the advance of artificial intelligence (AI). In the past few years, intelligent machines have begun to perform complex tasks far better and quicker than intelligent, skilled humans.
The ‘good GP’ we know will always know his patients well; their medical history, their personality, details about their family and their foibles, and will retain this background information and call on it when assessing patients. The good GP would know, for example, that Mr Murphy is probably upset, rather than clinically depressed, because his father died last week and he has no depression history.
However, unlike the good GP, who may be overworked, and stressed by the demands of a busy clinic, computers with built-in AI have an almost unlimited capacity to store information in medical records, and to recognise patterns that may have been missed by the GP. They are also excellent at measuring things, such as blood pressure, and analysing results, such as a routine blood test.
In recent years, scientists working in AI made a breakthrough when they developed software based on the working of the human brain, rather than, as was the case before, sticking to a rigid rule book. This software could learn from the environment, making mistakes, and correcting them, like a child learns. The world saw its first artificial ‘self-learning systems’.
There were implications from this for the GP, and other professionals, as suddenly it wasn’t just the old story of machines replacing low-skilled workers; their jobs were on the line too. GPs faced the prospect of being confined to a decreasing number of areas where they are still superior to artificial rivals, or worse still, to become redundant; a charming medical relic of a bygone age.
The role of specialist medical consultants – not just GPs – is also coming under threat too from sophisticated ‘deep learning systems’ which are already outperforming doctors in specialised areas of medicine, says Professor Barry O’Sullivan, director of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at the Department of Computer Science, in University College Cork, and a leading AI researcher.
“Dermatology is one such field,” he says. “A very recent paper that appeared in (research journal) Nature showed that a deep learning system could outperform human dermatologists at identifying skin cancer by quite a margin.”
Another area where AI is already better than doctors is radiology, adds O’Sullivan. A radiologist can recognise patterns in scans, based on years of experience. However, no matter how experienced the radiologist, he can’t store the amount of scans that AI can, while comparing them to a particular scan in order to assess, for example, the likelihood of a stroke or epilepsy. Meanwhile, there are further reasons for GPs not to be cheerful about the future with plans in the UK, supported by the NHS, to use smartphones to bypass the GP clinic altogether. A pilot scheme, run by private firm Babylon Health is encouraging people to consult a ‘chatbot’, equipped with AI, rather than a human being when they contact the 111 non-emergency line.
Patients key in symptoms, and AI determines how urgent each case is, and whether the user should be told to go straight to A&E, the chemist or simply go home to bed. The AI system makes decisions based on 300 million pieces of information, and the company says trials have shown the system is faster and more accurate than doctors. Certainly, most experts agree the future of medicine is ‘personalised medicine’, with disease treatments being tailored to suit personal needs. This is an area that AI excels, as it is very good at looking at medical data and finding specific treatments for patients which can, in some cases, even save their lives.
“For example, organisations such as Cancer Commons have assisted cancer patients survive conditions that were regarded as fatal in their situations by combining AI with extremely rich and individual-level data,” says Prof O’Sullivan. “The founder of Cancer Commons, Marty Tenenbaum, is one such survivor.”
Brendan Kelly, professor of psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, says: “Computers and electronic diagnostic aids are delivering more and more information every year in medicine. And it is likely that computers and other devices, with their essentially infinite data storage and pattern recognition abilities, will continue to add increasing value to medical care.
He adds: “AI is especially useful in diagnosis: recognising skin lesions, monitoring measurable indices of body function, and identifying known patterns of symptoms and signs.
“It is less useful for other dimensions of medical care: contextualising findings in the context of the patient’s life, moving from recognising a pattern to agreeing a narrative between doctor and patient, and providing reassurance.
“AI is also less useful for picking up on the unexpected elements in a patient’s presentation: noting, for example, that a patient presenting with a lesion on his ear also has swollen ankles. Or noticing that someone with chest pain smells strongly of alcohol at 11 in the morning and might have an alcohol problem (which might or might not be related to the chest pain). Or noticing that a woman who comes to have a prescription renewed brings along her child, whom the nurse remembers has missed a vaccination, and can receive it today.”
Kelly isn’t worried about his job just yet though.
“Medicine has always welcomed new technologies and benefited hugely from them: stethoscopes, x-ray machines, MRI. But these tools amplify the effectiveness of healthcare professionals, rather than replacing them.”
The doctor will still see you now
Dr Mark Murphy, GP, and chair of Communications with the Irish College of General Practitioners, responds:
“It is unlikely that AI will make a meaningful difference in the GP setting, given the significant human factors at play in a consultation.
“There is a requirement for the GP to conduct face-to-face consultation to develop a rapport, to physically examine a patient and read nonverbal cues.”
“AI systems cannot get rid of the complex uncertainty and greyness at the heart of the undifferentiated presentations to General Practice.
“However, AI and machine learning will help with the handling of information in the healthcare system, and may be able to assist with complicated ‘black and white’ diagnostic process, such as imaging or to make sense of the complex genomic factors with rare-disease treatment.”
Irish Independent
Ireland and the Race to Mars
First broadcast on Today with Sean O’Rourke (23-11-2016)
The Martian landscape as depicted in The Martian, a film by 20th Century Fox (Credit: 20th Century Fox)
Both NASA and China have announced plans to land rovers on Mars in 2020, while a number of ambitious non governmental organisations also joining the dash to the Red Planet. It is anticipated that a manned mission from Earth to Mars and back will take five years, and Irish researchers and companies are part of global efforts to make sure that a manned Mars mission is a success.
The ‘Race to Mars’ has well and truly started, and, it’s about time some might argue, as it is now 47 years since Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, and those of us around back then might have expected to see more progress by now.
Unlike the 1960s, when the technology was really being stretched to the limit to get to the Moon, there are far less technical obstacles in the way of us reaching Mars, and the reason we haven’t done so is due to US politics and money.
That said the scientific challenges of getting humans to Mars, establishing a permanent presence there, and returning them safely to Earth are enormous. In October, President Obama set a goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s, and commented that he expects to be still around to see it happen.
But, what drove NASA on in the 1960s, of course, was fear of the Soviet Union and the militarisation of space. There is no Soviet Union threatening US existence anymore, but China is showing signs of emerging as viable new rival. The emergence of China as a space rival can only help efforts to get to Mars.
Challenges
Mars is 34 million miles away, and that is more than 140 times further than the Moon. The entire duration of the mission to the Moon in 1969 was just over 8 days, but getting to Mars safely, spending time there and returning safely to Earth will take in the region of 5 years.
On the journey to Mars, the craft must be designed so that it protects the astronauts from cosmic radiation, while providing them with healthy food to eat, and a means to exercise and stay physically and mentally healthy, and prevent the muscle and bone tissue wastage that will impact astronauts living in microgravity.
NASA are planning to have a habitat module where astronauts will eat a healthy diet from crops grown on ‘green walls’ inside the craft. The air and water will be constantly recycled, and the people chosen will be individuals with a high level of psychological resilience who can endure boredom and are not prone to conflict.
The NASA timeline is that Mars astronauts will spend one year preparing for the launch, one year travelling to Mars, 18 months orbiting and then landing on Mars, and 18 further months on the surface of Mars. They will come home when the Earth and Mars are again favourably aligned to make the return trip home.
This will be a space mission like none in human history requiring a lot of material, some experimental, some to sustain life, some of which would be sent ahead of the crew, such a descent vehicle which would await the astronauts while in Mars orbit, and a shelter on the surface of Mars, assembled by robots.
Cost
There are some who doubt that NASA will be able to get humans to Mars by the 2030s, or even 2040s because of some financial realities. It is estimated that the Apollo moon landings cost $140 billion in today’s dollars, while the realistic price tag to get humans on Mars is somewhere around $450 billion.
NASA’s annual budget for human spaceflight is currently around $9 billion, which is a long, long way short. There needs to be another JFK figure to set out the vision, and secure the budget, but the US has little competition, and there is no ‘clear and present danger’ such as the old Soviet Union to give it a push. That said, ‘Red’ China is creeping up again as a threat to the US psyche.
Will it happen? It is probably unlikely that the US taxpayer will be prepared to pay the entire $450 billion bill to do something for the vague good of mankind.
Commercial
The answer might come from NASA taking on Mars as a kind of joint venture with commercial companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX. This can help secure private investment and access to potential useful new technologies. For example,
SpaceX are working on cheaper rockets, costing about $1 million to launch.
Some other companies involved are Inspiration Mars, which is a non profit company founded by Dennis Tito the first space tourist. He is planning a trip for a select crew of Americans, who will travel to Mars, orbit, but not land. The plan here is to leave Earth in 2018, or failing that to try again in 2021. The estimated cost of this flyby mission is between $1 and $2 billion.
Then there is the Mars One mission, the one way trip, proposed by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp. This is regarded by some as a ‘suicide mission’ as once people are there, there is no way home. Despite that, there were 2,782 applications to be astronauts on the trip, some of which came from Ireland, including Trinity College astrophysicist, Dr Joseph Roche. The plan is that these applicants will be whittled down six groups of four astronauts, and the first crew of four will leave Earth in 2024. Mars One plan to document the trip on a reality TV show, which they hope will provide much of the finance for the trip.
But, Space X is a serious, space exploration company founded by Elon Musk, a billionaire, playboy who has also made a success out of Tesla electric cars. He is working on developing a fleet of reusable rockets, launch vehicles and space capsules to transport humans to Mars and back again. He wants to build a self sustaining Martian city of 80,000 people, which could be a bolt hole for humanity in the event of some natural or manmade catastrophe here. The plan is to have a human step on Mars by 2026 (10 years!) and for it to be a round trip.
Musk may charge people as little as $0.5 million for a round trip to Mars.
Ireland
There are a surprising number of researchers and companies based in Ireland doing work that can help make the mission to Mars a success.
For example, the work of Brian Caulfield, Professor of Physiotherapy at UCD, has led to the design and development of a device that can enable astronauts exercise properly so that their physical and mental health can be maintained on the long voyage to Mars. The work has been funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The device stimulates the large muscles of the legs to produce aerobic exercise training and muscle strengthening effects in space. This ‘Neuromuscular Electrical Muscle Stimulation Technology’ has been successfully tested by the ESA and was developed as a collaboration between UCD and researchers at the Galway based Biomedical Research Limited.
Research by Trinity College’s Mary Bourke, and Ulster University’s Derek Jackson has investigated Martian wind patterns and how they shape the giant sand dunes that can be seen on the surface of Mars – like a red Saudi Arabia.
Scientists know that Martian weather can be volatile and potentially very dangerous for a Martian landing as well as for human colonists, with huge sandstorms from time to time, for example.
The research is of potential value to NASA and others planning to go to Mars as it shows how the enormous sand dunes on mars influence the local wind speeds on the planet, and how these wind speeds, then in turn shape the sand dunes.
It is like developing a Martian wind and weather forecasting ability on Earth.
In Athlone Institute of Technology Dr Diana Cooper is working on the effects of microgravity on human physiology. The insights gained from this work could be crucial to developing methods to ensure that humans can survive long periods in space, travelling between Earth and Mars, without their bone tissue being reabsorbed back into the blood, or losing significant muscle mass.
Mathematics
Something less obvious and immediate, but of enormous importance to the success of any space mission to Mars concerns something invented by an Irish mathematical genius in 1843. These are quaternions, which are mathematical equations, which are used to represent the relative movement of 3D objects in space, and the man that invented then was called William Rowan Hamilton.
A few years back, after the NASA curiosity rover landed on Mars, I spoke to one of the mission controllers, a man called Miguel San Martin. He told me that the incredibly precise landing of the car sized curiosity, near an area which NASA believed may show former evidence for life on Mars, was only possible because the precise navigation of curiosity was underpinned by quaternions.
So, incredibly, something invented by a Dubliner, while walking along the banks of the Royal Canal in 1843 with his wife, will be vital to ensure that any future Mars mission lands close to a pre-planned safe, and viable landing site.
Industry
There are a number of companies in Ireland who are doing work which feeds to the development of the technology required to get to Mars.
For example, A specific type of engine, called a Mars Apogee Engine is under development at Moog, Dublin, in work supported by Enterprise Ireland.
This engine is a liquid propellant engine capable of providing more thrust, with less fuel, than is possible with existing propulsion systems. The idea is that these new engines will be efficient enough to save 150kg of propellant on a Mars mission, which will make space available for other things, such as scientific instruments, which will give any Mars mission more ‘bang for its buck’.
The Curtiss-Wright Aviation and Electronic company, which has its origins all the way back to the Wright brothers, has a branch in Dublin. The people here are working on launch vehicles that can take payloads into orbit and build the Martian ‘in orbit’ infrastructure that will be required to supply and sustain human missions to Mars. This will build a supply chain if you like.
Curtiss-Wright are also developing technologies to enable the safe re-entry of spacecraft through planetary atmospheres including Mars, as well as technology that will be central to sustaining life & generating fuel for human explorers on the surface of Mars
Danny Gleeson, Chairman of the Irish Space Industry Group, said that development of human missions to Mars will take decades and that it was unlikely that the human mission to Mars will be a single shot but rather a choreographed series of missions that build the necessary infrastructure in Earth orbit and Mars orbit & surface to sustain human missions.
“The good news is that there is a plan to get to Mars and back again and the technologies required are almost all available now,” said Danny.
Can the next JFK please step up.
Why diesel cars are bad for our health
Broadcast on Today with Sean O’Rourke [24-08-2016]
Tiny particles of soot pollution from diesel cars and vehicles have been linked with cancer and life-threatening lung diseases (source: http://www.dpfcleaningservices.co.uk)
Tax incentives for those buying diesel cars over the last decade has fueled a move to diesel on Irish roads, with diesel cars now outnumbering petrol cars.
This has been widely regarded as a welcome move, as diesel cars are considered ‘better for the environment’ because they produce less carbon dioxide gases than petrol cars – the gases that have been linked with causing global warming.
However, scientific evidence is emerging which shows that the level of diesel particulates, which are damaging to human health, has increased in line with the growing popularity of diesel and that Irish people are dying as a result of this. The European Environment Agency has, for example, estimated that 1,200 people in Ireland per year are dying as a result of diseases caused by particulate pollution.
Research
Until relatively recently, there has not been a significant amount of research into the impact of diesel pollution on public health, particularly in Europe, but the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal certainly gave it an added push.
The evidence that is emerging from the US primarily – where research has been going on for longer – suggests that there is real reason for concern when it comes to health effects, and environmental effects, or air pollution from diesel engines. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the World Health Organisation and the UK Department of Transport have all produced reports in the last year or two which point to a real problem here.
As well as pointing to increased emissions of particulate matter (PM) and Nitrogen Dioxide gas, which are known to damage human health, the authorities in Europe and the US have started to make a direct link between an increase in numbers of people dying from respiratory diseases and cancers, and this increase in pollution.
The US EPA, who support a lot of work in this area, has led the way with publication of figures of increased numbers of premature deaths, cancers and respiratory diseases due to air pollution from diesel vehicles. There is a tangible link, a ‘smoking gun’ if you link that is linking cause and effect.
Ireland
There has been little research into subject in Ireland until this year. In January 2016, a research project began at Trinity College Dublin, with funding from the Irish EPA, which is looking to precisely determine the amount of a certain type of damaging particulate, called PM 2.5 which is produced by diesel vehicles here.
It is a multi-disciplinary research effort, involving experts in air pollution, chemistry and transportation and will take place over 24 months. At the end of it, they say they will be able to determine precisely, using computer software modeling, how many deaths and illnesses here are caused by diesel vehicles.
One of the researchers involved, Dr Bidisha Ghosh, is a transportation expert, and said that the plan is to look at diesel particulates first, and to then to a follow up study where the impact of NO2 is measured and assessed.
Measuring
The Irish EPA has a number of monitoring sites around Ireland that will be used as measuring points. One of the key challenges – and this is the first time anyone in the world has done this – will be to distinguish the percentage of PM 2.5 (particulate matter 2.5, a size of particulate) that is from diesel cars as opposed to other potential sources, such as sand, or the burning of coal.
The measuring sites will be near to roads as that is where diesel fumes are strongest, and another part of the study will determine how quickly dangerous diesel pollution dissipates as you move away from a busy road.
The researchers will be looking closely at what comes out of the diesel particulate filters that are attached to diesel cars. This is in order to get the chemical composition, or signature of PMs to better identify those PMs that are from diesel cars or other diesel vehicles. This is a difficult task and will involve using specialised machines to look at tiny quantities of polluting chemicals.
Dr Ghosh said that by the end of their project, in the latter part of 2017 they will be in a position to give precise numbers on the health effects of the growing use of diesel cars in Ireland. At that stage, she said they will have precise numbers on how many extra deaths, or premature deaths are being caused or what kind of extra number of lung cancers and other respiratory diseases are happening in Ireland due to us driving more diesel cars.
The calculations are based on knowledge of the car fleet, the type and age of cars on Irish roads, and knowledge of what the standard pollution emission from a certain vehicle of a certain age will be. This makes it possible to do comparison such as comparing the 2000 level of emissions versus the 2015 levels and matching the increase in pollution with the increase in deaths and diseases.
The project will also make it possible to predict, based on a number of scenarios – such as increasing use of diesel cars at the current rate – what Ireland can expect in 2020 or 2030 in terms of death rates from air pollution. This, it is hoped, will produce a solid basis for policy makers to address this problem.
Diesel cars
The new new diesel cars on the market have very good particle filters and if you are sitting inside one of these cars you wouldn’t get a whole lot of this PM pollution, and the newer models may not pollute the atmosphere that much. The old diesels is where the big problem lies, and there are still a lot of old diesel cars being driven on Irish roads today, as they have vastly inferior emissions control technology to more modern cars.
It is also true that the bigger diesel car engines are far more polluting. The researchers at TCD, who have access to pollution figures in Ireland between 2010 and 2015 said there was a very significant increase in diesel PMs in those years, and this finding was what prompted a more detailed air pollution study.
The researchers also strongly suspect that the VW scandal wasn’t just a VW issue, and that many other diesel car makers have been cooking the books, in the sense that the emissions reported in the car manual does not bear much resemblance to the real on road emissions. The real figures, I was told, are likely to be far, far higher than what we see in the new diesel car manuals.
Supports
The Irish government started to actively support diesel from 20o8, with various tax incentives, in order to help Ireland meet its carbon dioxide ‘greenhouse gas’ targets. In fairness to the Irish government back then, the extent of the public health risk from diesel cars was not widely known.
It was initially thought that certain types of PMs were not harmful, but that thinking has changed, and now scientists are looking at the damage caused by diesel particulates that can remain wedged in the lungs. For example, the particulate, PM 1, is very hard to remove from the lung once in.
The evidence that is now emerging, however, is that not only is diesel bad for public health, it is also, by producing NO2, bad for the environment.
The science around this is all still quite new, and emerging. It is only in 2015 that a report was published by the UK authorities which stated that NO2 can also be very harmful to children, their respiratory development, their lung development and that it can cause irreversible changes.
The initial findings about the problem with diesel took time to emerge, as they didn’t perhaps fit with the green image of diesel, especially in Europe. However, the more research on this that is being done, the clearly the scientific picture becomes, and eventually, governments will have to act on the results.
NO2
Nitrous oxide, and nitrous dioxide gases from diesel cars and vehicles are also linked with health problems, and the data can be collected again by using standard emissions and examining the national car fleet. This is likely to be supported by specific EPA funded research in future, which will, like the TCD project looking at PMs, look into NO2 levels at certain EPA monitoring sites, near busy roads around the country.
Aside from being linked with respiratory disease and death, NO2 is known to have a negative impact on vegetation and acts to break down the ozone layer.
Alternatives?
There are emerging fuels out there, such as hydrogen gas, which is being made available at existing petrol stations in the UK this summer.
However, experts believe that because the infrastructure and global distribution network is built for diesel and petrol cars, and that huge investment has been made in this system, that it will be impossible to envisage a change to any other fuel or transport type in the near, or even distant future.
Electric cars are still rare in Ireland despite significant government support, as people don’t like some of the unanswered questions that remain on it, such as how long does an electric car last, and what to do should a battery die out?
There is also the fact that a very high amount of energy can be liberated from diesel or petrol, and there is nothing that can rival petroleum on that score.
The solution, some suggest, is to truly move towards a sustainable transport system, where people walk if they can, and only use a car when they have to. Those countries that do this, and that promote public transport have far less emissions from petroleum car engines. It is also very important to think about where we locate our busy roads, as studies have shown that irreversible damage can be done to schoolchildren from air pollution in schools near such roads.
For those that need a car, the advice is to look at getting rid of the old diesel and replacing it with a new one, with better a particulate filter. Also, to avoid buying one of the high performance diesel cars and go for a more modest option.
There is also the issue in Ireland of people removing diesel particulate filters when they start to affect car performance. They can be expensive to replace, and some garages in Ireland are openly offering services on the internet to remove and not replace the filters.
A diesel car can run without a filter, and not replacing a malfunctioning filter can save hundreds if not a few thousand euros. However, from a public health and environmental perspective removing a filter is “disastrous, really, really bad” according to Dr Ghosh.
Actively preventing the removal of diesel particulate filters from diesel cars, and insisting on a high standard of operation of diesel filters as part of the NCT test, might be how the Irish government might start trying to tackle this important public health issue.
Towards the Zero Carbon House
Listen to discussion above with Keelin Shanley broadcast on Today with Sean O’Rourke on RTE Radio 1 (19.04.16)
The ‘zero carbon’ house is a realistic aspiration Irish homeowners (Credit: http://www.treehuggers.com)
There are many reasons to make a house more energy efficient; from reducing the amount of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere to reducing energy costs and increasing home comforts.
The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland has a range of grant supports that can improve the insulation, and heating systems in your home.
This is all part of a long-term drive to move towards Zero Carbon Housing, where homes not longer use fossil fuels, such as gas or oil.
Ultimately we are moving in Europe towards the ‘Near Zero Energy Home’ (NZEB) where homes are self-sufficient in energy, and no longer need to be connected to the grid.
Electric cars set to go driverless
Click above to hear discussion broadcast on Today with Sean O’Rourke, RTE Radio 1, 30th November, ’15
Google plans to bring a driverless electric car to market in 2018, and is already road testing driverless vehicles in California (Credit: Google)
Electric cars have been around the late 19th century, but they have never matched the appeal of cars run on either petrol or diesel.
That is all set to change, as the most popular cars on the market in coming decades are likely to be both electric and driverless.
The question is, is Ireland ready for electric, driverless cars, how do they work, are they safe? and how will they potentially make our lives better?
History
The first commercial electric cars appeared as early as the 1880s and ‘electric drive’ cars as they were called were popular with early drivers.
However, from the turn of the 20th century, there was a growing demand for cheaper automobiles, from the general public.
From the 1920s, petrol was becoming more easily available and cheaper, petrol driven cars had a longer range, had greater horsepower, and the introduction of automatic starting mechanisms in petrol cars increased their appeal to all groups.
Yet, from as early as 1908, when the first Model T Ford’s were mass produced, the popularity of the electric car was waning.
In the mid 1960s the United States Congress introduced the first bills recommending support for the development of a new generation of commercial electric cars to try and deal with the issue of air pollution.
This paved the way for a revival of interest in electric cars in the 1970s, a revival which was further helped following the soar in oil prices following the Oil Crisis of 1973, and the birth of the environmental movement.
It seemed to many back then, 40 years ago, that the time had come for electric cars, but people resisted buying them, due to their cost, so-called ‘range anxiety’ and the daily hassle of recharging their batteries.
The situation stayed like that for the following decades, with electric cars remaining a niche market, but in the last decade two things happened.
Governments, including the Irish government, began actively promoting e cars as a way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas, and to reduce reliance on imports of fossil fuels from The Middle East.
In Ireland this mean grants for people buying e cars (there is a 5k grant in place) and tax relief. Allied to that the ESB began building a network of public charging points, and there are now about 2,000 on the island.
The other thing that happened is that battery technology – which has been slow to develop for technical reasons – has started to improve.
Fully electric cars (there are also electric/petrol and electric/diesel hybrids) are totally dependent on batteries, usually lithium ion types.
These batteries, like the ones in our smartphones, are efficient, but the are expensive. This of course, affects the sale price of e cars.
The e car batteries need to be 80 per cent cheaper, some industry analysts say, in order for e cars to break through into mass use, and truly compete with cars based on the internal combustion engine (ICE).
Some believe it will be possible to make cost cutting improvements to the lithium ion battery, while others say a new battery technology is needed.
Technology
Electric are based on pretty simple technology, which hasn’t changed all that much since the first electric cars appeared in the 19th century.
One hundred per cent electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf, the Ford Focus Electric and the VW e golf all make use of an electric motor.
There is a battery, of a series of connected batteries, that link to the electric motor and provide the power to drive the car forward.
They are green because they are based on electricity rather than petrol or diesel, but, of course, electricity can be produced by burning fossil fuels.
The battery is vital, as it charges the electric motor, and determines how far the car can travel without a charge, and its performance.
The first battery used in any electric vehicle was an old fashioned lead-acid battery which was itself invented in 1859.
The batteries that are, these days, used in electric cars are lithium ion batteries which are light, and have a good ability to store energy.
The problem with lithium ion batteries, as many of us will know from using smartphones, is that they need to be regularly recharged, and that after hundreds of recharges, they can become depleted, and just ‘die’.
So, there is a desperate need for a new battery technology that do not need to be recharged as often, and don’t die with lots of re charges.
From the buyers point of view, the big downside with electric cars is that they have to be recharged for hours, overnight, and that the driver might still, with a long journey, feel that he might needed a top up recharge.
This is something called ‘range anxiety’ and it’s a well known factor that has turns off buyers and that e car makers are trying to address.
Cost
Yes, there are a few competing options. Perhaps the most promising is one being developed in the UK at Cambridge University.
Scientists there last month announced they had found a way to develop batteries that are one-fifth the coast and weight of current e car batteries.
The technology is called lithium air technology and it’s important because it can reduce the cost of electric cars, while also enabling them to match the range of petrol and diesel cars.
Electric cars, based on these, the scientists say, could drive from London to Edinburgh with a single charge, hugely increasing the range of e cars.
This new technology also produces batteries which can store a lot of energy, and can recharge thousands of times without the battery dying.
Yet, lithium ion batteries, as well all know from our smartphones, have to be recharged often, and after repeated charging they can gradually die.
A lithium air battery can create a voltage from oxygen molecules – air – in the vicinity of the positive electrode. It appears to be a big breakthrough.
This all looks promising, but it is just emerging from the lab, is at the development stage, and may be a decade before it enters the real world.
Disappointing
Sales of e cars in Ireland remain disappointing low, despite the efforts of Government to promote e cars through subsidies, grants and tax breaks.
The ESB have been actively promoting the greater use of e cars in Ireland by building a network of public charging points and grants. Grants are of 5k are available from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland for buyers of new e cars.
Minister Coveney has been pictured driving a fully electric Nissan Leaf, and the ESB has been busy building infrastructure to support e cars.
Yet, in 2014, Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported that just 222 electric cars were sold, which, is poor, but significantly up on the 55 cars that were sold in 2013.
The Government has set itself a target of 230,000 e cars being in use in Ireland by 2020. We currently have a little over 10,000 e cars here.
To compare, there were 13,929 petrol cars sold in 2014, and 47,559 diesel cars. So, electric is still very much a niche market in Ireland.
Ireland might use Norway as a comparison, a country of similar size, where 23, 390 electric vehicles were registered in 2014 alone.
The Norwegians have encouraged this through the lack of VAT on e cars, and free car parking, free access to bus lanes and free public charging points for e car owners. Ireland has followed some of these measures.
Barriers
People are still reluctant to purchase e cars, and one of the mainr reasons is the ‘range anxiety’ already mentioned as well as the perceived hassle of charging batteries for hours overnight.
People might also enjoy driving, and feel that an electric car, running silently without gear changes, is not what they traditionally enjoy.
For e cars to really take hold here, the Government might have to follow Norway’s lead and allow e cars travel in bus lanes, and park for free.
Allied to that, the cost of e cars needs to come down. I think they really need to be cheaper than existing petrol or diesel cars to break through.
They might also need to have a ‘unique selling point’ that marks them out as distinctly different or superior to petrol or diesel cars.
There are signs that this might happen, as electric cars are set to become driverless, and that this will happen a lot faster than we might imagine.
Driverless
Hard-nosed analysts of the global car industry are convinced driverless cars WILL happen, and will happen in the near future.
Certainly, companies with huge reputations like Google, and Apple are reportedly investing in developing a driverless, electric car.
Volvo are working on one too, as are BMW, and legislation has already been passed in some US states permitting cars to be driverless.
VW too, who are under huge pressure these days of course, are reportedly work on an electric driverless car of their own.
The people who look at these things closely are expecting that a driverless car will be for sale inside the next five years.
The market potential is huge, according to the Boston Consulting Group, who estimate the driverless car market will be worth $42 billion by 2015.
The Google X driverless car is expected to hit the market in 2018, with Apple’s Project Titan to arrive in or around the same time.
It is very interesting that technology companies like Google and Apple are investing so heavily and secretively in driverless cars.
These giants clearly believe that people will be travelling in driverless, electric cars in future, using the Net, Apps, or whatever else freely.
Inside a Google car, Google have a captive audience to promote all kinds of other technology which people will use freely on their way to work.
Many of the barriers that would have blocking the development of the driverless car are being removed.
The two biggest blocks are legislation and the willingness of people to use them. A lot is happening on the legislation side.
For example, six states in the US have already passed legislation allowing the testing of driverless cars out on the public roads.
The world has already had its first driverless car crash, which happened in July last when a driverless Lexus crashed and three Google employees got minor injuries.
Also, just last week a the Google driverless car had an encounter with the law in Silicon Valley California for driving 24 mph in a 35 mph zone.
The police officer pulled over the prototype car and spoke with the people inside, but no ticket was issued.
Legislation
Irish and UK legislation would have to be substantially changed to allow for driverless cars to operate here, but it needs to happen urgently.
The UK is addressing this in law, and we need to too.
The other legal issue people would have is who is to blame if a driverless car crashes. People don’t want to be held account for something that is not under their control – understandably.
This led Volvo last month to say that it would take liability for any crash of any of its driverless cars – others will probably follow.
But, generally speaking the driverless car will be far safer than a car piloted by a human, who may be tired, distracted, or drunk.
Game changer
We have had technologies in our cars which are not under our control already for years.
The best example perhaps would be ABS braking. This has been around since the 1980s, where control of the braking is taken from the driver to best ensure that wheels don’t lock, and spin out of control.
There are also systems which help us to park -self parking systems – where sensors guide a car as well as cruise control.
But, the vision for a driverless car goes way beyond these familiar features to a situation where a person, or persons, sit in, type or speak in a destination point, and then sit back and relax, read or work.
The driverless car will be able to sense its surrounding using existing technologies like RADAR, GPS and computer vision.
They will update their maps based on sensory input, and be able to track their position everywhere and adjust to all driving conditions.
Most of the ideas for driverless envisage a person in a driver’s seat, with a cloud, or wifi connection to other vehicles all around them.
The vehicles will communicate each other’s position and destination, and share the sensory input on road blocks, accidents or weather conditions.
All that intelligence will better get everyone safely from A to B. Dublin might have a swarm of electric vehicles, efficiently moving all of us.
A giant, traffic management system, with zero pollution, and an order of magnitude safer than what have. Safety, and efficiency might drive this.
It is not about breakthrough technology it is about incorporating a range of existing technology into a 21st century vehicle, which has, up to now, been run on an internal combustion engines, born in the 19th century.
Sexist toys putting girls off science; 9am school start too early for teenagers; 30,000 old virus brought back to life; mental health ‘apps’ review
Click above to listen to discussion on The Morning Show with Declan Meehan.
This was first broadcast on East Coast FM on 10th September 2015
Are sexist toys turning girls off science? Many scientists believe they are (Source: Independent, UK)
A quick visit to a toy store confirms that many toys are heavily marketed towards either boys or girls, not both.
Sexist toys, critics say, encourage nurturing and a pretty appearance, while boys focus on building things, and competing with other boys.
This is sending an early message to girls that activities which involve building, creating and problem solving are not meant for them.
This, according to Professor Dame Athena Donald, the new President of the British Science Association, explains why girls are often turned off by science, and particularly hard science subjects like physics.
Sleep research is finding that teenagers starting school at 9am are sleep deprived, and suggest 10am as a time more in keeping with youngster’s natural body clocks.
Scientists have brought a 30,000 year old virus back to life. It was frozen in Siberian ice, melted due to global warming. There is a concern that the virus may be dangerous to humans, and safety testing is underway.
Up to 60% of people that have a mental health problem do not access health professionals, for a variety of reasons. Mental health ‘apps’ – against this background – are proving popular with many first time therapy users.
DNA-based computers set to replace silicon
Click above to listen to discussion with Keelin Shanley on Today with Sean O’Rourke, broadcast on RTE Radio 1 on 27th August 2015
DNA-based computers have already been built and they look set to replace silicon computers in coming years (Source: http://www.news.discovery.com)
We love our electronics, or most of us do, and every year or two, when we go to buy a new phone, computer or laptop we all expect to buy a faster, more intelligent device.
The microchips inside our electronics are ‘the brain’ of the device. They are currently made up of silicon, an abundant material found in sand.
However, some time soon, perhaps very soon, silicon-based chips will no longer be able to provide devices with the extra speed and functionality that buyers demand.
The big question is, if electronic devices are not based on silicon, as they have been for decades now, what will they be based on?
It might come as a surprise to some to learn that DNA, the genetic material inside every human cell, is a leading contender to fill silicon’s shoes.
Origins
In a way, it makes perfect sense to use DNA for computers. DNA is brilliant at storing and processing information, and is made up of a simple, reliable code.
Yet the idea of using DNA in computers didn’t emerge until as late as 1994.
That was when Leonard Adleman, of the University of Southern California showed that DNA could solve a well-known mathematical problem.
The problem was a variation of what mathematicians call the ‘directed Hamilton Path problem. In English that translates to ‘the travelling salesman problem’.
In brief, the problem is to find the shortest route between a number of cities going through each city just once.
The problem gets more difficult the more cities are added to the problem. Adelman solved the problem,using , for seven cities in the US.
Thing is, it is not a hugely difficult problem, and a clever enough human using paper and pencil could probably work it out faster than Adelman’s DNA computer.
The importance of what Adelman did was to show that DNA could be used to solve computational problems – what we might call a proof of concept today.
He used synthesised DNA strands to represent each one of the seven cities and other strands were made for each of the possible flight paths between the cities.
He then performed a number of experimental techniques on the DNA strands to get the single answer that he wanted. Like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.
It was slow, but he showed it could be done.
The question now was, what else can we do with DNA?
Purified silicon, pictured here, is sourced primarily from sand and is an abundant element in the Earth’s crust (Source: Wikipedia)
Silicon
The most important element is silicon, pictured here on the right, which is the material used to make the microchip; the brain of our phones, pads and laptops if you like.
The first silicon chip was made in 1968, and it became the material of choice for the emerging computer industry in the years and decades that followed.
It is an abundant material, found in sand, and in rocks like granite and quartzite, and this abundance means it is cheap, and easy to find, all over the world.
It is also a semiconductor, which means it conducts electricity, although badly. It is halfway between a conductor, such as metal, and an insulator, such as rubber.
It would be very hard to control electricity, in terms of switching transistors on and off, using a material that conducted electricity or block its flow entirely.
This semiconducting property makes it easier to control the flow of electricity in a silicon microchip, which is crucial to success of the microchip technology.
Other materials
Aside from silicon, there are plastics, which make up a lot of the weight of many devices and laptops, in the body, circuit boards, wiring, insulation and fans.
These are plastics like polystyrene, a common one, are made up of carbon and hydrogen, two of the most common elements in nature.
There are metals, but usually light metals, such as aluminium, which is popular because it is light, and strong and has a sleek, modern appearance.
Aluminium comes from bauxite mining, and a lot of energy is spent in extracting the ore aluminium from the bauxite rock in big producer nations like Australia.
There is some steel for structural support and for things like screws, and copper is still used in wiring on circuit boards and to connect electrical parts.
The battery is key, of course, and typically it is a lithium-iron battery these days. These batteries also have cobalt, oxygen and carbon.
Rare earths
There are also small elements of rare materials, or rare earths such as gold or platinum, or neodymium, which is used for tiny magnets inside tiny motors.
electronic devices, including iPhones and other devices. This,has proved controversial as the process that extracts those rare earths from the ground is environmentally risky, some believe.
Minerals such as neodymium are used in magnets inside the iPhones to make speakers vibrate and create sound.
Europium is a material that creates a bright red colour on an iPhone screen and Cerium is used by workers to polish phones as the go along the assembly line.
The iPhone wouldn’t work without the various rare earths contained in it. Ninety per cent of the rare earths are mined in China, where environmental rules are slacker.
Price
There is a human price to be paid – elsewhere – for our shiny, fast, new devices.
For example, a centre of rare earth mining is a place called Baotou, in Inner Mongolia. The town has dense smog, and a radioactive ‘tailings’ lake west of the city, where rare earth processors dump their waste, described as “an apocalyptic sight”.
Radioactive waste has seeped into the ground, plants won’t grow, animals are sick, and people report their teeth falling out, and their hair turning white.
The people that risk their lives mining for the rare materials that need to make make the electronics we love, usually live far away from Europe or North America.
China is a major centre for such mining, and Australia is significant too.
DNA is ‘clean’
When scientists built a computing running on DNA in Israel in 2003, it contained none of the silicon, metals or rare earths used in our devices today.
It could also perform 330 trillion operations per second, which was a staggering 100,000 times faster than silicon-based personal computers.
A DNA computer would be much ‘greener’ and more in keeping with our 21st century ideas of sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint.
DNA computers don’t need much energy to work. It is just a case of putting DNA molecules into the right chemical soup, and controlling what happens next.
If built correctly, and that is where the technical challenge likes, a DNA computer will sustain itself on less than one millionth of the energy used in silicon chip technology.
Milestones
There have been a few important milestones since the pioneering work of Adelman in California opened the door to DNA computers back in 1994.
A lot of the progress has happened in the Weizmann Institute for Science in Israel, a world class institute in a country even smaller than our own.
Between 2002 and 2004, scientists there produced a computer based on DNA and other biological materials, rather than silicon.
They came up with a DNA computer which was, they said, capable of diagnosing cancer activity inside a cell, and releasing an anti-cancer drug after diagnosis.
More recently in 2013, researcher stored a JPEG photo, the text of a set of Shakespearean sonnets and an audio file of Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech using DNA.
This proved that DNA computers were very good at storing data, which is something that DNA has evolved to do over millions of years in the natural world.
DNA computers are on the way that will be far better at storing data than existing computers which use cumbersome magnetic tape or hard drive storage systems.
The reason is simple. DNA is a very dense, highly coiled molecule that can be packed tightly into a small space.
It lives in nature inside tiny cells. These cells are only visible under a microscope, yet the DNA from one cell would stretch to 2 metres long if uncoiled and pulled straight.
The information stored in DNA also can be stored safely for a long time. We know this because DNA from extinct creatures, like the Mammoth, has lasted 60,000 years or more when preserved in ice, in dark, cold and dry conditions.
One of the few advantages of our Irish weather is that it is makes it an attractive place for high technology companies to base their data store centres here.
It was a factor in the announcement by Google last week that it was to locate a second data centre in Dublin.
Many industry experts believe the days of the silicon chip, like this one, are numbered, and some believe DNA will replace it as the material of choice in our future devices (Source: http://www.tested.com)
DNA chip
A DNA computer chip – if we call it that- will have to be far more powerful than existing silicon chips to establish itself as a new technology.
This will be ‘disruptive’,and a lot of money is invested in manufacturing plants like Intel in Leixlip, which have been set up and fitted out to make silicon chips.
But, regardless of the level of investment, and Intel have invested something like $12.5 billion in their Leixlip plant since 1990, silicon’s days are numbered.
In 1965, Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, came up with a law governing the production of faster and faster computing speeds, which has proved accurate.
He said that the number of transistors on an ‘integrated circuit’ – the name given to chips before silicon became the material of choice – would double every two years.
This doubling has continued every two years since 1965, but engineers say that they are fast reaching the point where they have exhausted silicon transistor capacity.
The need for something to replace silicon is becoming urgent, and this is why a recent breakthrough in DNA computing in the UK is especially timely.
Scientists at the University of East Anglia have just announced they have found a watch to change the structure of DNA – twice – using a harmless common material.
The material is called EDTA and it is found in shampoo, soaps and toiletries to keep their colour, texture and fragrance intact.
The scientists used EDTA to change DNA to another structure, and the, after changing it, to change it back into its original structure again.
In silicon, the transistors switch between ‘on’ and ‘off’ states and this provides the means of controlling the way that the silicon chip works.
Similarly, this breakthrough has shown, for first time, that scientists can now also switch DNA between two ‘states’ or forms.
The research was just published (17th August) in the journal Chemical Communications.
The fact that the structure of DNA can be changed twice means that it is possible to create DNA ‘logic gates’, like those which are used in silicon computers.
A logic gate, by the way, is something that is capable of performing a logical operation based on more or more logical inputs, to produce a single logical output.
Future
DNA computers can take us to a new level of computing which wasn’t possible with Silicon.
DNA computers, the size of teardrops, will be constructed in the future, using nanotechnology; will will be as powerful as the supercomputers of today.
This size will be important as we are entering an age when many things will be connected to the internet in our homes and offices, all talking to one another.
These devices will have artificial intelligence, and they will be capable of rapid processing of data, and making decisions to benefit mankind.
We come home, and some wearable device detects we are sweating, and the hot water is put on for a shower, while a cold drink is made in the kitchen.
We will have a lot of devices, and if they are based on DNA technology, we’ll need a lot of DNA, but that is no problem, as we can now make it ourselves.
There are no toxic materials required to synthesize DNA and it can provide us with the technology we crave, without something else paying for it with their ill health.
Killer robots with A.I. are worrying scientists
CLICK ABOVE to listen to discussion with Keelin Shanley on the dangers of killer robots with A.I. on Today with Sean O’Rourke (broadcast 5th August 2015)
Scientists are worried about how mankind will control robots with advanced built in artificial intelligence (Credit: Warner Bros)
Huge advances in in robotics and artificial intelligence mean that intelligent ‘killer robots’ could be ‘living’ among us in just a few years, and scientists and experts in the field are worried.
Origins
Artificial intelligence is the name given to how scientists try and replicate human intelligence in a computer. At its most basic it is software based on mathematics.
The scientific ‘father’ of A.I., as it is called, is Alan Turing, the brilliant English mathematician and code-breaker whose life was portrayed in The Imitation Game last year which many listeners will have seen.
We can, in fact, lay claim to Turing for Ireland, as he was half Irish. His mother, Ethel Sara Stoney, was Irish, attended Alexandra College in Milltown Dublin, and was part of a famous Anglo-Irish scientific family.
Ethel’s relations included George Stoney, the scientist who invented the term electron, and after whom a street in Dublin’s Dundrum is named; as well as Edith Stoney, regarded as the first woman medical physicist.
Turing’s idea was that a machine, using a mathematical alphabet which consisted of just two numbers, 0 and 1 could solve any problem.
This machine was the Turing Universal machine, and Turing came up with the idea, as far back as 1936, when he was just 24-years old.
Many identify the birth of A.I. as occurring at a now famous scientific conference at Dartmouth College Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in the U.S.A. in 1956.
After that, in the 1960s and 70s, A.I. researchers developed programmers that could solve basic problems of algebra, prove mathematical theorems and speak English.
The public was astonished, and this was the background to the creation of the Hal 9000 computer on the Discovery spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The US government poured money into A.I. research and it was predicted that an intelligent machine, to rival or surpass a human, would be built inside 20 years.
Like, is often the case in science, however, the predictions were overly optimistic, and didn’t anticipate the scale of the technical problems that had to be overcome.
Yet, in the past decade, A.I. researchers have started to create more intelligent software which learns from the environment like a toddler, and think for itself.
Earlier A.I. systems could only respond to direct commands, and were unable to learn from, or adapt to, the environment around them.
The advances in A.I. mean that machines with A.I. can now start to do things really useful, like helping humans to be better pilots, doctors and teachers.
But, creating machines that can help us in these many ways also means that we have created another intelligence, which may, or may not be under our control.
Like the Frankenstein story, written by Mary Shelley in 1818, we may ultimately create a life form which we cannot control, and which destroys us.
Concerns
For a long time, A.I. was not very intelligent at all, and came no-where close to replicating the miracle of bio-engineering that is the human brain.
However, recent advances in developing ‘self-learning systems’ which interact with the environment, and learn from it, like humans, have become a lot better.
So, much so that a Campaign to Stop Killer Robots was set up in 2013, with the support of about 1,000 A.I. scientists and researchers.
The main aim was to ban the development of what they called ‘autonomous weapons’ before they became a reality. That is weapons that can ‘think’ for themselves.
The United States already uses ‘drones’ in its conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria, and in March an ISIS-operated drone was shot down by the US near Fallujah, Iraq.
Drones are robotic planes that require an operator to select and kill targets, but with advances in A.I. drones could select targets and kill without an operator.
Obama likes Drones because they don’t risk pilots’ lives and they cost less. A drone costs about $12 million, while a new fighter costs about $120 million.
Self-learning systems, as they are called, are now being developed, which interact with the environment, and learn from it, in much the way humans do.
The rapid recent developments in A.I. worried A.I. researchers and 1,000 or so of them set up The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots in 2013.
Earlier this year, an open letter signed by leading lights of science and industry, said mankind is heading for a dark future without controls on A.I.
This was signed by Stephen Hawking, top A.I. researcher and pioneer Professor Stephen Russell and Elon Musk of the space company, SpaceX.
Hawking said: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
Musk said that allowing A.I. to develop freely without controls would be akin to “summoning the demon.”
Science, one of the world’s most highly regarded science magazines, entered the debate with a special edition on the subject of A.I. which also highlighted many concerns.
The issue right now is that A.I. is no longer in the realm of science fiction and that scientists are worried it will become reality without proper human controls.
Awareness
There are two schools of thought among A.I. researchers on whether robots will ever develop an intelligence that is truly ‘self-aware’ like humans.
One view holds that A.I. will always be artificial and will never truly replicate life and become self-aware like we are.
The other believes that A.I. systems will, at some point in the future, become ‘self aware’ in precisely the same way that humans are aware they exist.
It’s hard to decide who might be correct, as right now, we understand little about what makes us humans, conscious and self aware.
It is one of the great mysteries of science, and this means it will be very hard for us to determine whether a machine is truly conscious or not.
We don’t know what we are looking for essentially.
However, we can say that, as humans, by whatever magic of biology, we are aware of ourselves existing, and can take decisions based on our own moral code.
The point is, should we risk allowing A.I. machines, with weapons and killing capacity to become ‘self aware’ and autonomous? It seems a big risk to take.
Benefits
A.I. can be used to make our environment and our devices more intelligent, leading to a higher standard of living, arguably, for us all in the future.
All our devices will be connected to the ‘Net, the Internet of Things, and these things, equipped with A.I. will be better able to serve the needs of their human masters.
A robot that prepares your dinner, using fresh ingredients and has it ready for you when you come home tired from work? It’s already happening.
A driver less car that takes you safely home from the pub on a Friday night when you have been out enjoying a few drinks with friends.
A robotic surgeon, who doesn’t make mistakes, and has all the skills learned from hundreds of years of surgery to call on, may save your life on the operating table. `
Superior speech recognition systems, which mean you can talk to devices as you move around your home, and do things for you, as required.
A domestic robot that can do chores around the house, or act as a companion or carer to people, with built in empathy, or personality?
Machines with A.I. could rapidly go through the massive amount of data that is out there in the world now, and make sense of it, in a way that humans struggle to do.
The sky’s the limit with A.I., but like always with science, and like, there can be a dark side.
Super intelligence
Super intelligence, as articulated by Oxford University philosopher, Nick Bostrom, at the Future of Humanity Institute, is a huge concern for some A.I. thinkers.
At some point in the not-too distant future, machines will surpass humans in general intelligence. At that point machines will replace humans as the dominant ‘life form’ on Earth. Life here will have entered its post-biological phase. We’ll be extinct.
Sufficiently, intelligent machines could improve themselves, to reach an even higher level of intelligence, without the need for humans.
The fate of humans, whether they continued to exist or not, would, be dependent on the whim of the machine super intelligence.
Our relationship to the super intelligence would be like the relationship gorillas, for example, have with humans today. We’d be endangered, or doomed.
Thinkers like Bostrom, and futurist Ray Kurzweil, talk about a moment called a ‘technological singularity’ when A.I. becomes truly super intelligent.
This is the moment when a computer or a robot with A.I. becomes capable of designing better, more intelligent versions of itself.
Rapid repetitions of this would result in an intelligence explosion, and very quickly, a super intelligence would emerge, way beyond human intelligence.
It would be like putting evolution into super-fast forward, and our own slow biological evolution would be unable to compete with this.
This super intelligence might be able to solve problems, and answer questions which have proved beyond the capabilities of human beings to solve.
Scientists argue as to when this moment might arrive, Kurzweil, predicts it will be with us by 2045, some have argued it will be with us as early as 2030.
Threat
No-one is agreed on how best to deal with unregulated ‘autonomic weapons’ or with the prospect of hostile super intelligent machines.
The aforementioned Elon Musk, the SpaceX entrepreneur, has put $10 million of his money into projects aimed at keeping A.I. ‘under control’ and ‘beneficial’.
We would try and build in elements that would prevent A.I. machines from turning on humans, like with the protective Terminator in the Hollywood film.
We might do well to take on board ‘The Three Laws of Robotics’ devised by brilliant science fiction author Isaac Asimov (author of I, Robot) back in 1942.
These are:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Future
Or perhaps our future is to become cyborgs, to adopt and incorporate this immense A.I. intelligence as part of our own existence.
We could decide to ditch our biology, and to become a race of super intelligent, immortal machines.
Our ‘primitive’ fragile, biological beginnings may, in time become forgotten.
Was Sir Tim Hunt treated fairly? Are humans ‘walking dead’? Should we fear facial recognition technology? Why men are better at maths
Sir Tim Hunt was forced to resign from several prestigious positions following allegedly ‘sexist’ remarks (Credit: nobelprize.org)
The allegedly ‘sexist’ remarks made by Sr Tim Hunt, Nobel Prize winner, led to his resignation from several posts within days and his career is in shreds.
But were the remarks genuinely sexist? Was he treated fairly by the press?
Species of plants and animals are disappearing faster than any time since the dinosaurs. Legendary scientist and advocate Paul Ehrlich believes we have three generations left to do something about it, or we’ll end up like other ‘walking dead’, doomed species.
Facial recognition software is improving all the time, and governments and private companies are very interested in the data it provides. What’s now possible and how worried should be?
In education there is a well-known theory called the self-fulfilling prophecy. This is where a student meets the expectations of teachers and parents.
Does this explain the apparently strange reality where men are better at maths than women, while girls do better than boys in maths in primary school?
Click below to hear a discussion of these topics on The Morning Show with Declan Meehan
This was first broadcast on 25th June 2015 on East Coast FM
