this curious life

 

While many Americans were finalizing preparations for Thanksgiving on Nov. 21, the U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signed a new policy directive aimed at reducing the risk and “consequences of failures in autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems that could lead to unintended engagements.” In other words, the Pentagon was making sure that the U.S. military doesn’t end up in a situation where robots are able to decide whether to pull the trigger on a human.

 

In an attempt to head that future off, Terminator-like, Cambridge University has announced it’s setting up a center next year devoted to the study of technology and “existential risk” — the threat that advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology and other fields could pose to mankind’s very existence.

 

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/29/rise-of-the-machines-cambridge-university-to-study-technologys-existential-risk-to-mankind/#ixzz2Ddt8C5H2

'With the fundamental tools of genetic manipulation—tools that had cost millions of dollars not 10 years earlier—dropping precipitously in price, the crowd-sourced design of biological agents was just the next logical step.'

 

'Bill Gates, in a recent interview, told a reporter that if he were a kid today, forget about hacking computers: he’d be hacking biology.'

 

'The historical trend is clear: Whenever novel technologies enter the market, illegitimate uses quickly follow legitimate ones. A black market soon appears. Thus, just as criminals and terrorists have exploited many other forms of technology, they will surely soon turn to synthetic biology, the latest digital frontier.'

By Andreas Kahl and Owen Craig

 

'We have been working in the area of colon cancer prevention and detection for some time, and the announcement this week of a major step towards a more effective and reliable blood-based test for bowel cancer is delivering on this major research effort.

 

The test is the result of a five-year scientific collaboration between CSIRO, Australian biotech company Clinical Genomics and Flinders University in Adelaide. Such a test has been the goal for many scientists working in molecular diagnostics around the world, and this development is a major step forward.'

The controversial scientist is convinced that the planet’s biggest problems can be solved by its tiniest organisms. It’s just a matter of creating the right ones.

 

'"In the menagerie of Craig Venter’s imagination, tiny bugs will save the world. They will be custom bugs, designer bugs — bugs that only Venter can create. He will mix them up in his private laboratory from bits and pieces of DNA, and then he will release them into the air and the water, into smokestacks and oil spills, hospitals and factories and your house.'