Speaking at the Annual International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures in New York, professor Alexi Samsonovich, from Moscow’s National Research Nuclear University Cybernetics Department, stated that Russian researchers are on the verge of a major breakthrough in AI. But Samsonovich feels this breakthrough won’t necessarily be measurable in terms of artificial consciousness — we can’t even prove that humans are conscious, let alone an entity that might be as alien as AI — but rather that true advancement in AI would be seen in terms of AE: artificial emotions.
read more

The mainstream scientific community has long asserted that the strange effects of quantum physics, such as quantum indeterminacy and entanglement, can not assert themselves at the classical, or macroscopic, level of everyday physics. In recent years, quantum physicists have been steadily pushing the scale of what can be affected by quantum effects upward, suggesting that large-scale objects can affect, and in turn be affected by distant phenomenon.
read more

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast that temperatures for the months of August, September and October will be above average for the United States, including both the contiguous states and Alaska. According to research into NOAA’s archives on the matter done by Gizmodo, a forecast stretch of above-average temperatures this long is unprecedented.
read more