Poor Commander Hadfield. Without that wondrous zero gravity environment to work in, Earth has become a rather boring place.
This fantastic Hadfield at Home parody was put together by Sean Ireland, who reminds us that everything is cooler in space — including the wringing out of washcloths.
Here he recreates the famous nail-clipping experiment:
Two months ago, a boulder-sized object smashed into the surface of the Moon. The resulting flash — which could be seen by the naked eye — was 10 times brighter than anything witnessed before.
The Moon is hit by meteoroids all the time, but this impact was particularly notable. Looking at it from Earth, the one-second flare-up would have had the same intensity as a 4th magnitude star.
The meteoroid is estimated to have been about 40 kg and about 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide. But because it was traveling at 56,000 mph — and with no atmsophere to slow its descent — it resulted in an explosion equivalent to five tons of TNT.
An interesting question to ask is, if the Moon has no oxygen, how can something explode? NASA explains:
Lunar meteors don't require oxygen or combustion to make themselves visible. They hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that even a pebble can make a crater several feet wide. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site.
More here:
Images: NASA.
This seems a bit counter-intuitive, but a new study has shown that marijuana protects people from the emotional pain of being socially excluded.
Previous studies have shown that over-the-counter medications like Tylenol (acetaminophen) reduce both physical and social pain. Because Tylenol affects cannabinoid 1 (CB1) receptors in the brain, a research team led by Timothy Deckman conducted a four-part study to find out if marijuana does the same.
The four-part study included a total of 7,040 participants and three different methodologies. The researchers examined cross-sectional data from national surveys (including data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication), they interviewed high school students, and they conducted their very own experiment involving a computer-based game called Cyberball, which, by consistently ignoring players, causes them to feel socially excluded and rejected.
After considering the data, Deckman and his colleagues concluded that "marijuana use consistently buffered people from the negative consequences associated with loneliness and social exclusion," and that "[t]hese findings offer novel evidence supporting common overlap between social and physical pain processes."
That said, the researchers said smoking pot is a "poor way of coping with social pain." But their finding could also explain its popularity. To no one's surprise, marijuana is likely being used as a way to self-medicate.
Read the entire study at Social Psychological & Personality Science: "Can Marijuana Reduce Social Pain?"
Image: Shutterstock/holbox.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope is busted and it may never work normally again. But during its four years of exemplary service, the planet-hunting telescope provided astronomers with an unprecedented glimpse into the Milky Way. Here are the most incredible discoveries made by Kepler.
Top image: Ron Miller.
As we reported yesterday, controllers on the ground can no longer control Kepler’s orientation
Regardless, the space telescope has done its bit for king-and-country, operating for six months longer than initially planned.
Over the course of its three-and-half-years, the $600 million Kepler mission helped astronomers identify 132 exoplanets, including another 2,700 candidates. But it’s also provided us with a clearer picture of the Milky Way — a galaxy that contains bizarre worlds, freaky solar systems, and an astounding number of potentially habitable planets.
Here’s a rundown of Kepler's most significant and jaw-dropping discoveries.
In January 2011, astronomers discovered Kepler-10b — the most Earth-like planet known at the time. It marked the first time in history that a terrestrial planet was discovered outside of our own solar system
The discovery of Kepler 10-b is a significant milestone in the search for planets similar to our own. Although this planet is not in the habitable zone, the exciting find showcases the kinds of discoveries made possible by the mission and the promise of many more to come.
It’s one thing to find a rocky planet, but quite another to find one orbiting within its solar system’s habitable zone. Astronomers have now catalogued a handful of these potentially habitable exoplanets, but the first to ever be discovered was Kepler-22b
It’s also significantly cooler, dimmer, and smaller than ours. And while scientists have yet to determine K-22b's composition — be it rocky, gaseous or liquid — they estimate that surface temperatures on K-22b average a very Earth-like 72-degrees Fahrenheit.
Image: NASA/Ames/JPL.
Back in January, Kepler data helped astronomers estimate the number of Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way. They surveyed about 2,400 candidate planets spotted by the Kepler satellite over the first 16 months of its operation. The data indicated that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury — that's about one in every six star systems. Given that the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, that adds up to the figure of 17 billion
Image via Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Red dwarfs comprise nearly 75% of all the stars in the Milky Way, yet they remain invisible to the naked eye.
Using data pulled from Kepler, astronomers now believe that as many as 6% of all red dwarfs host Earth-sized planets within their habitable zones — a calculation that brings the total number of red dwarf alien Earths across the galaxy to 4.5 billion
Image: Artist's impression of a sunset from the super-Earth Gliese 667Cc courtesy ESO/L.Calçada. The large sun is the red dwarf, 667C.
On September 15th, 2011, NASA discovered a "circumbinary planet," orbiting not one, but two stars — just like Tatooine.
Located 200 light years away, Kepler-16b is a binary star system that hosts a Saturn-like planet composed of both gas and rock. The larger of the two suns is roughly 69% the mass of our Sun, while the smaller, red star is closer to 20% of our Sun's mass. Kepler also discovered the first binary system with more than one planet
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Kepler data was also made available to the general public. Back in October 2012, two amateur astronomers confirmed the existence of a Neptune-like planet with four suns, designating it the first quadruple star system ever discovered
The planet, which is 5,000 light years away from Earth, closely orbits one pair of stars, which in turn forms a unit that revolves around a second pair at a distance of around 1,000 AU.
Image: Ron Miller.
Several years ago, Kepler scientists discovered celestial bodies that appeared too heavy for their size.
The going theory is that they’re an entirely new class of planet — Neptune-like planets that were stripped of their outer gaseous layers after venturing too close to their sun
Early last year, scientists also confirmed the discovery of a new class of exoplanet called a boiling waterworld
Kepler has also found strange new solar systems that defy classification, like the one featuring a Neptune-like planet locked in a close orbit with a terrestrial planet
Artistic impression of Kepler-36 by David Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Kepler helped astronomers find a short-period super-Mercury planet that is in the final stage of its life.
The object has gotten so close to its parent star that it's only taking 15.7 hours to orbit around it, while it's surface temperature has risen to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The result: a dramatic, comet-like tail that's bursting outward from the planet
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.
This past April, the Kepler mission discovered a trio of distant planets that look remarkably like our own
Three Earth-sized worlds, dubbed Kepler-62f, Kepler-62e, and Kepler-69c, were discovered 1,200 and 2,700 light years from Earth — and they’re all situated in the so-called Goldilocks Zone of their parent stars, the "just-right" range at which liquid water, and life, can exist on a planet's surface.
Just announced this past week, data from Kepler helped astronomers find a hot Jupiter that’s 2,000 light-years away — and they did so using a new technique called BEER
At the close of the 19th century — just before cars made their appearance — a wealthy American businessman began construction on a private, for-profit bicycle superhighway that would stretch from Pasadena to Los Angeles. It almost got built.
This story comes to us from Brian Merchant at the always interesting Motherboard. The entrepreneur in question was Horace Dobbins, and he was trying to take advantage of the pre-automobile worldwide cycling boom. Merchant writes:
Dobbins was able to win the support of an ex-governor of California, who in turn strong-armed a nay-saying legislature to get the bike highway approved. It was officially dubbed the California Cycleway. Here's a Google Map of its intended route:
The first stretch of it, 1.25 miles across Pasadena, was in fact erected. The plan was to charge bicyclists 10¢ a pop for hopping on the bike-only highway one way, or 15¢ round trip. That's a savings of 50% if you make a day of it, folks.
The notion that anyone could profit off of such a venture—a bicycle toll road—seems insane now. But at the time, bicycling was a full-on fad. As in, something the rich, the hip, and the elite actually wanted to do. There were 30,000 cyclists in the Los Angeles region at the time, which was less populous then; it was home to 500,000 residents. A full 6% of Angelenos were cyclists.
Read the rest of the story at Motherboard.
Still is here in Canada. The GTA's 407 highway is the most expensive toll road in all of North America — and it's run by a corporation.
Without mosquitoes, malaria wouldn't be able to infect humans. But in addition to hitching a ride, it now appears that the parasite also alters insect behavior — making infected mosquitoes thirstier for human blood. Like, a lot thirstier.
According to a new study led by James Logan, mosquitoes (Anopheles gambiae) carrying the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum) are more attracted to human body odor than uninfected ones. And in fact, they're three times more likely to be drawn towards a human scent.
And fascinatingly — if not disturbingly — malaria does this by enhancing the mosquitoes sense of smell. It's an incredible evolutionary adaptation, one that doesn't directly benefit its own reproductive fitness, but that of its transmission vector. That's nasty.
Logan and his team aren't entirely sure how malaria tweaks mosquito physiology, but they suspect an alteration somewhere in the olfactory system.
The researchers figured this out after watching infected mosquitoes go to town on smelly stockings previously worn by humans. Uninfected mosquitoes weren't nearly as drawn to them.
Each year, malaria infects over 200 million people, killing 770,000 of them. Understanding how it spreads, therefore, is of critical importance. This latest discovery could result in new attractive compounds used to improve mosquito traps.
Read the entire study at PLOS: "Malaria Infected Mosquitoes Express Enhanced Attraction to Human Odor."
Image: Shutterstock/Natursports.
Quoting my son: "This is the least zombie thing EVER."
The undead are definitely upping their game, there's no question about it. And as if to prove the point, these parkouring zombies will happily show you how they've taken their stalking skills to the next level.
The Zombie CBR stunt team consists of Chris Romrell, Robert Bennett, Christain Russell, and Devon Bardole. More about this video here.
H/t Geekologie.
Drag queen parkour! YES!
Fifteen minutes is obviously a long time to spend on a video like this, but there's a real meditative quality to it. I could also see it being used as a background video for an art display, a concert, or even at a party.
Get ready to take a trip. Your 6,000 mile (9,000 km) long journey will start in Russia and extend down to the northern tip of South Africa — and you'll see it all from a height of 438 miles (705 km).
It's called The Long Swath — a 19-gigapixel filmstrip of the Earth produced by NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). Taken on April 19th, 2013, the satellite's natural color imager surveyed a strip of land 120 miles (185 km) wide and 6,000 miles (9,000 km) long.
NASA says it's an unusually long distance considering 70% of the planet is covered with water. The seamless 15-minute video was compiled from 56 still images.
NASA's Earth Observatory site features the swath mosaic in GigaPan view, allowing you to use the controls to zoom in and navigate the gigantic image. Each still image is available for download.
Image: NASA Earth Observatory.
High school chemistry class. Open flames on the ceiling. Fire sprinkler system. You can guess what happens next.
Researchers from the University of Manitoba have shown that birds can either be very good at flying or swimming, but not both. And they’ve been studying a very awkward seabird to prove it.
Animals that can fly really have it good. Flight allows for quick getaways, aerial view hunting, expanded territorial ranges, and the ability to travel vast distances when making seasonal migrations.
So, for a species to give up flight, there better be a damned good reason.
And indeed, the penguin did exactly such a thing about 70 million years ago, foregoing flight in favor of swimming. Scientists aren’t really sure why penguins made the switch, but they suspect it had something to do with a lack of land-based predators.
But a new theory, the biomechanical hypothesis, suggests that nature cannot provide a seabird with a wing that is proficient at both flying and swimming. For penguins, selectional pressures eventually tipped over in the direction of swimming, resulting in a vestigial wing that could propel the bird not through air, but through water. As a consequence, flight had to be completely abandoned lest the species remain mediocre at both — a condition that nature, with its preference for fitness peaks, will not endure.
To reach this conclusion, a research team led by Kyle Elliott studied two birds that are closely related to the penguin, the thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia), which are wing-propelled divers, and pelagic cormorants (Phalacrocorax pelagicus) which are foot-propelled divers. The murres proved to be particularly interesting — it’s a bird that’s reasonably good at swimming, but absolutely dreadful at flying.
Evolutionarily speaking, the murres is not quite ready to give up on flight just quite yet — but it’s not too far off, either. Without a doubt, the murres is one of the most awkward flying seabirds to ever be documented by scientists. In order to fly, it must beat its wings like crazy, expending energy at 31 times their resting state. Most animals burn energy at about 25 times their resting rate when going full-tilt.
The murres is also really terrible at landing.
At the same time, they’re so-so swimmers. Compared to penguins of the same size, the murres has to expend about 30% more energy. The scientists theorize that the dual-purpose feathered wings are causing too much drag for the bird underwater. The penguins' smooth and stubby flippers, which propels them through the water, is highly specialized for the task.
The murres, on the other hand, needs a wing that’s good at both, making specialization impossible. This bird is obviously well suited to its environment right now, but like the penguin, selection pressures may eventually tip it towards one of two possible directions.
Read the entire study at PNAS: “High flight costs, but low dive costs, in auks support the biomechanical hypothesis for flightlessness in penguins.”
Images: Kyle H. Elliot; inset: Christian Musat.
A recent study has shown that gamers who wage battle against human-looking characters are more likely to experience aggressive thoughts and words than those facing monstrous nonhuman targets.
For the study, a University of Connecticut research team led by Rory McGloin had 148 participants play the first-person shooter, Quake 3 Revolution, before administering tests to measure their levels of verbal, cognitive, and physical aggression.
Quake was chosen because it features a number of human-like and monster-like characters — including a giant floating eyeball.
"The more human players perceived the aggressive targets to be, the more verbally aggressive they were and the more violent words they generated," the researchers noted in the study. "Although we predicted that less human targets would result in more aggression, players seemed to be more aggressive after perceiving more human targets."
But that said, there was no significant increase in levels of actual physical aggression after fighting human-like video game characters.
"There are obvious consequences for physical violence," McGloin stated through a release. "But we're much more tolerant as a society of aggressive thoughts, as long as they don't lead to aggressive behavior."
The researchers also noted that men appeared to be more physically aggressive than women, and that "the more experience someone had playing violent games, the less violent they perceived the stimulus game to be."
Looking ahead, the researchers plan on studying the effects of using realistic gun-like controllers.
They also caution about making broad generalizations about their findings.
“We can talk about violent video games and aggression all day, but we need to be careful,” McGloin says. “We’re not going to find one answer and be able to say, ‘This game’s good, this game’s bad.’ It’s never going to be that simple.”
Read the entire study at Mass Communication and Society: "The Perception of Human Appearance in Video Games: Toward an Understanding of the Effects of Player Perceptions of Game Features."
Top image: Bioshock Infinite; Quake image via University of Connecticut.
Two days ago, as the 2013 Moore tornado struck Oklahoma, Charles Gifford sought refuge in a storm shelter. After he was safe inside, and with the door securely shut, Gifford poked his camera through a small hole, allowing him to capture this insanely up-close video of the 1.3 mile wide tornado.
This video shows how incredibly dangerous it is to be exposed to a tornado's churning debris field. There's all sorts of stuff flying around, blown by winds reaching 210 mph. At the 0:37 mark you can see an actual car tire whiz past. Wires can be heard snapping and massive branches can be seen coursing down the street.
The video is shown vertically because Gafford could only fit the camera through the hole at a vertical angle. He came out unscathed, but his neighbourhood was obviously severely damaged.
H/t Petapixel.
Australian researchers have isolated an immune system cell in salamanders which helps it regenerate missing limbs and damaged organs — and they suspect the same thing could work in humans, too.
Salamanders, or axolotls, are unique among vertebrates in that they’ve got remarkable regenerative powers. Adults can literally regrow and restore function to any part of the body, including the spinal cord and heart — even parts of the brain. Moreover, the regenerated tissue is scar free; once repaired, the new tissue looks almost the same as it was before.
Mammals obviously can’t do this. When we suffer tissue damage, the growth response is severely limited, while also being subject to scarring.
Now, thanks to the work of James Godwin and colleagues at Monash University's Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, scientists are one step closer to figuring out how to transfer the salamander’s regenerative powers to humans.
A crucial part of the healing process involves the presence of macrophages — a major immune system cell type that patrols tissues and gobbles-up foreign invaders, like bacteria and fungi. What’s more, they also play an important role in determining the mode of repair and instigating the tissue regeneration process.
Godwin et al. determined this after they got rid of all the macrophages in the salamanders they were experimenting upon. Devoid of these immune cells, the salamanders completely lost their ability to regrow limbs. In a manner of speaking, they suddenly became mammal-like — left with stumps and scarred tissue.
But then, after the macrophages were re-introduced, their regenerative capacities were restored, and the salamanders were able to grow their limbs back.
"Previously, we thought that macrophages were negative for regeneration, and this research shows that that's not the case — if the macrophages are not present in the early phases of healing, regeneration does not occur," he said in a press statement. "Now, we need to find out exactly how these macrophages are contributing to regeneration. Down the road, this could lead to therapies that tweak the human immune system down a more regenerative pathway."
The researchers theorize that chemicals released by the macrophages are crucial for regeneration. And indeed, this is the next phase of their research. Their ultimate goal is to reverse-engineer these techniques into human therapies — a medical breakthrough that could lead to treatments for heart and liver diseases associated with scarring (fibrosis). It could also lead to therapies for the treatment of spinal cord and brain injuries.
Read the entire study at PNAS: “Macrophages are required for adult salamander limb regeneration.”
Image: National Geographic/Stephen Dalton/Animals Animals—Earth Scenes.
With much of our attention focused the rise of advanced artificial intelligence
As a species, we’ve been amplifying our brains for millennia. Or at least we’ve tried to. Looking to overcome our cognitive limitations, humans have employed everything from writing, language, and meditative techniques straight through to today’s nootropics
Unlike efforts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), or even an artificial superintelligence (SAI), the human brain already presents us with a pre-existing intelligence to work with. Radically extending the abilities of a pre-existing human mind — whether it be through genetics, cybernetics or the integration of external devices — could result in something quite similar to how we envision advanced AI.
Looking to learn more about this, I contacted futurist Michael Anissimov, a blogger at Accelerating Future and a co-organizer of the Singularity Summit. He’s given this subject considerable thought — and warns that we need to be just as wary of IA as we are AI.
Michael, when we speak of Intelligence Amplification, what are we really talking about? Are we looking to create Einsteins? Or is it something significantly more profound?
The real objective of IA is to create super-Einsteins, persons qualitatively smarter than any human being that has ever lived. There will be a number of steps on the way there.
The first step will be to create a direct neural link to information
The next step will be to develop brain-computer interfaces that augment the visual cortex, the best-understood part of the brain. This would boost our spatial visualization and manipulation capabilities. Imagine being able to imagine a complex blueprint with high reliability and detail, or to learn new blueprints quickly. There will also be augmentations that focus on other portions of sensory cortex, like tactile cortex and auditory cortex.
The third step involves the genuine augmentation of pre-frontal cortex. This is the Holy Grail of IA research — enhancing the way we combine perceptual data to form concepts. The end result would be cognitive super-McGyvers, people who perform apparently impossible intellectual feats. For instance, mind controlling other people, beating the stock market, or designing inventions that change the world almost overnight. This seems impossible to us now in the same way that all our modern scientific achievements would have seemed impossible to a stone age human — but the possibility is real.
For it to be otherwise would require that there is some mysterious metaphysical ceiling on qualitative intelligence that miraculously exists at just above the human level. Given that mankind was the first generally intelligent organism to evolve on this planet, that seems highly implausible. We shouldn't expect version one to be the final version, any more than we should have expected the Model T to be the fastest car ever built.
Looking ahead to the next few decades, how could AI come about? Is the human brain really that fungible?
The human brain is not really that fungible. It is the product of more than seven million years of evolutionary optimization and fine-tuning, which is to say that it's already highly optimized given its inherent constraints. Attempts to overclock it usually cause it to break, as demonstrated by the horrific effects of amphetamine addiction.
Chemicals are not targeted enough to produce big gains in human cognitive performance. The evidence for the effectiveness of current "brain-enhancing drugs" is extremely sketchy. To achieve real strides will require brain implants with connections to millions of neurons. This will require millions of tiny electrodes, and a control system to synchronize them all. The current state of the art brain-computer interfaces have around 1,000 connections. So, current devices need to be scaled up by more than 1,000 times to get anywhere interesting. Even if you assume exponential improvement, it will be awhile before this is possible — at least 15 to 20 years.
Improvement in IA rests upon progress in nano-manufacturing. Brain-computer interface engineers, like Ed Boyden at MIT, depend upon improvements in manufacturing to build these devices. Manufacturing is the linchpin on which everything else depends. Given that there is very little development of atomically-precise manufacturing technologies, nanoscale self-assembly seems like the most likely route to million-electrode brain-computer interfaces. Nanoscale self-assembly is not atomically precise, but it's precise by the standards of bulk manufacturing and photolithography.
What potential psychological side-effects may emerge from a radically enhanced human? Would they even be considered a human at this point?
One of the most salient side effects would be insanity. The human brain is an extremely fine-tuned and calibrated machine. Most perturbations to this tuning qualify as what we would consider "crazy." There are many different types of insanity, far more than there are types of sanity. From the inside, insanity seems perfectly sane, so we'd probably have a lot of trouble convincing these people they are insane.
Even in the case of perfect sanity, side effects might include seizures, information overload, and possibly feelings of egomania or extreme alienation. Smart people tend to feel comparatively more alienated in the world, and for a being smarter than everyone, the effect would be greatly amplified.
Most very smart people are not jovial and sociable like Richard Feynman. Hemingway said, "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools." What if drunkenness were not enough to instill camaraderie and mutual affection? There could be a clean "empathy break" that leads to psychopathy.
So which will come first? AI or IA?
It's very difficult to predict either. There is a tremendous bias for wanting IA to come first, because of all the fun movies and video games with intelligence-enhanced protagonists. It's important to recognize that this bias in favor of IA does not in fact influence the actual technological difficulty of the approach. My guess is that AI will come first because development is so much cheaper and cleaner.
Both endeavours are extremely difficult. They may not come to pass until the 2060s, 2070s, or later. Eventually, however, they must both come to pass — there's nothing magical about intelligence, and the demand for its enhancement is enormous. It would require nothing less than a global totalitarian Luddite dictatorship to hold either back for the long term.
What are the advantages and disadvantages to the two different developmental approaches?
The primary advantage of the AI route is that it is immeasurably cheaper and easier to do research. AI is developed on paper and in code. Most useful IA research, on the other hand, is illegal. Serious IA would require deep neurosurgery and experimental brain implants. These brain implants may malfunction, causing seizures, insanity, or death. Enhancing human intelligence in a qualitative way is not a matter of popping a few pills — you really need to develop brain implants to get any significant returns.
Most research in that area is heavily regulated and expensive. All animal testing is expensive. Theodore Berger has been working on a hippocampal implant for a number of years — and in 2004 it passed a live tissue test, but there has been very little news since then. Every few years he pops up in the media and says it's just around the corner, but I'm skeptical. Meanwhile, there is a lot of intriguing progress in Artificial Intelligence.
Does IA have the potential to be safer than AI as far as predictability and controllability is concerned? Is it important that we develop IA before super-powerful AGI?
Intelligence Augmentation is much more unpredictable and uncontrollable than AGI has the potential to be. It's actually quite dangerous, in the long term. I recently wrote an article that speculates on global political transformation caused by a large amount of power concentrated in the hands of a small group due to "miracle technologies" like IA or molecular manufacturing. I also coined the term "Maximillian," meaning "the best," to refer to a powerful leader making use of intelligence enhancement technology to put himself in an unassailable position.
Image: The cognitively enhanced Reginald Barclay from the ST:TNG episode, "The Nth Degree."
The problem with IA is that you are dealing with human beings, and human beings are flawed. People with enhanced intelligence could still have a merely human-level morality, leveraging their vast intellects for hedonistic or even genocidal purposes.
AGI, on the other hand, can be built from the ground up to simply follow a set of intrinsic motivations that are benevolent, stable, and self-reinforcing.
People say, "won't it reject those motivations?" It won't, because those motivations will make up its entire core of values — if it's programmed properly. There will be no "ghost in the machine" to emerge and overthrow its programmed motives. Philosopher Nick Bostrom does an excellent analysis of this in his paper "The Superintelligent Will". The key point is that selfish motivations will not magically emerge if an AI has a goal system that is fundamentally selfless, if the very essence of its being is devoted to preserving that selflessness. Evolution produced self-interested organisms because of evolutionary design constraints, but that doesn't mean we can't code selfless agents de novo.
What roadblocks, be they technological, medical, or ethical, do you see hindering development?
The biggest roadblock is developing the appropriate manufacturing technology. Right now, we aren't even close.
Another roadblock is figuring out what exactly each neuron does, and identifying the exact positions of these neurons in individual people. Again, we're not even close.
Thirdly, we need some way to quickly test extremely fine-grained theories of brain function — what Ed Boyden calls "high throughput circuit screening" of neural circuits. The best way to do this would be to somehow create a human being without consciousness and experiment on them to our heart's content, but I have a feeling that idea might not go over so well with ethics committees.
Absent that, we'd need an extremely high-resolution simulation of the human brain. Contrary to hype surrounding "brain simulation" projects today, such a high-resolution simulation is not likely to be developed until the 2050-2080 timeframe. An Oxford analysis picks a median date of around 2080. That sounds a bit conservative to me, but in the right ballpark.
Top image: imredesiuk/shutterstock.
1:55 onwards: Yes, please.
Ugh, can't believe I did that; thanks. Now fixed.