How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the Ultimate AI Brain

Google has always been an artificial intelligence company, so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise that Ray Kurzweil, one of the leading scientists in the field, joined the search giant late last year. Nonetheless, the hiring raised some eyebrows, since Kurzweil is perhaps the most prominent proselytizer of “hard AI,” which argues that it is possible to create consciousness in an artificial being. Add to this Google’s revelation that it is using techniques of deep learning to produce an artificial brain, and a subsequent hiring of the godfather of computer neural nets Geoffrey Hinton, and it would seem that Google is becoming the most daring developer of AI, a fact that some may consider thrilling and others deeply unsettling. Or both.

On Tuesday, Kurzweil moderated a live Google hangout tied to a release of the upcoming Will Smith film, After Earth, presumably tying the film’s futuristic concept to actual futurists. The discussion touched on the necessity of space travel and the imminent resolution of the world’s energy problems with solar power. After the hangout, Kurzweil got on the phone with me to explore a few issues in more detail.

Through Dirt-Cheap Genetic Testing, Counsyl Is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

For cynics who say that Silicon Valley has become too mired in photo-sharing apps and addictive games, take a 15-minute drive to South San Francisco.

In a non-descript lab is a company that may be paving the way for the Valley’s next wave of disruptive startups, which marry software with data from the human genome.

Counsyl is doing genetic tests that look for more than 400 mutations and at least 100 genetic disorders for parents who are planning children. At $599 total, or $99 with insurance, their tests cost a fraction of standard ones, which often only look for a single condition like cystic fibrosis, and run anywhere from $100 to $500. A full panel of tests for Ashkenazi Jews, a minority famously at risk for various genetic conditions, can run about $4,000 to $5,000 from companies like Quest Diagnostics.

Founded six years ago, Counsyl has grown to handle carrier screening for 2.5 percent of all births in the U.S.

'God Particle' Update: Scientists Think They've Pinned Down The Higgs Boson

"Scientists working with data from a large particle accelerator in Europe are now almost certain they have pinned down the elusive sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs Boson," NPR's Joe Palca tells our Newscast Desk.

Or, as it's also known, the "God Particle" (more on that moniker below).

Joe reports that:

"The Large Hadron Collider sits in a 17-mile long circular tunnel straddling France and Switzerland. There are two scientific instruments called detectors located at distinct points around the tunnel. These detectors measure the debris when larger atomic particles are smashed together. Now, scientists have analyzed results from both these detectors, and both have seen a particle consistent with what theoretical models have predicted would be the Higgs Boson.

"Although the result is gratifying in the sense that the collider was built largely to find the Higgs, finding it exactly as predicted is a little disappointing. Finding something that wasn't predicted would mean there's an entire new field of physics is waiting to be discovered."

OK, we realize this is complicated — and that as scientists do, the geniuses at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are leaving themselves some wiggle room. This is from their announcement Thursday:

"Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time."

New Self-Healing Microchips Can Shrug Off Laser Blasts Like It’s Nothing

This Amazing 3-D Desktop Was Born at Microsoft

LONG BEACH, California – The history of computer revolutions will show a logical progression from the Mac to the iPad to something like this SpaceTop 3-D desktop, if computer genius Jinha Lee has anything to say about it.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad student earned some notice last year for the ZeroN, a levitating 3-D ball that can record and replay how it is moved around by a user. Now, following an internship at Microsoft Applied Science and some time off from MIT, Lee is unveiling his latest digital 3-D environment, a three-dimensional computer interface that allows a user to “reach inside” a computer screen and grab web pages, documents, and videos like real-world objects. More advanced tasks can be triggered with hand gestures. The system is powered by a transparent LED display and a system of two cameras, one tracking the users’ gestures and the other watching her eyes to assess gaze and adjust the perspective on the projection.

Lee’s new 3-D desktop, which he just showed off at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, California, is still in the early stages. But it lights the way toward the sort of quantum leap that’s all too rare in computer interfaces. It took decades to get from the command-line interface to the graphical user interface and Apple’s Macintosh. It took decades more to get from the Mac to the touch interface of iPhones and iPads. Lee and people like him might just get us to the next revolution sooner.