Sunday, July 25, 2010

NYTIMES Profiles The Lifeboat Foundation

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit that seeks to protect people from some seriously catastrophic technology-related events. It funds research that would prevent a situation where technology has run amok, sort of like a pre-Fringe Unit.

The organization has a ton of areas that it’s looking into, ranging from artificial intelligence to asteroids. A particular interest for the group revolves around building shields and lots of them.

For example, there’s talk of a Neuroethics Shield – “to prevent abuse in the areas of neuropharmaceuticals, neurodevices, and neurodiagnostics. Worst cases include enslaving the world’s population or causing everyone to commit suicide.”

And then there’s a Personality Preserver that would help people keep their personalities intact and a Nano Shield to protect against overly aggressive nano creatures.


Read the full article by Ashless Vance titled, The Lifeboat Foundation: Battling Asteroids, Nanobots and A.I.

1 comment:

Joanna Bryson said...

I see Colin (at least?) is a member on their board. What do you know about these guys?