Oren Etzioni, a well-known AI researcher, complains about news coverage of potential long-term risks arising from future success in AI research (see "No, Experts Don't Think Superintelligent AI is a Threat to Humanity"). After pointing the finger squarely at Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom and his recent book, Superintelligence, Etzioni complains that Bostrom's "main source of data on the advent of human-level intelligence" consists of surveys on the opinions of AI researchers. He then surveys the opinions of AI researchers, arguing that his results refute Bostrom's. It's important to understand that Etzioni is not even addressing the reason Superintelligence has had the impact he decries: its clear explanation of why superintelligent AI may have arbitrarily negative consequences and why it's important to begin addressing the issue well in advance. Bostrom does not base his case on predictions that superhuman AI systems are imminent.

SoftBank also sells the Pepper human-shaped companion robot for homes and businesses, and runs a solar energy business in Japan, highlighting a critical stance against nuclear energy that has spread since the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Its investment empire encompasses financial technology and ride-booking services.

While the oil and gas industry has had its share of ups and downs over the past decade, many financial institutions are banking on a very slow growth of oil prices in 2017. Though some believe that the efficiency gains that the oil industry can capture are quickly coming to an end, this sentiment is only capturing hard technology specifically related to oil and gas. To help bring the O&G industry to the 21st century, technology from other industries needs to be incorporated, using many hard-earned years of expertise and different lines of thinking. Oilprice previously mentioned incorporating food industry technology to increase safety standards when fracking, but incorporating technology from the IT industry is something that the O&G industry as a whole can benefit from. Whether its neural networks, machine learning, fuzzy logic, case-based reasoning or expert systems, AI has the potential to transform the industry.

This piece showcased the immense power of exponential technology versus linear technology and became a pivotal concept for anyone trying to anticipate what the future held. The essay predicted advances in business and technology with eerie precision, including how exponential growth would ripple through any technology that became an information technology, such as computing, biotechnology, or energy. The past 15 years have shown that while some of Kurzweil's specific predictions may or may not pan out exactly as predicted, the underlying idea of the law of accelerating returns grows more relevant with each passing week. But as we start to look at the next fifteen years, I believe there is another concept just as significant as the law of accelerating returns that we need to understand. The strangest, most interesting and magical-seeming creations of the future will occur at the intersection of multiple exponential trend lines.

There are a lot of solar chargers out there, but the Water-Resistant Dual-USB Solar Charger is one of the best deals I've seen. It's much more compact than your typical solar chargers, which tend to be very brick-like. And yet it still packs an impressive 5000mAh of power.The charger itself can be powered via solar energy or USB depending […]

The growing penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in urban areas raises multiple reliability issues. The topology reconstruction is a critical step to ensure the robustness of distribution grid operation. However, the bus connectivity and network topology reconstruction are hard in distribution grids. The reasons are that 1) the branches are challenging and expensive to monitor due to underground setup; 2) the inappropriate assumption of radial topology in many studies that urban grids are mesh. To address these drawbacks, we propose a new data-driven approach to reconstruct distribution grid topology by utilizing the newly available smart meter data. Specifically, a graphical model is built to model the probabilistic relationships among different voltage measurements. With proof, the bus connectivity and topology estimation problems are formulated as a linear regression problem with least absolute shrinkage on grouped variables (Group Lasso) to deal with meshed network structures. Simulation results show highly accurate estimation in IEEE standard distribution test systems with and without loops using real smart meter data.

In the micro-economic performance, digital enterprise best practices are rapidly diffusing into enabling smart assets, digital workforce, connecting sensors to SCADA and operations to build an Industrial Internet of Things set of capabilities in generation, distribution, transmission and into consumer and remote markets. At a Macro-economic level new business models of Distributed energy, renewables, and alternative energy hybrid models are generating new investment planning issues. Digitization is cutting across these through new levels of sensorisation, new informatics, Artificial Intelligence and robotics. New forms of digital data capture and visualization in 360 location and asset scanning, Virtual and Augments reality advances are changing the landscape of how assets, work and productivity may get done in the near future. New Consumer Internet of Things and the Internet of People driven by consumer behavior customer centric data powered services are changing the loci of demand and supply to new community and peer models.

The underwater lake, discovered 3,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, is a pit of super-salty water and dissolved methane that kills any critter unlucky enough to fall inside. The discovery was made last year by a San Pedro-based research vessel, the E/V Nautilus. In the video, scientists excitedly navigate a remotely operated vehicle, the Hercules, above the circular pool. They point out the "pickled crabs" that succumbed to the elements. "These larger organisms really don't like to be in this fluid -- or maybe they just come here to die," Scott Wankel, a marine chemist, says on the video.

These structures look like giant robot jellyfish, but they could one day function as eco-friendly hotel lodges. Conceived by Janine Hung, a graduate architect based in the Philippines, the floating lodges boast kitchen and bathroom-equipped living quarters and gardens in their underbelly that can raise fish and grow vegetables. Beneath the surface, the solar-powered structure has'tentacles' which capture and collect rubbish, and filter polluted water - either storing it for human use or returning it to its source clean. Ms Hung, who designed it for Inhabitat's Biodesign Competition this year, received an honorable mention for her innovative creation. 'The Jellyfish Lodge proposes to rehabilitate the world's most polluted river slums by removing waste, treating water, growing food, and purifying air all through solar power,' judges stated.

Determining the optimal size and orientation of small-scale residential based PV arrays will become increasingly complex in the future smart grid environment with the introduction of smart meters and dynamic tariffs. However consumers can leverage the availability of smart meter data to conduct a more detailed exploration of PV investment options for their particular circumstances. In this paper, an optimization method for PV orientation and sizing is proposed whereby maximizing the PV investment value is set as the defining objective. Solar insolation and PV array models are described to form the basis of the PV array optimization strategy. A constrained particle swarm optimization algorithm is selected due to its strong performance in non-linear applications. The optimization algorithm is applied to real-world metered data to quantify the possible investment value of a PV installation under different energy retailers and tariff structures. The arrangement with the highest value is determined to enable prospective small-scale PV investors to select the most cost-effective system.