Big Ideas Forum

Introduction [Read More]

Understanding how the brain works have already led to significant improvement in “neurological health” such as “pacemaker implants” to control Parkinson’s disease. But with this understanding comes the ability to manipulate the brain, perhaps upload memory from a hard drive or to download memory from the brain to an external device–as suggested the Matrix movie. Transfer of thoughts between Man and Machine have already been demonstrated, and with the accelerating miniaturization of chips, the implant of chips in the brain that communicated with the Internet is on the horizon. [Read More]

Our cars are almost entirely computer controlled. Our TVs and phones are “smart”. But are they intelligent? Are IBM’s Deep Blue and Watson intelligent? What does it actually mean to be intelligent? How can we tell? [Read More]

A brief survey of present options for eldercare and family support plus a glimpse at how technology may be expanding options in the future. [Read More]

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs, have become part of our everyday life, mostly in food products. And they seem to become more and more widely used.   [Read More]

Virtual Reality (or in its more advanced form, Augmented Reality (AR)) is a field within AI which aim at presenting 3D visual inputs in such a realistic way that the viewer feels like they are “there.” It has a huge application already in the entertainment industry, and it has huge potential in remaking education, in bringing us to places we would never be able to go (Mt. Everest or Mars), and even in bringing news from around the world to us–not on a TV but on VR glasses–as real as if were eye witnesses ourselves. [Read More]