Transhumanismus

There’s a growing sense that developing practical fusion energy is no longer an if but a when.

The way scientists think about fusion changed forever in 2022, when what some called the experiment of the century demonstrated for the first time that fusion can be a viable source of clean energy.

The experiment, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, showed ignition: a fusion reaction generating more energy out than was put in.

In addition, the past few years have been marked by a multibillion-dollar windfall of private investment in the field, principally in the United States.

But a whole host of engineering challenges must be addressed before fusion can be scaled up to become a safe, affordable source of virtually unlimited clean power. In other words, it’s engineering time.

As engineers who have been working on fundamental science and applied engineering in nuclear fusion for decades, we’ve seen much of the science and physics of fusion reach maturity in the past 10 years.

But to make fusion a feasible source of commercial power, engineers now have to tackle a host of practical challenges. Whether the United States steps up to this opportunity and emerges as the global leader in fusion energy will depend, in part, on how much the nation is willing to invest in solving these practical problems—particularly through public-private partnerships.

Building a Fusion Reactor

Fusion occurs when two types of hydrogen atoms, deuterium and tritium, collide in extreme conditions. The two atoms literally fuse into one atom by heating up to 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius), 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun. To make these reactions happen, fusion energy infrastructure will need to endure these extreme conditions.

There are two approaches to achieving fusion in the lab: inertial confinement fusion, which uses powerful lasers, and magnetic confinement fusion, which uses powerful magnets.

While the “experiment of the century” used inertial confinement fusion, magnetic confinement fusion has yet to demonstrate that it can break even in energy generation.

Several privately funded experiments aim to achieve this feat later this decade, and a large, internationally supported experiment in France, ITER, also hopes to break even by the late 2030s. Both are using magnetic confinement fusion.

Challenges Lying Ahead

Both approaches to fusion share a range of challenges that won’t be cheap to overcome. For example, researchers need to develop new materials that can withstand extreme temperatures and irradiation conditions.

Fusion reactor materials also become radioactive as they are bombarded with highly energetic particles. Researchers need to design new materials that can decay within a few years to levels of radioactivity that can be disposed of safely and more easily.

Producing enough fuel, and doing it sustainably, is also an important challenge. Deuterium is abundant and can be extracted from ordinary water. But ramping up the production of tritium, which is usually produced from lithium, will prove far more difficult. A single fusion reactor will need hundreds of grams to one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of tritium a day to operate.

Right now, conventional nuclear reactors produce tritium as a byproduct of fission, but these cannot provide enough to sustain a fleet of fusion reactors.

So, engineers will need to develop the ability to produce tritium within the fusion device itself. This might entail surrounding the fusion reactor with lithium-containing material, which the reaction will convert into tritium.

To scale up inertial fusion, engineers will need to develop lasers capable of repeatedly hitting a fusion fuel target, made of frozen deuterium and tritium, several times per second or so. But no laser is powerful enough to do this at that rate—yet. Engineers will also need to develop control systems and algorithms that direct these lasers with extreme precision on the target.

A laser setup that Farhat Beg’s research group plans to use to repeatedly hit a fusion fuel target. The goal of the experiments is to better control the target’s placement and tracking. The lighting is red from colored gels used to take the picture. David Baillot/University of California San Diego

Additionally, engineers will need to scale up production of targets by orders of magnitude: from a few hundreds handmade every year with a price tag of hundreds of thousands of dollars each to millions costing only a few dollars each.

For magnetic containment, engineers and materials scientists will need to develop more effective methods to heat and control the plasma and more heat- and radiation-resistant materials for reactor walls. The technology used to heat and confine the plasma until the atoms fuse needs to operate reliably for years.

These are some of the big challenges. They are tough but not insurmountable.

Current Funding Landscape

Investments from private companies globally have increased—these will likely continue to be an important factor driving fusion research forward. Private companies have attracted over $7 billion in private investment in the past five years.

Several startups are developing different technologies and reactor designs with the aim of adding fusion to the power grid in coming decades. Most are based in the United States, with some in Europe and Asia.

While private sector investments have grown, the US government continues to play a key role in the development of fusion technology up to this point. We expect it to continue to do so in the future.

It was the US Department of Energy that invested about $3 billion to build the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the mid 2000s, where the “experiment of the century” took place 12 years later.

In 2023, the Department of Energy announced a 4-year, $42 million program to develop fusion hubs for the technology. While this funding is important, it likely will not be enough to solve the most important challenges that remain for the United States to emerge as a global leader in practical fusion energy.

One way to build partnerships between the government and private companies in this space could be to create relationships similar to that between NASA and SpaceX. As one of NASA’s commercial partners, SpaceX receives both government and private funding to develop technology that NASA can use. It was the first private company to send astronauts to space and the International Space Station.

Along with many other researchers, we are cautiously optimistic. New experimental and theoretical results, new tools and private sector investment are all adding to our growing sense that developing practical fusion energy is no longer an if but a when.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Here’s What It Will Take to Ignite Scalable Fusion Power appeared first on SingularityHub.

Robots need an internal representation of the world and its rules like ours.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of “world models” just yet, a storm of activity at the start of 2025 gives every indication it may soon become a well-known term.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, used his keynote presentation at CES to announce a new platform, Cosmos, for what they’re calling “world foundation models.” Cosmos is a generative AI tool that produces virtual-world-like videos. The next day, Google’s DeepMind revealed similar ambitions with a project led by a former OpenAI engineer. This all comes several months after an intriguing startup, World Labs, achieved unicorn status—a startup valued $1 billion or more—within only four months to do the same thing.

To understand what world models are, it’s worth pointing out that we’re at an inflection point in the way we build and deploy intelligent machines like drones, robots, and autonomous vehicles. Rather than explicitly programming behavior, engineers are turning to 3D computer simulation and AI to let the machines teach themselves. This means physically accurate virtual worlds are becoming an essential source of training data to teach machines to perceive, understand, and navigate three-dimensional space.

What large language models are to systems like ChatGPT, world models are to the virtual world simulators needed to train robots. Therefore, world models are a type of generative AI tool capable of producing 3D environments and simulating virtual worlds. Just like ChatGPT is built with an intuitive chat interface, world-model interfaces might allow more people, even those without technical game developer skillsets, to build 3D virtual worlds. They could also help robots better understand, plan, and navigate their surroundings.

To be clear, most early world models including those announced by Nvidia generate spatial training data in a video format. There are, however, already models capable of producing fully immersive scenes as well. One tool made by a startup called Odyssey, uses gaussian splatting to create scenes which can be loaded into 3D software tools like Unreal Engine and Blender. Another startup, Decart, demoed their world model as a playable version of a game similar to Minecraft. DeepMind has similarly gone the video game route.

All this reflects the potential for changes in the way computer graphics work at a foundational level. In 2023, Huang predicted that in the future, “every single pixel will be generated, not rendered but generated.” He’s recently taken a more nuanced view by saying that traditional rendering systems aren’t likely to fully disappear. It’s clear, however, that generative AI predicting which pixels to show may soon encroach on the work that game engines do today.

The implications for robotics are potentially huge.

Nvidia is now working hard to establish the branding label “physical AI”  as a term for the intelligent systems that will power warehouse AMRs, inventory drones, humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, farmer-less tractors, delivery robots, and more. To give these systems the ability to perform their work effectively in the real world, especially in environments with humans, they must train in physically accurate simulations. World models could potentially produce synthetic training scenarios of any variety imaginable.

This idea is behind the shift in the way companies articulate the path forward for AI, and World Labs is perhaps the best expression of this. Founded by Fei-Fei Li, known as the godmother of AI for her foundational work in computer vision, World Labs defines itself as a spatial intelligence company. In their view, to achieve true general intelligence, AIs will need an embodied ability to “reason about objects, places, and interactions in 3D space and time.” Like their competitors, they are seeking to build foundation models capable of moving AI into three-dimensional space.

In the future, these could evolve into an internal, humanlike representation of the world and its rules. This might allow AIs to predict how their actions will affect the environment around them and plan reasonable approaches to accomplish a task. For example, an AI may learn that if you squeeze an egg too hard it will crack. Yet context matters. If your goal is placing it in a carton, go easy, but if you’re preparing an omelet, squeeze away.

While world models may be experiencing a bit of a moment, it’s early, and there are still significant limitations in the short term. Training and running world models requires massive amounts of computing power even compared to today’s AI. Additionally, models aren’t reliably consistent with the real world’s rules just yet, and like all generative AI, they will be shaped by the biases within their own training data.

As TechCrunch’s Kyle Wiggers writes, “A world model trained largely on videos of sunny weather in European cities might struggle to comprehend or depict Korean cities in snowy conditions.” For these reasons, traditional simulation tools like game and physics engines will still be used for quite some time to render training scenarios for robots. And Meta’s head of AI, Yann LeCun, who wrote deeply about the concept in 2022, still thinks advanced world models—like the ones in our heads—will take a while longer to develop.

Still, it’s an exciting moment for roboticists. Just as ChatGPT signaled an inflection point for AI to enter mainstream awareness; robots, drones, and embodied AI systems may be nearing a similar breakout moment. To get there, physically accurate 3D environments will become the training ground for these systems to learn and mature.

Early world models may make it easier than ever for developers to generate the countless number of training scenarios needed to bring on an era of spatially intelligent machines.

The post A ChatGPT Moment Is Coming for Robotics. AI World Models Could Help Make It Happen. appeared first on SingularityHub.

These were our favorite articles in science and tech this week.

Google Is Forming a New Team to Build AI That Can Simulate the Physical World Kyle Wiggers | TechCrunch

“‘We believe scaling [AI training] on video and multimodal data is on the critical path to artificial general intelligence,’ reads one of the job descriptions. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, generally refers to AI that can accomplish any task a human can. ‘World models will power numerous domains, such as visual reasoning and simulation, planning for embodied agents, and real-time interactive entertainment.'”

Nvidia Announces $3,000 Personal AI Supercomputer Called Digits Kylie Robison | The Verge

“The desktop-sized system can handle AI models with up to 200 billion parameters. …For even more demanding applications, two Project Digits systems can be linked together to handle models with up to 405 billion parameters (Meta’s best model, Llama 3.1, has 405 billion parameters). The GB10 chip delivers up to 1 petaflop of AI performance—meaning it can perform 1 quadrillion AI calculations per second—at FP4 precision (which helps make the calculations faster by making approximations).”

AI Could Create 78 Million More Jobs Than It Eliminates by 2030—Report Benj Edwards | Ars Technica

“On Wednesday, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Future of Jobs Report 2025, with CNN immediately highlighting the finding that 40 percent of companies plan workforce reductions due to AI automation. But the report’s broader analysis paints a far more nuanced picture than CNN’s headline suggests: It finds that AI could create 170 million new jobs globally while eliminating 92 million positions, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs by 2030.”

This Robovac Has an Arm—and Legs, Too Jennifer Pattison Tuohy | The Verge

“Dreame says its arm can pick up sneakers as large as men’s size 42 (a size 9 in the US) and take them to a designated spot in your home. The concept could apply to small toys and other items, and you’ll be able to designate specific areas for the robot to take certain items, such as toys to the playroom and shoes to the front door.”

A Virtual Cell Is a ‘Holy Grail’ of Science. It’s Getting Closer. Matteo Wong | The Atlantic

“Scientists are now designing computer programs that may unlock the ability to simulate human cells, giving researchers the ability to predict the effect of a drug, mutation, virus, or any other change in the body, and in turn making physical experiments more targeted and likelier to succeed.”

Predicting the ‘Digital Superpowers’ We Could Have by 2030 Louis Rosenberg | Big Think

“Computer scientist Louis B. Rosenberg predicts that context-aware AI agents will bring ‘digital superpowers’ into our daily experiences by 2030. The convergence of AI and body-worn devices, like AI-powered glasses, will likely enable these new abilities. Rosenberg outlines his predictions for the future of technologies like AI, augmented reality, and conversational computing across three phases.”

The Ocean Teems With Networks of Interconnected Bacteria Veronique Greenwood | Quanta

“The Prochlorococcus [bacteria] population may be more connected than anyone could have imagined. They may be holding conversations across wide distances, not only filling the ocean with envelopes of information and nutrients, but also linking what we thought were their private, inner spaces with the interiors of other cells.”

These Newly Identified Cells Could Change the Face of Plastic Surgery Max G. Levy | Wired

“The cells appear to simultaneously provide structure (like cartilage) and natural squishiness (like fat). They appear in many mammals, including humans, and the unique structure they provide gives reconstructive surgeons a clearer understanding of what materials make up our faces. Plikus believes this new tissue discovery sets the stage for better cartilage transplants—and so better plastic surgery.”

Transforming the Moon Into Humanity’s First Space Hub Saurav Shroff | Wired

“This year will mark a turning point in humanity’s relationship with the moon, as we begin to lay the foundations for a permanent presence on its surface, paving the way for our natural satellite to become an industrial hub—one that will lead us to Mars and beyond.”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through January 11) appeared first on SingularityHub.

In this episode of Singularity.FM, I sit down with renowned author and philosopher Donald J. Robertson to explore his latest book, How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World. As we navigate the crossroads of ancient wisdom and modern challenges, Donald shares timeless insights from Socrates that […]

SYNESTHETES

Tired: Listening to music.
Wired: Feeling the music.

A mind-bending new suit straps onto your torso, ankles and wrists, then uses actuators to translate audio into vivid vibration. The result: a new way for everyone to experience music, according to its creators. That’s especially exciting for people who have trouble hearing.

THE FEELIES

The Music: Not Impossible suit was created by design firm Not Impossible Labs and electronics manufacturing company Avnet. The suit can create sensations to go with pre-recorded music, or a “Vibrotactile DJ” can adjust the sensations in real time during a live music event.”

Billboard writer Andy Hermann tried the suit out, and it sounds like a trip.

“Sure enough, a pulse timed to a kickdrum throbs into my ankles and up through my legs,” he wrote. “Gradually, [the DJ] brings in other elements: the tap of a woodblock in my wrists, a bass line massaging my lower back, a harp tickling a melody across my chest.”

MORE ACCESSIBLE

To show the suit off, Not Impossible and Avnet organized a performance this past weekend by the band Greta Van Fleet at the Life is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas. The company allowed attendees to don the suits. Mandy Harvey, a deaf musician who stole the show on America’s Got Talent last year, talked about what the performance meant to her in a video Avnet posted to Facebook.

“It was an unbelievable experience to have an entire audience group who are all experiencing the same thing at the same time,” she said. “For being a deaf person, showing up at a concert, that never happens. You’re always excluded.”

READ MORE: Not Impossible Labs, Zappos Hope to Make Concerts More Accessible for the Deaf — and Cooler for Everyone [Billboard]

More on accessible design: New Tech Allows Deaf People To Sense Sounds

The post Make Music A Full Body Experience With A “Vibro-Tactile” Suit appeared first on Futurism.

IN THE FEELS

Today’s prosthetics can give people with missing limbs the ability to do almost anything — run marathons, climb mountains, you name it. But when it comes to letting those people feel what they could with a natural limb, the devices, however mechanically sophisticated, invariably fall short.

Now researchers have created a “synthetic skin” with a sense of touch that not only matches the sensitivity of natural skin, but in some cases even exceeds it. Now the only challenge is getting that information back into the wearer’s nervous system.

UNDER PRESSURE

When something presses against your skin, your nerves receive and transmit that pressure to the brain in the form of electrical signals.

To mimic that biological process, the researchers suspended a flexible polymer, dusted with magnetic particles, over a magnetic sensor. The effect is like a drum: Applying even the tiniest amount of pressure to the membrane causes the magnetic particles to move closer to the sensors, and they transmit this movement electronically.

The research, which could open the door to super-sensitive prosthetics, was published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics.

SPIDEY SENSE TINGLING

Tests shows that the skin can sense extremely subtle pressure, such as a blowing breeze, dripping water, or crawling ants. In some cases, the synthetic skin responded to pressures so gentle that natural human skin wouldn’t be able to detect them.

While the sensing ability of this synthetic skin is remarkable, the team’s research doesn’t address how to transmit the signals to the human brain. Other scientists are working on that, though, so eventually this synthetic skin could give prosthetic wearers the ability to feel forces even their biological-limbed friends can’t detect.

READ MORE: A Skin-Inspired Tactile Sensor for Smart Prosthetics [Science Robotics]

More on synthetic skin: Electronic Skin Lets Amputees Feel Pain Through Their Prosthetics

The post “Synthetic Skin” Could Give Prosthesis Users a Superhuman Sense of Touch appeared first on Futurism.

BRAIN BOOST

There’s a gadget that some say can help alleviate depression and enhance creativity. All you have to do is place a pair of electrodes on your scalp and the device will deliver electrical current to your brain. It’s readily available on Amazon or you can even make your own.

But in a new paper published this week in the Creativity Research Journal, psychologists at Georgetown University warned that the practice is spreading before we have a good understanding of its health effects, especially since consumers are already buying and building unregulated devices to shock them. They also cautioned that the technique, which scientists call transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), could have adverse effects on the brains of young people.

“There are multiple potential concerns with DIY-ers self-administering electric current to their brains, but this use of tES may be inevitable,” said co-author Adam Green in a press release. “And, certainly, anytime there is risk of harm with a technology, the scariest risks are those associated with kids and the developing brain”

SHOCK JOCK

Yes, there’s evidence that tES can help patients with depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, and other serious conditions, the Georgetown researchers acknowledge.

But that’s only when it’s administered by a trained health care provider. When administering tES at home, people might ignore safety directions, they wrote, or their home-brewed devices could deliver unsafe amounts of current. And because it’s not yet clear what effects of tES might be on the still-developing brains of young people, the psychologists advise teachers and parents to resist the temptation to use the devices to encourage creativity among children.

The takeaway: tES is likely here to stay, and it may provide real benefits. But for everyone’s sake, consumer-oriented tES devices should be regulated to protect users.

READ MORE: Use of electrical brain stimulation to foster creativity has sweeping implications [Eurekalert]

More on transcranial electrical stimulation: DARPA’s New Brain Device Increases Learning Speed by 40%

The post People Are Zapping Their Brains to Boost Creativity. Experts Have Concerns. appeared first on Futurism.

MIND CONTROL

The military is making it easier than ever for soldiers to distance themselves from the consequences of war. When drone warfare emerged, pilots could, for the first time, sit in an office in the U.S. and drop bombs in the Middle East.

Now, one pilot can do it all, just using their mind — no hands required.

Earlier this month, DARPA, the military’s research division, unveiled a project that it had been working on since 2015: technology that grants one person the ability to pilot multiple planes and drones with their mind.

“As of today, signals from the brain can be used to command and control … not just one aircraft but three simultaneous types of aircraft,” Justin Sanchez, director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office, said, according to Defense One.

THE SINGULARITY

Sanchez may have unveiled this research effort at a “Trajectory of Neurotechnology” session at DARPA’s 60th anniversary event, but his team has been making steady progress for years. Back in 2016, a volunteer equipped with a brain-computer interface (BCI) was able to pilot an aircraft in a flight simulator while keeping two other planes in formation — all using just his thoughts, a spokesperson from DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office told Futurism.

In 2017, Copeland was able to steer a plane through another simulation, this time receiving haptic feedback — if the plane needed to be steered in a certain direction, Copeland’s neural implant would create a tingling sensation in his hands.

NOT QUITE MAGNETO

There’s a catch. The DARPA spokesperson told Futurism that because this BCI makes use of electrodes implanted in and on the brain’s sensory and motor cortices, experimentation has been limited to volunteers with varying degrees of paralysis. That is: the people steering these simulated planes already had brain electrodes, or at least already had reason to undergo surgery.

To try and figure out how to make this technology more accessible and not require surgical placement of a metal probe into people’s brains, DARPA recently launched the NExt-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program. The plan is to make a device with similar capabilities, but it’ll look more like an EEG cap that the pilot can take off once a mission is done.

“The envisioned N3 system would be a tool that the user could wield for the duration of a task or mission, then put aside,” said Al Emondi, head of N3, according to the spokesperson. “I don’t like comparisons to a joystick or keyboard because they don’t reflect the full potential of N3 technology, but they’re useful for conveying the basic notion of an interface with computers.”

READ MORE: It’s Now Possible To Telepathically Communicate with a Drone Swarm [Defense One]

More on DARPA research: DARPA Is Funding Research Into AI That Can Explain What It’s “Thinking”

The post Military Pilots Can Control Three Jets at Once via a Neural Implant appeared first on Futurism.

ONE IN A MILLION TEN

Today, about 10 people on Earth have bladders they weren’t born with. No, they didn’t receive bladder transplants — doctors grew these folks new bladders using the recipients’ own cells.

On Tuesday, the BBC published a report on the still-nascent procedure of transplanting lab-grown bladders. In it, the publication talks to Luke Massella, who underwent the procedure more than a decade ago. Massella was born with spina bifida, which carries with it a risk of damage to the bladder and urinary tract. Now, he lives a normal life, he told the BBC.

“I was kind of facing the possibility I might have to do dialysis [blood purification via machine] for the rest of my life,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to play sports, and have the normal kid life with my brother.”

All that changed after Anthony Atala, a surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, decided he was going to grow a new bladder for Massella.

ONE NEW BLADDER, COMING UP!

To do that, Atala first removed a small piece of Massella’s own bladder. He then removed cells from this portion of bladder and multiplied them in a petri dish. Once he had enough cells, he coated a scaffold with the cells and placed the whole thing in a temperature controlled, high oxygen environment. After a few weeks, the lab-created bladder was ready for transplantation into Massella.

“So it was pretty much like getting a bladder transplant, but from my own cells, so you don’t have to deal with rejection,” said Massella.

The number of people with lab-grown bladders might still be low enough to count on your fingers, but researchers are making huge advances in growing everything from organs to skin in the lab. Eventually, we might reach a point when we can replace any body part we need to with a perfect biological match that we built ourselves.

READ MORE: “A New Bladder Made From My Cells Gave Me My Life Back” [BBC]

More on growing organs: The FDA Wants to Expedite Approval of Regenerative Organ Therapies

The post Lab-Grown Bladders Can Save People From a Lifetime of Dialysis appeared first on Futurism.