Monthly Archives: February 2014

Warrendale, PA (PRWEB) February 19, 2014

An industry futurist and a trend-setting publisher will serve as keynote speakers during the SAE 2014 World Congress & Exhibition, which will be held April 8-10 at Cobo Center in Detroit, Mich.

Hyundai will serve as Host Company, and Tier One Strategic Partner for the event is Delphi. With a theme of Creating New Possibilities, the SAE 2014 World Congress assembles the best talent in the automotive industry; experts, management teams, engineers, and executives alike gather to collaborate and address these current challenges, celebrate evolution and achievement over the last 100+ years, and promote the multitude of opportunities fundamental for a successful future.

Wed., April 9, 2014 AVL Technology Leadership Center 9:00- 9:45 a.m.

Dr. Peter Phelps, Senior Research/Futurist with the Institute for Mobility Research, BMW Group, will present "Mobility: Future Market, or End of Growth?"

For more than a century, intercity rail, public transport and the mass production of cars has strongly supported economic growth and continuously rising sub-urbanization. Transportation has pushed industrial development all around the world. Mobility has become a necessity to handle everyday life. Yet, while developing countries have just recently entered the period of fast mobility growth, in many industrialized countries one can find evidence for stagnating passenger travel, especially driven by changing car usage. Next to economic factors, explanations point to demographic development or increasing multi-modal mobility patterns of young adults.

What does this mean for the future? Must industrialized countries like the US or Germany cope with stagnating mobility development? Which mobility path will subsequent developing countries (such as BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India, China) follow in the future? Based on international research initiated by the Institute for Mobility Research (ifmo), this keynote address will answer the above questions and conclude new possibilities for the future mobility market.

Thursday, April 10, 2014 AVL Technology Leadership Center 9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. Myles Kovacs, President/Co-Founder, DUB Magazine

Kovacs is a leading voice of the influential, trend-setting youth segment. He connects with young consumers through America's influencers-entertainers, media, hot- product designers and mainstream corporations-and through his cornerstone asset, DUB magazine.

Kovacs has propelled DUB Publishing Inc. and its family of companies into an annual $50 million-plus business. He has partnered with such organizations as Best Buy, Chrysler, Energizer, General Motors, Ford, Microsoft, Mobil 1, NASCAR, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart, targeting the youth market, and is now the executive producer of two new TV series "The DUB Magazine Project" on MTV2 and "DUB Latino" on mun2. Newsweek named Kovacs one of the nation's "10 Big Thinkers for Big Business in the 21st Century."

Read more from the original source:
SAE International Announces Wednesday and Thursday Keynote Speakers for 2014 World Congress

Posted on Wednesday, February 19th, 2014 by Angie Han

If Spike Jonzes Her left you yearning for a virtual Scarlett Johansson of your very own, we have some good news. According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, who spends a lot of time pondering such things, a Samantha-like A.I. could be available as early as 2029.Other aspects of the movie, like the foul-mouthed video game character, could be available even sooner, around 2020.

Kurzweil made his predictions in his review of the sci-fi romance, which he regarded as more realistic than other cinematic depictions of A.I. Still, he had a few bones to pick with Jonzes movie, including its ending. Find out why after the jump.

The scientist was quite taken withHer as a movie, praising its well-crafted script, excellent directing, and outstanding performances. But any film critic couldve told you that.Where Kurzweils writeup gets interesting is when he delves into the science of it all, and puts it alongsideThe Matrix andBeing John Malkovich as a realistic vision of a future technology.

I would place some of the elements in Jonzes depiction at around 2020, give or take a couple of years, such as the diffident and insulting videogame character he interacts with, and the pin-sized cameras that one can place like a freckle on ones face. Other elements seem more like 2014, such as the flat-panel displays, notebooks and mobile devices.

He continues, Samantha herself I would place at 2029, when the leap to human-level AI would be reasonably believable. But he didnt find everything about Jonzes movie to be completely believable.

As I mentioned, a lot of the dramatic tension is provided by the fact that Theodores love interest does not have a body. But this is an unrealistic notion. It would be technically trivial in the future to provide her a virtual visual presence to match her virtual auditory presence, using, lens-mounted displays, for example, that display images onto Theodores retinas.

Additionally, in Kurzweils view, the ending doesnt make much sense. (Spoilers follow from here on out.) Not only does Samantha evolve much more quickly than Kurzweil thinks is plausible, theres really no need for her and the other A.I.s to leave the humans behind.

If they are progressing in this way, it means that they can continue their relationships with the unenhanced humans using an increasingly small portion of their cognitive ability, he points out.

See more here:
Futurist Ray Kurzweil Believes Spike Jonzes Her Could Be a Reality by 2029