Beginning today, drivers of a federally-funded organ-collecting wagon will be monitoring New York’s 911 emergency calls indicating someone might be about to croak in his home.

The so-called Organ Donation Unit and a special ambulance will then hover outside the patient’s residence, waiting for bad news from the emergency workers inside.

Once the patient is declared dead, a team from the organ van will pounce upon grieving relatives, to persuade them to part quickly with their departed loved one’s parts.

From Fox News in New York:

The team — composed of two EMTs, an organ donor family services specialist and a Bellevue emergency physician — will interact with grieving and shocked family members in the limited time available before it is too late to use a person’s organs. A police detective will arrive at the scene before the team to make sure there’s nothing about the death that warrants a criminal investigation.

via MyFoxNy.

Two college professors have already given one robot the ability to handle a crabby patient with compassion.

Susan Anderson, a philosopher at the University of Connecticut, and her husband, Michael Anderson, a computer scientist at the University of Hartford, have programmed a robot with the ability to make an ethical choice.

via A robot exhibits bedside manners — and ethics – The Boston Globe.

Recently I interviewed Ben Goertzel for Singularity 1 on 1. During that interview Ben argued that the technological singularity is not necessarily inevitable and that The Future Is Ours To Create. Interestingly, in the video below Ben argues that it may not be absolutely ridiculous to consider that the singularity may actually happen as yearly as 10 years from now.

via Ben Goertzel: 10 Years To The Singularity.