Last week, Elon Musk confirmed reports regarding the launch of his new venture, Neuralink. Today, more details have come to light regarding the company’s ultimate goal to develop a brain-computer interface.
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Category: Elon Musk
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qb0Kzb3haK8
Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed today, on the eve of the New York International Auto Show that the company plans to unveil its all-electric semi truck, called ‘Tesla Semi’, in September.
Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level.
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Some weird religious stories w/ transhumanism Expect the conflict between religion and transhumanism to get worse, as closed-minded conservative viewpoints get challenged by radical science and a future with no need for an afterlife: http://barbwire.com/2017/04/06/cybernetic-messiah-transhumanism-artificial-intelligence/ & http://www.livebytheword.blog/google-directors-push-for-computers-inside-human-brains-is-anti-christ-human-rights-abuse-theologians-explain/ & http://ctktexas.com/pastoral-backstory-march-30th-2017/
By J. Davila Ashcroft
The recent film Ghost in the Shell is a science fiction tale about a young girl (known as Major) used as an experiment in a Transhumanist/Artificial Intelligence experiment, turning her into a weapon. At first, she complies, thinking the company behind the experiment saved her life after her family died. The truth is, however, that the company took her forcefully while she was a runaway. Major finds out that this company has done the same to others as well, and this knowledge causes her to turn on the company. Throughout the story the viewer is confronted with the existential questions behind such an experiment as Major struggles with the trauma of not feeling things like the warmth of human skin, and the sensations of touch and taste, and feels less than human, though she is told many times she is better than human. While this is obviously a science fiction story, what might comes as a surprise to some is that the subject matter of the film is not just fiction. Transhumanism and Artificial Intelligence on the level of the things explored in this film are all too real, and seem to be only a few years around the corner.
Recently it was reported that Elon Musk of SpaceX fame had a rather disturbing meeting with Demis Hassabis. Hassabis is the man in charge of a very disturbing project with far reaching plans akin to the Ghost in the Shell story, known as DeepMind. DeepMind is a Google project dedicated to exploring and developing all the possible uses of Artificial Intelligence. Musk stated during this meeting that the colonization of Mars is important because Hassabis’ work will make earth too dangerous for humans. By way of demonstrating how dangerous the goals of DeepMind are, one of its business partners, Shane Lange is reported to have stated, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and this technology will play a part in it.” Lange likely understands what critics of artificial intelligence have been saying for years. That is, such technology has an almost certain probability of become “self aware”. That is, becoming aware of its own existence, abilities, and developing distinct opinions and protocols that override those of its creators. If artificial intelligence does become sentient, that would mean, for advocates of A.I., that we would then owe them moral consideration. They, however, would owe humanity no such consideration if they perceived us as a danger to their existence, since we could simply disconnect them. In that scenario we would be an existential threat, and what do you think would come of that? Thus Lange’s statement carries an important message.
Already so-called “deep learning” machines are capable of figuring out solutions that weren’t programmed into them, and actually teach themselves to improve. For example, AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence designed to play the game Go, developed its own strategies for winning at the game. Strategies which its creators cannot explain and are at a loss to understand.
Transhumanist Philosophy The fact is many of us have been physically altered in some way. Some of the most common examples are lasik surgery, hip and knee replacements, and heart valve replacements, and nearly everyone has had vaccines that enhance our normal physical ability to resist certain illnesses and disease. The question is, how far is too far? How “enhanced” is too enhanced?
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OpenAI vs. Deepmind in river raid ATARI.
AI research has a long history of repurposing old ideas that have gone out of style. Now researchers at Elon Musk’s open source AI project have revisited “neuroevolution,” a field that has been around since the 1980s, and achieved state-of-the-art results.
The group, led by OpenAI’s research director Ilya Sutskever, has been exploring the use of a subset of algorithms from this field, called “evolution strategies,” which are aimed at solving optimization problems.
Despite the name, the approach is only loosely linked to biological evolution, the researchers say in a blog post announcing their results. On an abstract level, it relies on allowing successful individuals to pass on their characteristics to future generations. The researchers have taken these algorithms and reworked them to work better with deep neural networks and run on large-scale distributed computing systems.
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OpenAI researchers were surprised to discover that a neural network trained to predict the next character in texts from Amazon reviews taught itself to analyze sentiment. This unsupervised learning is the dream of machine learning researchers.
Much of today’s artificial intelligence (AI) relies on machine learning: where machines respond or react autonomously after learning information from a particular data set. Machine learning algorithms, in a sense, predict outcomes using previously established values. Researchers from OpenAI discovered that a machine learning system they created to predict the next character in the text of reviews from Amazon developed into an unsupervised system that could learn representations of sentiment.
“We were very surprised that our model learned an interpretable feature, and that simply predicting the next character in Amazon reviews resulted in discovering the concept of sentiment,” OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company whose investors include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman, explained on their blog. OpenAI’s neural network was able to train itself to analyze sentiment by classifying reviews as either positive or negative, and was able to generate text with a desired sentiment.
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EVER since ENIAC, the first computer that could be operated by a single person, began flashing its ring counters in 1946, human beings and calculating machines have been on a steady march towards tighter integration. Computers entered homes in the 1980s, then migrated onto laps, into pockets and around wrists. In the laboratory, computation has found its way onto molars and into eyeballs. The logical conclusion of all this is that computers will, one day, enter the brain.
This, at least, is the bet behind a company called Neuralink, just started by Elon Musk, a serial technological entrepreneur. Information about Neuralink is sparse, but trademark filings state that it will make invasive devices for treating or diagnosing neurological ailments. Mr Musk clearly has bigger plans, though. He has often tweeted cryptic messages referring to “neural lace”, a science-fictional concept invented by Iain M. Banks, a novelist, that is, in essence, a machine interface woven into the brain.
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After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX’s drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9’s relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company’s live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. “It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight,” he said.
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Private spaceflight company Blue Origin has released the first interior photos for the New Shepard, offering a glimpse at what the finished crew capsule will look like.
New Shepard is a reusable vehicle aimed at taking tourists to the edge of space, where they can float around weightless for a few minutes. The rocket has been successfully launched and landed five times already, but no people have ridden in the capsule yet. Blue Origin is planning to take its first paying customers to space by 2018, according to CEO Jeff Bezos.
The photos of New Shepard look quite different from the interior of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. But while the New Shepard focuses on tourism, the main purpose for Crew Dragon is to send astronauts to the International Space Station. (Though CEO Elon Musk recently announced that he plans to send two tourists around the moon in the spaceship in 2018.)
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