Certain cyber-artificial intelligence attacks could pose an existential threat to the US and the West, former US cyber command chief, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Brett Williams said on Tuesday.
Speaking as part of Cybertech’s virtual conference, Williams said, “artificial intelligence is the real thing. It is already in use by attackers. When they learn how to do deepfakes, I would argue this is potentially an existential threat.”
Laser it o.o
Sixty Six million years ago a 14-kilometer long, Mount-Everest sized asteroid blasted a hole in the ground, when at the moment of impact, “the top of it might have still towered more than a mile above the cruising altitude of a 747,” writes Peter Brannen in Ends of the World. “In its nearly instantaneous descent, it compressed the air below it so violently that it briefly became several times hotter than the surface of the sun, hitting Earth with enough force enough to lift a mountain back into space at escape velocity, releasing the equivalent of 100 million megatons of TNT creating a 20-mile deep, 110-mile hole and sterilizing the remaining 170 million square miles of the ancient continent of Pangaea, killing virtually every species on Earth and, oddly, paving the way for the emergence of the human species.”
Magnified Preview of a Coming Attraction?
“It would have felt like the ground beneath your feet had become a ship in the middle of the ocean,” says earth and space science professor Mark Richards at the University of Washington. “Then rocks would have bombarded you from a boiling sky that was beginning to take on a hazy glow. It would have seemed like the end of the world.”
A 20-year project to reintroduce the species across the peninsula has seen their numbers rise to 855.
In a recent study of the upper atmosphere of Venus, finding the chemical fingerprint of phosphine has led to speculation that it may be tied to airborne life high in the clouds of our sister planet [1]. We harbour similar suspicion of microbial life on Mars [2], Saturn’s moon Enceledus [3], and Europa, the icy Galilean of the Jovian system [4]. The dwarf planet Ceres of the asteroid belt could be added to that list also, with recent evidence of oceanic water [5], while more exotic variations of life may exist on Titan, which is known to be teeming with organic materials [6]. Should we be more wary of our Solar System as an environment to explore, and the potential of pathogens we may encounter?
If one rewinds 500 years, to when exploration of new worlds involved sailing the oceans, the discovery of the Americas introduced viruses which decimated the native population at that time [7]. That in itself was far from a unique event in history, of course. There have been many occurrences throughout history where travel between distant lands has resulted in the introduction of devastating plagues to one population or the other — not least the Black Death, which arrived in Europe from commercial travel with Asia in the 1300s [8]. Meanwhile, 2020 has reminded us how a novel virus can prove virtually unstoppable from spreading worldwide in a matter of months and reaching pandemic level, once introduced to our now interconnected world [9].
Indeed when the first astronauts returned from the Moon in the 60s, they had to undergo weeks of quarantine as a precaution against introducing a lunar pathogen to Earth [10]. We now know the Moon to be a sterile world, but this should not give us a false sense of security when visiting and returning from other worlds, which are far more likely to harbour microbial life. It is quite plausible to consider that any microbes which have evolved to survive in the harsh environments on other worlds could multiply out of control if introduced to a more fertile environment on Earth. The likelihood of any such foreign microbes being capable of becoming infectious pathogens to our species is difficult to measure, but one could still cause problems regardless, by undermining Earth’s ecosystem in competing with native microbial life as a runaway invasive species.
Fortunately, due to the vast distances involved in inter-planetary travel, returning astronauts would likely show symptoms of infection from any dangerous pathogen long before reaching home, as such a journey would be expected to take many months, even with more advanced propulsion technology than we use in space travel today. That is not to say they could not inadvertently return with microbial life on board — or even on the exterior of craft: Earth’s tardigrades, for example, have proven quite durable in journeys into outer space [11].
Undoubtedly, finding life on any other world — even if just primitive microbial life — would be hailed as an unprecedented scientific discovery. As that potential draws nearer, any such discovery should surely be met with due caution, rather than wild excitement. While not as dramatic as an invasion of Spiders from Mars, the discovery of microbial life on other worlds could prove to be a far more sobering prospect — and pose new ethical questions of whether to leave their ecosystems preserved intact, or take the risk blending them with ours.
[1] Strange chemical in clouds of Venus defies explanation. Could it be a sign of life?
https://www.space.com/venus-clouds-possible-life-chemical-discovery.html
[2] How Martian Microbes Could Survive in the Salty Puddles of the Red Planet https://www.space.com/salt-tolerant-microbes-life-on-mars.html
[3] If There’s Life on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus, It Might Look Like This https://www.wired.com/story/if-theres-life-on-saturns-moon-enceladus-it-might-look-like-this/
[4] ‘Racing certainty’ there’s life on Europa, says leading UK space scientist
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-certainty-life-europa-mars-uk.html
[5] The dwarf planet Ceres might be home to an underground ocean of water
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/11/1006447/ceres-largest-asteroid-dwarf-planet-underground-ocean-salty-water
[6] ‘Possibility of life’: scientists map Saturn’s exotic moon Titan
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-titan-idUSKBN1XS2H2
[7] How Europeans brought sickness to the New World
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/how-europeans-brought-sickness-new-world
[8] The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever
[9] Coronavirus: A timeline of how the deadly COVID-19 outbreak is evolving
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/coronavirus-a-timeline-of-how-the-deadly-outbreak-evolved/
[10] Apollo 11 Astronauts Spent 3 Weeks in Quarantine, Just in Case of Moon Plague
https://www.space.com/apollo-11-astronauts-quarantined-after-splashdown.html
[11] How do tardigrades survive in space?
https://cen.acs.org/biological-chemistry/biochemistry/tardigrades-survive-space/97/i41
Oreo seems determined to save its cookies from all future threats and has built a doomsday vault in Norway to do so. Check out the video.
That’s one way to rock the vote.
An asteroid with a diameter the size of a refrigerator could strike the Earth the day before the November election, according to celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson — but it’s not large enough to do any serious damage.
The famed astrophysicist said the space rock, known as 2018VP1, is hurtling towards Earth at a speed of 25,000 miles per hour and may clip the planet on Nov. 2.
“It may buzz-cut Earth on Nov. 2, the day before the Presidential Election,” he wrote on Instagram.
Elon Musk has warned many times about the dangers of AI. He sees strong artificial intelligence as an existential risk. Musk therefore wants to develop a brain machine interface or BMI device so we can merge with AI and hopefully develop a symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence thus solve the AI control problem. Elon Musk has founded the neurotechnology company Neuralink. the company is focused on developing implantable brain machine interfaces. Neuralink has made recent headlines for its newest BMI device presented by Elon Musk.
In the short term, Neuralink’s BMI may be used to fix neurological problems and disorders. As Elon Musk has pointed out, over time, virtually everyone who gets old will suffer at least one if not multiple common neurological issues such as: Memory loss, hearing loss, seizures, strokes, brain damage etc.
With the development of Neuralink’s device, these problems may be a thing of the past. Better yet, the integration of Neuralink’s device with the human brain may advertently solve the artificial intelligence alignment problem by achieving a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines.
This is because there are many cases where an AI and a biological intelligence could benefit from each other’s actions; the AI receiving data from the human brain and the human brain receiving data from the AI. The benefits of this relationship would greatly outweigh the costs to both humans and AI systems; however, it is also very likely that AI systems and biological intelligences will at some point be in conflict.
Elon Musk has commented on the dangers of AI saying it is the greatest risk we face as a civilization. However, in order to prove that Neuralink can solve this problem, two things will need to become clear: how does Neuralink achieve symbiosis with the human brain? And what are the side effects and potential drawbacks of this symbiosis?
#ElonMusk #Neuralink #AI
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In episode two of Hacking the Apocalypse, Claire Reilly looks at the risk of an all-out nuclear war and tours a Cold-War era missile silo that’s now a luxury escape bunker.
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Meteorite impacts may be a good thing — but only sometimes.
Craters could create habitable conditions on many planets and moons.
