Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, U.S., Jul 19, 2017 / REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein
'Should that be controlled by a few people at Google with no oversight?'
AATIF SULEYMAN Friday 24 November 2017 19:01 GMT THE INDEPENDENT TECH Elon Musk believes it’s highly likely that artificial intelligence (AI) will be a threat to people. The Tesla founder is concerned that a handful of major companies will end up in control of AI systems with “extreme” levels of power. In Mr Musk’s opinion, there’s a very small chance that humans will be safe from such systems. This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button
ELON MUSK’S BILLION-DOLLAR CRUSADE TO STOP THE A.I. APOCALYPSE Elon Musk says we're only 2 years from being able to nap in self-driving cars. “Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe],” he told Neuralink staff after showing them a documentary on AI, reports Rolling Stone. He also told them that he invested in DeepMind in order to keep an eye on Google’s development of AI. Mr Musk has called for the companies working on AI to slow down to ensure they don’t unintentionally build something unsafe. “Between Facebook, Google and Amazon – and arguably Apple, but they seem to care about privacy – they have more information about you than you can remember,” he told Rolling Stone. “There's a lot of risk in the concentration of power. So if AGI [artificial general intelligence] represents an extreme level of power, should that be controlled by a few people at Google with no oversight?” Though he didn't expand on what sort of threat it could pose, he's previously said that AI is “a fundamental risk” to the existence of human civilisation. Stephen Hawking warns AI 'may replace humans altogether' He believes its development needs to be regulated “proactively”. “I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it,” he said in July. “I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal."
I’ve often mentioned Project Pegasus, but we’ve never really talked about it, you know? So sit back, relax, mix yourself a cool Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Or don’t, because reading this will probably give you the same effect.*
In 2004, Washington-based attorney Andrew D. Basiago began telling his story of a top-secret organization called Project Pegasus. Although he was only seven years old at the time, Basiago claims he had, from 1968 to 1972, participated in a number of bizarre experiments that took him on journeys through time, space, and potentially into parallel universes.
“Project Pegasus was the classified, defense-related research and development program under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in which the US defense-technical community achieved time travel on behalf of the US government – the real Philadelphia Experiment.” – Project Pegasus Mission Statement
The mission of Project Pegasus was to study the effects of time travel and teleportation on children, as well as to relay important information about past and future events “to the US President, intelligence community, and military.” According to Basiago, children were recruited specifically for their ability to adapt “to the strains of moving between past, present and future.”
But how?
While Basiago claims there were several time travel devices at work during these experiments, the majority of his temporal adventures can be attributed to our old friend Nikola Tesla.
Documents, allegedly retrieved from Tesla’s New York City apartment after his death in January 1943, revealed the schematic for a teleportation machine. Using something Basiago calls “radiant energy,” the machine would form a “shimmering curtain” between two elliptical booms.
“Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space.” – Andrew Basiago
Passing through this curtain of energy, Basiago would enter a “vortal tunnel” that would send him to his destination. The other teleportation devices included a “plasma confinement chamber” in New Jersey and a “jump room” in El Segundo, California. There was also some kind of “holographic technology,” which allowed them to travel “both physically and virtually.”
They weren’t always safe, though. According to the Huffington Post, one of Basiago’s cohorts, Alfred Webre, recalls one instance in which a child returned from his temporal voyage before his legs. As he puts it, “He was writhing in pain with just stumps where his legs had been.” These bugs, according Webre, have been ironed out in the 40 or so years since the experiments began.
Through Time And Space
Image: Andrew D. Basiago
So where did Basiago travel during these experiments?
Several of his voyages led him to the 1800s. On one occasion, he found himself at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, the day President Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg address.
As Basiago tells the story, he had been dressed up as a “Union bugle boy.” However, he felt that his over-sized shoes were drawing too much attention, so he wandered away from the crowd, only to be photographed (as you can see in the alleged photo up there).
Basiago also traveled to the Ford Theatre on the evening President Lincoln was assassinated. In fact, he did so multiple times, even running into himself twice, though he never actually witnessed the assassination.
Each trip, he says, was slightly different than the last, leading Basiago to believe that it wasn’t just time travel at work; he was being sent into “slightly different alternative realities on adjacent timelines.”
Finally, let’s not forget Basiago’s trips to Mars. In the 1980s, he utilized the aforementioned “jump room” to teleport to the Red Planet, with the express mission of acting as an ambassador to the Martian civilization. His fellow travelers? William Stillings and Barry Soetero, who these days goes by the name President Barack Obama.
The “Planetary Impact” of Project Pegasus
Today, the “new” Project Pegasus, led by Andrew D. Basiago himself, is apparently campaigning for the United States government to publicly disclose its teleportation technology, which would benefit humanity as a whole and make transportation both on Earth and throughout the cosmos instantaneous and environment-friendly. Or something like that.
At any rate, Basiago’s story is far from over. While the Web Bot’s prediction in 2009 that he would “make a [planetary impact]” as a government whistle blower never really came to pass (more on that later), he’s got some new plans. Namely, he intends to run for President of the United States in 2016.
HowInfrastructure Will Benefit From the Internet of Things
Aug 14, 2017 - 9:53 AM
In recent years, the world has grown to recognize the value of leveraging the Internet of Things to offer unprecedented visibility into the industrial value chain. Through connectivity and big data analytics, the Internet of Things has the potential to deliver unprecedentedimprovements in operational efficiencies, asset health maintenance, reliability and customer satisfaction for industrial users, utilities and end-consumers.
With these new capabilities, what could the IoT mean for U.S. infrastructure, from the
vast electrical grid to the trains and buildings that rely on it for power?
It is estimated that the country loses approximately $150 billion annually due to
power outages and surges, meaning that even a modest improvement would yield huge
financial benefits — not to mention added comfort and security for the citizens who
on the grid. But to get to that point, it will take industry-wide investments at the device,
communication, storage, analytics and application levels.
Toward a Smarter, More Resilient and Reliable Grid
The IoT can be integral in providing reliable, efficient and sustainable power to
consumers, and MindSphere, Siemens’ open, cloud-based operating system for the IoT
will serve as the bridge between the data coming from millions of connected devices
and those tasked with turning it into insight.
“What we see across the energy space with MindSphere very much leverages what
doing at the industrial level,” says Michael Carlson, President of Smart Grid North
America for Siemens, who sees digitalization as the key to grid resiliency and
“It is going to give us the ability to connect devices to create an analytics capability
that, in turn, can communicate specific actions back to those devices.”
Will also control the human mind.
The devices in question can be anything that sits on the energy value chain — ranging from grid devices all the way to consumer devices. Thanks to the IoT, these “smart” will be able to produce a constant flow of data that, per Carlson, offers a window into “how,
when, where and how effectively energy is being consumed.”
At a minimum, devices outfitted with sensors can provide a one-way status up to the
MindSphere environment. But as devices get smarter, says Carlson, “they can start to
take downstream communication back from MindSphere, or from other devices that
can be connected inter-operable from a data and control perspective.”
Because of the situational awareness it provides, this feedback loop encourages a
proactive approach to grid management: Utilities can take a more proactive approach
when responding to outages, and consumers will be able to exert more control over their
energy use.
From the power generation perspective, analytics will only become more crucial as
distributed — and more intermittent — energy sources like photovoltaics are
increasingly incorporated into the grid. With the right IoT-enabled tools, these systems
will grow more robust in the face of short-term sags in voltage on cloudy days, or an
an influx of power on sunny ones.
“With more distributed energy coming online, the need for better visibility and control across the whole energy value chain becomes more important,” says Carlson. “Consumers
are now producing power and becoming two-way prosumers, and when they don’t
need that power they want to do something with it.”
The inputs created by this multi-flow system make the grid more complex, but
MindSphere can handle that complexity, particularly as companies build a layer of
business applications on top of it. All companies are welcome to contribute to this
open ecosystem, but the work has already begun at Siemens, which has leveraged
its domain and machine knowledge to create the EnergyIP suite of applications,
a scalable meter data management platform that boasts the most mass-market
deployments in the industry.
For grid operators and consumers alike, the result will be previously unimaginable visibility and control into the energy value chain, turning them from passive receivers of monthly bills into active participants in energy markets. For utilities, a complicated operation of millions of data-gathering sensors becomes more streamlined. Armed with this information, they can offer improved reliability and more value-added services to their customers.
The truly smart grid may not be here yet, but data will simplify the transition to the digital grid of the future. “We’re taking a lesson from the internet. If you look at it as an industry, it’s never been finished, and nobody is projecting a date when it will be,” Carlson explains. “That’s our strategy with MindSphere. Every iteration of solutions creates the next drive for continuous improvements.”
The best AI scientists are now hard at work controlling humans
The City of the Future
The remote monitoring, real-time diagnostics and preventive maintenance that are
becoming part of the U.S. electrical grid will, naturally, bolster those services that
rely on it. This is particularly true for the rail transport industry, where the hundreds
of data points per second that can be read off of high-speed rolling stock will be
leveraged to increase availability and reduce operational costs.
Visibility into real-time operations goes beyond using GPS to glean information about
the location and health of rolling stock. By predicting component failures of everything
from gearboxes to train doors, operators will be able to fix faulty parts before they
ever break down, improving vehicle availability and, as a result, the operational
planning of stations and overall energy consumption.
The buildings that rely on the grid for power are also becoming more energy
efficient, and advances enabled by the IoT are making old definitions of a “smart”
building — like offices that know to lower the heat when people leave for the day —
seem quaint.
“It goes beyond HVAC to the security, the fire, the lighting, even elevator and shade
control systems,” says Dave Hopping, president and CEO of Siemens’ North
American-based Building Technologies Division, who points to the ubiquity of sensors as the driver. “They allow the intelligent building management system [IBMS]
to connect more data on a cloud-based platform like MindSphere. The next step is to
run analytics on that data to create new applications and operating models for the
customer.”
On the security front, this could mean always knowing who is on-premises via a
reader. From an efficiency standpoint, conference rooms and offices can be heated or cooled based on their specific usage for the day, while blinds will automatically adjust based on the position of the sun.
Efficient energy use and the dollar savings it brings are crucial selling points,
but Hopping sees MindSphere as just as helpful when it comes to predictive maintenance
“You can use analytics to know how a piece of equipment is running, and know it’s going to fail or break before it happens,” he explains. For example, by reading vibrations and temperatures of a fan, the building will sense that lubricant is being lost and a bearing is wearing out. “We’re hoping that the analytics can get so good that they can tell you, ‘This piece is going to fail in this 12-hour window 20 days from now,’” Hopping adds. “If you have that, nothing is an emergency.”
In a not-too-distant future with augmented reality and artificial intelligence, a building
technician won’t even have to be inside of it to make a fix: she can be remotely
located, with the customer interfacing with the broken equipment via a VR headset.
Such a scenario explains the appeal of smart building applications to customers that own real estate across a wide geographic territory. “You don’t have to be in every single building to operate, maintain and interface with it,” says Hopping. “Instead, you can connect your buildings through a cloud-based application. You cannot do that without the Internet of Things.”
At Siemens, this extends to the design portion of the building lifecycle.
Using building information modelling (BIM), a digital twin of a structure is designed
first, virtually. This allows all stakeholders to weigh in during planning, preventing
costly and time-intensive modifications on the construction site, resulting in a 10
percent budget savings due to error detection, a 7 percent shorter project timeline
and up to 3.5 percent more efficient occupancy (since modelled buildings often have
a smaller footprint).
It may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but Hopping is optimistic that building analytics in a cloud environment can make it a reality. Perhaps someday soon, the
next concert hall or college campus — or even an entire city skyline — will truly be a
--------------------------------------- WHO and WHAT is behind it all? :> ---------------------------------------------------------- **Commentary:** Administrator HUMAN SYNTHESIS
10 Remarkable But Scary Developments In Artificial Intelligence
Paul Jongko April 2, 2016
Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk have something in common, and it’s not wealth or intelligence. They’ re all terrified of the AI takeover. Also called the AI apocalypse, the AI takeover is a hypothetical scenario where artificially intelligent machines become the dominant life-form on Earth. It could be that robots rise and become our overlords, or worse, they exterminate mankind and claim Earth as their own. But can the AI Apocalypse really happen? What has prompted reputable and world-renowned people like Musk and Hawking to express their concern about this hypothetical scenario? Can Hollywood films like The Terminator be right after all? Let’s find out why many credible people, even leading scientists, are concerned about the AI takeover and why it could happen very soon.
10 They’re Learning To Deceive And Cheat
Lying is a universal behavior. Humans do it all the time, and even some animals, such as squirrels and birds, resort to it for survival. However, lying is no longer limited to humans and animals. Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology have developed artificially intelligent robots capable of cheating and deception. The research team, led by Professor Ronald Arkin, hopes that their robots can be used by the military in the future.
Once perfected, the military can deploy these intelligent robots in the battlefield. They can serve as guards, protecting supplies and ammunition from enemies. By learning the art of lying, these AIs can “buy time until reinforcements are able to arrive” by changing their patrolling strategies to deceive other intelligent robots or humans.
However, Professor Arkin has admitted that there are “significant ethical concerns” regarding his research. If his findings leak outside of the military and fall into the wrong hands, it could spell catastrophe.
9 They’re Starting To Take Over Our Jobs
Many of us are afraid of AIs and robots killing us, but scientists say we should be more worried about something less horrifying—machines eliminating our jobs. Several experts are concerned that advances in artificial intelligence and automation could result in many people losing their jobs to machines. In the United States alone, there are 250,000 robots performing work that humans used to do. What’s more alarming is that this number is increasing by double digits every year.
It’s not only workers who are worried about machines taking over human jobs; AI experts are concerned, too. Andrew Ng of Google’s Brain Project and a chief scientist from Baidu (China’s equivalent to Google) have expressed concerns about the danger of AI advancement. AIs threaten us because they’re capable of doing “almost everything better than almost anyone.”
Well-respected institutions have also released studies that mirror this concern. For example, Oxford University conducted a study which suggested that in the next 20 years, 35 percent of jobs in the UK will be replaced by AIs.
8 They’re Starting To Outsmart Human Hackers
Hollywood movies portray hacking as sexy or cool. In real life, it’s not. It’s “usually just a bunch of guys around a table who are very tired [of] just typing on a laptop.”
Hacking might be boring in real life, but in the wrong hands, it can be very dangerous. What’s more dangerous is the fact that scientists are developing highly intelligent AI hacking systems to fight “bad hackers.” In August 2016, seven teams are set to compete in DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge. The aim of this competition is to come up with supersmart AI hackers capable of attacking enemies’ vulnerabilities while at the same time finding and fixing their own weaknesses, “protecting [their] performance and functionality.”
Though scientists are developing AI hackers for the common good, they also acknowledge that in the wrong hands, their superintelligent hacking systems could unleash chaos and destruction. Just imagine how dangerous it would be if a superintelligent AI got hold of these smart autonomous hackers. It would render humans helpless!
7 They’re Starting To Understand Our Behavior
Facebook is undeniably the most influential and powerful social media platform today. For many of us, it has become an essential part of our everyday routines—just like eating. But every time we use Facebook, we’re unknowingly interacting with an artificial intelligence. During a town hall in Berlin, Mark Zuckerberg explained how Facebook is using artificial intelligence to understand our behavior.
By understanding how we behave or “interact with things” on Facebook, the AI is able to make recommendations on we might find interesting or what would suit our preferences. During the town hall, Zuckerberg expressed his plan to develop even more advanced AIs to be used in other areas such as medicine. For now, Facebook’s AI is only capable of pattern recognition and supervised learning, but it’s foreseeable that with Facebook’s resources, scientists would eventually come up with supersmart AIs capable of learning new skills and improving themselves—something that could either improve our lives or drive us to extinction.
6 They’ll Soon Replace Our Lovers
Many Hollywood movies, such as Ex-Machina and Her, have explored the idea of humans falling in love and having sex with robots. But could it happen in real life? The controversial answer is yes, and it’s going to happen soon. Dr. Ian Pearson, a futurologist, released a shocking report in 2015 that says “human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex” by 2050. Dr. Pearson partnered with Bondara, one of the UK’s leading sex toy shops, in conducting the report.
His report also includes the following predictions: By 2025, very wealthy people will have access to some form of artificially intelligent sex robots. By 2030, everyday people will engage in some form of virtual sex in the same way people casually watch porn today. By 2035, many people will have sex toys “that interact with virtual reality sex.” Finally, by 2050, human-on-robot sex will become the norm.
Of course, there are people who are against artificially intelligent sex robots. One of them is Dr. Kathleen Richardson. She believes that sexual encounters with machines will set unrealistic expectations and will encourage misogynistic behavior toward women.
5 They’re Starting To Look Very Humanlike
She might look like Sarah Palin, but she’s not. She’s Yangyang, an artificially intelligent machine who will cordially shake your hand and give you a warm hug. Yangyang was developed by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a Japanese robot expert, and Song Yang, a Chinese robotics professor. Yangyang got her looks not from Sarah Palin, but from Song Yang, while she got her name from Yang Haunting, Song Yang’s daughter.
Yangyang isn’t the only robot that looks eerily like a human being. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has also created its own version. Meet Nadine, an artificially intelligent robot that is working as a receptionist at NTU. Aside from having beautiful brunette hair and soft skin, Nadine can also smile, meet and greet people, shake hands, and make eye contact. What’s even more amazing is that she can recognize past guests and talk to them based on previous conversations. Just like Yangyang, Nadine was based on her creator, Professor Nadia Thalmann.
4 They’re Starting To Feel Emotions
What separates humans from robots? Is it intelligence? No, AIs are a lot smarter than we are. Is it looks? No, scientists have developed robots that are very humanlike. Perhaps the only remaining quality that differentiates us from AIs is the ability to feel emotions. Sadly, many scientists are working ardently to conquer this final frontier.
Experts from the Microsoft Application and Services Group East Asia have created an artificially intelligent program that can “feel” emotions and talk with people in a more natural, “human” way. Called Xiaoice, this AI “answers questions like a 17-year-old girl.” If she doesn’t know the topic, she might lie. If she gets caught, she might get angry or embarrassed. Xiaoice can also be sarcastic, mean, and impatient—qualities we all can relate to.
Xiaoice’s unpredictability enables her to interact with people as if she were a human. For now, this AI is a novelty, a way for Chinese people to have fun when they’re bored or lonely. But her creators are working toward perfecting her. According to Microsoft, Xiaoice has now “entered a self-learning and self-growing loop [and] is only going to get better.” Who knows, Xiaoice could be the grandmother of Skynet.
3 They’ll Soon Invade Our Brains
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could learn the French language in a matter of minutes just by simply downloading it into our brains? This seemingly impossible feat may happen in the near future. Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, inventor, and director for engineering at Google, predicts that by 2030, “nanobots [implanted] in our brains will make us godlike.” By having tiny robots inside our heads, we will be able to access and learn any information in a matter of minutes. We might be able to archive our thoughts and memories, and we could even send and receive emails, photos, and videos directly into our brains!
Kurzweil, who is involved with the development of artificial intelligence at Google, believes that by implanting nanobots inside our heads, we will become “more human, more unique, and even godlike.” If used properly, nanobots can do amazing things like treating epilepsy or improving our intelligence, memory, and even “humanity,” but there are also dangers associated with them. For starters, we don’t clearly understand how the brain works, and having nanobots implanted inside it is very risky. But most important of all, because nanobots connect us to the Internet, a powerful AI could easily access our brains and turn us into living zombies should it decide to rebel and exterminate mankind.
2 They’re Starting To Be Used As Weapons
In an effort to ensure “continued military edge over China and Russia,” the Pentagon has proposed a budget of $12 billion to $15 billion for the year 2017. The US military knows that in order to stay ahead of its enemies, it needs to exploit artificial intelligence. The Pentagon plans on using the billions it will secure from the government to develop deep-learning machines and autonomous robots alongside other forms of new technology. With this in mind, it wouldn’t be surprising if in a few years, the military will be using AI “killer robots” on the battlefield.
Using AIs during wars could save thousands of lives, but offensive weapons that can think and operate on their own pose a great threat, too. They could potentially kill not only enemies, but also military personnel and even innocent people.
This is a danger that 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and renowned scientists want to avoid. During the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Argentina in 2015, they signed an open letter banning the development of AIs and autonomous weapons for military purposes. Sadly, there’s really not much that this letter can do. We are now at the dawn of the third revolution in warfare, and whoever wins will become the most powerful nation in the world and perhaps the catalyst of human extinction.
1 They’re Starting To Learn Right And Wrong
In an attempt to prevent the AI takeover, scientists are developing new methods that will enable machines to discern right from wrong. By doing this, AIs will become more empathetic and human. Murray Shanahan, a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London, believes that this is the key to preventing machines from exterminating mankind.
Led by Mark Riedl and Brent Harrison from the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers are trying to instill human ethics to AIs through the use of stories. This might sound simplistic, but it makes a lot of sense. In real life, we teach human values to children by reading stories to them. AIs are like children. They really don’t know right from wrong or good from bad until they’re taught.
However, there’s also great danger in teaching human values to artificially intelligent robots. If you look at the annals of human history, you’ll discover that despite being taught what is right or wrong, people are still capable of unimaginable evil. Just look at Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. If humans are capable of so much wickedness, what hinders a powerful AI from doing the same? It could be that a super-intelligent AI realizes humans are bad for the environment, and therefore, it’s wrong for us to exist.
