Category Archives: Futurism

In Brief Elon Musk takes to Twitter, saying deep AI, not automation, is what humanity should be worried about. Musk is part of a group of tech leaders working to create protective technological measures to prepare for the advancement of deep AI. Deep AI Vs. Automation

In an apparent attempt at a joke, a Twitter user sent a Business Insider tweet featuring a driverless Tesla car to Elon Musk, asking him to confirm that the development in humanless automation would not result in a robotic apocalypse. Musk replied via tweet, reaffirming his oft-repeated position that it is not automation per se, but deep AI, that poses more of an apocalyptic risk to humanity:

Disruption may cause us discomfort, but its not a threat in and of itself. However, Musk and others do see the potential for deep AI to be world-shattering, at least for humans.

Its easy to understand why some are worried about this; AIs are learning how to encrypt messages efficiently. Jrgen Schmidhuber, considered to be the father of deep learning, believes that there will be trillions of self-replicating robot factories along our Solar Systems asteroid belt by 2050. He also thinks that robots will eventually explore the galaxy by themselves, motivated by their own curiosity, capable of deciding their own agenda without much human oversight. And, perhaps most disturbing, scientists working with Googles DeepMind AI tested whether or not AIare more prone to cooperation or competition and found that it can go either way, and AI are even capable of developing killer instincts, or a cooperative mindset, depending on the situation.

Musks solution to this potential threat is his famous neural lace concept. In brief, this ambitious project would use easily injectable electrodes to form a neural lace over the brain. The lace could both stimulate and interpret the brains electrical activity, and would eventually merge with the brain entirely, making human and AI part of the same organism.

The key isnt halting progress, or even fearing AI its learning how to merge with it successfully.

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Elon Musk Says Deep AI, Not Automation, Poses the Real Risk for Humanity - Futurism

In Brief Dubai is introducing a robot to their police force to interact with citizens. Dubai's goal is to have their police force consist of 25% robots by 2030.

Disclosure: The Dubai Future Foundation works in collaboration with Futurism and is one of our sponsors.

Dubai is set to introduce the newest member of their police force:a 5-foot, 5-inch [165.1 cm], 222-pound [100.698 kg] robot whichwill be equipped with facial recognition technology and have the ability to broadcast live video feeds.The first model, which will begin patrolling the streets of thefuturistic city today, will not be on the front lines making arrests, but will be interacting with the community. Residents of Dubai will be able to report crimes, pay fines, and ask the robot questions (though what sort of questions is unclear).

The head of Dubais Police Tech divisiontold reporters at the Gulf Information Security Expo and Conference that by 2030, [Dubai is] keen to make robots around 25% of the total police force. Thoughthis may sound like the beginning of a dystopian novel, this is not the first robot in use by a police force.

Police departments in the United States use robots for training purposes and also utilize bomb-diffusing robots that were first created for the American military. In 2016, the Cleveland Police used robots to patrol the Republican National Convention, while police in Dallas outfitted a robot with a bomb to kill a sniper after losing numerous police lives. South Korea has robot prison guards, and Israeli police use robots in their counter-terrorism unit.

While this is not the first robot to be put into use by police, it is the first that will be ever present on the streets of a city that will eventually be able to make arrests and have all of the responsibilities of a regular cop. The rollout will happen over the next decade, so hopefully that will be enough time to work out any kinks including robots lack of human empathy. And, as these robots have recording capabilities, make sure none of them document any PDA on video.

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Dubai's Newest Addition to the Police Force: A Robot - Futurism

In Brief University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers showed that the Milky Way exists in a part of the universe that's largely devoid of matter. Being in this void, however, could help settle the differences in measuring the rate of the universe's expansion. Riddled With Holes

If you picture what the universe looks like, you can imagine it as Swiss cheese. The sizes of holes, or voids, in the matter of the universe vary greatly. One example would be the cold spot that was found in the Universes radiation. Galaxies are connected by filaments of dark matterthat cannot be seen.

This means that the Milky Way exists in one of these voids, specifically the KBC void, which a 2013 study showed to be not as densely packed with matter as other voids. Its like our galaxy rests in a cosmological backwater the Outer Rim, so to speak. A new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison which waspresented at the 2017 American Astronomical Society meeting confirms that the Milky Way does indeed reside in an enormous void.

However, the researchers claim that being in this huge KBC void also helps resolve the differences in measuring the rate the universe expands theHubble Constant, the number used to describe this cosmic expansion.

There are two ways to measure the expansion of the universe. One is a local determination using the Hubble Space Telescope, which relies on observations of supernovae that exploded in galaxies nearby. The other is a cosmic determination that relies on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data the Big Bangs residual noise taken by the Planck observatory.

One possible explanation for the differences in the Hubble Constant measurement is due to differences in time. Hubbles observations rely on cosmic objects nearer in terms of time, while the CMB was emitted back when the universe was young. Simply put, being in a void with considerably lesser matter affects the measurement taken by observing supernovae explosions. On the other hand, the CMB technique doesnt distort the measurement at all.

No matter what technique you use, you should get the same value for the expansion rate of the Universe today, lead researcher Ben Hoscheit said in a press release. Fortunately, living in a void helps resolve this tension.

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Scientists Assert That Earth May Exist in a Massive Cosmic Void - Futurism

In BriefDeep Blue, IBM's chess computer, caused a worldwide epiphanyregarding the capabilities of AI when it defeated Gary Kasparov in1997. What is the legacy of this match, what other games has AIexcelled in, and what will it succeed in next? Deep Blues Victory

Murray Campbell, a Distinguished Research Staff Member at IBM, recently discussed the legacy and impact of the fateful 1997 chess series in which IBMs Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov the world number one chess player for 225 out of 228 months between 1986 and 2005.

Campbell was part of the portentous encounter himself. He was a member of the team that helped build Deep Blues university progenitor, Deep Thought, which was the first program to beat a grandmaster in a professional tournament. When IBM took notice, Campbell andhis colleagues were hired by them to build Deep Blue. The system they eventually built was a combination of general-purpose supercomputer processors combined with [] chess accelerator chips.

Although computers had beaten humans in games before such as BKG 9.8s victory over Luigi Villa at backgammon in 1979 and Chinooks domination of Don Lafferty in checkers in 1994 Deep Blues victory was considered so auspicious because it won at chess.

David J. Staley wrote, concerning the match, that Chess represents a domain of human skill that is simple enough to model yet complex enough to reflect deep levels of cognition. Therefore, Deep Blues triumph marked the first true trophy for artificial intelligencebecause it beat the man who many consider to be the best player of all time at a game that has been regarded as a pinnacle of human intelligence since antiquity.

Monty Newborn, Emeritus Professor of McGill Universitys School of Computer Science, makes an apt analogy in his book Kasparov versus Deep Blue: Computer Chess Comes of Age.He states that many advances in the auto world were first tried on racing models and then after refinement incorporated into commercial vehicles. This may be the pattern in the computer field, too, where techniques used by computers to play chess are on the cutting edge of developments in complex problem-solving.

Since Deep Blue established a benchmark, says Campbell, machines have improved in processing speed and memory and so on resulting in them adding more and more gaming jewels to their virtual crown. Additionally, machine learning algorithms have access to a lot more data than they did in the past.

In recent years, the most notable victories have been AlphaGos win over five of the best Go (a game arguably more complicated than chess) players simultaneously, and Libratuss domination over four of the worlds top poker players. In this latter encounter, Dong Kim, one of the contestants, told Wired,I felt like I was playing against someone who was cheating, like it could see my cards. Im not accusing it of cheating. It was just that good.

These developments may be reflections of AIs incremental development towards becoming more human, as these games are similar to the complexities and solutions of life itself. However, Kasparovs point from 2010 that modern technology is a culture of optimization that it is derivative, incremental, profit margin-forced, consumer-friendly technology not the kind that pushes the whole world forward economically applies to these victories.

Perhaps AIs real challenge, and the next paradigm shift, is for it to defeat a game we have developed in modern times like StarCraft II.Oriol Vinyals, a DeepMind researcher and former top-ranked StarCraft player, told The Verge that the game is so complex and multifaceted that the skills required for an agent to progress through the environment and play StarCraft well could ultimately transfer to real-world tasks.

Even though you can play against AI when you play StarCraft, the AI that Vinyals is working on would be modeled afterthe way humans play the game along with usingthe same rules we do. AIs are able to play simple video games (think Atari-level), but nothing as complex as StarCraft yet. The researchers dont know when an AI will be created that is able to best a top-ranked player, but the day will come. This AI will have been taught to make decisions as a human would when playing a game with far more layers and complexities than any gameattempted by AI before. Maybe it will be able to teach players the perfect strategy to defeating a Zerg rush.

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AI Has Beaten Humanity at Our Own Game. Literally. - Futurism

In Brief Isle de Jean Charles in the bayous of Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico due to climate change, causing its residents to relocate. This is just one symptom of climate change and emphasizes the urgent necessity to fight it. Drowning Communities

Isle de Jean Charles, a small island in southeastern Louisianas bayous, is drowning as the Gulf of Mexico rises. Twenty-ninehomes remain, housing 100 people, but they are all being relocated because the flooding is unstoppable. The island has already lost 98% of its land since 1955, making it one of the most visible victims of climate change so far. The residents can either leave their homes or die in them, and they are leaving.

Now theres just a little strip of land left, resident Rita Falgout tells Quartz. Thats all we have. Theres water all around us. Im anxious to go.

Residents of places like Isle de Jean Charles can compete for a chance to relocate through the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC), a program organized by the federal government. The goal of the program is to help states and communities recover from disasters and lower risks from future disasters. However, the looming threats from climate change are growing, and affecting more and more communities; Louisiana alone is losing the equivalent of one football fields worth of land every hour.

Climate change is affecting larger coastal areas in the U.S., from Alaska down to Florida and Louisiana. Climate-induced migration is now a concrete reality for citizens of our country, not an abstract idea for politicians to talk about. Research from a March 2016 study indicates that collapsing polar ice caps are likely to cause sea levels to rise by 6 feet (1.8 meters) by 2100; this will in turn force at least 13.1 million Americans living in coastal areas to become homeless. A less drastic rise of 3 feet would leave at least 4 million homeless.

The only solution to these problems is combating climate change before it is too late. States like Hawaii are sticking with the Paris Accord goals, and various cities, states, and businesses are also banding together to maintain a commitment to this important issue, regardless of the action the federal government does or does not take. We cant relocate everyone, and our window for making a difference is closing. Thankfully, the world isnt giving up.

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An Entire Town in the US Is Sinking Because of Climate Change - Futurism

In Brief Russia has shown a great deal of interest in Ethereum-based blockchain technology. This could signal a move toward diversifying Russian interests with technology outside of fossil fuels. Russian Evolution

Youve likely heard of Bitcoin as the future of money, but it is not the only cryptocurrency in the running for cashless economy dominance. The second largest among them is found on the Ethereum blockchain and is called Ether. One of the critical differences between Bitcoin and Ether is that while Bitcoin is first and foremost a currency, Ether, however, can be a platform for a variety of decentralized applications. In short, Ether can do much more than Bitcoin.

The adaptive quality of the platform may be part of the reason why Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, seem to be showing great interest in Ethereum. Reporting from Bloomberg reveals that Putin has been thinking aboutdigital currency. The digital economy isnt a separate industry, its essentially the foundation for creating brand new business models, he said at last weeks St. Petersburg Economic Forum.

Russia could be looking at Ethereum as a way to expand the countrys economic profile of fossil fuels with technology. Bloombergs Leonid Bershidskysuggests that Putin is under the impression that, to wean the country off its oil dependence, they needed a major leap in some specific area of technology that wasnt yet dominated by Western, Chinese, or Japanese tech giants.

Russia is already testing an Ethereum-based blockchain system through its central bank. When Deputy Governor Olga Skorobogatova was asked if Russia is pursuing a national virtual currency, she did not deny the possibility. Currently, there are a few countries already experimenting with national cryptocurrencies.

Coindesk cites eight cryptocurrencies from a variety of countries in the Eurozone. Among them are Icelands Auroracoin, Pesetacoin and Spaincoin from Spain, Gaelcoin from Ireland, and Aphroditecoin from Cyprus. Cryptocurrenciesoffer a lot of benefits including both transparency and security. The level of encryption essentially makes counterfeit transactions impossible.

Russia is among the most powerful countries in the world. Adoption of this technology would be a major boon for the platform and could accelerate the expansionof its influenceacross the world.

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Bitcoin's Rival Just Caught Russia's Attention - Futurism - Futurism