Circa 2017
The Matrix, the first episode, was a fun movie. But as a description for reality? Please.
Continue reading “‘Great’ Minds Think Universe Is a Computer Program” »
Almost 5 years after Elon Musk allowed other manufacturers access to Tesla patents without fear of legal action – effectively making them open source – Toyota has announced that it’s opening up its vehicle electrification patent archive to help speed up the development and adoption of electric vehicles.
Google’s new lab is indicative of a broader effort to bring so-called machine learning to robotics. Researchers are exploring similar techniques at places like the University of California, Berkeley, and OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab founded by the Silicon Valley kingpins Elon Musk and Sam Altman. In recent months, both places have spawned start-ups trying to commercialize their work.
In 2013, the company started an ambitious, flashy effort to create robots. Now, its goals are more modest, but the technology is subtly more advanced.
Over the past twenty years, neuroscientists have been quietly building a revolutionary technology called BrainGate that wirelessly connects the human mind to computers and it just hit the world stage. Entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have entered the race with goals of figuring out how to get computer chips into everyone’s brains. The attention of Musk and Zuckerberg means the potential for giant leaps forward. But the question no one seems to be asking is whether our dependence on machines and technology has finally gone too far. Countries annually celebrate their independence from other countries, but it now seems we should start asking deeper questions about our personal independence.
60 Minutes recently ran a piece showing how engineers are using what scientists have learned about the brain to manipulate us into staying perpetually addicted to our smartphones. The anxiety most of us feel when we are away from our phone is real: During the 60 Minutes piece, researchers at California State University Dominguez Hills connected electrodes to reporter Anderson Cooper’s fingers to measure changes in heart rate and perspiration. Then they sent text messages to his phone, which was out of his reach, and watched his anxiety spike with each notification.
The segment revealed that virtually every app on your phone is calibrated to keep you using it as often and as long as possible. The show made an important point: a relatively small number of Silicon Valley engineers are experimenting with, and changing in a significant way, human behavior and brain function. And they’re doing it with little insight into the long-term consequences. It seems the fight for independence has gone digital.
Continue reading “Hacking The Brain: The Future Computer Chips In Your Head” »
SpaceX has silently published the first known detailed render of its new stainless steel Starship’s design on the cover of Popular Mechanic’s April 2019 issue, showing the next-generation orbital spacecraft reentering Earth’s atmosphere in a blaze of glowing metal and plasma.
Despite the fact that the render seems to only be available in print and then only through one particular news outlet, Teslarati has acquired a partial-resolution copy of the image to share the latest official glimpse of SpaceX’s Starship with those who lack the means, access, or interest to purchase a magazine. Matters of accessibility aside, SpaceX’s updated render offers a spectacular view of Starship’s exotic metallic heat shield in action, superheating the atmosphere around it to form a veil of plasma around the spacecraft’s hull. According to CEO Elon Musk, the hottest parts of Starship’s skin will be reinforced with hexagonal tiles of steel and transpiration cooling, a largely unproven technology that SpaceX is already in the process of testing.
Following SpaceX’s successful debut launch, rendezvous, and recovery of Crew Dragon, NASA has published official photos documenting the scorched spacecraft’s Atlantic Ocean splashdown, GO Searcher’s recovery, and the duo’s return to Port Canaveral shortly thereafter.
Aside from offering a number of spectacularly detailed views of Crew Dragon after its inaugural orbital reentry, NASA’s photos also provide an exceptionally rare glimpse of the spacecraft’s PICA-X v3 heat shield, revealing a tiled layout that is quite a bit different from Cargo Dragon’s own shield. A step further, CEO Elon Musk offered updates on March 17th about progress being made towards a new, metallic heat shield technology meant to make ablative shields like those on Dragon outdated, serving as a striking bit of contrast to SpaceX’s newest spacecraft, potentially just a dozen or two months away from already becoming anachronistic.
On Monday, OpenAI’s leaders said that a paltry $1 billion wouldn’t be enough to compete with the well-resourced AI labs at companies such as Google and Facebook after all. They announced the new investment vehicle, a company called OpenAI LP, as a way to raise extra money for the computing power and people needed to steer the destiny of AI. Musk left the board of OpenAI last February and is not formally involved in OpenAI LP.
OpenAI, the independent research lab cofounded by Elon Musk, created a for-profit arm to attract more funding to hire researchers and run computers.
