I believe that AI holds a lot of promise and many great things; however, we have to correct some very critical issues 1st before compound a huge issue that we have today. And, that is Cyber Security and re-establish trust with our consumers and customers. Without these 2 being fully addressed; you will compound these two challenges with AI plus run the risk of having an IoT that most people will not wish to use due to hackers, bad data, etc. Not to mention lawsuits for Wi-Fi connected robotics that were hacked and injured or worse some innocent person.
I believe need to ensure priorities are in order before we make things worse.
Unexpected convergent consequences…this is what happens when eight different exponential technologies all explode onto the scene at once.
This post (the second of seven) is a look at artificial intelligence. Future posts will look at other tech areas.
I find this a bit of a stretch. Maybe some jobs; however, not all and there will be (like any new technology, etc.) new career fields created.
“Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50 per cent unemployment? Will those out of work be content to live a life of leisure?” Vardi noted.
“I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” he said.
“The question I want to put forward is, ‘Does the technology we are developing ultimately benefit mankind?’” said Vardi, a member of both the US National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science.
The pace at which robots and intelligent machines are able to take over the jobs traditionally performed by humans will result in more than half the population being unemployed within 30 years, an expert in computing has predicted.
While some may look forward to a life of leisure, many others face the dismal prospect of long-term unemployment as a result of the rise of smart machines, from self-driving cars and intelligent drones to smart financial-trading machines, said Moshe Vardi, professor of computational engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
We develop a quantum information protocol that models the biological behaviours of individuals living in a natural selection scenario. The artificially engineered evolution of the quantum living units shows the fundamental features of life in a common environment, such as self-replication, mutation, interaction of individuals, and death. We propose how to mimic these bio-inspired features in a quantum-mechanical formalism, which allows for an experimental implementation achievable with current quantum platforms. This study paves the way for the realization of artificial life and embodied evolution with quantum technologies.
Becoming immortal is one of mankind’s many quixotic notions that most people will relegate to the world of fantasy and science fiction. However, there is a subset of prominent scientists who believe that immortality is not only attainable, but it is something that will come to fruition in as little as 25 years. This idea is shared by men like Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil; Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk; and one of the most interesting presidential candidates outside of Donald Trump and Deez Nuts, Zoltan Istvan. All three men identify as trans-humanist, and for those who don’t know, trans-humanism is the idea that mankind will one day be able to transcend our biological limitations through the use of science and technology; not to mention, the movement has accumulated over 3 million supporters worldwide. So the question remains, with the multitude of prominent intellectuals who believe immortality is a tangible goal, just how will they go about achieving it? Well, the six answers below could possibly hold the key to everlasting life.
Number Six: Uploading Minds to Computers. Futurists believe that at some point in the near future we will be able to copy and scan all of the data that exists in our brains and upload the information into a computer. This will allow us to perpetually exist as incorporeal inhabitants of cyberspace. Of course, the idea of mind uploading is still purely science fiction, but if it ever becomes tangible, progeny could possibly live in a limitless world, that echoes notions expressed in the Matrix; minus the robot despots.
I gave an interview for a queer people of interest blog and plugged the lifeboat foundation. Thought I would share the information here.
Phillipe Bojorquez is an engineer, activist, and artist: He has been described as “a futurist with a community minded bent.” He is a engineer, with experience at First Dibs, Samsung, Boxee, and Canary. He is a board member of The Lifeboat Foundation, an independent research group dedicated to helping humanity survive the risks posed by new technologies. His research areas include artificial intelligence, robotics, engineering, and philosophy. Bojorquez is a past board member of CRUX, NYC’s LGBT rock climbing organization, and an early contributor and organizer of Vegans in Vegas, a yearly gathering of activists and entrepreneurs at the forefront of nutrition and sustainability.
With the recent use of genetically engineered mosquitoes in Brazil to halt the spread of the Zika virus, we might be beginning to see some major health improvements as a consequence of the genetics revolution. A world in which mosquitoes were all but eliminated from the ecosystem would look quite different from the world of today, especially for people living in the tropics where the threat of mosquito transmitted infections does more than just mar an otherwise tranquil margarita sipped from the veranda of a beach resort. This is not to beggar the more mundane advantages of a mosquito-free habitat, but rather call attention to the fact that for large parts of the world, including Brazil, mosquitoes can be the difference between life and death.
Ironically, the genetic changes made to the Aedes aegypti mosquito in order to halt the spread of the Zika virus are deceptively simple. The company behind the project, Oxitec, used a modified version of something called the “Sterile Insect Technique” to create their hybrid specimens. The end goal of this process is to produce a male mosquito possessing a “self-limiting gene.” When these males mate with wild female mosquitoes, they create non viable offspring that perish soon after the birth. The end result is a rapid drop in the mosquito population of a given area.
When compared with some of the more hazardous forms of mosquito control currently in use such as massive spraying of DEET and chemical infusers popular throughout Asia, sterilizing mosquitoes sounds like an imminently reasonable approach. As a journalist who once saw his roadside samosa blasted by a massive spray of DEET from an oncoming municipal vehicle in India, I can personally attest to a preference for a genetic solution.
In a computational reconstruction of brain tissue in the hippocampus, Salk and UT-Austin scientists found the unusual occurrence of two synapses from the axon of one neuron (translucent black strip) forming onto two spines on the same dendrite of a second neuron (yellow). Separate terminals from one neuron’s axon are shown in synaptic contact with two spines (arrows) on the same dendrite of a second neuron in the hippocampus. The spine head volumes, synaptic contact areas (red), neck diameters (gray) and number of presynaptic vesicles (white spheres) of these two synapses are almost identical. (credit: Salk Institute)
Salk researchers and collaborators have achieved critical insight into the size of neural connections, putting the memory capacity of the brain far higher than common estimates. The new work also answers a longstanding question as to how the brain is so energy efficient, and could help engineers build computers that are incredibly powerful but also conserve energy.
“This is a real bombshell in the field of neuroscience,” says Terry Sejnowski, Salk professor and co-senior author of the paper, which was published in eLife. “We discovered the key to unlocking the design principle for how hippocampal neurons function with low energy but high computation power. Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte (1 quadrillion or 1015 bytes), in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.”
Bioengineers and cognitive scientists have developed the first portable, 64-channel wearable brain activity monitoring system that’s comparable to state-of-the-art equipment found in research laboratories.
In the early days of the space race of the 1960s, NASA used satellites to map the geography of the moon. A better understanding of its geology, however, came when men actually walked on the moon, culminating with Astronaut and Geologist Harrison Schmitt exploring the moon’s surface during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
In the modern era, Dr. Gregory Hickock is one neuroscientist who believes the field of neuroscience is pursuing comparable advances. While scientists have historically developed a geographic map of the brain’s functional systems, Hickock says computational neuroanatomy is digging deeper into the geology of the brain to help provide an understanding of how the different regions interact computationally to give rise to complex behaviors.
“Computational neuroanatomy is kind of working towards that level of description from the brain map perspective. The typical function maps you see in textbooks are cartoon-like. We’re trying to take those mountain areas and, instead of relating them to labels for functions like language, we’re trying to map them on — and relate them to — stuff that the computational neuroscientists are doing.”
Hickok pointed to a number of advances that have already been made through computational neuroanatomy: mapping visual systems to determine how the visual cortex can code information and perform computations, as well as mapping neurally realistic approximations of circuits that actually mimic motor control, among others. In addition, researchers are building spiking network models, which simulate individual neurons. Scientists use thousands of these neurons in simulations to operate robots in a manner comparable to how the brain might perform the job.
That research is driving more innovation in artificial intelligence, says Gregory. For example, brain-inspired models are being used to develop better AI systems for stores of information or retrieval of information, as well as in automated speech recognition systems. In addition, this sort of work can be used to develop better cochlear implants or other sorts of neural-prostheses, which are just starting to be explored.
“In terms of neural-prostheses that can take advantage of this stuff, if you look at patterns and activity in neurons or regions in cortex, you can decode information from those patterns of activity, (such as) motor plans or acoustic representation,” Hickok said. “So it’s possible now to implant an electrode array in the motor cortex of an individual who is locked in, so to speak, and they can control a robotic arm.”
More specifically, Hickok is interested in applying computational neuroanatomy to speech and language functions. In some cases where patients have lost the ability to produce fluid speech, he states that the cause is the disconnection of still-intact brain areas that are no longer “talking to each other”. Once we understand how these circuits are organized and what they’re doing computationally, Gregory believes we might one day be able to insert electrode arrays and reconnect those brain areas as a form of rehabilitation.
As he looks at the future applications in artificial intelligence, Hickok says he expects continued development in neural-prostheses, such as cochlear implants, artificial retinas, and artificial motor control circuits. The fact that scientists are still trying to simulate how the brain does its computations is one hurdle; the “squishy” nature of brain matter seems to operate differently than the precision developed in digital computers.
Though multiple global brain projects are underway and progress is being made (Wired’s Katie Palmer gives a succinct overview), Gregory emphasizes that we’re still nowhere close to actually re-creating the human mind. “Presumably, this is what evolution has done over millions of years to configure systems that allow us to do lots of different things and that is going to (sic) take a really long time to figure out,” he said. “The number of neurons involved, 80 billion in the current estimate, trillions of connections, lots and lots of moving parts, different strategies for coding different kinds of computations… it’s just ridiculously complex and I don’t see that as something that’s easily going to give up its secrets within the next couple of generations.”