Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk is on the record stating that artificial superintelligence or ASI could bring the end of the human race. Elon has publicly expressed concern about AI many times now. He thinks the advent of a digital superintelligence is the most pressing issue for humanity to get right.

What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence would have undergone an event called the intelligence explosion, likely to occur in the 21st century. It is unknown what, or who this machine-network would become; The issue of superintelligence remains peripheral to mainstream AI research and is mostly discussed by a small group of academics.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Message on Artificial Superintelligence — ASI” »

This is interesting. So Mars won’t be under earth-based laws?

Interesting… 😃

SpaceX’s Elon Musk has revealed that they will not abide by international law on Mars.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s SpaceX Will Make Its Own Laws On Mars” »

“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonisation spacecraft, the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the governing law section states.

“Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s SpaceX says it will ‘make its own laws on Mars’” »

SpaceX staff and members of the media have been inundated this morning with emails ostensibly from concerned Armenians around the world, asking the company to cancel a launch contract with the Turkish government. The concerns are valid — and the mass-email method surprisingly effective.

In the form email, received by TechCrunch staff hundreds of times in duplicate and with minor variations, the senders explain that they represent or stand in solidarity with Armenians worldwide, an ethnic and national group that has suffered under the authoritarian rule and regional influence of Turkey’s President, Tayyip Erdogan.

SpaceX is slated to launch the Turkish satellite Turksat-5A in the next month or two, a geostationary communications satellite built by Airbus that will serve a large area of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The deal has been on the books for a long time, and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk even traveled to Turkey to meet with Erdogan regarding the satellite in 2017.

…BIOS is doing pretty much the same thing as Neuralink — only in many respects better.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to hack the brain – here are the European neurotechnology startups that are doing the same with a lot less funding.

Elon Musk has extended his thanks to Tesla owners who received the company’s limited Full Self-Driving beta last week. The information Tesla is gathering from early access FSD beta testers will be invaluable as the company’s AI team continues to enhance and refine the EV automaker’s autonomous driving software.

The founder of Tesla Owners Club Vancouver Islands James Locke asked Elon Musk about his view on the content early access FSD testers were sharing. “Yes, very helpful,” said the Tesla CEO. “Thanks to all beta testers.”

Last week, Musk announced that Tesla plans to roll out the FSD beta to the general public later this year. Tesla will need all the information it can get to make sure that the full release of the Full Self-Driving beta goes smoothly.

“In a breakthrough study published on February 19th in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers connected neural dust implants reduced to 1.7 cubic millimeters to rat sciatic nerves. The implanted device, called the StimDust system, consisted of very few components, which will be scaled down for future applications. A piezoceramic ultrasonic transducer generated power allowing for wireless communication and stimulation. A capacitor stored any excess energy generated from ultrasonic beams. Bipolar stimulating electrodes directly interfaced with the nerve while a cuff attached to a small circuit-board allowed the device to adhere physically to the nerve. These components were sufficient to generate or record nerve-impulses. In anesthetized rodents, they elicited muscular contractions with the StimDust system.”

While Neuralink, Elon Musk’s startup-venture focused on creating a brain-computer interface, garners lots of coverage in the biotechnology space, other bioelectronics ventures continue innovating in this space.

iota Biosciences, a spin-off company from UC Berkley formed in 2017, made news two years ago by securing $15 million in Series A funding and again last year announcing a partnership with Astellas Pharma Inc. Bolstered by studies in rodents, iota Biosciences advances towards their vision. In a press release on their partnership, founders Jose Carmena and Michel Maharbiz commented:

Continue reading “Neural Dust: Millimeter-Sized Brain Stimulators” »

Rock-climb without fear. Play a symphony in your head. See radar with superhuman vision. Discover the nature of consciousness. Cure blindness, paralysis, deafness, and mental illness. Those are just a few of the applications that Elon Musk and employees at his four-year-old neuroscience company Neuralink believe electronic brain-computer interfaces will one day bring about.

None of these advances are close at hand, and some are unlikely to ever come about. But in a “product update” streamed over YouTube on Friday, Musk, also the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, joined staffers wearing black masks to discuss the company’s work toward an affordable, reliable brain implant that Musk believes billions of consumers will clamor for in the future.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater” »

SpaceX is a leader in aerospace innovation. The company was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with the ultimate mission to make life multiplanetary. For over a decade, SpaceX teams have worked to develop technologically advanced rockets and spacecraft. Developing rockets comes with many challenges. SpaceX had a couple of failed missions in the early days. The company went from almost not making it to orbit to returning human spaceflight capabilities to the United States in 2020.

The company’s first rocket, Falcon 1, failed to attain Earth orbit three times: in March 2007 and August 2008, but in September 2008 SpaceX became the first American private company to send a liquid-fueled rocket into orbit. Despite the challenges, SpaceX pushed through until the fourth rocket launch reached orbit. A fourth failure “would have been absolutely game over,” Musk said at the International Astronautical Congress conference in 2017. “Fortunately, the fourth launch, which was … the last money that we had for Falcon 1 –that fourth launch worked. Or it would have been… that would have been it for SpaceX,” he said. The company was able to land a government contract from NASA when it reached orbit.

SpaceX then worked to develop an improved version of the rocket. In 2010, the company launched the Falcon 9, powered by nine Merlin 1D engines. Falcon 9 was designed so that its first-stage could be reused. Other companies use expendable rockets. SpaceX engineers accomplished developing the world’s first orbital-class rocket capable of returning from space to perform a controlled landing powered by its engines. Falcon 9 is capable of launching payload to orbit and landing soon after liftoff. In 2015 a Falcon 9 first-stage booster returned to Earth near its launch site for the first time, after several explosive landings (video below).