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Elon Musk and his archrival Sam Altman are racing to create a superintelligent A.I. to save humanity from extinction

Musk cofounded OpenAI—the parent company of the viral chatbot ChatGPT—in 2015 alongside Altman and others. But when Musk proposed that he take control of the startup to catch up with tech giants like Google, Altman and the other cofounders rejected the proposal. Musk walked away in February 2018 and changed his mind about a “massive planned donation.”

Now Musk’s new company, xAI, is on a mission to create an AGI, or artificial general intelligence, that can “understand the universe,” the billionaire said in a nearly two-hour-long Twitter Spaces talk on Friday. An AGI is a theoretical type of A.I. with human-like cognitive abilities and is expected to take at least another decade to develop.

Musk’s new company debuted only days after OpenAI announced in a July 5 blog post that it was forming a team to create its own superintelligent A.I. Musk said xAI is “definitely in competition” with OpenAI.

Devastation followed by desperation in Acapulco after Hurricane Otis rips through

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — First came the devastation, then people’s desperation.

Hurricane Otis blasted the Mexican tourist port of Acapulco like no other storm before in the Eastern Pacific. As a monstrous Category 5 meteor, with its 165 mph (266 kph) winds, it destroyed what it found in its path: large residential buildings, houses, hotels, roads and stores.

Fallen trees and power line poles covered practically all the streets in this city of more than 1 million people. The walls and the roofs of buildings and houses were left partially or totally ripped off, while some cars were buried under debris.

Giant Comet Will Fly by the Earth and Will Be Visible in the Night Sky

An huge volcanic comet, 12P/Pons-Brooks, has violently exploded for the second time in four months and it is heading towards the Earth. It will not hit the Earth but we could see it in the night sky around April 21, 2024.

It has a solid nucleus, with an estimated diameter of 18.6 miles (30 kilometers), and is filled with a mix of ice, dust and gas known as cryomagma. The comet is about three times bigger than Mount Everest. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was between 10 and 15 kilometers wide.

12P is currently hurtling toward the inner solar system, where it will be slingshotted around the sun on its highly elliptical 71-year orbit around the sun.

Creating Sapient Technology and Cyborg Rights Should Happen Soon

Here’s my latest Opinion piece just out for Newsweek…focusing on cyborg rights.


Over the past half-century, the microprocessor’s capacity has doubled approximately every 18–24 months, and some experts predict that by 2030, machine intelligence could surpass human capabilities. The question then arises: When machines reach human-level intelligence, should they be granted protection and rights? Will they desire and perhaps even demand such rights?

Beyond advancements in microprocessors, we’re witnessing breakthroughs in genetic editing, stem cells, and 3D bioprinting, all which also hold the potential to help create cyborg entities displaying consciousness and intelligence. Notably, Yale University’s experiments stimulating dead pig brains have ignited debates in the animal rights realm, raising questions about the ethical implications of reviving consciousness.

Amid these emerging scientific frontiers, a void in ethical guidelines exists, akin to the Wild West of the impending cyborg age. To address these ethical challenges, a slew of futurist-oriented bills of rights have emerged in the last decade. One of the most prominent is the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, which is in its third revision through crowdsourcing and was published verbatim by Wired in 2018.

These cyborg bills encompass a broad array of protections, including safeguards for thinking robots, gender recognition for virtual intelligences, regulations for genetically engineered sapient beings, and the defense of freedoms for biohackers modifying their bodies. Some also incorporate tech-driven rules to combat environmental threats like asteroids, pandemics, and nuclear war.

Joscha Bach: Artificial Consciousness and the Nature of Reality

Joscha Bach is the VP of Research at the AI Foundation, previously doing research at MIT and Harvard. Joscha work explores the workings of the human mind, intelligence, consciousness, life on Earth, and the possibly-simulated fabric of our universe.

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Incredible comment by ernst.gemeint showing some of the topics mentioned:
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Bitcoin miners beef up Texas operations ahead of extinction-level event, exclusive data shows

The new data also confirms that Texas has cemented its position as the crypto capital of the United States, as miners flock there for abundant clean energy and a permissive regulatory environment.

Texas made up 8.43% of the hashrate in the U.S. as of the end of 2021, and that percentage has jumped to 28.50% as of July 27, 2023 — though Foundry notes that the data was aggregated during a period of heavy curtailment in July, so Texas’s percentage of actual hashrate is even greater than what’s reflected on their latest map. Zhang added that Texas’s growth in Foundry’s map also had to do with the fact that the firm took on more clients there in the past two years.

Given that the U.S. is currently the world leader in terms of its share of the collective hashrate of the bitcoin network, that makes Texas the bitcoin capital of the world.

The Fermi Paradox: Fallen Empires

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The cosmos seem silent and empty of any great interstellar empires, but perhaps they once existed, and if so, what titanic ruins might they have left behind?

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Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Fallen Empires.
Episode 412a, September 17, 2023
Produced, Written & Narrated by:
Isaac Arthur.

Editors:
Jerry Guern.
Konstantin Sokerin.
David McFarlane.

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Historic OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples successfully return to Earth

In the morning hours of Sept. 24, a small capsule containing surface samples from asteroid 101,955 Bennu careened into Earth’s atmosphere after a seven-year journey through space. The landing of this sample capsule is the culmination of NASA’s historic Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) asteroid sample return mission, which is now the first American mission to return samples from an asteroid.

The sample return capsule (SRC) landed within a 14 by 58-kilometer ellipse at a Department of Defense property at the Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Touchdown of the SRC occurred at 8:52 AM MDT (14:52 UTC) — three minutes earlier than planned. Low winds and dry weather was present at Dugway during the landing — optimal conditions for the return and recovery of the SRC.

OSIRIS-REx launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Sept. 8, 2016. Since then, OSIRIS-REx has flown past Earth, rendezvoused with asteroid 101,955 Bennu, orbited the asteroid and extensively imaged/mapped its surface, collected a sample from Bennu, made the journey back to Earth, and now returned its sample. As the SRC was streaking through Earth’s atmosphere, OSIRIS-REx performed a flyby of Earth and began a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX, wherein OSIRIS-REx will fly out and study asteroid 99,942 Apophis. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in 2029 if all goes according to plan.

Preventing Human Extinction

Table of Contents:

0) — Intro : 0:00 — 1:49
1) — Ionopocalypse : 1:49 — 7:32
2) — Petrocalypse : 7:32 — 17:03
3) — Ecocalypse : 17:03 — 25:43
4) — Nuclear Apocalypse : 25:43 — 31:06
5) — Biopocalypse : 31:06 — 35:39
6) — Nanopocalypse : 35:40 — 40:15
6) — Infopocalypse : 40:15 — 52:57
7) — Geopocalypse : 52:58 — 58:59
8) — Astropocalypse : 58:59 — 1:04:14
9) — Xenopocalypse1:04:14 — 1:13:10

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