I do commend Sacramento for trying to put controls in place to reduce human trafficking; will it work?
What if banning smartphone encryption could stem the rising tide of human trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery from which perpetrators force victims to engage in commercial labor services or sex acts against their will?
“But if you are familiar with the advanced search options these sites offer or read any number of books or blogs on ‘Google Dorks, ’ you’ll likely be more fearful of them than something with limited scope like Shodan”.
And it’s recently emerged that Shodan, a search engine for the Internet of Things, allows users to snoop on screenshots of anything filmed by a webcam from cash register cameras to babies sleeping in a cot. It’s pitched mainly as a security research tool and a way for businesses to monitor connected device usage, but it has also exposed controls to utilities, heating and cooling units, and traffic systems.
Another article highlighting the fears around Singularity. There are so many great things that will come from Singularity such as Cancer is wiped out, improved healthcare across the board and cheaper, etc. And, there are also downsides as Gates, Musk, etc. have warned folks especially around AI.
So, what are our options and obligations around Singularity? In reality, you will not be able to stop this evolution from happening. However, each person has a right to decide how much singularity is right for their own private use. As a business or a company, there are many things to consider such as Total Cost of Ownership v. ROI, tax codes or how government will view “humanoids” v. non-humanoids as it relates to CapEx and Taxes, etc. And, the company or business needs to ensure that there are appropriate safegaurds in place in order to protect their data, etc… Also, government has an obligation to the people in general in safegaurding our rights, security, and safety.
Another, question that will continue to be raised and will increase overtime is government and business obligations to the financial welfare of the people. And, this one will become more and more complex and interesting overtime. If AI was to truly displace millions of workers; how will the countries help feed, clothe, and house millions displaced people beyond what they have done in their own country’s past? Will the countries government place a special tax structure on companies and businesses to help fund the displaced workers and their families? Or, will it be a joint partnership with business and government? It does make one wonder.
Many experts believe the single greatest threat to our existence is the so-called “singularity” when computers are as smart as we are.
There is enough wealth for all of us. What if we decided that every human being has a right to income security? How could a basic income change our lives? Could this relieve our society from the stress and anger that comes with the rising inequality?
Featuring: Guy Standing (economist, UK), Phillippe Van Parijs (philosopher, co-founder European Basic Income Network, BE) Enno Schmidt (Co-initiator of the Swiss Citizen’s Initiative on Basic Income, CH) Daniel Hani (Co-initiator of the Swiss Citizen’s Initiative on Basic Income, CH) Roland Duchatelet (entrepreneur, BE) Francine Mestrum (researcher on social development, BE) Dirk De Wachter (psychotherapist, BE) Sarah Van Lieferinge (Pirate Party, BE) Claudia & Dirk Haarman (Researchers Basic Income Grant project Namibia, NA) Bischop Kameeta (current Minister of poverty aleviation, NA) Ismael Daoud, Pierre & Axelle Catelin (calculated a possible basic income, BE) …
I see this competition now between the US vs Russia/China in robotics as a good thing. For one it will make the silly campaigns against robots go away, as this will now become a matter of national security to advance robotics. And, secondly, it will force the government to put up a huge amount of money into robotics research even if they didnt really want to; the old guys think robots are silly. What that means for us in the general public is that we will get robot caregivers much sooner than we thought thanks to all this defense spending on robotics.
U.S. officials have ordered an investigation into whether China might be gaining an unfair competitive advantage in the robotics race.
I usually never post articles like this one; however, it does raise a question for me. Could both defense and homeland security needs in addressing risks, and other emergencies really propel us sooner than later into singularity in order to ensure citizens their own protection. As other country militaries race to improve their own military AI & robotic capabilities. https://lnkd.in/ebMQ3Ab
If you thought Enhanced Human Operations (EHO) were an extravagant fantasy of Hollywood films and video games, then think again. Russia and China are involved in EHO, the act of modifying the brain and body in order to create “super soldiers” who will have the upper hand in battles.
Understandably, the United States is concerned about the prospect of having to join Russia and China by going down the Enhanced Human Operations route.
Nice venture for GeckoSystems; this is their 2nd venture with another Japanese robotics company in less than 12 months.
Invitation to Japan next month from company’s CEO
CONYERS, GA / ACCESSWIRE / January 15, 2016 / GeckoSystems Intl. Corp. (OTC: GOSY) announced that its CEO, Martin Spencer, has been invited by the CEO of a prominent Japanese robotics company to meet for the purpose of signing a joint venture agreement. For over eighteen years GeckoSystems has dedicated itself to development of “AI Mobile Robot Solutions for Safety, Security and Service™.”
“I am pleased to report that due to the continued hard work of one of our Japanese representatives, Mr. Fujii Katsuji, we have again achieved demonstrable progress securing viable joint ventures in Japan. This latest, one of several joint ventures being entertained, is particularly significant due to the breadth and depth of the robotics expertise of this company and their insistence we meet them next month in Japan to sign the JV agreement,” commented Spencer.
Encryption protects everyone’s communications, including terrorists. The FBI director wants to undermine that. The ex-NSA director says that’s a terrible idea.
But on Tuesday, the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency…
Read the full article at CNN Money
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/13/technology/nsa-michael-hayden-encryption/
Insertables are here! They are a new class of devices that go literally under your skin! Heffernan, Vetere, and Chang from the University of Melbourne discuss what they are, what they could be used for, their risks and the challenges for the HCI community. Fascinating! @kaylajheffernan # insertables #hci # wearables
DNA is similar to a hard drive or storage device, in that contains the memory of each cell of every living, and has the instructions on how to make that cell. DNA is four molecules combined in any order to make a chain of one larger molecule. And if you can read that chain of four molecules, then you have a sequence of characters, like a digital code. Over the years the price of sequencing a human genome has dropped significantly, much to the delight of scientists. And since DNA is a sequence of four letters, and if we can manipulate DNA, we could insert a message and use DNA as the storage device.
At this point in time, we are at the height of the information age. And computers have had an enormous impact on all of our lives. Any information is able to be represented as a collection of bits. And with Moore’s law, which states that computing power doubles every 18 months, our ability to manipulate and store these bits has continued to grow and grow. Moore’s law has been driven by scientists being able to make transistors and integrated circuits continuously smaller and smaller, but there eventually comes a point we reach in which these transistors and integrated circuits cannot be made any smaller than they already are, since some are already at the size of a single atom. This inevitably leads us into the quantum world. Quantum mechanics has rules which are, in many ways, hard for us to truly comprehend, yet are nevertheless tested. Quantum computing looks to make use of these strange rules of quantum physics, and process information in a totally different way. Quantum computing looks to replace the classical bits which are either a 0 or a 1, with quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both a 0 and a 1 at the same time. This ability to be two different things at the same time is referred to as a superposition. 200 qubits hold more bits of information than there are particles in the universe. A useful quantum computer will require thousands or even millions of physical qubits. Anything such as an atom can serve as a quantum bit for making a quantum computer, then you can use a superconducting circuit to build two artificial atoms. So at this point in time we have a few working quantum transistors, but scientists are working on developing the quantum integrated circuit. Quantum error correction is the biggest problem encountered in development of the quantum computer. Quantum computer science is a field that right now is in its very early stages, since scientists have yet been able to develop any quantum hardware.
A quantum computer would be perfect for tackling quantum problems like simulating the properties of a new molecule or material or help us to create a catalyst that will remove CO2 from the atmosphere, or make pattern recognition in computers much more efficient, and also in code breaking, and privacy and security of personal information since quantum information can never be copied.
A great deal of the energy we create has to go into maintaining computations and data storage but we can reduce our energy expenditure significantly by looking to nature. Nature is much more effective at information processing. For example, in the process of photo synthesis, there is a nanowire, who’s quantum efficiency is almost 100%. DNA is also a great example of energy efficiency represented in nature, since DNA base pairing can be considered a computational process. Computers generate heat by performing computations because each computation is irreversible. Quantum mechanics can make those computations reversible, since a quantum computer can perform two functions at the same time.
