Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Elon Musk?

 

Elon Musk (1971–) is an American businessman and inventor.

Elon Musk is an engineer, entrepreneur, and inventor who was born in South Africa.

He is a dual citizen of South Africa, Canada, and the United States, and resides in California.

Musk is widely regarded as one of the most prominent inventors and engineers of the twenty-first century, as well as an important influencer and contributor to the development of artificial intelligence.

Despite his controversial personality, Musk is widely regarded as one of the most prominent inventors and engineers of the twenty-first century and an important influencer and contributor to the development of artificial intelligence.

Musk's business instincts and remarkable technological talent were evident from an early age.

By the age of 10, he had self-taught himself how program computers, and by the age of twelve, he had produced a video game and sold the source code to a computer magazine.

Musk has included allusions to some of his favorite novels in SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launch and Tesla's software since he was a youngster.

Musk's official schooling was centered on economics and physics rather than engineering, interests that are mirrored in his subsequent work, such as his efforts in renewable energy and space exploration.

He began his education at Queen's University in Canada, but later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's degrees in Economics and Physics.

Musk barely stayed at Stanford University for two days to seek a PhD in energy physics before departing to start his first firm, Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk.

Musk has started or cofounded many firms, including three different billion-dollar enterprises: SpaceX, Tesla, and PayPal, all driven by his diverse interests and goals.

• Zip2 was a web software business that was eventually purchased by Compaq.

• X.com: an online bank that merged with PayPal to become the online payments corporation PayPal.

• Tesla, Inc.: an electric car and solar panel maker 

• SpaceX: a commercial aircraft manufacturer and space transportation services provider (via its subsidiarity SolarCity) 

• Neuralink: a neurotechnology startup focusing on brain-computer connections 

• The Boring Business: an infrastructure and tunnel construction corporation

 • OpenAI: a nonprofit AI research company focused on the promotion and development of friendly AI Musk is a supporter of environmentally friendly energy and consumption.

Concerns over the planet's future habitability prompted him to investigate the potential of establishing a self-sustaining human colony on Mars.

Other projects include the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system, and the Musk electric jet, a jet-powered supersonic electric aircraft.

Musk sat on President Donald Trump's Strategy and Policy Forum and Manufacturing Jobs Initiative for a short time before stepping out when the US withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Musk launched the Musk Foundation in 2002, which funds and supports research and activism in the domains of renewable energy, human space exploration, pediatric research, and science and engineering education.

Musk's effect on AI is significant, despite his best-known work with Tesla and SpaceX, as well as his contentious social media pronouncements.

In 2015, Musk cofounded the charity OpenAI with the objective of creating and supporting "friendly AI," or AI that is created, deployed, and utilized in a manner that benefits mankind as a whole.

OpenAI's objective is to make AI open and accessible to the general public, reducing the risks of AI being controlled by a few privileged people.

OpenAI is especially concerned about the possibility of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which is broadly defined as AI capable of human-level (or greater) performance on any intellectual task, and ensuring that any such AGI is developed responsibly, transparently, and distributed evenly and openly.

OpenAI has had its own successes in taking AI to new levels while staying true to its goals of keeping AI friendly and open.

In June of 2018, a team of OpenAI-built robots defeated a human team in the video game Dota 2, a feat that could only be accomplished through robot teamwork and collaboration.

Bill Gates, a cofounder of Microsoft, praised the achievement on Twitter, calling it "a huge milestone in advancing artificial intelligence" (@BillGates, June 26, 2018).

Musk resigned away from the OpenAI board in February 2018 to prevent any conflicts of interest while Tesla advanced its AI work for autonomous driving.

Musk became the CEO of Tesla in 2008 after cofounding the company in 2003 as an investor.

Musk was the chairman of Tesla's board of directors until 2018, when he stepped down as part of a deal with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over Musk's false claims about taking the company private.

Tesla produces electric automobiles with self-driving capabilities.

Tesla Grohmann Automation and Solar City, two of its subsidiaries, offer relevant automotive technology and manufacturing services and solar energy services, respectively.

Tesla, according to Musk, will reach Level 5 autonomous driving capabilities in 2019, as defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) five levels of autonomous driving.

Tes la's aggressive development with autonomous driving has influenced conventional car makers' attitudes toward electric cars and autonomous driving, and prompted a congressional assessment of how and when the technology should be regulated.

Musk is widely credited as a key influencer in moving the automotive industry toward autonomous driving, highlighting the benefits of autonomous vehicles (including reduced fatalities in vehicle crashes, increased worker productivity, increased transportation efficiency, and job creation) and demonstrating that the technology is achievable in the near term.

Tesla's autonomous driving code has been created and enhanced under the guidance of Musk and Tesla's Director of AI, Andrej Karpathy (Autopilot).

The computer vision analysis used by Tesla, which includes an array of cameras on each car and real-time image processing, enables the system to make real-time observations and predictions.

The cameras, as well as other exterior and internal sensors, capture a large quantity of data, which is evaluated and utilized to improve Autopilot programming.

Tesla is the only autonomous car maker that is opposed to the LIDAR laser sensor (an acronym for light detection and ranging).

Tesla uses cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors instead.

Though academics and manufacturers disagree on whether LIDAR is required for fully autonomous driving, the high cost of LIDAR has limited Tesla's rivals' ability to produce and sell vehicles at a pricing range that allows a large number of cars on the road to gather data.

Tesla is creating its own AI hardware in addition to its AI programming.

Musk stated in late 2017 that Tesla is building its own silicon for artificial-intelligence calculations, allowing the company to construct its own AI processors rather than depending on third-party sources like Nvidia.

Tesla's AI progress in autonomous driving has been marred by setbacks.

Tesla has consistently missed self-imposed deadlines, and serious accidents have been blamed on flaws in the vehicle's Autopilot mode, including a non-injury accident in 2018, in which the vehicle failed to detect a parked firetruck on a California freeway, and a fatal accident in 2018, in which the vehicle failed to detect a pedestrian outside a crosswalk.

Neuralink was established by Musk in 2016.

With the stated objective of helping humans to keep up with AI breakthroughs, Neuralink is focused on creating devices that can be implanted into the human brain to better facilitate communication between the brain and software.

Musk has characterized the gadgets as a more efficient interface with computer equipment, while people now operate things with their fingertips and voice commands, directives would instead come straight from the brain.

Though Musk has made major advances to AI, his pronouncements regarding the risks linked with AI have been apocalyptic.

Musk has called AI "humanity's greatest existential danger" and "the greatest peril we face as a civilisation" (McFarland 2014).

(Morris 2017).

He cautions against the perils of power concentration, a lack of independent control, and a competitive rush to acceptance without appropriate analysis of the repercussions.

While Musk has used colorful terminology such as "summoning the devil" (McFarland 2014) and depictions of cyborg overlords, he has also warned of more immediate and realistic concerns such as job losses and AI-driven misinformation campaigns.

Though Musk's statements might come out as alarmist, many important and well-respected figures, including as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Swedish-American scientist Max Tegmark, and the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, share his concern.

Furthermore, Musk does not call for the cessation of AI research.

Instead, Musk supports for responsible AI development and regulation, including the formation of a Congressional committee to spend years studying AI with the goal of better understanding the technology and its hazards before establishing suitable legal limits.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

Bostrom, Nick; Superintelligence.

References & Further Reading:

Gates, Bill. (@BillGates). 2018. Twitter, June 26, 2018. https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1011752221376036864.

Marr, Bernard. 2018. “The Amazing Ways Tesla Is Using Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.” Forbes, January 8, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/01/08/the-amazing-ways-tesla-is-using-artificial-intelligence-and-big-data/.

McFarland, Matt. 2014. “Elon Musk: With Artificial Intelligence, We Are Summoning the Demon.” Washington Post, October 24, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/10/24/elon-musk-with-artificial-intelligence-we-are-summoning-the-demon/.

Morris, David Z. 2017. “Elon Musk Says Artificial Intelligence Is the ‘Greatest Risk We Face as a Civilization.’” Fortune, July 15, 2017. https://fortune.com/2017/07/15/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-2/.

Piper, Kelsey. 2018. “Why Elon Musk Fears Artificial Intelligence.” Vox Media, Novem￾ber 2, 2018. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/11/2/18053418/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-google-deepmind-openai.

Strauss, Neil. 2017. “Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow.” Rolling Stone, November 15, 2017. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-the-architect-of-tomorrow-120850/.

Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Hans Moravec?

 

Hans Moravec(1948–) is well-known in the computer science community as the long-time head of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and an unashamed techno logical optimist.

For the last twenty-five years, he has studied and produced artificially intelligent robots at the CMU lab, where he is still an adjunct faculty member.

Moravec spent almost 10 years as a research assistant at Stanford University's groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence Lab before coming to Carnegie Mellon.

Moravec is also noted for his paradox, which states that, contrary to popular belief, it is simple to program high-level thinking skills into robots—as with chess or Jeopardy!—but difficult to transmit sensorimo tor agility.

Human sensory and motor abilities have developed over millions of years and seem to be easy, despite their complexity.

Higher-order cognitive abilities, on the other hand, are the result of more recent cultural development.

Geometry, stock market research, and petroleum engineering are examples of disciplines that are difficult for people to learn but easier for robots to learn.

"The basic lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard issues are simple, and the easy ones are hard," writes Steven Pinker of Moravec's scientific career.

Moravec built his first toy robot out of scrap metal when he was eleven years old, and his light-following electronic turtle and a robot operated by punched paper tape earned him two high school science fair honors.

He proposed a Ship of Theseus-like analogy for the viability of artificial brains while still in high school.

Consider replacing a person's human neurons one by one with precisely manufactured equivalents, he said.

When do you think human awareness will vanish? Is anybody going to notice? Is it possible to establish that the person is no longer human? Later in his career, Moravec would suggest that human knowledge and training might be broken down in the same manner, into subtasks that machine intelligences could take over.

Moravec's master's thesis focused on the development of a computer language for artificial intelligence, while his PhD research focused on the development of a robot that could navigate obstacle courses utilizing spatial representation methods.

The area of interest (ROI) in a scene was identified by these robot vision systems.

Moravec's early computer vision robots were extremely sluggish by today's standards, taking around five hours to go from one half of the facility to the other.

To measure distance and develop an internal picture of physical impediments in the room, a remote computer carefully analysed continuous video-camera images recorded by the robot from various angles.

Moravec finally developed 3D occupancy grid technology, which allowed a robot to create an awareness of a cluttered area in a matter of seconds.

Moravec's lab took on a new challenge by converting a Pontiac TransSport minivan into one of the world's first road-ready autonomous cars.

The self-driving minivan reached speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.

DANTE II, a robot capable of going inside the crater of an active volcano on Mount Spurr in Alaska, was also constructed by the CMU Robotics Institute.

While DANTE II's immediate aim was to sample harmful fumarole gases, a job too perilous for humans, it was also planned to demonstrate technologies for robotic expeditions to distant worlds.

The volcanic explorer robot used artificial intelligence to navigate the perilous, boulder-strewn terrain on its own.

Because such rovers produced so much visual and other sensory data that had to be analyzed and managed, Moravec believes that experience with mobile robots spurred the development of powerful artificial intelligence and computer vision methods.

For the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Moravec's team built fractal branching ultra-dexterous robots ("Bush robots") in the 1990s.

These robots, which were proposed but never produced due to the lack of necessary manufacturing technologies, comprised of a branching hierarchy of dynamic articulated limbs, starting with a main trunk and splitting down into smaller branches.

As a result, the Bush robot would have "hands" at all scales, from macroscopic to tiny.

The tiniest fingers would be nanoscale in size, allowing them to grip very tiny objects.

Moravec said the robot would need autonomy and depend on artificial intelligence agents scattered throughout the robot's limbs and branches because to the intricacy of manipulating millions of fingers in real time.

He believed that the robots may be made entirely of carbon nanotube material, employing the quick prototyping technology known as 3D printers.

Moravec believes that artificial intelligence will have a significant influence on human civilization.

To stress the role of AI in change, he coined the concept of the "landscape of human capability," which physicist Max Tegmark has later converted into a graphic depiction.

Moravec's picture depicts a three-dimensional environment in which greater altitudes reflect more challenging jobs in terms of human difficulty.

The point where the swelling waters meet the shore reflects the line where robots and humans both struggle with the same duties.

Art, science, and literature are now beyond of grasp for an AI, but the sea has already defeated mathematics, chess, and the game Go.

Language translation, autonomous driving, and financial investment are all on the horizon.

More controversially, in two popular books, Mind Children (1988) and Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (1989), Moravec engaged in future conjecture based on what he understood of developments in artificial intelligence research (1999).

In 2040, he said, human intellect will be surpassed by machine intelligence, and the human species would go extinct.

Moravec evaluated the functional equivalence between 50,000 million instructions per second (50,000 MIPS) of computer power and a gram of brain tissue and came up with this figure.

He calculated that home computers in the early 2000s equaled only an insect's nervous system, but that if processing power doubled every eighteen months, 350 million years of human intellect development could be reduced to just 35 years of artificial intelligence advancement.

He estimated that a hundred million MIPS would be required to create human-like universal robots.

Moravec refers to these sophisticated robots as our "mind children" in the year 2040.

Humans, he claims, will devise techniques to delay biological civilization's final demise.

Moravec, for example, was the first to anticipate what is now known as universal basic income, which is delivered by benign artificial superintelligences.

In a completely automated society, a basic income system would provide monthly cash payments to all individuals without any type of employment requirement.

Moravec is more concerned about the idea of a renegade automated corporation breaking its programming and refusing to pay taxes into the human cradle-to-grave social security system than he is about technological unemployment.

Nonetheless, he predicts that these "wild" intelligences will eventually control the universe.

Moravec has said that his books Mind Children and Robot may have had a direct impact on the last third of Stanley Kubrick's original screenplay for A.I. Artificial Intelligence (later filmed by Steven Spielberg).

Moravecs, on the other hand, are self-replicating devices in the science fiction books Ilium and Olympos.

Moravec defended the same physical fundamentalism he expressed in his high school thoughts throughout his life.

He contends in his most transhumanist publications that the only way for humans to stay up with machine intelligences is to merge with them by replacing sluggish human cerebral tissue with artificial neural networks controlled by super-fast algorithms.

In his publications, Moravec has blended the ideas of artificial intelligence with virtual reality simulation.

He's come up with four scenarios for the development of consciousness.

(1) human brains in the physical world, 

(2) a programmed AI implanted in a physical robot, 

(3) a human brain immersed in a virtual reality simulation, and 

(4) an AI functioning inside the boundaries of virtual reality All of them are equally credible depictions of reality, and they are as "real" as we believe them to be.

Moravec is the creator and chief scientist of the Pittsburgh-based Seegrid Corporation, which makes autonomous Robotic Industrial Trucks that can navigate warehouses and factories without the usage of automated guided vehicle systems.

A human trainer physically pushes Seegrid's vehicles through a new facility once.

The robot conducts the rest of the job, determining the most efficient and safe pathways for future journeys, while the trainer stops at the appropriate spots for the truck to be loaded and unloaded.

Seegrid VGVs have transported over two million production miles and eight billion pounds of merchandise for DHL, Whirlpool, and Amazon.

Moravec was born in the Austrian town of Kautzen.

During World War II, his father was a Czech engineer who sold electrical products.

When the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1944, the family moved to Austria.

In 1953, his family relocated to Canada, where he now resides.

Moravec earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, a master's degree in computer science from the University of Western Ontario, and a doctorate from Stanford University, where he worked with John McCarthy and Tom Binford on his thesis.

The Office of Naval Study, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and NASA have all supported his research.

Elon Musk (1971–) is an American businessman and inventor.

Elon Musk is an engineer, entrepreneur, and inventor who was born in South Africa.

He is a dual citizen of South Africa, Canada, and the United States, and resides in California.

Musk is widely regarded as one of the most prominent inventors and engineers of the twenty-first century, as well as an important influencer and contributor to the development of artificial intelligence.

Despite his controversial personality, Musk is widely regarded as one of the most prominent inventors and engineers of the twenty-first century and an important influencer and contributor to the development of artificial intelligence.

Musk's business instincts and remarkable technological talent were evident from an early age.

By the age of 10, he had self-taught himself how program computers, and by the age of twelve, he had produced a video game and sold the source code to a computer maga zine.

Musk has included allusions to some of his favorite novels in SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launch and Tesla's software since he was a youngster.

Musk's official schooling was centered on economics and physics rather than engineering, interests that are mirrored in his subsequent work, such as his efforts in renewable energy and space exploration.

He began his education at Queen's University in Canada, but later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's degrees in Economics and Physics.

Musk barely stayed at Stanford University for two days to seek a PhD in energy physics before departing to start his first firm, Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk.

Musk has started or cofounded many firms, including three different billion-dollar enterprises: SpaceX, Tesla, and PayPal, all driven by his diverse interests and goals.

• Zip2 was a web software business that was eventually purchased by Compaq.

• X.com: an online bank that merged with PayPal to become the online payments corporation PayPal.

• Tesla, Inc.: an electric car and solar panel maker • SpaceX: a commercial aircraft manufacturer and space transportation services provider (via its subsidiarity SolarCity) • Neuralink: a neurotechnology startup focusing on brain-computer connections • The Boring Business: an infrastructure and tunnel construction corporation • OpenAI: a nonprofit AI research company focused on the promotion and development of friendly AI Musk is a supporter of environmentally friendly energy and consumption.

Concerns over the planet's future habitability prompted him to investigate the potential of establishing a self-sustaining human colony on Mars.

Other projects include the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system, and the Musk electric jet, a jet-powered supersonic electric aircraft.

Musk sat on President Donald Trump's Strategy and Policy Forum and Manufacturing Jobs Initiative for a short time before stepping out when the US withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Musk launched the Musk Foundation in 2002, which funds and supports research and activism in the domains of renewable energy, human space exploration, pediatric research, and science and engineering education.

Musk's effect on AI is significant, despite his best-known work with Tesla and SpaceX, as well as his contentious social media pronouncements.

In 2015, Musk cofounded the charity OpenAI with the objective of creating and supporting "friendly AI," or AI that is created, deployed, and utilized in a manner that benefits mankind as a whole.

OpenAI's objective is to make AI open and accessible to the general public, reducing the risks of AI being controlled by a few privileged people.

OpenAI is especially concerned about the possibility of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which is broadly defined as AI capable of human-level (or greater) performance on any intellectual task, and ensuring that any such AGI is developed responsibly, transparently, and distributed evenly and openly.

OpenAI has had its own successes in taking AI to new levels while staying true to its goals of keeping AI friendly and open.

In June of 2018, a team of OpenAI-built robots defeated a human team in the video game Dota 2, a feat that could only be accomplished through robot teamwork and collaboration.

Bill Gates, a cofounder of Microsoft, praised the achievement on Twitter, calling it "a huge milestone in advancing artificial intelligence" (@BillGates, June 26, 2018).

Musk resigned away from the OpenAI board in February 2018 to prevent any conflicts of interest while Tesla advanced its AI work for autonomous driving.

Musk became the CEO of Tesla in 2008 after cofounding the company in 2003 as an investor.

Musk was the chairman of Tesla's board of directors until 2018, when he stepped down as part of a deal with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over Musk's false claims about taking the company private.

Tesla produces electric automobiles with self-driving capabilities.

Tesla Grohmann Automation and Solar City, two of its subsidiaries, offer relevant automotive technology and manufacturing services and solar energy services, respectively.

Tesla, according to Musk, will reach Level 5 autonomous driving capabilities in 2019, as defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) five levels of autonomous driving.

Tes la's aggressive development with autonomous driving has influenced conventional car makers' attitudes toward electric cars and autonomous driving, and prompted a congressional assessment of how and when the technology should be regulated.

Musk is widely credited as a key influencer in moving the automotive industry toward autonomous driving, highlighting the benefits of autonomous vehicles (including reduced fatalities in vehicle crashes, increased worker productivity, increased transportation efficiency, and job creation) and demonstrating that the technology is achievable in the near term.

Tesla's autonomous driving code has been created and enhanced under the guidance of Musk and Tesla's Director of AI, Andrej Karpathy (Autopilot).

The computer vision analysis used by Tesla, which includes an array of cameras on each car and real-time image processing, enables the system to make real-time observations and predictions.

The cameras, as well as other exterior and internal sensors, capture a large quantity of data, which is evaluated and utilized to improve Autopilot programming.

Tesla is the only autonomous car maker that is opposed to the LIDAR laser sensor (an acronym for light detection and ranging).

Tesla uses cameras, radar, and ultrasonic sensors instead.

Though academics and manufacturers disagree on whether LIDAR is required for fully autonomous driving, the high cost of LIDAR has limited Tesla's rivals' ability to produce and sell vehicles at a pricing range that allows a large number of cars on the road to gather data.

Tesla is creating its own AI hardware in addition to its AI programming.

Musk stated in late 2017 that Tesla is building its own silicon for artificial-intelligence calculations, allowing the company to construct its own AI processors rather than depending on third-party sources like Nvidia.

Tesla's AI progress in autonomous driving has been marred by setbacks.

Tesla has consistently missed self-imposed deadlines, and serious accidents have been blamed on flaws in the vehicle's Autopilot mode, including a non-injury accident in 2018, in which the vehicle failed to detect a parked firetruck on a California freeway, and a fatal accident in 2018, in which the vehicle failed to detect a pedestrian outside a crosswalk.

Neuralink was established by Musk in 2016.

With the stated objective of helping humans to keep up with AI breakthroughs, Neuralink is focused on creating devices that can be implanted into the human brain to better facilitate communication between the brain and software.

Musk has characterized the gadgets as a more efficient interface with computer equipment, while people now operate things with their fingertips and voice commands, directives would instead come straight from the brain.

Though Musk has made major advances to AI, his pronouncements regarding the risks linked with AI have been apocalyptic.

Musk has called AI "humanity's greatest existential danger" and "the greatest peril we face as a civilisation" (McFarland 2014).

(Morris 2017).

He cautions against the perils of power concentration, a lack of independent control, and a competitive rush to acceptance without appropriate analysis of the repercussions.

While Musk has used colorful terminology such as "summoning the devil" (McFarland 2014) and depictions of cyborg overlords, he has also warned of more immediate and realistic concerns such as job losses and AI-driven misinformation campaigns.

Though Musk's statements might come out as alarmist, many important and well-respected figures, including as Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, Swedish-American scientist Max Tegmark, and the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, share his concern.

Furthermore, Musk does not call for the cessation of AI research.

Instead, Musk supports for responsible AI development and regulation, including the formation of a Congressional committee to spend years studying AI with the goal of better understanding the technology and its hazards before establishing suitable legal limits.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

Find Jai on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

Superintelligence; Technological Singularity; Workplace Automation.

References & Further Reading:

Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Moravec, Hans. 1999. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Moravec, Hans. 2003. “Robots, After All.” Communications of the ACM 46, no. 10 (October): 90–97.

Pinker, Steven. 2007. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper.

Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Ben Goertzel (1966–)?

Ben Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a blockchain AI company, as well as the chairman of Novamente LLC, a research professor at Xiamen University's Fujian Key Lab for Brain-Like Intelligent Systems, the chief scientist of Mozi Health and Hanson Robotics in Shenzhen, China, and the chair of the OpenCog Foundation, Humanity+, and Artificial General Intelligence Society conference series. 

Goertzel has long wanted to create a good artificial general intelligence and use it in bioinformatics, finance, gaming, and robotics.

He claims that, despite AI's current popularity, it is currently superior than specialists in a number of domains.

Goertzel divides AI advancement into three stages, each of which represents a step toward a global brain (Goertzel 2002, 2): • the intelligent Internet • the full-fledged Singularity Goertzel presented a lecture titled "Decentralized AI: The Power and the Necessity" at TEDxBerkeley in 2019.

He examines artificial intelligence in its present form as well as its future in this discussion.

"The relevance of decentralized control in leading AI to the next stages, the strength of decentralized AI," he emphasizes (Goertzel 2019a).

In the evolution of artificial intelligence, Goertzel distinguishes three types: artificial narrow intelligence, artificial broad intelligence, and artificial superintelligence.

Artificial narrow intelligence refers to machines that can "address extremely specific issues... better than humans" (Goertzel 2019a).

In certain restricted activities, such as chess and Go, this kind of AI has outperformed a human.

Ray Kurzweil, an American futurologist and inventor, coined the phrase "narrow AI." Artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to intelligent computers that can "generate knowledge" in a variety of fields and have "humanlike autonomy." By 2029, according to Goertzel, this kind of AI will have reached the same level of intellect as humans.

Artificial superintelligence (ASI) is based on both narrow and broad AI, but it can also reprogram itself.

By 2045, he claims, this kind of AI will be smarter than the finest human brains in terms of "scientific innovation, general knowledge, and social abilities" (Goertzel 2019a).

According to Goertzel, Facebook, Google, and a number of colleges and companies are all actively working on AGI.

According to Goertzel, the shift from AI to AGI will occur within the next five to thirty years.

Goertzel is also interested in artificial intelligence-assisted life extension.

He thinks that artificial intelligence's exponential advancement will lead to technologies that will increase human life span and health eternally.

He predicts that by 2045, a singularity featuring a drastic increase in "human health span" would have occurred (Goertzel 2012).

Vernor Vinge popularized the term "singularity" in his 1993 article "The Coming Technological Singularity." Ray Kurzweil coined the phrase in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near.

The Technological Singularity, according to both writers, is the merging of machine and human intellect as a result of a fast development in new technologies, particularly robots and AI.

The thought of an impending singularity excites Goertzel.

SingularityNET is his major current initiative, which entails the construction of a worldwide network of artificial intelligence researchers interested in developing, sharing, and monetizing AI technology, software, and services.

By developing a decentralized protocol that enables a full stack AI solution, Goertzel has made a significant contribution to this endeavor.

SingularityNET, as a decentralized marketplace, provides a variety of AI technologies, including text generation, AI Opinion, iAnswer, Emotion Recognition, Market Trends, OpenCog Pattern Miner, and its own cryptocurrency, AGI token.

SingularityNET is presently cooperating with Domino's Pizza in Malaysia and Singapore (Khan 2019).

Domino's is interested in leveraging SingularityNET technologies to design a marketing plan, with the goal of providing the finest products and services to its consumers via the use of unique algorithms.

Domino's thinks that by incorporating the AGI ecosystem into their operations, they will be able to provide value and service in the food delivery market.

Goertzel has reacted to scientist Stephen Hawking's challenge, which claimed that AI might lead to the extinction of human civilization.

Given the current situation, artificial super intelligence's mental state will be based on past AI generations, thus "selling, spying, murdering, and gambling are the key aims and values in the mind of the first super intelligence," according to Goertzel (Goertzel 2019b).

He acknowledges that if humans desire compassionate AI, they must first improve their own treatment of one another.

With four years, Goertzel worked for Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong.

He collaborated with Sophia, Einstein, and Han, three well-known robots.

"Great platforms for experimenting with AI algorithms, including cognitive architectures like OpenCog that aim at human-level AI," he added of the robots (Goertzel 2018).

Goertzel argues that essential human values may be retained for future generations in Sophia-like robot creatures after the Technological Singularity.

Decentralized networks like SingularityNET and OpenCog, according to Goertzel, provide "AIs with human-like values," reducing AI hazards to humanity (Goertzel 2018).

Because human values are complicated in nature, Goertzel feels that encoding them as a rule list is wasteful.

Brain-computer interfacing (BCI) and emotional interfacing are two ways Goertzel offers.

Humans will become "cyborgs," with their brains physically linked to computational-intelligence modules, and the machine components of the cyborgs will be able to read the moral-value-evaluation structures of the human mind directly from the biological components of the cyborgs (Goertzel 2018).

Goertzel uses Elon Musk's Neuralink as an example.

Because it entails invasive trials with human brains and a lot of unknowns, Goertzel doubts that this strategy will succeed.

"Emotional and spiritual connections between people and AIs, rather than Ethernet cables or Wifi signals, are used to link human and AI brains," according to the second method (Goertzel 2018).

To practice human values, he proposes that AIs participate in emotional and social connection with humans via face expression detection and mirroring, eye contact, and voice-based emotion recognition.

To that end, Goertzel collaborated with SingularityNET, Hanson AI, and Lia Inc on the "Loving AI" research project, which aims to assist artificial intelligences speak and form intimate connections with humans.

A funny video of actor Will Smith on a date with Sophia the Robot is presently available on the Loving AI website.

Sophia can already make sixty facial expressions and understand human language and emotions, according to the video of the date.

When linked to a network like SingularityNET, humanoid robots like Sophia obtain "ethical insights and breakthroughs...

via language," according to Goertzel (Goertzel 2018).

Then, through a shared internet "mindcloud," robots and AIs may share what they've learnt.

Goertzel is also the chair of the Artificial General Intelligence Society's Conference Series on Artificial General Intelligence, which has been conducted yearly since 2008.

The Journal of Artificial General Intelligence is a peer-reviewed open-access academic periodical published by the organization. Goertzel is the editor of the conference proceedings series.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

General and Narrow AI; Superintelligence; Technological Singularity.

Further Reading:

Goertzel, Ben. 2002. Creating Internet Intelligence: Wild Computing, Distributed Digital Consciousness, and the Emerging Global Brain. New York: Springer.

Goertzel, Ben. 2012. “Radically Expanding the Human Health Span.” TEDxHKUST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMUbRPvcB54.

Goertzel, Ben. 2017. “Sophia and SingularityNET: Q&A.” H+ Magazine, November 5, 2017. https://hplusmagazine.com/2017/11/05/sophia-singularitynet-qa/.

Goertzel, Ben. 2018. “Emotionally Savvy Robots: Key to a Human-Friendly Singularity.” https://www.hansonrobotics.com/emotionally-savvy-robots-key-to-a-human-friendly-singularity/.

Goertzel, Ben. 2019a. “Decentralized AI: The Power and the Necessity.” TEDxBerkeley, March 9, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4manxX5U-0.

Goertzel, Ben. 2019b. “Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us?” July 31, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDClKEORtko.

Goertzel, Ben, and Stephan Vladimir Bugaj. 2006. The Path to Posthumanity: 21st Century Technology and Its Radical Implications for Mind, Society, and Reality. Bethesda, MD: Academica Press.

Khan, Arif. 2019. “SingularityNET and Domino’s Pizza Announce a Strategic Partnership.” https://blog.singularitynet.io/singularitynet-and-dominos-pizza-announce-a-strategic-partnership-cbbe21f80fc7.

Vinge, Vernor. 1993. “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.” In Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, 11–22. NASA: Lewis Research Center

Artificial Intelligence - Who Is Nick Bostrom?

 

Nick Bostrom(1973–) is an Oxford University philosopher with a physics and computational neuroscience multidisciplinary academic background.

He is a cofounder of the World Transhumanist Association and a founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute.

Anthropic Bias (2002), Human Enhancement (2009), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), and Global Catastrophic Risks (2014) are among the works he has authored or edited (2014).

Bostrom was born in the Swedish city of Helsingborg in 1973.

Despite his dislike of formal education, he enjoyed studying.

Science, literature, art, and anthropology were among his favorite interests.

Bostrom earned bachelor's degrees in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and artificial intelligence from the University of Gothenburg, as well as master's degrees in philosophy and physics from Stockholm University and computational neuroscience from King's College London.

The London School of Economics gave him a PhD in philosophy.

Bostrom is a regular consultant or contributor to the European Commission, the United States President's Council on Bioethics, the CIA, and Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

Bostrom is well-known for his contributions to a variety of subjects, and he has proposed or written extensively on a number of well-known philosophical arguments and conjectures, including the simulation hypothesis, existential risk, the future of machine intelligence, and transhumanism.

Bostrom's concerns in the future of technology, as well as his discoveries on the mathematics of the anthropic bias, are combined in the so-called "Simulation Argument." Three propositions make up the argument.

The first hypothesis is that almost all civilizations that attain human levels of knowledge eventually perish before achieving technological maturity.

The second hypothesis is that most civilizations develop "ancestor simulations" of sentient beings, but ultimately abandon them.

The "simulation hypothesis" proposes that mankind is now living in a simulation.

He claims that just one of the three assertions must be true.

If the first hypothesis is false, some proportion of civilizations at the current level of human society will ultimately acquire technological maturity.

If the second premise is incorrect, certain civilizations may be interested in continuing to perform ancestor simulations.

These civilizations' researchers may be performing massive numbers of these simulations.

There would be many times as many simulated humans living in simulated worlds as there would be genuine people living in real universes in that situation.

As a result, mankind is most likely to exist in one of the simulated worlds.

If the second statement is true, the third possibility is also true.

It's even feasible, according to Bostrom, for a civilization inside a simulation to conduct its own simulations.

In the form of an endless regress, simulations may be living within simulated universes, inside their own simulated worlds.

It's also feasible that all civilizations would vanish, maybe as a result of the discovery of a new technology, posing an existential threat beyond human control.

Bostrom's argument implies that humanity is not blind to the truth of the external world, an argument that can be traced back to Plato's conviction in the existence of universals (the "Forms") and the capacity of human senses to see only specific examples of universals.

His thesis also implies that computers' ability to imitate things will continue to improve in terms of power and sophistication.

Computer games and literature, according to Bostrom, are modern instances of natural human fascination with synthetic reality.

The Simulation Argument is sometimes mistaken with the restricted premise that mankind lives in a simulation, which is the third argument.

Humans, according to Bostrom, have a less than 50% probability of living in some kind of artificial matrix.

He also argues that if mankind lived in one, society would be unlikely to notice "glitches" that revealed the simulation's existence since they had total control over the simulation's operation.

Simulator creators, on the other hand, would inform people that they are living in a simulation.

Existential hazards are those that pose a serious threat to humanity's existence.

Humans, rather than natural dangers, pose the biggest existential threat, according to Bostrom (e.g., asteroids, earthquakes, and epidemic disease).

He argues that artificial hazards like synthetic biology, molecular nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence are considerably more threatening.

Bostrom divides dangers into three categories: local, global, and existential.

Local dangers might include the theft of a valuable item of art or an automobile accident.

A military dictator's downfall or the explosion of a supervolcano are both potential global threats.

The extent and intensity of existential hazards vary.

They are cross-generational and long-lasting.

Because of the amount of lives that might be spared, he believes that reducing the danger of existential hazards is the most essential thing that human beings can do; battling against existential risk is also one of humanity's most neglected undertakings.

He also distinguishes between several types of existential peril.

Human extinction, defined as the extinction of a species before it reaches technological maturity; permanent stagnation, defined as the plateauing of human technological achievement; flawed realization, defined as humanity's failure to use advanced technology for an ultimately worthwhile purpose; and subsequent ruination, defined as a society reaching technological maturity but then something goes wrong.

While mankind has not yet harnessed human ingenuity to create a technology that releases existentially destructive power, Bostrom believes it is possible that it may in the future.

Human civilization has yet to produce a technology with such horrific implications that mankind could collectively forget about it.

The objective would be to go on a technical path that is safe, includes global collaboration, and is long-term.

To argue for the prospect of machine superintelligence, Bostrom employs the metaphor of altered brain complexity in the development of humans from apes, which took just a few hundred thousand generations.

Artificial systems that use machine learning (that is, algorithms that learn) are no longer constrained to a single area.

He also points out that computers process information at a far faster pace than human neurons.

Humans will eventually rely on super intelligent robots in the same manner that chimps presently rely on humans for their ultimate survival, according to Bostrom, even in the wild.

By establishing a powerful optimizing process with a poorly stated purpose, super intelligent computers have the potential to cause devastation, or possibly an extinction-level catastrophe.

By subverting humanity to the programmed purpose, a superintelligence may even foresee a human response.

Bostrom recognizes that there are certain algorithmic techniques used by humans that computer scientists do not yet understand.

As they engage in machine learning, he believes it is critical for artificial intelligences to understand human values.

On this point, Bostrom is drawing inspiration from artificial intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky's concept of "coherent extrapolated volition"—also known as "friendly AI"—which is akin to what is currently accessible in human good will, civil society, and institutions.

A superintelligence should seek to provide pleasure and joy to all of humanity, and it may even make difficult choices that benefit the whole community rather than the individual.

In 2015, Bostrom, along with Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Max Tegmark, and many other top AI researchers, published "An Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence" on the Future of Life Institute website, calling for artificial intelligence research that maximizes the benefits to humanity while minimizing "potential pitfalls." Transhumanism is a philosophy or belief in the technological extension and augmentation of the human species' physical, sensory, and cognitive capacity.

In 1998, Bostrom and colleague philosopher David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association, now known as Humanity+, to address some of the societal hurdles to the adoption and use of new transhumanist technologies by people of all socioeconomic strata.

Bostrom has said that he is not interested in defending technology, but rather in using modern technologies to address real-world problems and improve people's lives.

Bostrom is particularly concerned in the ethical implications of human enhancement and the long-term implications of major technological changes in human nature.

He claims that transhumanist ideas may be found throughout history and throughout cultures, as shown by ancient quests such as the Gilgamesh Epic and historical hunts for the Fountain of Youth and the Elixir of Immortality.

The transhumanist idea, then, may be regarded fairly ancient, with modern representations in disciplines like artificial intelligence and gene editing.

Bostrom takes a stand against the emergence of strong transhumanist instruments as an activist.

He expects that politicians may act with foresight and command the sequencing of technical breakthroughs in order to decrease the danger of future applications and human extinction.

He believes that everyone should have the chance to become transhuman or posthuman (have capacities beyond human nature and intelligence).

For Bostrom, success would require a worldwide commitment to global security and continued technological progress, as well as widespread access to the benefits of technologies (cryonics, mind uploading, anti-aging drugs, life extension regimens), which hold the most promise for transhumanist change in our lifetime.

Bostrom, however cautious, rejects conventional humility, pointing out that humans have a long history of dealing with potentially catastrophic dangers.

In such things, he is a strong supporter of "individual choice," as well as "morphological freedom," or the ability to transform or reengineer one's body to fulfill specific wishes and requirements.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan

You may also want to read more about Artificial Intelligence here.

See also: 

Superintelligence; Technological Singularity.

Further Reading

Bostrom, Nick. 2003. “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Philosophical Quarterly 53, no. 211: 243–55.

Bostrom, Nick. 2005. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14, no. 1: 1–25.

Bostrom, Nick, ed. 2008. Global Catastrophic Risks. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Bostrom, Nick. 2014. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Savulescu, Julian, and Nick Bostrom, eds. 2009. Human Enhancement. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.