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I laughed it off the first time I read about the Neuralink project - this is a moonshot from Elon - but it's interesting. I'm still a skeptic - but some interesting things could result from the work. The Waitbuywhy.com guy convinced me a year or so back that it was at least an interesting thing for a guy with a lot of cash laying around to strive for. Worth a read: https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04...

Agreed.
Let me link you the Fermi Paradox: We're First, We're Rare, or We're Fucked.
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05...

Specifically Possibility 4: There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location. This is an unpleasant concept and would help explain the lack of any signals being received by the SETI satellites. It also means that we might be the super naive newbies who are being unbelievably stupid and risky by ever broadcasting outward signals; and Carl Sagan's takeaway: “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and compa, ring notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.”

A guinea pig is a mammal and on some biological level, I feel a connection to it—but a spider is an insect, with an insect brain, and I feel almost no connection to it. The alien-ness of a tarantula is what gives me the willies. To test this and remove other factors, if there are two guinea pigs, one normal one and one with the mind of a tarantula, I would feel much less comfortable holding the latter guinea pig, even if I knew neither would hurt me.

Now imagine that you made a spider much, much smarter—so much so that it far surpassed human intelligence? Would it then become familiar to us and feel human emotions like empathy and humor and love? No, it wouldn’t, because there’s no reason becoming smarter would make it more human—it would be incredibly smart but also still fundamentally a spider in its core inner workings. I find this unbelievably creepy. I would not want to spend time with a superintelligent spider. Would you??

The main issue is that all of this carbon has been slowly trapped in the earth over the last hundreds of millions of years, until we started releasing it at an alarming rate within the last few hundred years. That's obviously going to have a significant affect on the environment.

This is a fairly long read, but worth it. At least checkout "The Story of Energy" section.

Did you note the title of Musk's speech at IAC?
It was "Becoming a Multiplanetary Species".
Not "Exploring Mars", or "Looking at Mars through telescopes".

Tim Urban has written up the motivation to his mission in great detail here https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08...

To the point of parody. ;)

That said, Neuralink is not new. It just hasn't made the press as much. I definitely recommend the earlier-linked Waitbutwhy article, which is based on interviews with people involved in Neuralink. It's a very long article, but very detailed and thought provoking.

Neuralink is probably Musk's most ambitious project - the least likely to succeed, but with the most profound impacts on the future of humanity if it does.

Actually, Musk's interest in neuralink is in part to help make sure that we do end up with safe general AI and that we don't have substantial problems with unfriendly AGI. See https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html which gives a detailed breakdown of the goals and likely obstacles.

The myth of humans being obsolete is not what what Elon, Bill, Steven and others are (most) afraid of. Read the Wait But Why post on AI to see another example of how things could go wrong (also examples of the opposite). http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/... The example of how it could go wrong is in part 2, the link is to part 1, but just read it all - it's fascinating stuff :)

Pretty much anyone who goes on about the Singularity is a loon. Not because it's necessarily a fundamentally loony concept, but because it attracts loons like moths to a flame.

Great way to start a post. Really shows a lack of bias.

For now it looks like we're going to get mindless but very complex systems that can do most things better than humans

You make the mistake of believing that human brains are leaps and bounds more advanced than (say) chimp brains. They're not. The difference is very very significant yet very very slight (in an evolutionary sense). Reevaluate when you expect us to create AI that reaches chimp levels. Then add ten years. Maybe twenty.
In any case be sure to evaluate your arguments against the 'loony' Singularity concept for a primate life form of choice, such as chimps. That approach takes away a lot of the self-preservation instincts that lead you to the irrational rhetoric that puts humans on an unbreakable pedestal.

This (long) read is actually insightful:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

The problem is that we don't know how to make friendly AI. As in at some point, Artificial Intelligences will be able to beat humans at any task, at which point, how do you make sure that they don't destroy humanity (possibly through indifference). Even if you don't care about humanity, how do you make sure they do something interesting with the universe?

Various articles:
Stuart Armstrong's book Smarter than us discusses what happens when machines are smarter than humans:
https://intelligence.org/smart...
http://jjc.freeshell.org/Smart...
Bill Joy's article Why the Future doesn't need us on the dangers of robotics:
https://www.wired.com/2000/04/...
Tim Urban's article on superintelligence:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

The problem is that we don't know how to make friendly AI. As in at some point, Artificial Intelligences will be able to beat humans at any task, at which point, how do you make sure that they don't destroy humanity (possibly through indifference). Even if you don't care about humanity, how do you make sure they do something interesting with the universe?

Various articles:
Stuart Armstrong's book Smarter than us discusses what happens when machines are smarter than humans:
https://intelligence.org/smart...
http://jjc.freeshell.org/Smart...
Bill Joy's article Why the Future doesn't need us on the dangers of robotics:
https://www.wired.com/2000/04/...
Tim Urban's article on superintelligence:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

That's not true. We do have the ability to freeze the body without fatally damaging the cells. It would have been smarter to suspend her life (or kill her if you view it that way) via the cryogenic process rather than let her body get further ravaged by cancer to the point that it can't function on its own anymore.

Source: http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/...

From the source:

So to avoid that catastrophic liquid-to-solid state change, cryonics technicians do something cool—they perform surgery through the chest and hook the major arteries up to tubes which pump all the blood out of the body, replacing it with a “cryoprotectant solution,” otherwise known as medical grade anti-freeze. This does two important things: it replaces 60% of the water in the body’s cells, and it lowers the freezing point of what liquid is left. The result, when done perfectly, is that no freezing happens in the body. Instead, as they chill your body down and down over the next three hours, it hits -124C, a key point called the “glass transition temperature” when the body’s liquid stays amorphous but rises so high in viscosity that no molecule can budge. You’re officially an amorphous solid, like glass—i.e. you’re vitrified.

With no molecule movement, all chemical activity in your body comes to a halt. Biological time is stopped. You’re on pause.

In fact, there is a great two-parts article on WaitButWhy discussing exactly this:

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

In fact, there is a great two-parts article on WaitButWhy discussing exactly this:

The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

One of the best articles I've read this year. Long but very very well worth it.

Point is that whatever we're looking at now is nothing compared to what we'll have very very soon.

When you notice that your career is poor, and that everyone else is having success while you are stagnant, sometimes it is a problem of over-inflated expectations and false perception of other people's success. There is a very, very nice discussion about the frustration of people based on their career in this post. Presenting a list of both successes and failures helps other people ignore the idealized view of your career, and avoid frustration.

Thank you!

Its almost silly to think any advancement will take centuries based on the exponential nature of scientific discoveries.

I'd say progress has slowed significantly. I'm not sure how you'd defend the claim that our rate of progress accelerating, let alone exponentially.

Read this: Artificial Intelligence but it touches upon Exponential Progress

$35,000 Tesla Model III coming in 2017
Since they've seemed to slip all of their shcedules by 1-2 years, I'm guessing 2019.
This blog post discusses Tesla's top-down strategy where they use luxury cars to fund development of mass-market cars.

My plan for flapping my arms and attaining supersonic speed is totally feasible. I just need more money for studies.

But seriously though, this whole thing has been an exercise in watching someone (Bas Lansdorp) gradually become educated about space technology and why going to Mars is hard, except his self-education has been happening publicly and somewhat humiliatingly and against his own will. And this is if we're being charitable and assuming it's not a scam.

Elon Musk has an infinitely better plan for going to Mars, and best of all, he has the smarts and the resources to do it. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/...

I really hope Tesla stays in the game. That long article over at waitbutwhy totally sold me on the concept, and I was looking forward to buying one of the "mass production" models when they become available in a couple of years.

Also, weren't they supposed to be totally flush with money? I thought Musk said demand for the things was so high that he didn't think that giant battery plant they're building out in Nevada would be able to meet it.

(CAPTCHA: hotness)

When I said what's different between the banks and Apple, it was about the process itself.

My bank keeps gets information on my credit card usage even though all the information is stored with VISA, Mastercard, AMEX, etc...

What is fundamentaly different from a patent perspective between what Apple pantented and what the banks do when it comes to targeted adds based on credit availability? I would say that the only differences would be that Apple would have external ads that are targeted based on a certain credit availability. Even then, I've see ads from afiliated 3rd parties from my bank for insurance companies whereas my son, who doesn't have a job and doesn't have a lot of money going into his account, does not see any of those ads. I would think that the targeted add has looked at our credit worthiness before showing specific ads.

But if you wanted to look at it from your perpective, Apple might become a bank in the future...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/...
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/...
http://thehill.com/policy/fina...
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...

I am not sure if it could happen in the US, but in other jurisdictions, I could see it happening. It's already hapening with phone companies becoming banks in Africa:

http://qz.com/424535/in-south-...
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...

So with all the recent fuss over AI and some respectable folks being scared to death of it, I happened to stumble on this great article on waitbutwhy:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/...

It's a long two parter, but well worth the read. If you want the tl;dr part, skip to part 2 and search for "Robotica". With that in mind, we're going to end up with a planet of mile-high stacks of Magic: The Gathering cards.

FTA:

The fact that there are other things out there that are bigger, smarter, faster, stronger, or better than you, in any regard, in absolutely no way diminishes how special you are.

So it's important because it's a special little snowflake, just like the millennials have been taught to think of themselves. Yea, well, guess what? You're not special. And neither is Pluto.

Yeah, they do have a huge sense of entitlement. In big things and little things. They expect someone else to do lots of stuff for them. Little things like send you a spread sheet and expect you to do data cleaning on it. In part, because they don't know how to clean it up. Big things like just assuming that they get hired from an internship & a 100% raise.

Read this. It may help you a bit

http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html