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Elon Musk: Humans Need To Merge With Machines Else They Will Become Irrelevant in AI Age (cnbc.com)
Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas. So it didn't come as a surprise when on Monday at the World Government Summit in Dubai, he predicted that over time we will see a "closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence." He added, via a CNBC report: "It's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output." Musk explained what he meant by saying that computers can communicate at "a trillion bits per second", while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second. In an age when AI threatens to become widespread, humans would be useless, so there's a need to merge with machines, according to Musk. "Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem," Musk explained.
The code I write at a solid 10 bits per second sure beats anything I've seen a computer do.
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Elon needs to go away. One minute we're all in the fucking Matrix and the next we need to "merge with machines". Pick one you fucking douche bag
Irrelevant as corporate slaves?
Wow..these super rich types much be smoking some killer, killer shit.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
AI can and probably will ultimately make the concept of human employment extinct. And we probably need to accept that fact faster than any prediction, given the speed at which technology has accelerated just in the last couple of decades.
Humans need to first solve the problem of Greed. Otherwise, the chasm that separates the AI owners and wealthy overlords from the rest of the human race will continue to grow, and they won't give a shit about the demise of the irrelevant meatsack masses.
Even better when you consider that an improper filter set to prevent this winds up causing seizures for everyone up in HR.
"Be back, in a bit. I have to go reboot Bob again."
#SickNotWeak
Most of the comments so far have been personal attacks on Musk. I guess this is par for the low level of discourse here.
However, I'd like to see some discussion of his statement.
Would a better connection between humans and machines be beneficial?
What would be the benefits/ problems?
How could this be achieved?
Come on, folks, I have seen much better from you in the past.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
"Humans Need To Merge With Machines?" Reading the article it turns out Musk said nothing of the sort. He actually said, "we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence."
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Some high bandwidth interface to the brain...
Without a 100% perfection inbound firewall you're not coming anywhere near my brain interface.
It's funny, if I start spouting crazy shit people tell me I'm crazy and might give me two dollars.
If you are rich and crazy then people want to give you two hundred million to try your idea.
Just so everyone is clear... I probably earn way more then you do. So let's invest in my device to detect the shadow people and destroy them.
alternatively: humans only need to communicate at 10 bits, we don't need a trillion bits per second to enjoy life.
But really, isn't the trick to do less, not more? I ain't no worker-bee. I'm jealous of my pet dog sitting on the couch all day while I work at a desk. I want his life -- it's called retirement.
Productivity is the goal of business. Laziness is the goal of life. I've worked hard to be this lazy.
I didn't read the article. However even if this is bytes there's so much that is missed!
I look at a tree, recognize it and say "tree" in less than a second.
I can throw a ball against a wall and catch it before it hits the ground. Now give me a completely different size/weight ball and I can do the same (within tolerances of weight and size).
There is communication in both of those in which massive amounts of information is consumed and processed. For example the tree, 32 bits of information is relayed. However if I speak it then there is inflection, volume, direction, body language and intent that are all communicated in a short time.
Even though nothing is typed/spoken with the ball there is an output, catching the ball, that requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth utilized by a human.
Human Computer interfaces have a long way to go to catch up to these types of things; however, I think someone is raising an alarm about something that has no near term danger and just from the porn perspective will be developed as soon as is humanly possible. Think Matrix and Mouse pushing the girl in the red dress to Neo... The first in the porn industry to do that get's money from 99% of the world's men and a good portion of the world's women. Same thing happened with VHS....
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
Yeah, rich people don't get a lot of reality checks from their hired help. I just wish people were better at differentiating between Hollywood and real life. I hope Elon has a computer surgically implanted in his brain to show everyone how dumb an idea it is.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
It's funny, if I start spouting crazy shit people tell me I'm crazy and might give me two dollars.
Even more funny, claim to hear the voice of God in your head and you're enlightened in certain circles of people but claim to hear the voice of Elvis in your head telling you what to do and you're off to the insane asylum
We'll make great pets
Years ago a manager who helped disabled people wished there could be some kind of brain implant that could help someone be smarter. I asked, like playing chess? He said yes. I told him that already exists, just give him a laptop with a chess program. All we are doing is playing with different communication interfaces.
I can't find the source, but I remember reading that speakers of lower entropy languages simply end up speaking faster than speakers of higher entropy languages. E.g. English on average is spoken more slowly than Spanish by native speakers because English has less redundancy, so errors are more likely to affect received meaning. Overall spoken information rate (bps) remains pretty constant.
The concept of bio-integration is quite old. The part-man-part-machine being has been a common theme in popular science fiction for as long as I can remember.
So, one need not use drugs to come up with these ideas. In fact, the scifi authors who came up with these ideas probably didn't need drugs either...they just thought things through.
Seriously, this isn't that weird nor does it require that much creativity to imagine it.
And further, since humans today have machines integrated with them, it is likely that we will see more of this in the future, including and especially where our cognitive abilities are concerned. The potential benefits are just too high.
None of this should be hard to believe for anyone who has been paying attention.
The brain machine interface exists today, moron. Check it out.
The tech is primitive. But as it gets refined, the potential benefits will be far too valuable to overlook. This is a fucking great idea!
You are just one of those people who can't use the power of reason to look past the familiar.
It is not money that gives Elon credibility, but his list of accomplishments.
He has a track record of turning ideas into reality, so people pay attention.
He's probably right, eventually taking your glasses off will be like suffering from some kind of learning disability. All text you see automatically scanned and available for perfect recall, the name of ever person you meet whispered in your ear in case you forgot, any equation instantly solved... And an unquenchable thirst for Pepsi, an uncontrollable urge to buy a Tesla.
It's already sort of the case. Most of modern students are incapable of doing anything if they don't have facebook to ask elder friends for what to search on google. And then they have an unquenchable thirst for Pepsi. Conclusion, you don't need a brain interface to sell crap and render people useless.
There is so much bullshit with this. Modern students still learn how to use a library. I know, I see batches of students coming with their teachers all the time to learn how (just like old times.) All colleges make students learn how to use them (just like in old times), etc, etc.
In reality, the ability to search online has made students (and people in general) far more efficient at retrieving information. Obviously, this also has the downside that it makes it easy to plagiarize. But that comes with every technology. You get what you put in, and you put in according to what kind of person you are.
Case in point: my daughter who is in second grade now knows how to use google voice search to check for spelling of words she doesn't know. Then she cross-checks it with her dictionary in English and Japanese (since she is bilingual, and soon to be trilingual if everything goes according plan.)
She has become more efficient at writing her homework reports (while learning how to spell faster) without inducing cheating or sloppy work. It has reduced her frustration while helping her focus on the topics she needs to write. This, at 2nd grade.
This type of efficiency increases a lot more for older students and adults.
Pretending that people now are useless because they leverage electronic searches and social media is like pretending farmers today are useless for using tractors instead of hand-held plows.
In other words, this line of reasoning is both simplistic and stupid.
I hope Elon has a computer surgically implanted in his brain to show everyone how dumb an idea it is.
I don't think it's that dumb. Imagine if instead of having to manually perform math in your head, you had your result just as soon as you could mentally build the function; no need to pull out a piece of paper or type in LaTex, and you understand the entire process, even if your biological brain parts don't (you don't mentally understand how your biological brain parts work anyways, so what's the difference?) Or suppose you wanted to build a list of objects algorithmically, and instead of needing to open up your IDE and start writing code, you could accurately visualize the result near instantaneously. That would be pretty neat, and allow you to become more productive; probably even moreso than any AI.
Something like this may come, though probably not within our lifetimes...unless it's for the purpose of extending them. Even if we solve things like aging, cancer, etc, the barrier will inevitably be how to keep your brain working for more than one natural lifespan, so we'll need to conquer not only how it works, but also develop a technology solution for extending our memories.
So indeed, what Musk suggests may be inevitable, unless skynet beats us to the punch.
I'd sign up.