Scientific Totalitarianism (our future post 2020) - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Theories and happenings too odd for the main forums.
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"The substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind," -Winston Churchill.

Cyber Monday 2018 is forecast to be the biggest online shopping day in US history

Cyber Monday is expected to generate $7.8 billion in sales, up nearly 18% on last year, according to a new report from Adobe Analytics.

The lofty expectation comes even as shoppers increasingly spread their online holiday shopping over several days.

Black Friday pulled in $6.22 billion in online sales, Adobe Analytics said, according to CNBC, up 23.6% from a year ago. Thanksgiving Day itself has become a big shopping day too, attracting an estimated $3.7 billion in sales.

...

Black Friday saw a record of more than $2 billion in sales done through smartphones alone, the Adobe report said, per CNBC.

But even if it does have the US shopping calendar sewn up, Cyber Monday is still second string to the biggest online shopping day in the world.

Cyber Monday is eclipsed by Singles Day, a Chinese shopping event that attracts almost four times the sales volume.

With $30.8 billion made in sales over 24 hours this month from a single company — the e-commerce platform Alibaba — Singles Day celebration is easily the biggest shopping event on earth.

https://www.businessinsider.com/cyber-m ... ry-2018-11


New Studies Show Just How Bad Social Media Is For Mental Health

Some people may be starting to come to grips with the fact that social media isn’t so great for mental health. Others may think that getting on it will give them a boost—but especially depending on how you spend your time on it, you may well feel worse after using. Plenty of studies have found correlations between higher social media use and poorer mental health, including depression, anxiety, feelings of loneliness and isolation, lower self-esteem, and even suicidality.

But two new studies underline this reality by showing not just correlation, but causation—in other words, that tweaking your time on social media actually has measurable effects on mental health

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalt ... a5ccc7af44


FDA Hides Clear Evidence of Cancer Risk & DNA Damage From Wireless Radiation - US Brain Tumor Association.com

NTP Study Provides Enough Evidence for Class 1 Human Carcinogen-Scientists Demand 5G Moratorium

"The $25 million US National Toxicology Program Study has proven again what other studies have shown us that wireless radiation is a Class 1 Human Carcinogen like cigarette smoke and asbestos and should be treated as such. The NTP study proved wireless radiation can cause cancer and it can damage our DNA which can lead to a host of serious diseases. We must warn people and minimize exposure. I along with more than 200 of my colleagues who are expert in the field have called for a moratorium on the roll out of 5G which promises to maximize our exposure to harmful wireless radiation (5Gappeal.eu). Action must be taken to set new safety standards and protect our public's health." Professor Emeritus Anthony Miller MD, FRCP, FRCP(C),FFPH, former Director, National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group and former member World Health Organization Expert Advisory Panel on Cancer 2005-2015 (Professor Miller was also former Director Epidemiology Unit National Cancer Institute of Canada; former Director, World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Evaluation of Screening for Cancer; former Chairman Scientific Advisory Committee, Occupational Cancer Research Centre 2009-2017).

Read more: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 43087.html


Trump Administration’s Strategy on Climate: Try to Bury Its Own Scientific Report

The Trump White House, which has defined itself by a willingness to dismiss scientific findings and propose its own facts, on Friday issued a scientific report that directly contradicts its own climate-change policies.

That sets the stage for a remarkable split-screen political reality in coming years. The administration is widely expected to discount or ignore the report’s detailed findings of the economic strain caused by climate change, even as it continues to cut environmental regulations, while opponents use it to mount legal attacks against the very administration that issued the report.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/clim ... eport.html


Super-smart designer babies could be on offer soon. But is that ethical?

In his new book Blueprint, the psychologist Robert Plomin explains that it is now possible from our individual genome data to make a meaningful prediction about our IQ. When I discussed the topic with Plomin last month, we agreed on the need for urgent discussion of the implications, before genetic selection of embryos for intelligence hits the market. We’re too late. A company called Genomic Prediction, based in New Jersey, has announced that it will offer that service. New Scientist reports that it has already begun talks with American IVF clinics to find customers. They won’t be in short supply.

Before we start imagining a Gattaca-style future of genetic elites and underclasses, there’s some context needed. The company says it is only offering such testing to spot embryos with an IQ low enough to be classed as a disability, and won’t conduct analyses for high IQ. But the technology the company is using will permit that in principle, and co-founder Stephen Hsu, who has long advocated for the prediction of traits from genes, is quoted as saying: “If we don’t do it, some other company will.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... telligence


Samsung is building software to control your TV with your brain

The tech is aimed at people with physical disabilities. Testing is set to start in Swiss hospitals early next year.

Samsung has created smart TV software you can control with your brainwaves.

Read more: https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-is-ma ... onference/

We need to be mindful as we develop thought-reading tech

Mass thought control may not be on the cards just yet, but mind-reading tech is developing fast. We need to be prepared

HOWEVER much technology knows about you – and you would be surprised how much it does (see “I exposed how firms and politicians can manipulate us online”) – there is one firewall that it can’t penetrate: your skull. Unless you choose to share your thoughts, they remain private.

But for how much longer? Increasingly, a combination of brain scanning and artificial intelligence is opening the black box, gathering signals from deep inside the mind and reverse-engineering them to recreate thoughts. For now, the technology is limited to vision – working out what somebody is looking at from their brain activity (see “Mind-reading AI uses brain scans to guess what you’re looking at”) – but in principle there appears no reason why the entire contents of our minds couldn’t be revealed.

This line of research inevitably raises fears about the ultimate invasion of privacy: mind reading. It is not difficult to imagine some sort of device that can simply be pointed at somebody’s head to extract their thoughts.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... ding-tech/
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How Technocratic systems are augmenting and automating the default mode network (autobiographical information) via cybernetic feedback loops.



Cultural matrices and sociopolitical identity myths can be modulated by and merged with divisive post-truth politics. Prosumers (a person who consumes and produces a product or service) become self-regulating opinion factories with the power to publish digital pseudo-realities. Digital-reality is now a mass produced web of competing cultural-corporate narratives that funnel into big-brother business models.

Big-brother business models run data sets that are engineered by AI and in-house algorithms. These data sets, AI, and algorithms, comprise cybernetic information loops that can be used to manufacture or manipulate culture. This is the commodification and commercialization of perception, when culture becomes business and business becomes social engineering at the speed of light.

The Technocracy is busy dehumanizing humans and humanizing machines. A kind of post-human culture that can plug human behavior and psychology into an information grid, in order to augment an existing pyramidal-hierarchical pattern of organization and accelerate the compartmentalized nature of society. People are now programmable egos, driven by multiplex psycho-social cybernetic signals. Click the button if you like...



Post-modern Techno-doublethink

‘Robots deserve human rights’: Why activists want to protect machines from their creators

Then you’ve probably been cruel to a machine without even realising it. The concept of harming something that’s not a living, organic being might seem ridiculous right now, but will become very real as artificial intelligence begins to match and surpass our intellectual abilities. This idea is already being discussed by ‘Transhumanists’ who want to ensure the ‘sentient entities’ set to emerge in the coming decades are given the same rights as humans. These techno-utopians believe we must harness technology to conquer death and evolve into a new species free of war, disease and all the other afflictions which have dogged us throughout history. But to do that, they say humanity needs to ensure the machines we create to improve our own lives are not mistreated.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/05/robots-d ... to=cbshare



Normalize a post-human society via incremental nudging.
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Very pertinent information


Ellen DeGeneres Just Gave Two Oculus Go Headsets To Each Person In Her Audience

Ellen DeGeneres just gave her show’s audience two Oculus Go headsets each, funded as a marketing expense by Facebook. Ellen’s audience is typically around 400 strong, so this would equate to around 800 VR headsets given away.

Why two Oculus Go’s each, you may ask? We can’t be certain, but it’s likely that Facebook wants the audience to use the social VR apps available on the headset with people they know.

https://uploadvr.com/ellen-gave-away-oc ... -audience/

Facebook Taps Celebrities Including Wiz Khalifa, Awkwafina for Oculus Go Ad Campaign

Facebook is going all out with an ad campaign for its entry-level VR headset this holiday season. The company is promoting the $200 Oculus Go with ads featuring Wiz Khalifa, Awkwafina, Jonah Hill, Adam Levine, Behati Prinsloo and Leslie Jones.

https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/o ... 203026109/


Tech Journalists Locked Out At Top AI Conference

Members of the press have been blocked from attending some of the most interesting events at the NeurIPS artificial intelligence conference.

Organisers of NeurIPS, rebranded from NIPS (Neural Information Systems Processing) last month, made it impossible for journalists to attend "workshops" at NeurIPS 2018, which took place this week in Montreal.

The workshops contain many of the debates and the most interesting discussions, according to conference attendee and OpenAI policy director Jack Clark, who happens to be a former Bloomberg technology journalist. Clark appears to be the first person to publicise the fact that journalists are not allowed to attend the workshops.

Karen Hao, an AI reporter for MIT Technology Review, wrote on Twitter: "The best part about NeurIPS is the opportunity for learning, not opportunity for stories. It was sad to me that being labeled a reporter suddenly shut the door on my learning."

Katyanna Quach, an AI and science reporter for The Register, added: "Banning workshops sucks. It's where journalists can learn the most as all other research has been published. I found the sessions very valuable last year, and didn't really see any situations that would have made any companies/researchers look bad if they were reported."

The quality of AI media coverage varies and some AI researchers worry about sharing technical breakthroughs with the press over fears that they will be misreported. Certain newspapers and magazines scaremonger by regularly using pictures of The Terminator or other killer robots even though there’s no evidence to suggest machines will turn against us.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2 ... 5cd88b762f


Microsoft Warns Washington to Regulate A.I. Before Its Too Late

The company echoed tech ethicists and employees in its call for restrictions. As Microsoft president Brad Smith put it, “We must ensure that the year 2024 doesn’t look like a page from the novel 1984.”

"You cannot have black-box systems in core social services.”

“The long-term concerns around civil liberties aren’t being considered.”

“How far-ranging does the Secret Service believe its monitoring efforts need to be to fulfill its mission?” wrote the A.C.L.U. “Whatever the answer is today, there is good reason to be concerned about what that answer might be in the future—especially if unregulated face recognition and other technologies make it cheap and easy to extend the tentacles of its surveillance outwards.” Microsoft’s announcement may well have been a strategic bid for good P.R. But even so, it’s a crucial step as companies continue to develop A.I. in an unregulated space. “There is no longer a question of whether there are issues with accountability,” Meredith Whittaker, an A.I. Now co-founder who works at Google, told Bloomberg. “It’s what we do about it.”

Read more: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/12 ... s-too-late


DARPA head on AI dangers: ‘It’s not one of those things that keeps me up at night’

Walker’s comments arrive amid a backdrop of bitter controversy surrounding the military’s use of AI. In June, thousands of Google employees signed a petition protesting the company’s role in a Defense Department project using machine intelligence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... bbbf429324


Organizers of gene-editing meeting blast Chinese study but call for ‘pathway’ to human trials

An international conference on human gene editing dominated by news of the birth of the world's first genetically engineered babies concluded today with a statement from the organizers that harshly condemned the controversial study. But it did not call for a global moratorium on similar studies, as some scientists had hoped; instead it called for a "translational pathway" that might eventually bring the ethically fraught technology to patients in a responsible way.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11 ... man-trials
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If you value privacy, resist any form of national ID cards

In the U.S., we’re nowhere close to living under the degree of surveillance seen in Venezuela or China. Nonetheless, we must remain vigilant for calls for increased data gathering and national ID systems that put our privacy at risk, especially those calls that are couched in the name of immigration enforcement and anti-terrorism efforts. These ID proposals, if left unchecked, will diminish the freedom to travel and work, and expose more details of our private lives to the authorities.

Americans have historically been resistant to the kind of compulsory ID card schemes seen around the world. Yet before Trump’s presidency there were bipartisan calls for ID cards as a tool of immigration enforcement. In March, 2010 Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., took to the pages of The Washington Post to argue for a national biometric ID card as a means to tackle illegal immigration. Fortunately, Sens. Schumer and Graham failed to get their proposed mandated ID passed into law.

...

ID systems are not only discussed in the context of immigration enforcement. The threat of terrorism also provides fertile ground for national ID proposals. REAL ID, created in 2005, outlines federal requirements for state drivers licenses in order for them to be accepted by agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration. According to DHS, REAL ID enacts the 9/11 Commission report recommendation that the federal government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification.” In order to be REAL ID compliant, states must not only adhere to federal standards but also share information included on drivers licenses on a national network.

Although some states initially rejected REAL ID, every state is now complying with at least some portions of the system. While the federal government can’t directly coerce states into compliance, it can provide plenty of incentives. According to the TSA, drivers licenses that aren’t REAL ID compliant will not be considered a valid form of ID from October 1, 2020, onwards.

...

We should therefore be wary when advocates for biometric Social Security cards, mandatory E-Verify, and REAL ID tell us the use of these systems will be limited. As current ID systems expand they could easily morph into a de facto national ID scheme, with compliance required for air travel, gun purchases, banking, and much more.

Read full article: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... l-id-cards


"A slow rollout across the country, as facial recognition comes to an airport near you."

Newsman at the end of the video, "I'm down for it, because as you said, theres cameras everywhere, so why not."

Hertz launches biometric lanes to make car renting faster by up to 75 percent

The "Hertz Fast Lane powered by CLEAR" opened at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Tuesday, allowing travellers to use fingerprint scanners and facial recognition technology instead of showing a physical ID.

According to Hertz, the system will cut down on the time taken to collect a rental car by at least 75 percent, with the potential to get drivers through the exit gate and on the road in 30 seconds or less.

The Fast Lanes – the first use of biometrics by a major car rental firm – will be rolled out across more than 40 U.S. locations in 2019. New locations will include Los Angeles International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Read more:https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/12/hertz-launches-biometric-lanes-to-make-car-renting-faster.html
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A publicly disclosed chemtrail program unfolds

First sun-dimming experiment will test a way to cool Earth

Researchers plan to spray sunlight-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, an approach that could ultimately be used to quickly lower the planet’s temperature.

The idea is simple: spray a bunch of particles into the stratosphere, and they will cool the planet by reflecting some of the Sun’s rays back into space. Scientists have already witnessed the principle in action. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected an estimated 20 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that stretches from about 10 to 50 kilometres above Earth's surface. The eruption created a haze of sulfate particles that cooled the planet by around 0.5 °C. For about 18 months, Earth’s average temperature returned to what it was before the arrival of the steam engine.

The idea that humans might turn down Earth’s thermostat by similar, artificial means is several decades old. It fits into a broader class of planet-cooling schemes known as geoengineering that have long generated intense debate and, in some cases, fear.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07533-4


Hypnosis, truth drugs and remote-operated dogs: Declassified papers on CIA’s 'mind control' research

A renowned government secret hunter has published new documents detailing the CIA’s Cold War “behavioral modification” experiments (ranging from the bizarre to the stomach-churning), released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents were published by “The Black Vault”, a site which has published enough government documents on the paranormal, UFOs and government mind control experiments to provide material for a dozen new seasons of The X-Files. While the site might sound like a fringe web-community indulging in paranoid cliches, it is also the largest repository of its kind aside from the US government with over 2,000,000 pages of information. The 800 pages of classified information published in November had been withheld from previously released documents that were made public through FOIA requests in 2004 and 2016.

The newest documents, if verified, showcase some unprecedented disturbing outcomes of the CIA’s attempts to develop mind control techniques and truth serums as a part of its “MKultra” project, which the agency admitted to having secretly run until 1973. The releases include documents on a “successful” effort to create 6 dogs that could be “operated” to complete basic commands by remote control in the late 1960s. There are even diagrams of the surgical implants that employed “Electrical Stimulation of the Brain” to create controlled responses.

https://www.rt.com/usa/445980-mind-control-mkultra-cia/


MKultra goes public

Researchers Develop Smartphone-connected Device to Treat MS, Brain Disorders Remotely

Researchers at the Ural Federal University (UrFU) in Russia have developed a neuro-electrostimulation system that has the potential to treat different types of brain disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS). The system allows physicians to treat patients by remotely controlling the delivered electric pulse through a smartphone or tablet.

Details about the neuro-rehabilitating technology were published in the journal Mobile Information Systems in an article titled “Mobile Hardware-Information System for Neuro-Electrostimulation.”

The idea behind neuro-rehabilitation devices is based on the brain’s neuroplasticity and ability to repair or replace damaged neurons. The system delivers low-frequency electrostimulation to clusters of nerve cells in the autonomic nervous system, which controls internal organ functions. This stimulates the release of neurotransmitters (the signaling chemicals of the nervous system) and the formation of new neuronal networks.

https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/ ... -remotely/


With Brain Implants, Scientists Aim to Translate Thoughts into Speech

Experts increasingly think a system that could help paralyzed patients is within reach

“We think we’re getting enough of an understanding of the brain signals that encode silent speech that we could soon make something practical,” said Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley. “Even something modest could be meaningful to patients. I’m convinced it’s possible.”

Further in the future, Facebook and others envision similar technology facilitating consumer products that translate thoughts into text messages and emails. No typing or Siri necessary.

The first brain-computer interfaces (BCI) read electrical signals in the motor cortex corresponding to the intention to move, and use software to translate the signals into instructions to operate a computer cursor or robotic arm. In 2016, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh went a step further, adding sensors to a mind-controlled robotic arm so it produced sensations of touch.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... to-speech/


Where is the boundary between your phone and your mind?

As our online existences become less distinct from ‘real life’, experts raise concern about the growing power of big tech

Here’s a thought experiment: where do you end? Not your body, but you, the nebulous identity you think of as your “self”.Does it end at the limits of your physical form? Or does it include your voice, which can now be heard as far as outer space; your personal and behavioral data, which is spread out across the impossibly broad plane known as digital space; and your active online personas, which probably encompass dozens of different social media networks, text message conversations, and email exchanges?

This is a question with no clear answer, and, as the smartphone grows ever more essential to our daily lives, that border’s only getting blurrier.
Here's an idea, instead of being a vapid cyclops, you could listen to Eastern mystics/philosophers probe your "thought experiment."
:roll: Want something a lil more Western- go listen to Alan Watts.

But you see, this is about the tech, not an existential reflection. Today, A dumb-phone phone is the essential experience.


Michael Patrick Lynch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and director of the school’s Humanities Institute, which promotes interdisciplinary research, says that the notion of an “extended self” was coined by the philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers in 1998.

“They argued that, essentially, the mind and the self are extended to those devices that help us perform what we ordinarily think of as our cognitive tasks,” Lynch says. This can include items as seemingly banal and analog as a piece of paper and a pen, which help us remember, a duty otherwise performed by the brain. According to this philosophy, the shopping list, for example, becomes part of our memory, the mind spilling out beyond the confines of our skull to encompass anything that helps it think.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ook-google
:roll: Bold-faced lies. Marshall McLuhan wrote Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in 1964.
#14977240
Right down to the present (2013), people who should know better have continued to ignore the fact that the development of societies can never be rationally controlled. Thus, we often find technophiles making such absurd statements as: “humanity is in charge of its own fate”; “[we will] take charge of our own evolution”; or, “people [will] seize control of the evolutionary process.” 118 The technophiles want to “guide research so that technology improve[s] society”; they have created a “Singularity University” and a “Singularity Institute” that are supposed to “shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications” of technological progress, and “make sure... that artificial intelligence... is friendly” to humans 119

Of course, the technophiles won’t be able to “shape the advances” of technology or make sure that they “improve society” and are friendly to humans. Technological advances will be “shaped” in the long run by unpredictable and uncontrollable power-struggles among rival groups that will develop and apply technology for the sole purpose of gaining advantages over their competitors. See Chapter Two of this book.

It’s not likely that the majority of technophiles fully believe in this drivel about “shaping the advances” of technology to “improve society.” In practice, Singularity University serves mainly to promote the interests of technology-oriented businessmen, 120 while the fantasies about “improving society” function as propaganda that helps to forestall public resistance to radical technological innovation. But such propaganda is effective only because many laymen are naive enough to take the fantasies seriously.

“Chapter One: Part VI.” Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How, by Theodore John Kaczynski, Fitch & Madison Publishers, 2016, pp. 32.



Ray Kurzweil’s MiNd-B0gGliNg Predictions for the Next 25 Years!

By the late 2010s, glasses will beam images directly onto the retina. Ten terabytes of computing power (roughly the same as the human brain) will cost about $1,000.

By the 2020s, most diseases will go away as nanobots become smarter than current medical technology. Normal human eating can be replaced by nanosystems. The Turing test begins to be passable. Self-driving cars begin to take over the roads, and people won’t be allowed to drive on highways.

By the 2030s, virtual reality will begin to feel 100% real. We will be able to upload our mind/consciousness by the end of the decade.

By the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (a.k.a. us). Nanotech foglets will be able to make food out of thin air and create any object in physical world at a whim.

By 2045, we will multiply our intelligence a billionfold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud.

Ray’s predictions are a byproduct of his (and my) understanding of the power of Moore’s Law, more specifically Ray’s “Law of Accelerating Returns” and of exponential technologies.

These technologies follow an exponential growth curve based on the principle that the computing power that enables them doubles every two years.

As humans, we are biased to think linearly.

As entrepreneurs, we need to think exponentially.

I often talk about the 6D’s of exponential thinking

Most of us can’t see the things Ray sees because the initial growth stages of exponential, DIGITIZED technologies are DECEPTIVE.

Before we know it, they are DISRUPTIVE—just look at the massive companies that have been disrupted by technological advances in AI, virtual reality, robotics, internet technology, mobile phones, OCR, translation software, and voice control technology.

Each of these technologies DEMATERIALIZED, DEMONETIZED, and DEMOCRATIZED access to services and products that used to be linear and non-scalable.

Now, these technologies power multibillion-dollar companies and affect billions of lives.

https://singularityhub.com/2015/01/26/r ... mk0m51fdho


Want some supplemental reading to make you feel good about scientific totalitarianism? CHeck out: Infinite Progress: How the Internet and Technology Will End Ignorance, Disease, Poverty, Hunger, and War, by Byron Reese.

IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND AWAY, :lol:

Reviewers rave: "A camouflaged advertising program for the Silicon Valley ideology."

"Too boring to finish. Largely superficial book filled with banalities and ridiculous hype."

"This book was so optimistic that reading it was like eating an entire chocolate cake in one sitting."

I only got about 1/4 through the book and I had to put it down. Maybe it will get better after the first quarter. I almost always finish books but this was just too vapid.

The book suffers from being very boring as it has nothing new to bring to the table. It has all been said better before by many others (Kurzweil, Matt Ridley etc). The author projects an embarrassing childlike fascination with the internet (and technology) and its capabilities that made me double check the date of publication. It would have been fine in the 1990's (or 1950's) but not in 2013.
#14977546
The technophiles won’t be able to “shape the advances” of technology or make sure that they “improve society” and are friendly to humans. Technological advances will be “shaped” in the long run by unpredictable and uncontrollable power-struggles among rival groups that will develop and apply technology for the sole purpose of gaining advantages over their competitors.

@annatar1914 This thread is an on-going compilation of a future post-industrial society. This is an important forecast, which is why it has 11,000 plus views, despite minimal contribution from other forum members.

This thread isn't a conspiracy. I deliberately placed it in the conspiracy section because I didn't want this thread to be bothered by narrow-minded forum topics.

Technology, global climate, and the economy, will shape the structure of the Technocracy.

I'm here to warn you of present science that will one day govern human society. Remember, all of this information is from publicly available sources. One can only speculate what is being developed/tested behind closed doors.

A group of Mark Zuckerberg-funded researchers is testing implantable brain devices as part of a $5 billion quest to end disease control your mind.

Mark Zuckerberg has sold close to 30 million shares of Facebook to fund an ambitious biomedical-research project, called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with a goal of curing all disease within a generation.

A less publicized initiative related to the $5 billion program includes work on brain-machine interfaces, devices that essentially translate thoughts into commands. One recent project is a wireless brain implant that can record, stimulate, and disrupt the movement of a monkey in real time.

In a paper published in the highly cited scientific journal Nature on New Year's Eve,researchers detail a wireless brain device implanted in a primate that records, stimulates, and modifies its brain activity in real time, sensing a normal movement and stopping it immediately. One of those researchers is an investigator with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, a nonprofit medical research group related to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/chan-zu ... es-2018-12


^Totalitarian science. It's a real knee-slapper.




The Pentagon’s Push to Program Soldiers’ Brains

The military wants future super-soldiers to control robots with their thoughts.


“Tonight I would like to share with you an idea that I am extremely passionate about,” the young man said. His long black hair was swept back like a rock star’s, or a gangster’s. “Think about this,” he continued. “Throughout all human history, the way that we have expressed our intent, the way we have expressed our goals, the way we have expressed our desires, has been limited by our bodies.” When he inhaled, his rib cage expanded and filled out the fabric of his shirt. Gesturing toward his body, he said, “We are born into this world with this. Whatever nature or luck has given us.”

His speech then took a turn: “Now, we’ve had a lot of interesting tools over the years, but fundamentally the way that we work with those tools is through our bodies.” Then a further turn: “Here’s a situation that I know all of you know very well—your frustration with your smartphones, right? This is another tool, right? And we are still communicating with these tools through our bodies.”

And then it made a leap: “I would claim to you that these tools are not so smart. And maybe one of the reasons why they’re not so smart is because they’re not connected to our brains. Maybe if we could hook those devices into our brains, they could have some idea of what our goals are, what our intent is, and what our frustration is.”

So began “Beyond Bionics,” a talk by Justin C. Sanchez, then an associate professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience at the University of Miami, and a faculty member of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ng/570841/


Celebrate the cybernetic society!

8 Things to Expect From CES, Consumer Tech's Big Shindig

Bot Boom

Just a few years ago, adding a low-energy Bluetooth chip and a Wi-Fi radio to your dumb gadget was enough to earn it a place in the “smart tech” category at CES. Now, smarts are defined by how sentient, how predictive our personal technology can be, whether those calculations are happening on the hardware or in the cloud. And at CES more than anywhere else, the term “AI-powered” is used loosely and is almost always a marketing ploy, whether a product is widely impacted by AI or not. Expect to see everything from self-driving vehicles to OLED televisions to energy-saving wall outlets all touting some form of artificial intelligence, machine learning, or deep learning.

The 5G Shuffle

2019 is supposed to be the year that 5G transcends hype and becomes a reality. So it makes sense that wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon, handset makers like Samsung, and mobile chip makers like Qualcomm will take advantage of the CES stage to make more proclamations about how the next generation of ultra-fast cell networks will fundamentally change our tech lives. 5G also has huge implications for the connected auto industry, because of its potential to let vehicles “talk” to one another in real time. Just keep in mind that, while 5G-ready handsets and devices will start shipping this year, 5G wireless networks won’t be available nationwide until 2020, and the first ones to roll out won’t offer the 10-gigabytes-per-second data speeds that make the technology so alluring.

Future Transport

Speaking of cars, CES is still locked in competition with the North American International Auto Show when it comes to auto tech announcements. This year, 11 major car manufacturers are expected to show up in Vegas, up from nine last year. But while there will undoubtedly be some concept cars (like a car that walks on legs from Hyundai), automakers still don’t really view CES as a place to show off new metal. Instead, expect a big focus on self-driving abilities (again) and partnerships with sophisticated chip, sensor, display, and voice technology vendors—anything to convince consumers that legacy car manufacturers are speeding ahead into the future. Also, watch out for zippy scooters and other transportation gear that hint at hassle-free, carless commutes.

Filling the K Hole

Just when you thought you were up to speed on 4K—you’ve got that sweet Vizio, that cheap 4K streaming stick, a solid broadband connection, and actual 4K movies to watch—8K has arrived to spin you into another seven-year cycle of living room inadequacy. TV manufacturers like Samsung, Sony, LG, Toshiba, and Sharp are widely expected to show off 8K displays at CES this year. LG has even pre-announced what the company claims is the world’s first OLED 8K display. 8K displays have a resolution of 7,680 by 4,320 pixels (that’s more than 33 million pixels total) which means they’re really really ridiculously good-looking. On the downside, these sets will be crazy expensive and difficult to find, and there's hardly any 8K content out there to watch.

Curves Ahead

There are insanely high-resolution displays, and then there are displays that you can fold and tuck into your back pocket, because that’s a thing you've always wanted to do. For several years now, companies like Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, and LG have teased a variety of flexible-display prototypes. CES, with all its oddity and aversion to humanity, has always been the perfect place to showcase such technologies. Will we get another glimpse of Samsung’s folding Galaxy smartphone concept that was first revealed in November? Will Chinese display tech company Royole bring the FlexPai, its new 7.8-inch folding phone, to the big show? Will LG demo its fold-up TV screen again? Maybe; whether any of those devices ship this year is another question.

So Much Talk

For the past couple years Amazon and Google have helped CES maintain its relevance; not only because of the companies’ massive physical installations throughout Vegas, but because their voice assistants have been integrated into thousands of gadgets. There are now over 20,000 smart devices compatible with Alexa, and over 10,000 that work with Google Assistant. CES 2019 will undoubtedly be a noisy cacophony of voice-controlled devices, ranging from refrigerators to sound systems to smart lights in the home, to wearables and cars outside of the home. (Turns out that if you add another voice assistant an existing product, you can call it “new.”) The question around voice technology, though, isn’t so much whether it will have a presence; the question is whether it will grow more seamless and less awkward this year.

Enhance!

It wouldn’t be the new year if we weren’t resolved to improve ourselves in some way, and what better panacea for all our ills than a Bluetooth body dongle that spits out health data? The digital health section has grown a lot at CES over the years. Nearly 120 health tech exhibitors will be at the show this year, up from 98 in 2018, the CTA says. Expect the usual GPS running watches, questionable sleep gadgets, and promising hearing aid solutions. But also: consumer packaged goods companies are starting to capitalize on the quantified self. Procter & Gamble’s Olay will be showing off a new skin gadget, while its Pantene brand will somehow utilize AI to improve your hair. L’Oreal will demo new health-related sensors, and a company called Lumen says it will help you hack your metabolism by showing you how quickly you're torching carbs and offering you nutritional guidance. And you thought all you had to do to improve your well-being in 2019 was delete your Facebook account.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2019-what-to-expect/


A wireless closed-loop system for optogenetic peripheral neuromodulation

Here we introduce a miniaturized bio-optoelectronic implant that avoids these limitations by using (1) an optical stimulation interface that exploits microscale inorganic light-emitting diodes to activate opsins; (2) a soft, high-precision biophysical sensor system that allows continuous measurements of organ function; and (3) a control module and data analytics approach that enables coordinated, closed-loop operation of the system to eliminate pathological behaviours as they occur in real-time. In the example reported here, a soft strain gauge yields real-time information on bladder function in a rat model. Data algorithms identify pathological behaviour, and automated, closed-loop optogenetic neuromodulation of bladder sensory afferents normalizes bladder function. This all-optical scheme for neuromodulation offers chronic stability and the potential to stimulate specific cell types.

Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0823-6


Optogenetics Device Provides Targeted Control Over Light Delivered to Neurons

A University of Arizona research team has developed a wireless, battery-free method for controlling the intensity and frequency of light that is delivered to neurons in the brain. The miniature device for optogenetics can be fully implanted under the scalp and allows researchers to independently stimulate multiple locations in the brain of the same subject.

Read more: https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Opto ... rol/a64283
#14985918
Culture propaganda, normalizing robots and AI.

What’s the Deal With All the Robots in This Year’s Super Bowl Ads?

“Today, about every American interacts with some form of AI on a daily basis,” said Cuanan Cronwright, creative director of Grey Group, which produced Pringles’ Super Bowl spot. “While this has added convenience to our lives, it also has people questioning the progressively more human qualities these devices are taking on.”

And indeed, an uneasy awareness of just how human robots are becoming and what their growing skill sets will ultimately mean to our once-assured place in the world are the driving forces behind most of the ads that feature robots.

“We may be at the apex of being uncomfortable because [robots] are becoming real at scale,” said Jason Snyder, global CTO at production network Craft. “Marketers [are] responding to the emotional and intellectual climate by including AI and robots: Exploiting the tension that exists in the world between humanity and technology; trying to create situations where the technology is insinuating itself into culture. The result can be emotionally uncomfortable.”

But fears of AI run deeper than a generalized anxiety about its expanding role in the culture. Americans who feel uneasy about robots are, more often than not, uneasy about those robots taking their jobs.


Read more: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ ... -bowl-ads/


Alexa Can Help Kids With Homework, But Don't Forget Problem-Solving Skills

"Alexa, what's 5 minus 3?"

A 6-year-old boy recently asked that question in a video, which went viral on Twitter with more than 8.5 million views. He leaned over his homework as his mother hovered in the doorway. Alexa, Amazon's voice-activated assistant, delivered a quick answer: 2.

"Booooy," the mother chastised her son.

It's cute, but it raises a question that's been on the minds of many parents and educators lately: How do virtual assistants like Alexa, which are increasingly common in households, affect children's learning experiences?


Read more: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/10/68300976 ... ing-skills


Amazon's Alexa Turns Teacher for School Kids in Indian Village - Report

In an Indian village, poor internet connectivity and low speeds have not quelled students' desire to learn poetry, maths, general knowledge, and history from their "third teacher", Amazon's Alexa.

A government school in Waruda, a small village in the Amravati district of Maharashtra, has been teaching 42 students a variety of topics and subjects, ranging from mathematics to poetry, without formal classroom sessions with in the flesh teachers, according to a report in The Hindu newspaper. The third teacher is Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant device, powered through an Amazon Echo encased in a mannequin.


Read more: https://sputniknews.com/asia/2019020410 ... ge-school/


Edward Bernays knows best

An old advertiser would try to persuade an individual to buy an item immediately, for example: ‘Buy this piano — NOW’. Using reiteration and emphasis directed upon the individual, the advertiser tries to break down sales resistance.

A new advertiser would instead of directly penetrating sales resistance, try to remove it by creating circumstances that will swing emotional currents that will build purchaser demand. For example, a new advertiser when selling a piano would try to develop acceptance of the idea of a music room in the house, perhaps by arranging an exhibition of music rooms by well-known designers, inviting key people of influence with regards to buying habits, i.e. famous musicians. The music room will be accepted and people with a music room will naturally think of buying a piano, believing it comes as their own idea. Instead of saying to the purchaser ‘please buy a piano’, they have caused the purchaser to say ‘please sell me a piano’.


https://medium.com

For Many Builders, Smart Homes Now Come Standard
Widespread adoption of home technology—mostly thanks to companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google—has made connectivity an affordable, expected standard in new-home construction.

Meritage isn’t alone when it comes to new-home builders including smart technology as standard in its houses. In 2017, Lennar threw down the gauntlet for smart home technology as standard in new homes by including it in its Everything’s Included approach, centered around its Wi-Fi Certified homes package.

Today, Lennar includes as standard an Amazon Echo Show and Dot, a Ring video doorbell, a Honeywell Wi-Fi thermostat, smart door locks from Kwikset and Baldwin, lights from Lutron, music from Sonos, and a Samsung SmartThings hub that integrates with Amazon’s Alexa interface to run it all. The home builder took its partnership with Amazon up a notch in May by rolling out Amazon Experience Centers in Lennar model homes across the country. The builder also includes a visit from an Amazon Smart Home Services employee to help homeowners set up their smart home tech, with an additional 90 days of free support.

“For us, it really represents a three-tiered approach,” says David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures. “The Wi-Fi certification, the smart devices in our homes, and then the activation and service by Amazon, which really represents that next step of living.”


Read more: https://www.builderonline.com/design/te ... standard_o


The True Test Of AI Adoption? When We Don't Realize We're Using It

Industry pundits are forecasting that AI will become a key strategic initiative for businesses in 2019, but in actuality, AI is already all around us. We’re just taking it for granted.

AI has the potential to change the world in major ways -- perhaps helping find the cure for cancer, or helping us reverse (or at least reduce) the damage caused by global warming and other environmental issues, or completely taking humans out of the driver’s seat in cars. But these lofty goals are, unfortunately, years away. What is here today, however, is all kinds of instances of pragmatic AI, silently working behind the scenes unobtrusively and making our lives easier.

Here are four key ways that ubiquitous AI is changing our lives -- and the way we do business -- for the better:

1. We Rely On Spam Filters To Unclog Our Inboxes.
2. We Converse With Chatbots And Virtual Assistants All The Time
3. We Won’t Go Anywhere Without Our Maps
4. We Get Customized Recommendations

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestech ... e176c15f73
#14991230
(soundtrack)

Full Spectrum Dominance, that's what we asked for
Then ended up on the wrong side of the blast doors
Full Spectrum Dominance, that's what we asked for
Then ended up on the wrong side of the blast doors

What if you talk to your shadow n ya' shadow talks back
Why is your shadow wearing a tin foil hat?
Don't have any plans, don't wanna give tragedy a chance
So you pray on knees and hands and follow their commands
The Land of the monitored Free, Home of the monitored Brave
In other words we're all monitored Slaves
And for today we're gonna dig graves in the rain
Let's sing and praise and try to remember much happier days
Yeah Full Spectrum Dominance, that's what we asked for
We ended up on the wrong side of the blast doors
Dismissive kisses, from pretty ass vampire bitches
Resist it, or end up with windpipe stitches
The reaction, breathless aghast, what an extraordinary ass?
That's why the men volunteer so fast
They've got 1 million laws you only gotta break one
To end up in a cell with Tarnush and his Sons
Hard knocks don't have weak spots, it's 2019
The beginning of a brand new epoch
Global currency swap, waffle twat just chartered a yacht
He bought it with stocks and bonds in a box
When they can't afford to choose but budget is not a problem
If they can't decide which one they want they buy all of them
Intruder detection, their own private musical section
Exercise equipment two more stretches
Batman Catamaran, somersault splash
Exciting as a 100yard Football pass
Beer cans clams and smiles, big titty starboard style
You really feel like an artist now

The man from Somerton beach, police fingerprinted his feet
His face was calm, his clothes were neat
Was it yellow jacket or white magic aka white hats tricks?
Some say they won't do jack shit, time will tell
How scientists designed the bell
From the instructions that they discovered behind the veil
Blurred vision, thoughts get foggy, nightmares extreme lethargy
Pet doggies with cerebral palsy - bark at my face paint
Facial recognition deterrent, Real ID permit, Fema camp insurance
Sentenced to hell, after the verdict, I had to work on the furnace
I charged extra for the warranty purchase
Dial 1800-411-PAIN, give's your name
You get paid? you can keep the change
Regentrificate, send 'em to space, what a waste
The human race should never talk about confusion of face
Cause after they cull the herds, the suburbs
Will just be a buzz word patrolled by tough nerds with plush furs
Turn key rappers, bio chip internet access
And carbon taxes credit benefactors forever laughing
At the frozen moisture, succulent boiling oysters
Immediate obedience to orders
Lunar operators have sworn to avoid human confrontation
To depopulate a stupid population

Full Spectrum Dominance, that's what we asked for
Then ended up on the wrong side of the blast doors
Full Spectrum Dominance, that's what we asked for
Then ended up on the wrong side of the blast doors


Intelligent Automation: How Robots And AI Are Redefining The Rules

Intelligent Automation bridges the “islands of automation” where humans are the integration points between systems that otherwise cannot communicate. This is work which cannot be automated any other way. By definition it requires logging in and out of different systems to complete the process (or even a single task) and these often third party systems or otherwise environments which cannot be integrated through a programmatic interface, and so they aren’t. Instead people do it, with swivel chairs and sticky notes, and as a result the design of the related rules and workflows are based on how the applications were built, rather than the actual objectives of the end-to-end process which span across them.
Image

The ability to integrate processes and operations, rather than systems and applications, to deliver closer to holistic or comprehensive automation of work rather requiring (far more expensive) humans to perform this work manually. What is the best starting point for leveraging Intelligent Automation? One obvious first place to look at areas of operations concentrated with repetitive human tasks. In these areas, where humans are bogged down performing tedious, repetitive steps, there are likely gains to be found with greater efficiency, but also quality and accuracy. Also look for where users are shifting back and forth between different application interfaces as part of the task or process step.

Your strategy should lay the groundwork for horizontal scale, tying together discrete moments of automation within a more comprehensive, end-to-end process. To support this, have clear model for the separation of concern between business automation and RPA. There is almost always more value to realized, and greater chances for success, by leveraging Intelligent Automation to facilitate task assignment, sequencing steps, enforcing rules, and other means of work management – rather than seeking to fully replace the work otherwise performed by human beings. As a stand-alone capability, RPA in fact is purpose-built specifically to replace work otherwise less efficient and effective when performed by humans. Yet as a component of Intelligent Automation, the combined capabilities offer a far more efficient and effect coordination of both knowledge work and automated tasks.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitivew ... 6ceb932bfc


Don’t Let Robots Pull the Trigger

Weapons that kill enemies on their own threaten civilians and soldiers alike

The killer machines are coming. Robotic weapons that target and destroy without human supervision are poised to start a revolution in warfare comparable to the invention of gunpowder or the atomic bomb. The prospect poses a dire threat to civilians—and could lead to some of the bleakest scenarios in which artificial intelligence runs amok. A prohibition on killer robots, akin to bans on chemical and biological weapons, is badly needed. But some major military powers oppose it.

Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... e-trigger/



Robots track moving objects with unprecedented precision

System uses RFID tags to home in on targets; could benefit robotic manufacturing, collaborative drones, and other applications.

In a paper being presented next week at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, the researchers show that robots using the system can locate tagged objects within 7.5 milliseconds, on average, and with an error of less than a centimeter.

In the system, called TurboTrack, an RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag can be applied to any object. A reader sends a wireless signal that reflects off the RFID tag and other nearby objects, and rebounds to the reader. An algorithm sifts through all the reflected signals to find the RFID tag’s response. Final computations then leverage the RFID tag’s movement — even though this usually decreases precision — to improve its localization accuracy.

The researchers say the system could replace computer vision for some robotic tasks. As with its human counterpart, computer vision is limited by what it can see, and it can fail to notice objects in cluttered environments. Radio frequency signals have no such restrictions: They can identify targets without visualization, within clutter and through walls.

To validate the system, the researchers attached one RFID tag to a cap and another to a bottle. A robotic arm located the cap and placed it onto the bottle, held by another robotic arm. In another demonstration, the researchers tracked RFID-equipped nanodrones during docking, maneuvering, and flying. In both tasks, the system was as accurate and fast as traditional computer-vision systems, while working in scenarios where computer vision fails, the researchers report.

“If you use RF signals for tasks typically done using computer vision, not only do you enable robots to do human things, but you can also enable them to do superhuman things,” says Fadel Adib, an assistant professor and principal investigator in the MIT Media Lab, and founding director of the Signal Kinetics Research Group. “And you can do it in a scalable way, because these RFID tags are only 3 cents each.”

In manufacturing, the system could enable robot arms to be more precise and versatile in, say, picking up, assembling, and packaging items along an assembly line. Another promising application is using handheld “nanodrones” for search and rescue missions. Nanodrones currently use computer vision and methods to stitch together captured images for localization purposes. These drones often get confused in chaotic areas, lose each other behind walls, and can’t uniquely identify each other. This all limits their ability to, say, spread out over an area and collaborate to search for a missing person. Using the researchers’ system, nanodrones in swarms could better locate each other, for greater control and collaboration.

“You could enable a swarm of nanodrones to form in certain ways, fly into cluttered environments, and even environments hidden from sight, with great precision,” says first author Zhihong Luo, a graduate student in the Signal Kinetics Research Group.

Read more: http://news.mit.edu/2019/robots-track-m ... ision-0219


On-Demand Grandkids and Robot Friends to Keep Senior Loneliness at Bay
Devices and services that facilitate—and in some cases replace—human contact are attracting insurers looking to combat an ever-more lethal crisis of loneliness

https://www.wsj.com/articles/on-demand- ... 1550898010


Amazon patents delivery robot that docks at your house

It's not enough to have an Amazon Echo in every room, no — in addition to voice-controlled speakers to order Amazon products whenever you want, the e-retailer has plans for an in-home robot.

In a patent approved Tuesday, Amazon shows how getting all your packages could be simplified (and quicker) if a retrieval robot stayed at your house and met up with delivery trucks on the street to bring back your orders.

Yes, that means the robot would live in your house, ready to pick up packages once notified.
Image
https://mashable.com/article/amazon-ret ... bcFzzQ8mqZ


MLB Reportedly Will Test Robotic Umpires, Other Changes In Independent League

“I think we are much closer than we were a year ago to having the technological capability to actually call the strike zone,” Manfred told Ken Rosenthal. “The accuracy is way up — way better than what it was a year ago. The technology continues to move … and it actually moved a little faster than I might have thought.

“There remains a fundamental question the owners are going to have to address. When you take away the home plate umpire’s control over the strike zone, you take away a principal piece of his authority in terms of managing the whole game. You really need to think carefully about whether you want to make that change.”

Of course, welcoming robot overlords and moving back the mound aren’t the only rule changes baseball is considering.
https://nesn.com/2019/02/mlb-reportedly ... nt-league/


The Punishing Polar Vortex Is Ideal for Cassie the Robot

This is not a story about how the polar vortex is bad—bad for the human body, bad for public transportation, bad for virtually everything in its path. This is a story about how one being among us is actually taking advantage of the historic cold snap: Cassie the bipedal robot. While humans suffer through the chill, this trunkless pair of ostrich-like legs is braving the frozen grounds of the University of Michigan, for the good of science.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-punishi ... the-robot/


'Killer robots' to be taught ethics in world-topping Australian research project

Australia is embarking on the world’s largest study into how to make autonomous weapons such as future armed drones behave ethically in warfare.

The $9 million project, funded by the Defence Department, highlights that what is still seen by many people as science fiction is a looming reality to military leaders, who see machines playing a growing role in decision-making in combat.

Jai Galliott, a researcher at the Australian Defence Force Academy campus of the University of NSW, said while calls to completely ban so-called "killer robots" were simplistic, the ethics had fallen behind the technology.

"A lot of people speak about ethics and law of autonomous weapons, killer robots and whatever else, but not a lot of people are actually trying to provide the solutions," he said.

Read more: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... 510vz.html

FedEx turns to Segway inventor to build delivery robot

FedEx is the latest company to join the delivery robot craze. The company said Wednesday it will test a six-wheeled, autonomous robot called the SameDay Bot in Memphis, Tenn. this summer and plans to expand to more cities. It's partnering with major brands, including Walmart, Target, Pizza Hut and AutoZone, to understand how delivery robots could help other businesses.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/27/tech/fed ... index.html


Troubling Trends Towards Artificial Intelligence Governance

This is an age of artificial intelligence (AI) driven automation and autonomous machines. The increasing ubiquity and rapidly expanding potential of self-improving, self-replicating, autonomous intelligent machines has spurred a massive automation driven transformation of human ecosystems in cyberspace, geospace and space (CGS). As seen across nations, there is already a growing trend towards increasingly entrusting complex decision processes to these rapidly evolving AI systems. From granting parole to diagnosing diseases, college admissions to job interviews, managing trades to granting credits, autonomous vehicles to autonomous weapons, the rapidly evolving AI systems are increasingly being adopted by individuals and entities across nations: its government, industries, organizations and academia (NGIOA).

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitivew ... a1fa3b25a5


Digital Communications Transformation In 2019: AI, Biometrics And More

From an organizational standpoint, these technologies offer proven benefits and return. According to a recent report from Teradata, 46% of companies are already seeing an increase in revenue when AI is applied to customer service. We may see enterprises increasingly leveraging AI to gain more immediate context on where a customer is along the service journey, as well as more quickly access verification and identification information.

Biometrics, meanwhile, provides an added layer of validation intelligence that will be crucial to the customer experience moving forward. Imagine, for example, being able to decipher a caller’s identity in milliseconds, whether it’s the account holder, a spouse or someone else using the same number. This level of sophistication in regard to location can also enhance efforts to reduce or eliminate typical security questions that prolong transactions and frustrate consumers. Both iOS and Android are working to add advanced location capabilities that will complement this level of biometrics in the near future.

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestech ... d2026d7813


Website uses AI to create infinite fake faces

You might already know that AI can put real faces in implausible scenarios, but it's now clear that it can create faces that otherwise wouldn't exist. Developer Phillip Wang has created a website, ThisPersonDoesNotExist, that uses AI to generate a seemingly infinite variety of fake but plausible-looking faces. His tool uses an NVIDIA-designed generative adversarial network (where algorithms square off against each other to improve the quality of results) to craft faces using a large catalog of photos as training material.

The results are imperfect (look at the area below the woman's eyes as proof), but when everything falls into place, it's disconcertingly realistic -- you sometimes wouldn't know a person is imaginary. It doesn't require much computational power, either. Wang told Motherboard that he's using an NVIDIA GPU on a rented server to create a random face every two seconds. This isn't so much a technological breakthrough as a bid to raise awareness of AI's ability to manipulate images.

The system in question isn't limited to faces. NVIDIA's technology can already handle cars, cats and even bedrooms.

It's a simple project on the surface, but it does illustrate the potential advantages and pitfalls of the technology. You could use this to create plausible characters for a story, but could also use it for scams that rely on bogus IDs and testimonials. Ideally, a website like this prompts discussion about the ethics of AI image manipulation before it goes too far.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/15/ai- ... ake-faces/


BAE Systems Updates F-35 Electronic Warfare Systems

“We’ve delivered almost 400 EW systems to date, and now we’ve updated the architecture and are manufacturing it at a high rate of production. This technology insertion gives the EW system room to grow, and will help the F-35 maintain its dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Deborah Norton, VP of F-35 Solutions at BAE Systems. “The successful insertion of DTIP was the result of the outstanding focus, dedication, and teamwork of our engineering and production teams working in close coordination with our customer.”

The advanced F-35 EW system is a proven digital electronic warfare/countermeasures suite that provides pilots with real-time battlespace situational awareness and rapid-response capabilities. The ASQ-239 system provides fully integrated radar warning, targeting support, and self-protection capabilities to engage, counter, jam, or evade threats to improve survivability and mission effectiveness. The system builds on BAE Systems 60-plus years of EW experience and legacy of providing 13,500 tactical systems for more than 80 different platforms, including F-22, F-16, F-15, B-1, B-2, and classified platforms.
http://www.theprogressnews.com/business ... 05fa9.html


Army lab, industry announce partnership to develop new materials

The Army and a major defense contractor established a new research partnership to create novel materials to further enhance the devices and technology used by warfighters.

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory -- the Army's corporate research laboratory known as ARL -- and the Lockheed Martin Corporation entered into a five-year cooperative agreement, titled "Self-Assembly of Nanostructures for Tunable Materials."

Officials said the collaborative effort leverages a current tri-service synthetic biology Department of Defense Applied Research for Advancement of Priorities program, the Army's Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies and the Army's Open Campus framework to co-locate academic, Army and industrial personnel in regional technology hubs of Boston, Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas.

According to Dr. Dimitra Stratis-Cullum, ARL research chemist and an Essential Research Program manager, the commitment to invest in synthetic biology in the Army and DOD along with ARL's Open Campus business model helped to catalyze the collaboration.

"ARL made a strategic decision to invest in synthetic biology beginning in fiscal year 2019," Stratis-Cullum said. "Soon after, the Office of the Secretary of Defense established a tri-service DOD Applied Research for Advancement of Priorities program titled 'Synthetic Biology for Military Environments.' The collaborative effort with Lockheed Martin came about from conversations, reviews and workshops revolving around our strategic growth and collective interest in this area to ultimately make a game-changing impact on the Army and the Soldier."

Under the agreement, ARL and Lockheed Martin will develop rapid prototyping methods using bio-production and self-assembly to create the building blocks of novel materials for defense optical technology and protective coatings.

According to the researchers, the research is intended to advance Army goals for the use of biological systems for on-demand synthesis of materials and embedding biological products into materials for advanced specialty paints for corrosion and protection, light weight, high performance optics for sensing on drones and production and repair of parts and systems for expeditionary forces through simpler, greener and rapid adaptation.

"The convergence of synthetic biology and materials science aims to accelerate the discovery to product pipeline to meet emerging needs in multi-domain operations including smaller, cheaper and agile production of high performance optics and protective coatings," Stratis-Cullum said. "This will drive to add advanced capabilities onto lower cost platforms. The rapid and agile development time will allow us to adapt to pacing threats and the simpler low-energy production methods could open up new capabilities to support expeditionary forces, repair of complex materials and systems and forward support to sustainment."

According to Dr. James Sumner, branch chief of ARL's Biotechnology Branch, the capabilities developed under this research program have potential application across the civilian market as well to include green manufacturing of materials, such as production of toxic-free paint with anti-fungal/anti-mold protection, and biomedical applications such as reducing the size, weight and cost of diagnostic and surgical devices.

"In addition, the functional coatings work proposed in the agreement for electro-optic and electromagnetic technology has potential impact on conformal antenna work in automotive, aerospace and drone technology that is under development for security, product delivery and other applications," Sumner said. "The advances in controlled assembly could open up the market for the emerging field of autonomously assembled polymers and composites."

The collaboration envisioned in this proposed effort will be wide-ranging, and will involve personnel, material, data, models and method exchanges.

"ARL is bridging to the academic community through co-located personnel as well as integrated and collaborative research across biology, materials science, chemistry and engineering disciplines," Stratis-Cullum said. "ARL is providing the synthetic biology expertise, facilities needed to gain an understanding of biological assembly through combined efforts in genetic control, material-based screening and modeling. Lockheed Martin is bringing design and experience in manufacturing and systems expertise through interdisciplinary scientists across their many business units. It's bringing all this together in an integrated and iterative fashion that we believe will accelerate bringing synthetic biology solutions to the Soldier."

For Stratis-Cullum and as an added benefit to this agreement, the two organizations can together look continuously at the full spectrum of cradle to grave manufacturing through sustainment up front and capitalize on secondary outcomes along the way.

Both ARL and Lockheed Martin have several research laboratory locations and personnel and facilities in the Boston and Washington, D.C., metropolitan regions to include ARL Northeast, which will aid in the collaborative exchange.

The researchers anticipate this generating a translational pipeline with tools to bridge the gap into functional materials that will open up the aperture on a variety of military concepts.

"This program exemplifies the future of innovation and the model we are trying to grow at ARL Northeast," said Dr. Melissa Flagg, regional lead for ARL Northeast. "We are linking some of the brightest minds across the country from government, academia and industry to ensure the most integrated, agile approach to solving some of the Army's most pressing challenges. ARL Northeast taps one of the most significant intellectual ecosystems in the world and brings access to a unique expertise and creativity at the intersection of biotechnology and materials science. We are excited about the opportunity to support this forward-leaning collaboration to not only extend our scientific knowledge, but to deliver state-of-the-art capabilities to the warfighter."

Initial efforts of this agreement are focused on understanding materials integration challenges with a focus on early wins in protective coatings.
ARL and Lockheed Martin will be working closely with both DOD and commercial company partners that align with DOD's Engineered Resilient Systems, Materials and Manufacturing Processes, as well as Army and DOD science and technology ecosystem for early adoption of synthetic biology products.

Officials are planning a formal program launch to be held later this year.

https://www.army.mil/article/217752/arm ... _materials
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DARPA Thinks AI Could Help Troops Telepathically Control Machines

The Pentagon is looking to build artificial intelligence into neural interfaces to let humans control machines with their thoughts.

The Pentagon’s research office is exploring how artificial intelligence can improve technologies that link troops’ brains and bodies to military systems.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently began recruiting teams to research how AI tools could augment and enhance “next-generation neurotechnology.” Through the program, officials ultimately aim to build AI into neural interfaces, a technology that lets people control, feel and interact with remote machines as though they were a part of their own body.

Impossible as they may sound, neural interfaces have already been used to allow people to control prosthetic limbs, translate thoughts into text, and telepathically fly drones. Through the Intelligent Neural Interfaces program, DARPA will explore how AI can make these systems more durable, efficient and effective.

One of the biggest issues researchers face when developing neural interfaces is keeping the tech homed in on the right part of the brain. Our brains are constantly gaining and losing neurons, so the machines often need to be recalibrated as neural connections change.

But through artificial intelligence, researchers could train the interface to automatically pick up on these changes and recalibrate itself accordingly, DARPA wrote in the solicitation. Under the program’s first track, teams would build algorithms that adjust the interface when neurons are lost or added, as well as if there’s any interference between the system and the brain.

Teams participating in the second track of the program will explore ways to overcome another limitation of neural interfaces: the human body itself.

The brain receives a constant stream of sensory information from the maze of nerves spread throughout the body, but there’s only so many feelings a given nerve can express. Under the program, teams will also build an AI-powered interface that can stimulate “artificial signals” within the body—creating a sense of burning without heat or touch without physical contact, for example.

Such a system would connect to the upper torso and “maximize information content carried” along major nerves, DARPA said.

Teams under both program tracks are eligible for up to $1 million in funding and will have 18 months to build a prototype. Proposals must be submitted to DARPA by March 4.

The project comes as part of the agency’s broader AI Exploration initiative, an effort to build artificial intelligence tools capable of reasoning and contextual understanding. DARPA plans to invest some $2 billion in advancing these so-called “third-wave” AI projects over the next five years, which will support the military’s growing appetite for the tech.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2 ... es/154937/


Zuckerberg Wants Facebook to Build a Mind-Reading Machine

All was going to plan. Zuckerberg had displayed a welcome humility about himself and his company. And then he described what really excited him about the future—and the familiar Silicon Valley hubris had returned. There was this promising new technology, he explained, a brain-computer interface, which Facebook has been researching.

The idea is to allow people to use their thoughts to navigate intuitively through augmented reality—the neuro-driven version of the world recently described by Kevin Kelly in these pages. No typing, no speaking, even, to distract you or slow you down as you interact with digital additions to the landscape: driving instructions superimposed over the freeway, short biographies floating next to attendees of a conference, 3-D models of furniture you can move around your apartment.

The Harvard audience was a little taken aback by the conversation’s turn, and Zittrain made a law-professor joke about the constitutional right to remain silent in light of a technology that allows eavesdropping on thoughts. “Fifth amendment implications are staggering,” he said to laughter. Even this gentle pushback was met with the tried-and-true defense of big tech companies when criticized for trampling users’ privacy—users’ consent. “Presumably,” Zuckerberg said, “this would be something that someone would choose to use as a product.”

In short, he would not be diverted from his self-assigned mission to connect the people of the world for fun and profit. Not by the dystopian image of brain-probing police officers. Not by an extended apology tour. “I don’t know how we got onto that,” he said jovially. “But I think a little bit on future tech and research is interesting, too.”

Of course, Facebook already follows you around as you make your way through the world via the GPS in the smartphone in your pocket, and, likewise, follows you across the internet via code implanted in your browser. Would we really let Facebook inside those old noggins of ours just so we can order a pizza faster and with more toppings? Zuckerberg clearly is counting on it.

To be fair, Facebook doesn’t plan to actually enter our brains. For one thing, a surgical implant, Zuckerberg told Zittrain, wouldn’t scale well: “If you’re actually trying to build things that everyone is going to use, you’re going to want to focus on the noninvasive things.”

The technology that Zuckerberg described is a shower-cap-looking device that surrounds a brain and discovers connections between particular thoughts and particular blood flows or brain activity, presumably to assist the glasses or headsets manufactured by Oculus VR, which is part of Facebook. Already, Zuckerberg said, researchers can distinguish when a person is thinking of a giraffe or an elephant based on neural activity. Typing with your mind would work off of the same principles.

As with so many of Facebook’s innovations, Zuckerberg doesn’t see how brain-computer interface breaches an individual’s integrity, what Louis Brandeis famously defined as “the right to be left alone” in one’s thoughts, but instead sees a technology that empowers the individual. “The way that our phones work today, and all computing systems, organized around apps and tasks is fundamentally not how our brains work and how we approach the world,” he told Zittrain. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m just very excited longer term about especially things like augmented reality, because it’ll give us a platform that I think actually is how we think about stuff.”

Kelly, in his essay about AR, likewise sees a world that makes more sense when a “smart” version rests atop the quotidian one. “Watches will detect chairs,” he writes of this mirrorworld, “chairs will detect spreadsheets; glasses will detect watches, even under a sleeve; tablets will see the inside of a turbine; turbines will see workers around them.” Suddenly our environment, natural and artificial, will operate as an integrated whole. Except for humans with their bottled up thoughts and desires. Until, that is, they install BCI-enhanced glasses.

Zuckerberg explained the potential benefits of the technology this way when he announced Facebook’s research in 2017: “Our brains produce enough data to stream 4 HD movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world—speech—can only transmit about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem. We’re working on a system that will let you type straight from your brain about 5x faster than you can type on your phone today. Eventually, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be manufactured at scale. Even a simple yes/no ‘brain click’ would help make things like augmented reality feel much more natural.”

Zuckerberg likes to quote Steve Jobs’s description of computers as “bicycles for the mind.” I can imagine him thinking, What’s wrong with helping us pedal a little faster?

And while I reflexively gag at Zuckerberg’s thinking, that isn’t meant to discount its potential to do great things or to think that holding it off will be easy or necessarily desirable. But at a minimum, we should demand a pause to ask hard questions about such a barrier-breaking technologies—each quietly in our own heads, I should hasten to add, and then later as a society.

We need to pump the brakes on Silicon Valley, at least temporarily. For, if the Zuckerberg reflection tour has revealed anything it is that even as he wrestles with the harms Facebook has wrought, he is busy dreaming up new ones.

https://www.wired.com/story/zuckerberg- ... g-machine/


China’s mind-controlled cyborg rats are proof we live in a cyberpunk dystopia

Yes, you read that title correctly: Neuroscience researchers (and presumably Bond villains in training) from Zhejiang University, China, have created a method that allows humans to control the movements of rats using a technology called a brain-brain interface.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been around for a while now, allowing people to convey instructions to a computer using only their minds. These generally work by taking an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap which picks up neural activity from inside the brain and then training a computer system to recognize the pattern of simple thoughts for a given individual. These patterns can then be identified by the computer and converted into an action of some kind.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech ... nterfaces/


DARPA to Tackle Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) officials will include a panel discussion on ethics and legal issues at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Colloquium being held March 6-7 in Alexandria, Virginia.

“We’re looking at the ethical, legal and social implications of our technologies, particularly as they become powerful and democratized in a way,” reveals John Everett, deputy director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office.

Questions abound regarding the ethics and legal implications of AI, such as who is responsible if an self-driving automobile runs over a pedestrian, or whether military weapon systems should have a “human in the loop” controlling unmanned systems to prevent mistakes on the battlefield. Those questions become more acute as AI becomes more prevalent. “A lot of the technology of the 20th century was not widely accessible to people. That’s not true any more. You have high school students editing genes,” Everett notes. “AI is accessible to people with a laptop, an Internet connection and maybe some cloud [computing] time. So, we need to be thinking about the broader implications of these technologies.”

For the military, autonomous weapons are the “perennial concern,” he adds. “There are actually other concerns that are probably going to become more important. If you see an autonomous tank driving across a plain toward troops, in some sense, does it matter if it’s driven by a human or computer? It’s autonomous. It’s got either a computer or a biological computer—a human—running it.”

Defense Department policy requires a human in the loop for any lethal action, but adversaries such as Russia or China are exploring fully autonomous weapon systems that could prove to be faster and more lethal than human-operated systems. “Then there’s an ethical question of force protection. How do we make sure we’re protecting our forces, particularly if they have an adversary that may not be as concerned about collateral damage? They have a more aggressive stance toward autonomous systems, so we need to understand if it’s possible to provide adequate force protection,” Everett says.

Another concern is that systems built and programmed by humans will exhibit human biases. “The more subtle ethical issues will arise in systems where they’re composed of many different machine learning systems, and the results are not catastrophically wrong, but they’re biased, and their systematically biased,” Everett offers. “They’re biased in such a way that they have subtle impacts on groups of people, for example.

And that could have a substantial societal cost if we don’t understand ways to test for bias, to detect it, prove that it’s there and to correct it.”

Privacy also is an issue to consider, says Valerie Browning, director of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “As AI becomes more prevalent, AI tools are used for diagnostics or in any form where it’s taking something particular about you to make a recommendation. It could all be completely well intentioned, but there is that issue of you putting some information about yourself somewhere that it’s very accessible [to others],” she notes.

Additionally, AI-enabled prosthetics and implanted medical devices could be accessible to nefarious hackers. Former Vice President Dick Cheney revealed in 2013 that the wireless function on his heart implant had to be disabled for fear terrorists might hack into it. “We have prosthetics that are being controlled by the brain. AI is going to play an increasing role in training these systems,” Browning explains. “There could be vulnerabilities, attack surfaces in AI. There’s a cyber aspect to that we have to worry about.”

During the AI Colloquium DARPA researchers and program managers will discuss work that is advancing the fundamentals of AI, as well as those programs that are exploring the technology’s application to defense-relevant challenges, from cyber defense and software engineering to aviation and spectrum management. The event also will feature an update on DARPA’s AI Exploration program, which involves a series of high-risk, high- reward projects that seek to establish the feasibility of new AI concepts within 18 months of award, as well as poster sessions that provide attendees opportunities to engage with the researchers actively involved with DARPA’s AI programs.

https://www.afcea.org/content/darpa-tac ... telligence
#14993161


Hospital 'robot' gives grandfather end-of-life news, leaving family outraged

A California hospital delivered end-of-life news to a 78-year-old patient via a robotic machine this week, prompting the man's family to go public with their frustration.

Ernest Quintana was admitted to the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center emergency department in Fremont, California, on March 3, granddaughter Annalisia Wilharm told USA TODAY in a written message Saturday. The family knew he was dying of chronic lung disease.

After an initial diagnosis, a follow-up visit was made to Quintana's intensive care unit room by a machine accompanied by a nurse.

The "robot," as Wilharm says the family refers to the machine, displayed a video of a remote doctor who communicated with Quintana.

A video of the exchange provided to USA TODAY by Wilharm shows the machine being used on Monday to tell grandfather and granddaughter that the hospital had run out of effective treatments.

Annalisia Wilharm needed to restate much of what the the machine communicated, as her grandfather struggled to hear and understand. They learned that the doctor believed Quintana would not be able to return home for hospice care. They discussed the appropriate amount of morphine to use to ease Quintana's suffering.

"If you're coming to tell us normal news, that's fine, but if you're coming to tell us there's no lung left and we want to put you on a morphine drip until you die, it should be done by a human being and not a machine," Catherine Quintana — Ernest's daughter and Wilharm's mother — said Friday.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 113760002/


The US Army wants us to pretend autonomous tanks aren’t killer robots

There’s been a recent hullabaloo over the US Army developing killer robots, but we’re here to set you straight. The Pentagon’s official stance: it’s all false. There’s no such thing as killer robots; you’re drunk.

The US Army‘s “Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System” (ATLAS) project isn’t what you think. I know it sounds bad, but if you ignore every other word it’s actually quite palatable. “Advanced and Automated” sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Those are probably the only words you should focus on.

The US Army just happens to be simultaneously developing “optionally-manned” tanks and soliciting white papers for a fully autonomous targeting system capable of bringing a weapon to bear on both vehicle and individual personnel targets. That’s a coincidence. You’re obviously not thinking straight. Perhaps you’re hormonal.

https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intel ... er-robots/


Industry Day for the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS) Program
https://www.fbo.gov/index.php?s=opportu ... e&_cview=0


US Army tanks using AI for automatic targeting to help crews

The language caused some people to fear that the Army was developing AI-powered killing machines or robots.

Humans will still be involved in decisions to fire

In response the Defense Department did not change the language of the invitation to present proposals and ideas but explained that policy had not changed. That policy is explained as follows: "All development and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous functions in weapon systems, including manned and unmanned platforms, remain subject to the guidelines in the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 3000.09, which was updated in 2017. Nothing in this notice should be understood to represent a change in DoD policy towards autonomy in weapon systems. All uses of machine learning and artificial intelligence in this program will be evaluated to ensure that they are consistent with DoD legal and ethical standards."

Directive 3000.09 requires that humans should be able to "exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force". Hence, the US does not intend to release a fully autonomous tank on the battlefield but only ones that have AI software to aid in finding, identifying, and engaging targets. The tank is not able to independently decide to fire at a target. A human will make the final decision. This is similar to the situation with drones where the drone operator makes the final decision to fire. However, at present the tanks will have a crew unlike drones. Drones also raise problems about humans being impressed by the AI and firing at targets simply on the basis of AI data about them.
The problem of autonomous tanks and other robotic weapons still exists

At present the US Army is developing tanks that have AI powers that are used for helping the human tank crew to identify, find, and engage targets. The AI system is like having another soldier in the turret to help out the crew. However, the US Army could decide in time to simply do away with the human factor. It could develop self-driving tanks that simply do all the identification, finding, and engaging of targets on the basis of AI. The development of tanks capable of operating without human decisions is surely worrying enough.

Stuart Russell an AI scientist and activist at Berkeley , a prominent critic of ATLAS up to now said “Even if the human is ‘in the loop’ [currently], the ‘approval’ step could easily be eliminated..meaning that this is lethal autonomy in all but name.”
http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and- ... cle/544781
#14999046
RhetoricThug wrote:Sure, you made your point, but the phrasing is quite silly. The 19th century had been full of resources, but humans had yet to discover uses for their resources. We are not limited by physical models, we are limited by perception.


The world population was much smaller then.
#14999341
ralfy wrote:The world population was much smaller then.
This is important, why?
#15005339
Smart farming uses driverless tractors and weed-killing robots

Robots are taking over farms faster than anyone saw coming.

The first fully autonomous farm equipment is becoming commercially available, which means machines will be able to completely take over a multitude of tasks. Tractors will drive with no farmer in the cab, and specialized equipment will be able to spray, plant, plow and weed cropland.

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- ... story.html
#15017075
The Military Wants AI to Manage America's Airwaves

Using a massive simulator dubbed the Colosseum, DARPA is experimenting with AI that manages radio spectrum.


In the internet era you’d be hard pressed to find a more valuable resource than radio spectrum. Technically owned by the public, US spectrum is managed by the government (the FCC and NTIA), then doled out to corporations via license auction. These licenses grant leasers the exclusive rights to use the frequencies for wireless or radio communications.

Due to the laws of physics, there’s only so much wireless spectrum available. And much of it isn’t suitable for use for modern wireless communications, either because transmissions at many frequencies can’t travel very far, or can’t penetrate things like building walls.

With wireless spectrum usage growing at a rate of 50 percent per year thanks to the rise of the mobile internet, engineers have turned to spectrum sharing and frequency-hopping techniques to more efficiently utilize this limited resource.

But given that governments, consumers, and corporations are all vying for a slice of the pie, coordinating this massive spectrum sharing effort (while avoiding interference) may prove too complicated for mere mortals.

Enter the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. For two years, DARPA has been conducting what it calls its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge to develop AI-managed radios that can help users share spectrum far more efficiently.

At the heart of DARPA’s AI experiments sits what the agency calls the Colosseum, a massive radio-frequency testbed designed to simulate real-world spectrum use.

According to DARPA, the Colosseum occupies 21 server racks at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Requiring the same cooling as roughly 10 large homes, Colosseum can emulate more than 65,000 unique interactions across 128 radios simultaneously—with 64 field-programmable gate arrays performing more than 150 trillion floating-point operations (teraflops).

According to DARPA Program Manager Paul Tilghman, the agency’s Spectrum Collaboration Challenge is letting participants take full advantage of the Colosseum’s processing power to help build the AI spectrum management systems of tomorrow (often called “cognitive radio”).

“SC2 is a three-year open competition in which teams from around the world are rethinking the spectrum-management problem with a clean slate,” he wrote in IEEE Spectrum. “Teams are designing new radios that use artificial intelligence (AI) to learn how to share spectrum with their competitors, with the ultimate goal of increasing overall data throughput.”

Competing teams will be vying for more than $4 million in prizes to be doled out in Los Angeles this October. As part of the competition, Colosseum is simulating a scenario where up to five radio networks share access to the same frequencies in a one kilometer area. AI systems are tasked with ensuring that these networks all play nicely with one another.

“We would determine how successful a given match was based on how many tasks, such as phone calls and video streams, were completed,” Tilghman says.

More efficient AI spectrum management will deliver major benefits for the American public. Cognitive radio opens the door to wireless spectrum (which again is technically owned by the public) becoming a sort of commons shared by everyone, as opposed to the exclusive domain of giant corporations—which often buy spectrum they don’t use, either to hamper competition, or to make a profit selling the spectrum later after its value has appreciated.

More efficient AI spectrum management could also lead to better, faster broadband networks. It can also help with the emergence of entirely new broadband alternatives like white space broadband, which hopes to leverage the vacated TV channels from classic, broadcast antenna TV created by the shift to digital television to bring broadband to underserved areas.

Author and activist Cory Doctorow has been writing about the potential benefits of cognitive radio for years. He says he’s not thrilled with the effort being under the purview of the Department of Defense, but believes the benefits of cognitive radio will be well worth it.

Doctorow told Motherboard that one obstacle to AI-managed shared spectrum is longstanding resistance by giant wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon, who historically haven’t been keen on sharing a valuable resource they’d prefer to have exclusive access to.

"Generations of exclusive spectrum licenses—with paid spectrum auctions in later years—have convinced the telecom sector that it owns the spectrum the American people generously allow it to use,” Doctorow says.

“In addition to the technical hurdles of getting spectrum-hopping, cooperative devices to play nice with each other and their inert, fixed-spectrum forebears, we will also have to convince the FCC to un-capture itself from the industries it regulates so that it takes action in the public interest,” Doctorow says. “That might be the hardest challenge of all."

So far, DARPA says that early competitors have been hugely successful in showing how AI-managed radios can deliver more bandwidth than exclusive spectrum use, though a timeline for deployment is unknown. Getting these efforts out of the labs and past the nation’s bureaucrats and politically-powerful mobile carriers will be a completely different battle, than even AI may struggle to solve.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nea9 ... s-airwaves

Cognitive Radio (CR) is an adaptive, intelligent radio and network technology that can automatically detect available channels in a wireless spectrum and change transmission parameters enabling more communications to run concurrently and also improve radio operating behavior.




Spectrum sharing built into smart-infrastructure can be used to integrate a back door surveillance system.
#15049095
The shape of things to come... In media ecology communication is built upon the realization that technology (oral to written, printing press to computer network) affects evolutionary developmental biology. Brain plasticity is in a feedback loop (the nature of a cybernetic environment, see Norbert Wiener) with our technologies. Our sensory diet (be it hardware or software) has the potential to reshape the absorber/user. AI is an extension of us, instead of the foot-eye-ear-arm, etc.; it's a projection and prosthetic of the mind.

New gene editing technology could correct 89% of genetic defects

The new technique is called "prime editing," and was developed by researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who published their findings Monday in the journal Nature.
Prime editing builds on powerful CRISPR gene editing, but is more precise and versatile -- it "directly writes new genetic information into a specified DNA site," according to the paper.
In the traditional CRISPR-Cas9 approach, Cas9, a type of modified protein, acts like a pair of scissors that can snip parts of DNA strands. It can target genes in a specific location -- for instance, to disrupt a mutation.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/22/health/g ... index.html


Bacteria being genetically engineered to locate buried explosives

Raytheon is recruiting glowing microbes to help search for buried explosives. Being developed under a DARPA contract, the company is working with Worcester Polytechnic Institute to use synthetic biology techniques to produce two new strains of bacteria – one to seek out hidden explosives below ground and a second on the surface that glows when they're found.

https://newatlas.com/good-thinking/bact ... xplosives/


Perception won't be reality, once AI can manipulate what we see

While policies are important, so is educating the public about the need to be skeptical about perceptions in this age of AI. After all, the shortcomings of the generation technology today are not likely to persist into the future. In the long term, we should expect AI systems to be capable of producing fakes that cannot be spotted either by us or by our AI techniques. We have to gird ourselves for a future where our AI-generated doppelgangers may come across as more authentic to our acquaintances. Hopefully, by then, we will learn not to trust our senses blindly and, instead, insist on provenance — such as cryptographic authentication techniques — to establish the trustworthiness of what we perceive. Asking our loved ones on the phone to provide authentication may offend our sense of trust, but it may be the price we will have to pay as AI’s ability to generate and manipulate media becomes ever more sophisticated.

As deep fakes increase in sophistication, so will our immunity to them: We will learn not to trust our senses, and to insist on authentication. The scary part of the deep fake future is not the long term but the short term, before we outgrow our “seeing is believing" mindset. One consolation is that the short term may also be the only time when AI can still be an effective part of the solution to the problem it has wrought in this vulnerable period.

https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecuri ... hat-we-see



Farmers are using AI to spot pests and catch diseases — and many believe it’s the future of agriculture

"We can tell when a leaf is developing and if there are any nutrient deficiencies, necrosis, whatever might be happening to the leaf," said 80 Acres Farms, CEO, Mike Zelkind. "We can identify pest issues, we can identify a whole variety of things with vision systems today that we can also process."

https://www.businessinsider.com/farmers ... ease-pests
#15049226
RhetoricThug wrote:Unification of bank, government, machine

Scientific process that is a step closer to economic socialism.
The first global Empire to conquer the human mind/imagination and unite our thought realm with our physical reality

Not an "Empire," but more of a global, unified "Nation" that by older terms to understand, is purely "international."
Machines mining data through centralized noosphere agencies

Yes.
Military drones, commercial drones, pet drones, human drones. Robots & artificial intelligence rising...

It is a possibility that future wars will either be fought by non human technologies and robots, or wars will cease to exist due to the whole world being unified.
Quantum computers (D-wave) will rewrite encryption code and replace the linear binary encryption methods

Yes.
Internet of things will connect everything to the panopticon

If it does not defend the personal privacy of people, and has no regulations to protect individual privacy for each person, then unfortunately yes.
Automated cars will replace human drivers taking the human element out of travel

It is a technological possibility. However, I personally do not support this since automobile traffic movements are unpredictable, and driving environments constantly change.
The overpopulation debate slowly replaces global warming or climate change

If reproduction rates are not controlled. Automated robots, automated assembly production, and technologically advanced methods of agriculture can help provide benefits for elderly population, and the disabled of whom have no offspring, or not enough offspring to provide benefits for them.
Agricultural & ecological crisis popularize genetically modified organisms

I disagree. Ecological crisis will not be caused by excessive pollution since eco friendly industry will evolve via inventions and scientific progress.
Self-loathing & anti-human sentiment

I disagree. This existed since the beginnings of humanity via people disliking each other due to biological and eugenic racial differences. An example are sub Saharan Africans hating racially white, Germans or Italians.
Machine vs man vs machineman vs genetically enhanced machineman vs alien vs Earth vs Universe

I disagree. Such actions will make humans extinct. If a global, nuclear war will not start like a World War 3 between the Soviet Union and the United States due to the results of a global nuclear war making humans extinct and damaging the Earth, then there is no possibility that humans will choose to battle non human, man-made machinery/robots.
Virtual reality and augmented reality will normalize transhumanist culture & make living in the 'matrix' cool/socially proper, as 'business as usual' goes online

Yes. This will help full fill each individual's personal desires.
Clones monitored by smart homes

Maybe.
The adult film industry will back Virtual Reality

Yes.
Cashless society will emerge backed by energy based commerce

Communism will be the final political and economic phase of humanity.
Bio metric & chip implants will dominate security (a piece in the mind for peace of mind)

There is a technological possibility. I desire for this to Never happen. If this happens, humans will be fully controlled, having no personal privacy.
Genetic modification, genetic design, replaceable organs, 3D printing

Yes, and this will be very helpful to people.
Abolition of family structure & gender confusion

Yes. The family institution is the most oppressive form of hierarchy and social rule. Gender is a social construct. Anti family political ideas, and gender being social construct political ideas have been around since before the 1900's.
Youth conform to new ideology reinforced through technological devices & bureaucratic indoctrination molded to accept the zeitgeist

People usually confine to ideologies that are taught to them via media. This has been happening for decades. For example, in the United States in the 1950's, their television media manipulated their masses to go against socialism.
Occult will & representation, revealed secret societies

I will want all fraternities, especially Freemasons and the Illuminati, to be banned and abolished.
Energy based weapons, photon, plasma, etc

Yes.
Slowly increase politically correct language while destroying literacy (critical thinking) language and philosophy

I disagree.
Politically incorrect thought will be deemed criminal and thrown under the errorist umbrella

Humanity has always been like that. In the 19th century, revolutionary socialist politics were banned in some nations, like the Russian or Ottoman Empires.
Provocateur politics

Humans have been doing this for centuries.
Militarized mentality for political, corporate, and public affairs. The culture of fear divides humanity

This has nothing to do with the future, nor the past. This has more to do with a hyper masculine culture, since hyper masculinity promotes social aggression and produces fear.
Education focuses on social engineering & perspective design while maintaining a supply (students) and demand (specialised corporate/state jobs) stimulating a functioning economy designed around central banking.

This has been happening for centuries. Organized religion is an example of this.
Digital socialism will eventually transform into a Technocratic police state with graduating levels of communism for the masses

Communism will be the final phase of humanity.
Pharmaceutical nutraceuticals

Yes.
Automated policing

Yes, by non emotional, non corrupt robots.
Manufactured culture through the communication medium

This has been happening in many parts of the World for decades.
Smart cities, fusion centers, assimilation parade

Yes.
Learning what to think, instead of how to think

I disagree. How to think is more critical, and intelligent then to only think what to think.
Telepathic psychotronics

Yes. This will be very useful since advanced, intelligent AI can psychologically help the humans they are interpreting, and can help determine what production will be done to give the maximum satisfaction for their interpreted humans.
Radiation levels increase

That would be dangerous.
New diseases, old diseases reemerge

I disagree. Less diseases will exist due to more advanced medical treatments.
Overmen seek immortality...

Yes.

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