Elon Musk: 'We Must Hack Our Brains Or Be Destroyed By AI'

[Queequeg]

He's wrong. You can't hack the brain because it is too delicate. The whole organism is too delicate. We don't even have robots that can do things like weed an organic garden all by itself and harvest papaya and coconut trees all by itself.

truth is stranger than fiction my friend. look into the work of Jose Delgado. Not only is it possible but this has been going on for a long time.

 

[Queequeg]

Great song!

Yes... but unfortunately the Pimp may have ruined it for me :)

 

[Nova]

AI is an attempt by a select group of arrogant rich guys to literally become God. Make "life" in their own image, so to say. Nothing less, nothing more. If and when they achieve their dreams of a technocratic society, they will find it empty and unsatisfying. Just as gods often do in holy books where they wipe the slate clean and start over. Turns out destroying is much easier than creating and maintaining. Who knew?

 

[Makrosky]

I think the whole thing about Elon Musk is a hype. I find all what he says extremely uninteresting and devoid of any exciting topics. Just a rich technocrat.

Nothing he says is new.

Why people take him as a guru or something ? It is beyond my understanding.

 

[Sucrates]

I think the whole thing about Elon Musk is a hype. I find all what he says extremely uninteresting and devoid of any exciting topics. Just a rich technocrat.

Nothing he says is new.

Why people take him as a guru or something ? It is beyond my understanding.

Because he's marketed as a Guru.

 

[amethyst]

I think the whole thing about Elon Musk is a hype. I find all what he says extremely uninteresting and devoid of any exciting topics. Just a rich technocrat.

Nothing he says is new.

Why people take him as a guru or something ? It is beyond my understanding.

Yes, he is known as a media labeled "guru". But I now see him as the front man, the "kinder, gentler" propagator, explainer, boy-genius extraodinaire of the Brave New World, which isn't even called that anymore. He's the "face" to make transhumanism and that group of pseudo-scientific individuals, palatable and reasonable to the general public. Regardless of what we think of him, it is a very real "movement' which wants to end the human experience, as we know it. Their stated goals are to meld man with machine, thus producing the ubermensch, or "new" man for the brave new golden age. A post human existence, if you will. They seem to think that being a "borg" for lack of a better term, is superior to just being a human, with it's flaws and all. Movies have been alluding to this for years. But we just thought it was entertainment. *Ray Kurzweil was/is his predecessor.

 

[Makrosky]

Yes, he is known as a media labeled "guru". But I now see him as the front man, the "kinder, gentler" propagator, explainer, boy-genius extraodinaire of the Brave New World, which isn't even called that anymore. He's the "face" to make transhumanism and that group of pseudo-scientific individuals, palatable and reasonable to the general public. Regardless of what we think of him, it is a very real "movement' which wants to end the human experience, as we know it. Their stated goals are to meld man with machine, thus producing the ubermensch, or "new" man for the brave new golden age. A post human existence, if you will. They seem to think that being a "borg" for lack of a better term, is superior to just being a human, with it's flaws and all. Movies have been alluding to this for years. But we just thought it was entertainment. *Ray Kurzweil was/is his predecessor.

Ok amethyst, thanks for putting it in context. I know Ray Kurzweil. I understand it better now.

I also don't like all this transhumanism thing but I think it's inevitable ? I hate it but I think it's just me resisting the unavoidable.

 

[amethyst]

Ok amethyst, thanks for putting it in context. I know Ray Kurzweil. I understand it better now.

I also don't like all this transhumanism thing but I think it's inevitable ? I hate it but I think it's just me resisting the unavoidable.

Resistance is futile, eh? I think they think they will achieve their goals. I certainly don't believe that. It's sheer lunacy/stupidity to continue on the way they are going. It will come to an end out of necessity.

 

[Makrosky]

Resistance is futile, eh? I think they think they will achieve their goals. I certainly don't believe that. It's sheer lunacy/stupidity to continue on the way they are going. It will come to an end out of necessity.

Really ? You are a romantic

 

[amethyst]

Really ? You are a romantic :)

Depends on the definition of "romantic"

 

[Makrosky]

Depends on the definition of "romantic"

Old times were always better ?

 

[lvysaur]

On a more serious note, I think the most feasible avenue for these "revolution of existence" fantasies lies in genome editing. Humans are notoriously bad at understanding nature directly, but we're pretty good at manipulating systems through an analytical code, and DNA is the closest thing to "biological computer code". We'll likely be able to create 7 foot tall superhumans before we can even begin to intertwine our consciousness with AI.

That said, I have very low hopes that the technology will be harnessed for public good, or even for the good of those who can afford it.

 

[pepsi]

He looks estrogenic. His bottom eyelids are puffy.
His outer eyebrows are thin and his eyes are drooping downward. He might be hypothyroid.

 

[Spokey]

I think he just reads whatever the last cyber punk novel he downloads on kindle and says the central premise out loud.

"We're living in a simulation, and I have hired researchers to find a way out!", er ok, into what? Even if it were true, what's our simulation running on? Some hardware in god's server room? Ok, so what about that universe, why isn't that a simulation? And the universe running that? Also a simulation? And escaping from a simulation. Isn't that like Mario finding his way out your Nintendo?
And hacking our brain to prevent AI taking over. That's like making keys to your house and giving them to random strangers as a preventative measure for burglary. Yeah, the T2000 isn't going to use the Matrix 0.2 port in your skull for anything bad.

I don't know if he's crazy or just saying whatever gets press. All that singularity stuff is pretty daft atm.

 

[DrJ]

I'm not the least bit concerned about AI in the current direction that it is headed. I work in a field that is not pure AI research, but makes use of "AI technologies" if they are useful. The experience so far is that their usefulness is extremely limited, and it depends strongly on having good training data. If you ask me, the current direction of AI is just glorified correlation engines. None of it seems to be capable of what we would call basic reasoning. We have tried Google Tensor Flow, and it can get tricked quite easily unless you have amazing training data, in which case, it will do well on a very limited set of "input types" but will still otherwise suck in broader contexts. Note that it's EXTREMELY hard to get good training data, especially lots of it, except in certain simple circumstances. And also the trained AI is only good for the originally envisioned task. If you change the task even slightly, you have to re-train (get more training data). Also, if you change the input specification, you have to re-train. Just my 2c

Also, Musk's companies are not doing so well if you make them use GAAP. His whole thing with Tesla and Solar City is highly suspect, and looks like nepotism. I think within a few years he won't be seen as the amazingly successful visionary as he is currently viewed.

 

[amethyst]

* on Youtube: "DEPOPULATION and Artificial Intelligence" RichieFromBoston channel)

 

[zztr]

Musk won the lottery when Peter Thiel orchestrated the merger of his web payment firm into Paypal. Everything he's done since then are huge fraudulent scams that will blow up in coming years. Tesla is rife with accounting fraud and has no realistic path to profitability. SpaceX is just a US government funded boondoggle that will end at some point. They charge a multiple of what arguably better Chinese launch services provide.

There are great vids and detailed articles showing how completely retarded Musk's proposed hyperloop plan is. Anyone with actual engineering knowledge was screaming their heads off about how nothing in the hyperloop outline made any sense. But in our unserious media environment Musk was taken seriously in this PR stunt.

It's going to be fun watching his fall from grace, and exposure as a fraud. Much as I heartily enjoyed that blond Elizabeth chick CEO of Theranos go from "second coming of Edison" to "exposed fraudster."

 

[amethyst]

Elon Musk says humans need "neural lace" to compete with AI

Yep. He's the poster boy for endorsing man melding with machine.

"Billionaire polymath Elon Musk has warned that humans risk being treated like house pets by artificial intelligence (AI) unless they implant technology into their brains.

Musk believes that a technology concept known as “neural lace” could act as a wireless brain-computer interface capable of augmenting natural intelligence."

 

[amethyst]

Elon Musk Joins Donald Trump’s Advisory Team

Donald Trump has asked for Elon Musk's help

Uh oh.

 

[Giraffe]

'We Must Hack Our Brains Or Be Destroyed By AI'

It's this deadly cold virus that is causing all this new madness in the world. It's forcing us to do the lockdowns and wear masks and all that jazz.

....

In a Q&A article published in October 2020 the neuroscientist John P. Donoghueanswers questions as to the limits and challenges of neurotechnology. I am only citing the part that is relevant for this thread:

Is it possible that neurotechnology can synergize artificial intelligence?

Indeed, it is notable that neurotechnology for network research has another potential area of impact. Artificial neural networks are spectacular at solving specialized problems. By contrast, the brain solves the problem of general intelligence in a way that machines (current AI) fail to accomplish—for example, the simple CAPTCHA on websites designed to keep bots out. Advanced, high-density neurotechnology devices might provide the network-level data and key insights needed to explain and mimic general human intelligence. Such a discovery would, in my view, radically transform the role of machines and humans in society. By combining specialized and general intelligence, such machines would almost certainly outdo us in almost everything. I think the discovery of the brain’s mechanism of general intelligence is likely, but it is not at all clear when. The impact of this advance is very hard to predict but would undoubtedly be immense, as entertained in a vast body of science fiction books. We need mechanisms in place to deal with a tidal wave of ethical, legal, and social effects should we become able to create machines that can exceed all human capabilities, and we need to be ready to integrate this technology ethically and responsibly for our collective benefit.

.....

As far as I understand it, there are currently two groups of clinical applications:

• Deep brain stimulation (DBS) uses electrical stimulation to lessen the symptoms in movement disorders such as Parkinson's or Tourette's syndrome.
• Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) read the activity in the brain (like an EEG) and feed this information it into a device. For example in patients that have become paralyzed after an accident, the pattern that is seen in the person's brain when they imagine a certain movement could be translated into the movement of a prosthetic limp.

I can imagine that the military has some ideas, too, how they would like to use neurotechnology.

The stories of different patients:

Radical Surgery Cures Teen of Tourette's Syndrome (04.01.11)
Deep Brain Stimulation for the Treatment of Tourette's Syndrome: Andrew's Story
Paralyzed man can move his arms again with brain implants
The nerve bypass: how to move a paralysed hand
Warning: Swimming and deep brain stimulation do not mix