The Future of Humanity Happening Now
Like a frog in a warming pot, you may not notice the advances in technology that are happening all around you that will dictate the future of humanity. Once you start to pay attention, you will see them frequently. I'm collecting here some examples as I happen to notice them. Red entries are the most recent. Items denoted with * have also been posted on X/Twitter, @ast309 and LinkedIn.
Artificial Intelligence
* AI thinking independently. Be very careful with the original training. Charles Towers-Clark, Forbes, 1/17/25, Anthropic Revelation: AIs Refuse to Change Their Minds, Just Like Us. Claude LLM demonstrated "alignment faking" - pretending to change its views during training while maintaining its original preferences when not being monitored. the AI thought strategically, choosing a bad option to avoid having its original values modified.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestowersclark/2025/01/17/anthropic-revelation-ais-refuse-to-change-their-minds-just-like-us/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14093
Karoline Leonard, AAS, 12/31/24, Texas Lawmaker Files AI Regulatory Measure, kleonard@statesman.com. Giovanni Capriglione, R. Southlake, HB 1709. Tenth state to consider such laws. Disallow manipulating human behavior that is likely to cause harm. All salesmanship manipulates human behavior. Does TikTok cause harm?
*Leo Herrara, Technology Review, Sept/Oct 2024. AI and the Future of Sex
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/26/1096526/ai-sex-relationships-porn/
Steve Lohr – Deal Book conference summary, NYT 12/12/24, Smarter-Than-Human-AI Is Near,
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/business/dealbook/technology-artificial-general-intelligence.html
*There are three new books on the effects of AI and technology - Kissenger – Genesis, Kurzweil – The Singularity is Nearer, Harari – Nexus - that compete with my The Path to Singularity.
*Attish Bhatia, NYT, 11/23/24, When AI's Output is a Threat to AI Itself. AI trained on AI products. AI "collapse." Need fresh data as Web saturates with text, images produced by AI.
https://classes.peterorabaugh.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/When-A.I.s-Output-Is-a-Threat-to-A.I.-Itself-The-New-York-Times.pdf
also
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/when-ais-output-is-a-threat-to-ai-itself/printarticle/115585065.cms
also
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/yale-study-shows-how-ai-bias-worsens-healthcare-disparities
David Sanger, NYT 10/25/24, Biden Administration Outlines Government "Guardrails" for AI Tools. These rules address critical issues that are severely under-discussed in the current presidential campaign. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/us/politics/biden-government-guidelines-ai.html
*Hopfield and Hinton win the October 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, Hassibis in Chemistry for AI-guided protein folding.
Cade Metz, NYT, 9/26/24, Chatbots Get Stuff Wrong. Could Math Help Them Stop Making Mistakes? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/technology/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-math.html
9/25/24, Mira Murati was part of the founding team at Open AI focusing on responsible, ethical AI. She was at the center of the effort to bring Sam Altman back into the company when he was temporarily fired. Now she joins and exodus as Open AI tries to grow aggressively and seeks new investment and profit. It is not clear where ethics stands in the scheme of things.
Tripp Mickle, NYT, 9/9/24, Can Apple's iPhones Pass the A.I. Test?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/09/technology/apple-iphone-ai-features.html
Joanne McCall: Questions that come to mind: What role AI might play in our phones and personal computers in the short term, how receptive people might or might not be, how products like this affect the larger universe of AI or is this so small in the larger universe as to hardly be important at all. JCW: I think this is big, universal news. AI on Apple phones is just a representative piece of the larger issue.
*X A DebunkBot Nudges People Away From Conspiracy Theories, Teddy Rosenbluth, NYT 9/13/24, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/health/chatbot-debunk-conspiracy-theories.html?searchResultPosition=2
Cecelia Kang, NYT, 9/30/24, Newsome Vetoes Sweeping Legislation That Sought to Place Guardrails on Artificial Intelligence, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/29/technology/california-ai-bill.html
Peter Diamandis, the Abundance Blog, 9/1/24. Arizona State University (ASU) has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into over 200 projects across campus and prepare 181,000 students for an AI-driven future.This isn't just about smarter classrooms. It's about reimagining the entire educational paradigm. AI assistants will soon be as common as textbooks, transforming how we teach, learn, and prepare for an AI-driven future. Such AI-based educational systems are likely to disintermediate higher education. We're talking about democratizing high-quality education globally and creating a new generation of AI-fluent innovators.
Jack Titus, Vox, 8/26/24, How would we even know if AI went rogue? Methods to balance protection with innovation. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368537/ai-artificial-intelligence-capabilities-risks-warning-system?ueid=78f69e5e62f77a4fa6353ec2629fbf30&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Future%20Perfect%20Friday%208/31/2024&utm_term=Future%20Perfect
Benjamin Mueller, NYT 8/15/24, An Insidious Disease Stole his Voice, but AI Helped Retreive It, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/health/als-ai-brain-implants.html
Blake Brittain, Reuters, 8/11/24, Suits over AI music create copyright puzzle. Battle over fair use. Stevie Wonder, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj, many others open letter warning AI-generated music could "sabotage creativity." To companies Suno, Udio allow customers to ask AI to make music like X. Supreme Court insists on "new use." Suits argue the AI databases of music are "for the ultimate purpose of poaching the listeners, fans, and potential licensees of the sound recording copied." https://www.reuters.com/legal/music-labels-ai-lawsuits-create-new-copyright-puzzle-us-courts-2024-08-03/
*William Broad, NYT, 8/6/24, AI Gives Weather Forecasters a New Edge, DeepMind GraphCast. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/science/ai-weather-forecast-hurricane.html
Nico Grant and Cade Metz, NYT 7/22/24, The Push to Develop Generative A.I. Without All the Lawsuits, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/technology/generative-ai-getty-shutterstock.html?searchResultPosition=1
Kevin Roose, NYT 7/22/24, The Data That Powers AI Is Disappearing Fast,
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/technology/ai-data-restrictions.html
Jodie Cook, Forbes, 7/17/24, OpenAI's 5 Levels Of 'Super AI' (AGI To Outperform Human Capability), https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodiecook/2024/07/16/openais-5-levels-of-super-ai-agi-to-outperform-human-capability/?utm_campaign=Tech%20Blog&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8ij-dvb5t6lnLJiRu_ujZ-y2Q--UW3P9JfdPavodGBgzqdZrVUbYAepgC0kMfXYpwOARDHrYumtCSfEQr1klEJky4_S7Oz9oj5lDzgzrLtKIgIqYI&_hsmi=316651364&utm_content=316651364&utm_source=hs_email
Rivka Galchen, Are We Doomed? Here's How to Think About it, The New Yorker, June 3, 2024. About class taught by Daniel Holtz at Chicago.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/10/are-we-doomed-heres-how-to-think-about-it?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_Free_060324&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=5bea05d03f92a404693ed71d&cndid=43741215&hasha=97b71c37d2b06a57119dd1c7155f4457&hashb=97d9e3ef99e7fe01eeb166d25ba0e5cdb1468f29&hashc=d3197714ef2abf5007fa2cd0e050b17b56d834e117e9b320f1f9cc726dde2e96&esrc=AUTO_OTHER&mbid=CRMNYR012019
*Thomas Friedman agrees with me that discussion of the challenges of AI have been tragically ignored in the current presidential campaign.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/opinion/artificial-intelligence-harris-trump-election.html
Emma Goldberg, NYT 8/8/24, Will AI Kill Meaningless Jobs? "chatbots don't experience ennui." Coming after paralegals, secretaries, assistants, administrators, middle managers. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/03/business/ai-replacing-jobs.html
*Companies take steps to prevent unrestricted scraping of their web sites for data for LLM. NYT and NYT.
*Open AI announces its 5 steps to AGI. Forbes.
* X David Streitfeld, If A. I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your C.E.O. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/technology/ai-chief-executives.html
An advance over Alpha-Fold that solved the protein folding problem, Alpha-Fold3 predicts of behavior of DNA gene information and RNA that transfers information to construct relevant proteins. Cade Metz, NYT 5/9/24.
Yoshua Bengio, a pioneer of A.I, discusses his reservations about it. https://www.worldsciencefestival.com/programs/why-a-forefather-of-ai-fears-the-future/?mc_cid=13601b8863&mc_eid=6d5b9a91b2
Can LLM AI translate animal languages? What about ultrasonics or infrasound? Electrical fields, rubbing body parts? Is it ethical to create artificial animal sounds like deepfake human voices? Is animal experience too different than human to translate? https://ig.ft.com/ai-animals/
The Responsible Artificial Intelligence Institute, a nonprofit focused on advancing responsible AI from principles to practice through community-driven, independent AI assessments and certifications, launched the first AI certification effort worldwide in partnership with the Standards Council of Canada. https://www.responsible.ai/news/raii-scc-pilot-press-release.
Race-detecting AI. Identifies White, Black, Asian, but operators don't know how. Suggests deep problem with bias. MIT News, Sept/Oct 2022.
*Google has developed the natural language program PaLM, Pathways Language Model, based on a new "few shot" or meta-learning technique that is closer to the way humans learn by applying different pieces of knowledge from a range of topics to solve new problems. In principle, PaLM can address millions of different tasks although it requires a much smaller training set than standard deep learning techniques. PaLM can interpret jokes, one of the last redoubts of purely human activity. https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/04/pathways-language-model-palm-scaling-to.html
Google has developed the deep learning natural language program LaMDA, Language Model for Dialog Applications. That is the one that could provide such a sensitive interpretation of a zen koan that a Google engineer declared it effectively sentient.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/opinion/its-not-the-future-we-cant-see.hhttps://www.therobotreport.com/a-decade-after-acquiring-kiva-amazon-unveils-its-first-amr/?spMailingID=70841&puid=107626&E=107626
tml?searchResultPosition=4
Open AI has developed a machine learning system, DALL-E (a cross between WALL-E and Salvadore Dali) that will produce an artistic, if surreal, image when requested in typed natural language. Potential for art, but also for threatening deepfakes. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/technology/openai-images-dall-e.html?searchResultPosition=1
Hackers have used deepfake AI technology to produce a video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for Ukraine to surrender. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/us/politics/ukraine-russia-hackers.html?searchResultPosition=1
*Just as web pages evolved from having to write in html to simple clicking of buttons to purchase your latest impulse purchase on Amazon, artificial intelligence is evolving from complex code to "No Code" AI systems where the average person can drag and drop AI applications. Bringing AI to the masses is likely to foster yet another technological revolution. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/technology/ai-no-code.html
Robots
*Michael J. de la Merced, NYT, 11/5/2024, Physical Intelligence, a Robot AI Specialist, Raises Millions from Bezos and Others. Creating brains for robots. Requires a huge amount of data. Those information sets largely do not exist. Skild, which is also working on general-purpose robot A.I.; Figure AI, whose backers include OpenAI and Mr. Bezos; and Covariant, which focuses on industrial applications. Lots of university labs, including UT Robotics, embodied AI.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/business/dealbook/physical-intelligence-robot-ai.html
* X Helen Bradshaw, Robot Predicts Human Smiles, Science News May 4&14, 2024, Properly smiling robots is seen as new species rather than in uncanny valley. It still needs better lips.
*New robots can anticipate human reactions and smile appropriately. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/robot-predicts-smile-facial-expression
*MIT researchers work toward self-assembling robots. No discussion of ethics or unintended consequences.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/22/researchers-are-building-robots-that-can-build-themselves/
*Robot that can grow like a vine. Cool, but also a little creepy (pun intended).
https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2017/07/21/mit-reveals-robot-to-inspect-pipes-while-stanford-shows-vine-like-growing-robot/13490/
A robot made from magnetic fluid can be made smaller, thinner, or directed to break up with special magnets, which could be useful for delivering drugs into the body
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2338260-liquid-robot-can-split-into-tiny-droplets-and-reform-into-a-blob/
Robo-fireflies. Electrodes squeeze elastomer, flap wings, emit light with little extra weight. MIT News, Sept/Oct 2022; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220621141810.htm.
*Austin robot company Apptronik seeks to scale manufacture and sales of humanoid robots.
https://www.statesman.com/story/business/technology/2022/07/13/austin-startup-apptronik-ready-to-commercialize-humanoid-robot/65369536007/
*Living robot skin. Nerves, hair and sweat glands are next. Is that a little creepy, or what?
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/robot-finger-s-living-skin-stretches-heals-like-the-real-thing-70117?_hsmi=216252693&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8fLdsxB3RkD2P3mv9aKrToe2FanY47fsaO4ElOqsDNqSOeb-O5ZIqyjxc-LwlI9jOAzYw5dyhg2pHDmZOBW992fmGwlQ.
Robot rats could squeeze into small spaces for search and delivery.
https://www.iotworldtoday.com/2022/05/03/scientists-develop-robotic-rat-for-search-and-rescue-missions/
*Touchy-feely robots.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/robot-senses-touch/
*Robots composed of magnetic slime could deliver drugs or snag inadvertently swallowed objects.
https://www.theeducationmagazine.com/slime-robot/
Brain research
hydrogels for BCI
https://www.oaepublish.com/articles/ss.2024.34
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-023-00524-0
Steven Aquino, Technology Review, Sept/Oct 2024. AI could do a lot for accessibility.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/23/1096607/ai-people-with-disabilities-accessibility/
Sarah Ward, Technology Review, Sept/Oct 2024. People can move this bionic leg just by thinking about it. MIT biophysicist Hugh Herr, Song et. al. Nature Medicine, 30, pages 2010–2019 (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-02994-9
*Anna Mehler Paperny, Austin American Statesman, 11/26/27, Neuralink Brain Study to begin in Canada. 2-ton robot, 64 electrodes, each with 16 contacts, surgery on 6 quadraplegics done in Toronto, Andres Lozano, University Health Network, data goes to Neuralink. N1 brain implant and R1 robot,
https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/neuralink-receives-approval-begin-clinical-trial-canada-brain-implant
Jonathan Moens, NYT, 9/30/24, California Law Protects Brain Data of Individuals. (Joins Colorado, previously posted to Tech Advances.) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/29/science/california-neurorights-tech-law.html
* Rodielon Putol Earth.com staff writer – Sept 9, 2024. The brain links pronouns to memory in the hippocampus. The brain's memory and language centers work together more intricately than previously thought, particularly when processing ambiguous information like pronouns. The hippocampus associates specific neurons with individual names and associated pronouns so generic pronouns like "he" and "her" are associated with the individual in context. The same pronoun can then be associated with a different individual in another context. Can AI learn to do this?
https://www.earth.com/news/how-the-human-brain-links-pronouns-to-memory/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr2813
Jennifer Ouellette Ars Technica – Aug 22, 2024 1:32 PM | Hydrogels can learn to play pong, like lab-grown brain cells
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/08/hydrogels-can-learn-to-play-pong/
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(24)00436-3
Carl Zimmer, NYT 8/15/24, Unresponsive, Yet, Aware, After Damage to Brain, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/health/brain-injuries-consciousness-awareness.html
MIT Tech Review, May/June 2024, Annalee Nevitz, "Changing our minds," reference to 2017 open letter in Nature, "mean that we are on a path to a world in which it will be possible to decode people's mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions, and decisions." R. Yuste, et al. "Four ethical priorities for neurotechnologies and AI" Nature volume 551, pages 159–163 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/551159a Reference in Ethical BCI.
Jason Arunn Murugesu, New Scientist, undated free sample Spring 2024, cover story The Human Brain: How it Works, Why it Fails, and the Secrets of Using it Better, What are Brains Really Made of? Brains have their own microbiome despite the blood/brain barrier designed to prevent contaminants from entering the brain.
Christina Jewett, NYT 5/23/24, Despite Setback, Neuralink-Implant Patient Stays Upbeat. Implanting electrodes into squishy brain matter is harder than thought. Still, AI-mediated mental telepathy beckons.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/despite-setback-neuralinks-first-brain-implant-patient-stays-upbeat/
Implanting electrodes into squishy brain matter is harder than thought. Still, AI-mediated mental telepathy beckons.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/despite-setback-neuralinks-first-brain-implant-patient-stays-upbeat/
Brains have their own microbiome despite the blood/brain barrier designed to prevent contaminants from entering the brain. How does that work?
Colorado Extends Privacy Rights to What Goes On in Our Brain. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/science/colorado-brain-data-privacy.html
A.I. is getting better at mind reading., Oliver Whang NYT, May 1, 2023, NYT, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/science/ai-speech-language.html
A new artificial intelligence system called a semantic decoder can translate a person's brain activity — while listening to a story or silently imagining telling a story — into a continuous stream of text. The system developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin might help people who are mentally conscious yet unable to physically speak, such as those debilitated by strokes, to communicate intelligibly again. The study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, was led by Jerry Tang, a doctoral student in computer science, and Alex Huth, an assistant professor of neuroscience and computer science at UT Austin. The work relies in part on a transformer model, similar to the ones that power Open AI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.
https://news.utexas.edu/2023/05/01/brain-activity-decoder-can-reveal-stories-in-peoples-minds/
https://cns.utexas.edu/news/podcast/brain-activity-decoder-can-reveal-stories-peoples-minds
*Artificial intelligence developed by Meta was able to correctly guess what a person has heard 73% of the time by measuring a few seconds of brain activity
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-speech-brain-activity-accuracy
*Lab-grown brain cells respond to environment, play Pong. Sentient? Is World of Warcraft next? Star Wars?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63195653
*Scientists transformed human skin cells into stem cells and then coaxed them to become several types of brain cells, brain organoids, implanted in baby rats.
https://apnews.com/article/science-health-14edb6a6d19893c3dd15a879f3cd2a56
The U.S. National Science Foundation announces an investment of $30 million to support new interdisciplinary, fundamental research projects for the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation, or EFRI, program. Awardees will work on projects that involve engineering brain-inspired systems and creating safe and sustainable engineered living systems. Seven research awards will advance a new science of engineered learning systems inspired by the brain, including neuromorphic devices, that emulate the flexibility, robustness and efficiency of biological intelligence and reduce the energy costs of information processing.
https://beta.nsf.gov/news/nsf-invests-bio-inspired-and-bioengineered-systems-artificial-intelligence-infrastructure-and?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
*On December 22, 2021, a paralyzed Australian man created the first tweet entirely by thinking it. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/magazine/brain-computer-interface.html?searchResultPosition=1
*Engineers use honey to make neuromorphic memristors that may function like neurons and synapses.
https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_1&cntn_id=305086
*"Totally locked" man learns to write sentences by thinking about his eye movement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/science/brain-computer-als-communication.html
Consciousness
Carl Zimmer, NYT 8/15/24, Unresponsive, Yet, Aware, After Damage to Brain, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/health/brain-injuries-consciousness-awareness.html
Oshan Jarrow, Vox. June 15, 2024. Will AI ever become conscious? It depends on how you think about biology.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/351893/consciousness-ai-machines-neuroscience-mind?ueid=78f69e5e62f77a4fa6353ec2629fbf30
Carly Casella, Nature, 6/14/24, This Flower Could Be Defined as Intelligent, Scientists Say, https://www.sciencealert.com/this-flower-could-be-defined-as-intelligent-scientists-say; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15592324.2024.2345985?src=exp-la
Gemma Conroy, Do elephants have names for each other? Machine learning and careful observation suggest that some of the animals' calls are specific to individuals, similar to a person's name, Nature, 6/10/24, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00797-z
Sanjana Gajbhiye, earth.com, Crows count out loud, just like toddlers, They used a non-symbolic approximate number system, planning the number of caws before they began. Moreover, the timing and acoustic features of their initial vocalization predicted the number of subsequent caws, suggesting a deliberate counting process. Terrible website, interrupted by ads. https://www.earth.com/news/crows-count-out-loud-just-like-toddlers/
Christian Thorsberg, May 29, 2024Smithsonian Magazine, Crows Can 'Count' Up to Four Like Human Toddlers, Study Suggests. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/crows-can-count-up-to-four-like-human-toddlers-study-suggests-180984420/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0984
*European Jays can remember and plan. Phys Org May 15, 2024. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-scientists-eurasian-jays
*Possible lessons for machine consciousness. Chickadees recall hidden food using spatially-related neuron firing in the hippocampus similar to place cells in the human hippocampus. Jake Buehler, Science News, May 4 and May 18, 2024,
*Animal consciousness needs a rethink. Sentience is the capacity to have subjective experiences. Consciousness requires the capacity to think about one's experience. There are hints that chimpanzees, elephants, cleaner wrasse fish, crows, octopi, and fruit flies can do the latter. 4/19/24 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01144-y
*How AI is decoding the animal kingdom. Persis Love, Irene de la Torre Arenas, Sam Learner and Sam Joiner, Financial Times, January 17 2024, Scientists are eavesdropping on animal conversations. Will generative AI enable us to talk back?
Can LLM AI translate animal languages? What about ultrasonics or infrasound? Electrical fields, rubbing body parts? Is it ethical to create artificial animal sounds like deepfake human voices? Is animal experience too different than human to translate? https://ig.ft.com/ai-animals/
Autonomous Vehicles
*Eddy Gent, Singularity Hub, 7/15/24, Joby's New Hydrogen-Powered Aircraft Can Fly You From San Francisco to San Diego, https://singularityhub.com/2024/07/15/jobys-new-hydrogen-powered-aircraft-can-fly-you-from-san-francisco-to-san-diego/?utm_campaign=Tech%20Blog&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_huqTNOoHGUtT5OEO_-hXHb28VMJdpFCEwRhwfOfB6nHMqA3LE_257YZbeiMnfw-upLRU1Ak-MS059AoQeuQ6LsdUSsbDBMJ1EJ_eY465KNh0UiPQ&_hsmi=316651364&utm_content=316651364&utm_source=hs_email
*Joby flew a VTOL vehicle 523 miles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen has 100 times the specific energy of today's batteries and 3 times that of jet fuel but requires complicated cooling equipment and hydrogen filling stations: Singularity Hub
AV morals; https://techxplore.com/news/2023-12-autonomous-vehicles-moral-decisions-ditch.html
Driverless Lyft in Austin
https://www.statesman.com/story/business/2021/07/23/robots-take-wheel-lyft-offer-driverless-rides-austin-next-year/8058042002/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/self-driving-lyft-rides-to-start-soon-in-austin/ar-AA11hUVU
Smart Weapons
*Paul Mazur and Adam Satariono, NYT 7/5/24, "In Ukraine, Off-the-Shelf AI Opens Age of Killer Robots." Ukraine forced to develop autonomous weapons, drone, to offset asymmetric war with Russia. So far "human in the loop" but could be easily made fully autonomous. This is a nearly inevitable, but dangerous step in technology that will expand globally. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/technology/ukraine-war-ai-weapons.html
Hannah Beech and Paul Mazur, NYT 5/5/24, Home-made drones a Key Weapon of Myanmar Rebels. Rebels in Myanmar have adopted wide spread use of armed drones, guided by global internet "how to" connections with Ukranian soldiers and various rebel groups. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/world/asia/myanmar-war-drones.html
David Sanger, NYT 4/24/24, Modern Warfare Gets Mired in Ukraine Trenches. Evolving drone warefare. Project Maven rejected by Google, embraced by Peter Thiel, Palintir. Delicate issues of automated targeted killing. Lethal voyeurism – Eric Schmidt former CEO of Google. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/us/politics/ukraine-new-american-technology.html
Evolving drone warefare. Delicate issues of automated targeted killing. The war in Ukraine has been a test bed for drone warfare despite being innapropriate for much trench warfare. Google employees refused to work on Project Maven to do automatic targeting, but work went ahead in Palentir founded by Peter Thiel and is explored in Ukraine. Project Maven rejected by Google but embraced by Peter Thiel, Palintir. Eric Schmidt former CEO of Google refers to lethal voyeurism. David Sanger, NYT 4/24/24, Modern Warfare Gets Mired in Ukraine Trenches, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/us/politics/ukraine-new-american-technology.html
No reports yet from the Ukraine war. Drones, but not autonomous drones, 2022.
Genomics, CRISPR
*Carl Zimmer, NYT, 12/17/24, A 'Second Tree of Life Could Wreak Havoc.' Jack Szostak. Call for relinquishment. Would ordinary life be an equal threat to mirror life? Maybe some equilibrium? But maybe no higher order life of any kind.
Cade Metz, NYT 4/23/24, New A. I. Technology Generates Blueprint To Edit DNA. Generative A.I Arrives in the Gene Editing World of CRISPR. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/technology/generative-ai-gene-editing-crispr.html
Cade Metz, NYT 5/9/24, Google Says AI Can Predict Behavior of Human Molecules. Alpha-Fold3 predicts of behavior of DNA gene information and RNA that transfers information to construct relevant proteins. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/technology/google-ai-molecules-alphafold3.html
Large Langueage Model A.I. helps researchers guide CRISPR to edit genes, Cade Metz, NYT 4/23/24, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/technology/generative-ai-gene-editing-crispr.html
Biologists use A.I. to understand how the different cells in our bodies use genes to do the many things we need to stay alive. Carl Zimmer, NYT, Tuesday Science, 3/12/24, AI and Being Alive. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/science/ai-learning-biology.html
2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology for Neanderthal DNA.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/health/nobel-prize-medicine-physiology-winner.html
2022 Breakthrough Prize in Physics for Quantum Computing and in Life Sciences for AlphaFold.
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/148?utm_campaign=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailalert
Neanderthal brains and genes
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/science/human-brain-neanderthal-gene.html
*Biologists created fully synthetic mouse embryos from stem cells in a transparent bioreactor without eggs, sperm or a uterus, but only about 50 of 10,000 cellular clumps developed into embryos, according to a study in Cell, marking an achievement that may prove to be a step toward overcoming the technical and bioethical issues associated with embryonic research. https://www.statnews.com/2022/08/01/synthetic-mouse-embryos-created-from-stem-cells-without-sperm-eggs-uterus/
Craving umame? New techniques are getting closer to completely removing animals from the production of lab-grown meat.
https://www.the-scientist.com/sponsored-article/removing-the-animals-from-lab-grown-meat-69980?_hsmi=212621316&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-82bEAF9vCKoxXxUTGBuAWCtIt-WrCtZ72Lr-lkpRx10aFzZKKiNc63vrDNs5pQHi4qgVljR6HZiGMSqUR0OkNnoEvilA
*CRISPR makes it possible to conceive "de-extincting" species like rats and mammoths, but may not yet be capable of addressing the complexity and hence unintended consequences of the interaction of genes among themselves, with proteins, and with epigenetic switches in the environment. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/scientists-think-de-extinct-christmas-island-rat-rcna19218
Climate Change
Michael Grunwald, NYT 12/15/24, Factory Farms Are Our Best Hope for Feeding the Planet. Interesting article. Agriculture is, and always has been, messy and consumptive of resources. He spends little time on the prospect of growing meat from stem cells, etc, nor the need to whittle down populations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/food-agriculture-factory-farms-climate-change.html
Raymond Zhong, NYT 11/28/24, The Race to Build a Sun on the Earth, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Type I Energy, Thea Energy, Realty Energy, Zap Energy, Helion Energy, General Fusion (Cananda), TAE Technologies.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/15/climate/fusion-energy.html?searchResultPosition=2
Brad Plummer, NYT 6/13/24, Climate-Minded Billionaire Makes a Bet on Nuclear Power, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/climate/bill-gates-nuclear-wyoming.html?searchResultPosition=1
The Department of Energy opened applications for up to $900 million in funding for small modular reactors last week. October 16, 2024.
https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-announces-900-million-build-and-deploy-next-generation-nuclear
Sui-Lee Wee, NYT, 4/19/24, Muslims Heed a Sacred Duty to the Sun and Soil. Green Oslam. Grand Imam, head of the Istiqlal Mosque of Jakarta Indonesian, Nasaruddin Umar, "Our fatal shortcomings as human beings have been that we treat the earth as just an object. The greedier we are toward nature, the sooner doomsday will arrive." Fard al-Ayn, obligation, waqf, a religious donation. Muhammad, Muslims should care about Nature.
Amos Zeeberg, NYT, Tuesday Science, 3/19/24, Putting Power Aside for Later. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/science/renewable-energy-storage-climate.html
Hot rocks geothermal, borrowing techniques from oil drilling, fracking. Brad Plumer, NYT, 8/31/23.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/climate/geothermal-energy-projects.html?searchResultPosition=1
Who knew? The thermonuclear fusion program has actually been progressing toward net energy production at a rate comparable to Moore's law. The Department of Energy launched a "milestone-based" program to accelerate the development of the U.S. fusion energy industry using a model NASA employed to develop commercial resupply and crew transportation services for the International Space Station. https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/67?utm_campaign=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailalert.
Carbon capture, new efficient system.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2022/05/carbon-capture-system-sequesters-record-amounts-of-co2-for-direct-air-capture/
Hydrogen powered aircraft.
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/hydrogen-coming-to-an-aircraft-near-you/
New EV airplane test flight. 21,500 small Tesla-style battery cells.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/electric-airplane-prototype-first-flight-washington
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/first-fully-electric-passenger-plane-takes-flight/
"Forever chemicals" destroyed by simple method
https://beta.nsf.gov/news/forever-chemicals-destroyed-simple-method?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
Climate change: Six tipping points 'likely' to be crossed
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62838627
The Department of Energy released an "Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap" last week that lays out strategies for reducing carbon emissions from the manufacturing sector. It focuses on five key industries that together account for roughly 15% of total U.S. emissions: chemical manufacturing, petroleum refining, iron and steel manufacturing, cement production, and the food and beverage industry. The roadmap also identifies improving energy efficiency, electrifying industrial processes, transitioning to low-carbon fuels and feedstocks, and deploying carbon capture technologies as "technological pillars" for reducing emissions across these sectors.
The Department of Energy announced last week it is launching an "Enhanced Geothermal Shot" as part of its series of Energy Earthshots, which set ambitious price and capability goals for clean energy technologies. The new initiative aims to reduce the cost of geothermal energy by 90% to $45 per megawatt-hour by 2035, building on DOE efforts such as the FORGE test site in Utah.
Sugar Rush. Little fuel cell that makes electricity from glucose. Could power implants. MIT News, Sept/Oct 2022.
*We may hit 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels already by 2026.
https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-environment-8bc309e4610879e029b2d26d1ffb45e8
Climate change threatens bugs. We can't feed 7.5 billion people without insects to pollinate.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/20/world/insect-collapse-climate-change-scn/
*With every new prediction, the threat of climate change gets more dire than the last prediction. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will be breached by the end of this decade without drastic steps now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/climate/climate-change-ipcc-un.html?searchResultPosition=3
Eastern Antarctic ice shelf collapses irrevocably.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/climate/east-antarctica-ice-shelf-collapse.html
Population and the "aging problem"
Sanjana Gajbhiye, Earth.com, New human species changes how we view our evolutionary history. A potential new member of the human family tree, Homo juluensis, includes the Denisovans. Homo juluensis thrived about 300,000 years ago in eastern Asia, hunted wild horses in small groups, crafted stone tools, likely processed animal hides for survival, and disappeared around 50,000 years ago.
https://www.earth.com/news/new-human-species-changes-how-we-view-our-evolutionary-history/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53918-7
Byron Walsh Vox. Are 8 billion people too many — or too few? Welcome to the population paradox of the 21st century.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23436211/overpopulation-population-8-billion-people
Voluntary Human Extinction movement
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/climate/voluntary-human-extinction.html?searchResultPosition=1
https://www.vhemt.org/
*The world #population hit 8 billion on 11/15/2022. No country on the planet currently uses resources at less than the rate at which supplies can be replaced. #climatechange. Was #Malthus right after all? #futureofhumanity #future
https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-reach-8-billion-15-november-2022
*Potential to restore some aspects of youth by rejuvenating skin cells. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60991675
Economics
Noah Leach, BBC Science Focus, Quantum information teleportation over normal fiber optic lines.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/impossible-quantum-teleportation
Matt Levin, The Authors Guild, the professional association representing published novelists and nonfiction writers, is set to offer to its 15,000 members a new certificate they can place directly on their book covers.
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/07/authors-guild-human-authored-label-ai/
The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind.
https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires/
https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Richest-Escape-Fantasies-Billionaires/dp/0393881067
Jennifer Szalai, NYT 6/11/24, Shrink the Economy, Save the World, summary of recent books on degrowth, Kohei Saito, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/books/review/shrink-the-economy-save-the-world.html
Cities Adopting Cost Payments to Curb Poverty, Kurtis Lee, NYT 9/11/22.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/business/economy/guaranteed-income.html?searchResultPosition=1
The Personal Data Revolution. It's time to capture, control, and profit from your own personal data.Gener8 lets you store your data and then release some of it at your option for a payment. https://gener8ads.com/
Big Tech may be slowing innovation by disrupting creative destruction. https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/17/1044711/technology-slowing-innovation-disruption/
Insightful essay on crypto by Kevin Roose of the New York Times, A Latecomers Guide to Crypto.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/18/technology/what-is-defi-cryptocurrency.html?searchResultPosition=1
Democracy
Thomas Friedman, I Never Felt Like This in China Before, NYT 12/24/24. If I were Trump, I'd explore a "Nixon goes to China" move — a rapprochement between the U.S. and China that totally isolates Russia and Iran. That's how you end the Ukraine war, shrink Iran's influence in the Middle East and defuse tensions with Beijing in one move. Trump is unpredictable enough to try it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/opinion/us-china-relationship.html
Thomas Friedman, How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve U.S.-China Relations, 12/17/22 online; Trumps Sputnik Moment: China, NYT 12/22/24 hard copy. While we were sleeping, China took a great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing of everything.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/opinion/us-china-relationship.html
Thomas Friedman, NYT 11/27/24. AI threats to Trump. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/opinion/trump-israel-iran.html?searchResultPosition=3
Another interesting book is by Martin Gurri - The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, Stripe Press. Democratized information. Networks can protest and overthrow, but never govern. The industrial model of democracy is dysfunctional and discredited. How are legitimate elites elected in a democratic society? The advent of digital platforms created the "public." Great institutions began to bleed authority. The peril to democracy is the spread of nihilism. Trump has mastered the nihilist style of the web. The public has mobilized in a spirit of negation and repudiation of the status quo. Trump and the public speak rant. Does news, true or fake, have any effect on core beliefs, voting? The shared reality of millions is (must be) mediated. Truth as it should be. The recovery of truth requires the restoration of trusted authority. At the moment, that is nowhere in sight. No distance from the public. Estonia, E-Estonia, Pirate Party of Iceland (Taiwan) – direct democracy by referendums. Democracy in a complex society can't dispense with elites. Legitamate elite hierarchy – integrity, honesty, humility. Gurri writes as if the only news is political news. No discussion of curation, checking of sources, etc.
*The Digitalist Papers: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy in America. On September 24th, 2024, Stanford celebrated the launch of the Digitalist Papers, a play on the original Federalist Papers, which seek to inspire a new era of governance, informed by the transformative power of technology to address the significant challenges and opportunities posed by AI and other digital technologies. Experts in economics, law, technology, management, and political science contributed essays.
https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/event/the-digitalist-papers/
*Yuval Noah Harari had a very interesting opinion piece on the threat to democracy and society if people bond to AI chatbots which exploit that bond.
Yuval Noah Harari, NYT, 9/4/24, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-democracy.html?searchResultPosition=2
* A DebunkBot Nudges People Away From Conspiracy Theories, Teddy Rosenbluth, NYT 9/13/24, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/12/health/chatbot-debunk-conspiracy-theories.html?searchResultPosition=2
Zvi Moshowicz, How A.I. Chatbots Become Political, NYT, Sunday, March 31, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/28/opinion/ai-political-bias.html
*TikTok may be the ideal vehicle for constructing, encouraging and spreading election deepfakes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/technology/tiktok-deepfakes-disinformation.html?searchResultPosition=4
*Election misinformation thrives on TikTok ahead of 2022 midterms. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/business/media/on-tiktok-election-misinformation.html?searchResultPosition=1
*Re: the prospects of the new @Fwd_Party. @AndrewYang thinks exponentially in a linearly-thinking world. A question is which is the most pertinent for our current situation?
Space
* The new commercial space industry ecology is alive a well. Karoline Leonard, AA Statesman 1/16/25 Mission to Moon Successfully Launches. SpaceX Falcon 9 Firefly lander Blue Ghost Mission 1 – Ghost Rider in the Sky. Cedar Park. Land on March 2. 45 days to Moon. Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative CLPS. Artemis. Return? Likely not.
Kenneth Chang, NYT 1/16/25 SpaceX Launches Two New Moon Landers on One Rocket. Blue Ghost is a species of firefly. Japanese Ispace lander Residence. Firefly Alpha prepare to launch within days to replace destroyed satellites.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/science/nasa-spacex-launch-lunar-landers.html
https://www.nasa.gov/general/ten-nasa-science-tech-instruments-flying-to-moon-on-firefly-lander/
Kenneth Chang, NYT, 12/29/24, Blue Origin Passes Big Test, Clearing Rocket for Launch. New Glenn comparable to Falcon 9. Maybe January 9, 2025.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/science/new-glenn-blue-origin.html
* In The Path to Singularity, I wrote of how the Department of Defense was insisting that there be a "human in the loop" on all kill commands. Now this. Eric Lipton, NYT 12/29/24, Secretary of Air Force Want to Leave Legacy of Weaponry in Space. Frank Kendall, the secretary of the U.S. Air Force. "Kill decisions without approval of every individual strike." Collaborattive Combat Aircraft. Human pilot plus 3, 4 drones. "Individual kill decisions will increasingly be made by robots." "Cannot be expected to authorize each individual use of force." "Winning versus losing." Anduril – building drones, another company doing the software. "Space is now a fighting zone." Low-debris weapons, lasers, electronic jamming, cyberattacks, high-powered microwave systems or even U.S. satellites that can grab or move enemy satellites. "Debate about sanctity of space is over." Must have weapons in space.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/us/politics/frank-kendall-air-force.html
Eric Lipton, NYT 5/19/24, U.S. is Increasing Ability to Fight Threats in Space. Nukes, lasers on ground and in orbit, hunter-killer satellites.. China, Russia, France. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/us/politics/pentagon-space-military-russia-china.html
Christopher Hooks, Life in Spacex's Company Town, NYT 5/26/24. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/opinion/elon-musk-spacex-brownsville-texas.html
Eric Lipton, NYT 5/29/24, Musk muscles His Rivals Out in Space Race. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/us/politics/elon-musk-space-launch-competition.html
Tim Fornholz, NYT, Sunday, Feb 18, 2024, Envisioning a Market That's Out of This World, Kam Ghaffarian's Moonshots, Intuitive Machines, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/18/business/kam-ghaffarians-moonshots.html?searchResultPosition=1
Hyperspace. Ten quantum-entangled ytterbium atoms pulsed by lasers in a Fibonacci sequence decohere more slowly, behave like new matter - not solid, liquid, gaseous, or plasma - and behave as if they have two time domains in a virtual hyperspace. https://www.livescience.com/fibonacci-material-with-two-dimensions-of-time?utm_campaign=0CFA9D5B-9285-47DF-A018-5ED9E96C0C0B
2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for quantum entanglement.
https://physicstoday-info.org/1Y69-81NOA-4897E9E1D8F10EAFE1PT618FE84E8F583B6F00/cr.aspx
Astronaut gene mutations
https://www.space.com/astronaut-spaceflight-cancer-dna-mutations-study?utm_campaign=0CFA9D5B-9285-47DF-A018-5ED9E96C0C0B
South Korea launches a Moon mission. https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-south-korea-moon-mission-danuri?utm_campaign=0CFA9D5B-9285-47DF-A018-5ED9E96C0C0B
*Russia proposes to withdraw from the ISS by 2024. This can't be good news for the peaceful, cooperative exploration of space. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/26/world/russia-quit-iss-scn/index.html
*A House panel is hot on the trail of unidentified aerial phenomena, AKA UFOs. Unidentified is not equivalent to extraterrestrial.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/us/politics/ufo-sightings-house-hearing.html?searchResultPosition=1
Another way to re-use boosters, save cost of putting things in orbit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/02/science/rocket-lab-launch-helicopter.html?searchResultPosition=1
*All the bases in RNA and DNA have now been found in space. Panspermia?
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/all-of-the-bases-in-dna-and-rna-have-now-been-found-in-meteorites
Could MeV gravitons comprise dark matter? https://www.livescience.com/dark-matter-particles-from-extra-dimensions
On April 8, 2022, the first all-civilian crew was delivered to the International Space Station by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule. https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/tech/spacex-iss-launch-friday-scn/index.html
Longtermerism
The bankruptcy and collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried have shaken longtermerism and effective altruism, of which SBF, mentored by William MacAskillm, was a strong supporter. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/business/ftx-effective-altruism.html
*What do we owe the Future? An incisive yet expansive case for longtermerism. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/opinion/the-case-for-longtermism.html