Tag Archives: self

#432512 How Will Merging Minds and Machines ...

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Android

One of the most exciting and frightening outcomes of technological advancement is the potential to merge our minds with machines. If achieved, this would profoundly boost our cognitive capabilities. More importantly, however, it could be a revolution in human identity, emotion, spirituality, and self-awareness.

Brain-machine interface technology is already being developed by pioneers and researchers around the globe. It’s still early and today’s tech is fairly rudimentary, but it’s a fast-moving field, and some believe it will advance faster than generally expected. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that by the 2030s we will be able to connect our brains to the internet via nanobots that will “provide full-immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system, provide direct brain-to-brain communication over the internet, and otherwise greatly expand human intelligence.” Even if the advances are less dramatic, however, they’ll have significant implications.

How might this technology affect human consciousness? What about its implications on our sentience, self-awareness, or subjective experience of our illusion of self?

Consciousness can be hard to define, but a holistic definition often encompasses many of our most fundamental capacities, such as wakefulness, self-awareness, meta-cognition, and sense of agency. Beyond that, consciousness represents a spectrum of awareness, as seen across various species of animals. Even humans experience different levels of existential awareness.

From psychedelics to meditation, there are many tools we already use to alter and heighten our conscious experience, both temporarily and permanently. These tools have been said to contribute to a richer life, with the potential to bring experiences of beauty, love, inner peace, and transcendence. Relatively non-invasive, these tools show us what a seemingly minor imbalance of neurochemistry and conscious internal effort can do to the subjective experience of being human.

Taking this into account, what implications might emerging brain-machine interface technologies have on the “self”?

The Tools for Self-Transcendence
At the basic level, we are currently seeing the rise of “consciousness hackers” using techniques like non-invasive brain stimulation through EEG, nutrition, virtual reality, and ecstatic experiences to create environments for heightened consciousness and self-awareness. In Stealing Fire, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal explore this trillion-dollar altered-states economy and how innovators and thought leaders are “harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition.” Beyond enhanced productivity, these altered states expose our inner potential and give us a glimpse of a greater state of being.

Expanding consciousness through brain augmentation and implants could one day be just as accessible. Researchers are working on an array of neurotechnologies as simple and non-invasive as electrode-based EEGs to invasive implants and techniques like optogenetics, where neurons are genetically reprogrammed to respond to pulses of light. We’ve already connected two brains via the internet, allowing the two to communicate, and future-focused startups are researching the possibilities too. With an eye toward advanced brain-machine interfaces, last year Elon Musk unveiled Neuralink, a company whose ultimate goal is to merge the human mind with AI through a “neural lace.”

Many technologists predict we will one day merge with and, more speculatively, upload our minds onto machines. Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth writes in Skeptic magazine, “All of today’s neuroscience models are fundamentally computational by nature, supporting the theoretical possibility of mind-uploading.” This might include connecting with other minds using digital networks or even uploading minds onto quantum computers, which can be in multiple states of computation at a given time.

In their book Evolving Ourselves, Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans describe a world where evolution is no longer driven by natural processes. Instead, it is driven by human choices, through what they call unnatural selection and non-random mutation. With advancements in genetic engineering, we are indeed seeing evolution become an increasingly conscious process with an accelerated pace. This could one day apply to the evolution of our consciousness as well; we would be using our consciousness to expand our consciousness.

What Will It Feel Like?
We may be able to come up with predictions of the impact of these technologies on society, but we can only wonder what they will feel like subjectively.

It’s hard to imagine, for example, what our stream of consciousness will feel like when we can process thoughts and feelings 1,000 times faster, or how artificially intelligent brain implants will impact our capacity to love and hate. What will the illusion of “I” feel like when our consciousness is directly plugged into the internet? Overall, what impact will the process of merging with technology have on the subjective experience of being human?

The Evolution of Consciousness
In The Future Evolution of Consciousness, Thomas Lombardo points out, “We are a journey rather than a destination—a chapter in the evolutionary saga rather than a culmination. Just as probable, there will also be a diversification of species and types of conscious minds. It is also very likely that new psychological capacities, incomprehensible to us, will emerge as well.”

Humans are notorious for fearing the unknown. For any individual who has never experienced an altered state, be it spiritual or psychedelic-induced, it is difficult to comprehend the subjective experience of that state. It is why many refer to their first altered-state experience as “waking up,” wherein they didn’t even realize they were asleep.

Similarly, exponential neurotechnology represents the potential of a higher state of consciousness and a range of experiences that are unimaginable to our current default state.

Our capacity to think and feel is set by the boundaries of our biological brains. To transform and expand these boundaries is to transform and expand the first-hand experience of consciousness. Emerging neurotechnology may end up providing the awakening our species needs.

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Posted in Human Robots

#432482 This Week’s Awesome Stories From ...

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Android

CYBERNETICS
A Brain-Boosting Prosthesis Moves From Rats to Humans
Robbie Gonzalez | WIRED
“Today, their proof-of-concept prosthetic lives outside a patient’s head and connects to the brain via wires. But in the future, Hampson hopes, surgeons could implant a similar apparatus entirely within a person’s skull, like a neural pacemaker. It could augment all manner of brain functions—not just in victims of dementia and brain injury, but healthy individuals, as well.”

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Here’s How the US Needs to Prepare for the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Will Knight | MIT Technology Review
“The Trump administration has abandoned this vision and has no intention of devising its own AI plan, say those working there. They say there is no need for an AI moonshot, and that minimizing government interference is the best way to make sure the technology flourishes… That looks like a huge mistake. If it essentially ignores such a technological transformation, the US might never make the most of an opportunity to reboot its economy and kick-start both wage growth and job creation. Failure to plan could also cause the birthplace of AI to lose ground to international rivals.”

BIOMIMICRY
Underwater GPS Inspired by Shrimp Eyes
Jeremy Hsu | IEEE Spectrum
“A few years ago, U.S. and Australian researchers developed a special camera inspired by the eyes of mantis shrimp that can see the polarization patterns of light waves, which resemble those in a rope being waved up and down. That means the bio-inspired camera can detect how light polarization patterns change once the light enters the water and gets deflected or scattered.”

POLITICS & TECHNOLOGY
‘The Business of War’: Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon
Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi | The New York Times
“Thousands of Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a letter protesting the company’s involvement in a Pentagon program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes.

The letter, which is circulating inside Google and has garnered more than 3,100 signatures, reflects a culture clash between Silicon Valley and the federal government that is likely to intensify as cutting-edge artificial intelligence is increasingly employed for military purposes. ‘We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,’ says the letter, addressed to Sundar Pichai, the company’s chief executive. It asks that Google pull out of Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program, and announce a policy that it will not ‘ever build warfare technology.’ (Read the text of the letter.)”

CYBERNETICS
MIT’s New Headset Reads the ‘Words in Your Head’
Brian Heater | TechCrunch
“A team at MIT has been working on just such a device, though the hardware design, admittedly, doesn’t go too far toward removing that whole self-consciousness bit from the equation. AlterEgo is a headmounted—or, more properly, jaw-mounted—device that’s capable of reading neuromuscular signals through built-in electrodes. The hardware, as MIT puts it, is capable of reading ‘words in your head.’”



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Posted in Human Robots

#432431 Why Slowing Down Can Actually Help Us ...

Posted on March 30, 2018 by Android

Leah Weiss believes that when we pay attention to how we do our work—our thoughts and feelings about what we do and why we do it—we can tap into a much deeper reservoir of courage, creativity, meaning, and resilience.

As a researcher, educator, and author, Weiss teaches a course called “Leading with Compassion and Mindfulness” at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, one of the most competitive MBA programs in the world, and runs programs at HopeLab.

Weiss is the author of the new book How We Work: Live Your Purpose, Reclaim your Sanity and Embrace the Daily Grind, endorsed by the Dalai Lama, among others. I caught up with Leah to learn more about how the practice of mindfulness can deepen our individual and collective purpose and passion.

Lisa Kay Solomon: We’re hearing a lot about mindfulness these days. What is mindfulness and why is it so important to bring into our work? Can you share some of the basic tenets of the practice?

Leah Weiss, PhD: Mindfulness is, in its most literal sense, “the attention to inattention.” It’s as simple as noticing when you’re not paying attention and then re-focusing. It is prioritizing what is happening right now over internal and external noise.

The ability to work well with difficult coworkers, handle constructive feedback and criticism, regulate emotions at work—all of these things can come from regular mindfulness practice.

Some additional benefits of mindfulness are a greater sense of compassion (both self-compassion and compassion for others) and a way to seek and find purpose in even mundane things (and especially at work). From the business standpoint, mindfulness at work leads to increased productivity and creativity, mostly because when we are focused on one task at a time (as opposed to multitasking), we produce better results.

We spend more time with our co-workers than we do with our families; if our work relationships are negative, we suffer both mentally and physically. Even worse, we take all of those negative feelings home with us at the end of the work day. The antidote to this prescription for unhappiness is to have clear, strong purpose (one third of people do not have purpose at work and this is a major problem in the modern workplace!). We can use mental training to grow as people and as employees.

LKS: What are some recommendations you would make to busy leaders who are working around the clock to change the world?

LW: I think the most important thing is to remember to tend to our relationship with ourselves while trying to change the world. If we’re beating up on ourselves all the time we’ll be depleted.

People passionate about improving the world can get into habits of believing self-care isn’t important. We demand a lot of ourselves. It’s okay to fail, to mess up, to make mistakes—what’s important is how we learn from those mistakes and what we tell ourselves about those instances. What is the “internal script” playing in your own head? Is it positive, supporting, and understanding? It should be. If it isn’t, you can work on it. And the changes you make won’t just improve your quality of life, they’ll make you more resilient to weather life’s inevitable setbacks.

A close second recommendation is to always consider where everyone in an organization fits and help everyone (including yourself) find purpose. When you know what your own purpose is and show others their purpose, you can motivate a team and help everyone on a team gain pride in and at work. To get at this, make sure to ask people on your team what really lights them up. What sucks their energy and depletes them? If we know our own answers to these questions and relate them to the people we work with, we can create more engaged organizations.

LKS: Can you envision a future where technology and mindfulness can work together?

LW: Technology and mindfulness are already starting to work together. Some artificial intelligence companies are considering things like mindfulness and compassion when building robots, and there are numerous apps that target spreading mindfulness meditations in a widely-accessible way.

LKS: Looking ahead at our future generations who seem more attached to their devices than ever, what advice do you have for them?

LW: It’s unrealistic to say “stop using your device so much,” so instead, my suggestion is to make time for doing things like scrolling social media and make the same amount of time for putting your phone down and watching a movie or talking to a friend. No matter what it is that you are doing, make sure you have meta-awareness or clarity about what you’re paying attention to. Be clear about where your attention is and recognize that you can be a steward of attention. Technology can support us in this or pull us away from this; it depends on how we use it.

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#432316 Video Friday: Dexterous Humanoid, ...

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Android

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Continue reading →

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#432165 Silicon Valley Is Winning the Race to ...

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Android

Henry Ford didn’t invent the motor car. The late 1800s saw a flurry of innovation by hundreds of companies battling to deliver on the promise of fast, efficient and reasonably-priced mechanical transportation. Ford later came to dominate the industry thanks to the development of the moving assembly line.

Today, the sector is poised for another breakthrough with the advent of cars that drive themselves. But unlike the original wave of automobile innovation, the race for supremacy in autonomous vehicles is concentrated among a few corporate giants. So who is set to dominate this time?

I’ve analyzed six companies we think are leading the race to build the first truly driverless car. Three of these—General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen—come from the existing car industry and need to integrate self-driving technology into their existing fleet of mass-produced vehicles. The other three—Tesla, Uber, and Waymo (owned by the same company as Google)—are newcomers from the digital technology world of Silicon Valley and have to build a mass manufacturing capability.

While it’s impossible to know all the developments at any given time, we have tracked investments, strategic partnerships, and official press releases to learn more about what’s happening behind the scenes. The car industry typically rates self-driving technology on a scale from Level 0 (no automation) to Level 5 (full automation). We’ve assessed where each company is now and estimated how far they are from reaching the top level. Here’s how we think each player is performing.

Volkswagen
Volkswagen has invested in taxi-hailing app Gett and partnered with chip-maker Nvidia to develop an artificial intelligence co-pilot for its cars. In 2018, the VW Group is set to release the Audi A8, the first production vehicle that reaches Level 3 on the scale, “conditional driving automation.” This means the car’s computer will handle all driving functions, but a human has to be ready to take over if necessary.

Ford
Ford already sells cars with a Level 2 autopilot, “partial driving automation.” This means one or more aspects of driving are controlled by a computer based on information about the environment, for example combined cruise control and lane centering. Alongside other investments, the company has put $1 billion into Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company for self-driving vehicles. Following a trial to test pizza delivery using autonomous vehicles, Ford is now testing Level 4 cars on public roads. These feature “high automation,” where the car can drive entirely on its own but not in certain conditions such as when the road surface is poor or the weather is bad.

General Motors
GM also sells vehicles with Level 2 automation but, after buying Silicon Valley startup Cruise Automation in 2016, now plans to launch the first mass-production-ready Level 5 autonomy vehicle that drives completely on its own by 2019. The Cruise AV will have no steering wheel or pedals to allow a human to take over and be part of a large fleet of driverless taxis the company plans to operate in big cities. But crucially the company hasn’t yet secured permission to test the car on public roads.

Waymo (Google)

Waymo Level 5 testing. Image Credit: Waymo

Founded as a special project in 2009, Waymo separated from Google (though they’re both owned by the same parent firm, Alphabet) in 2016. Though it has never made, sold, or operated a car on a commercial basis, Waymo has created test vehicles that have clocked more than 4 million miles without human drivers as of November 2017. Waymo tested its Level 5 car, “Firefly,” between 2015 and 2017 but then decided to focus on hardware that could be installed in other manufacturers’ vehicles, starting with the Chrysler Pacifica.

Uber
The taxi-hailing app maker Uber has been testing autonomous cars on the streets of Pittsburgh since 2016, always with an employee behind the wheel ready to take over in case of a malfunction. After buying the self-driving truck company Otto in 2016 for a reported $680 million, Uber is now expanding its AI capabilities and plans to test NVIDIA’s latest chips in Otto’s vehicles. It has also partnered with Volvo to create a self-driving fleet of cars and with Toyota to co-create a ride-sharing autonomous vehicle.

Tesla
The first major car manufacturer to come from Silicon Valley, Tesla was also the first to introduce Level 2 autopilot back in 2015. The following year, it announced that all new Teslas would have the hardware for full autonomy, meaning once the software is finished it can be deployed on existing cars with an instant upgrade. Some experts have challenged this approach, arguing that the company has merely added surround cameras to its production cars that aren’t as capable as the laser-based sensing systems that most other carmakers are using.

But the company has collected data from hundreds of thousands of cars, driving millions of miles across all terrains. So, we shouldn’t dismiss the firm’s founder, Elon Musk, when he claims a Level 4 Tesla will drive from LA to New York without any human interference within the first half of 2018.

Winners

Who’s leading the race? Image Credit: IMD

At the moment, the disruptors like Tesla, Waymo, and Uber seem to have the upper hand. While the traditional automakers are focusing on bringing Level 3 and 4 partial automation to market, the new companies are leapfrogging them by moving more directly towards Level 5 full automation. Waymo may have the least experience of dealing with consumers in this sector, but it has already clocked up a huge amount of time testing some of the most advanced technology on public roads.

The incumbent carmakers are also focused on the difficult process of integrating new technology and business models into their existing manufacturing operations by buying up small companies. The challengers, on the other hand, are easily partnering with other big players including manufacturers to get the scale and expertise they need more quickly.

Tesla is building its own manufacturing capability but also collecting vast amounts of critical data that will enable it to more easily upgrade its cars when ready for full automation. In particular, Waymo’s experience, technology capability, and ability to secure solid partnerships puts it at the head of the pack.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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