The best visuals to explain the Singularity to senior executives
Tomorrow morning I’m doing a presentation to the top executive team of a very large organization on the next 20 years. Most of what I will cover will be general societal, business and technological drivers as well as specific strategic issues driving their business. However as part of stretching their thinking I’ll also speak a about the Singularity. As such I’ve been trying to find one good image to introduce my explanation, however I haven’t been able to find one which is quite right for the purpose. Ray Kurzweil’s Six Epochs diagram below is great and the one I’ll probably end up using, however it is a bit too over-the-top for most senior executives. Source: Ray Kurzweil, Applied Abstractions The chart below from Hans Moravec showing how exponential growth of computing power will allow machines to match human intellectual capabilities is excellent, but it is seriously out of date. Source: Hans Moravec, When will computer hardware match the human brain? Source: Ray Kurzweil, Tropophilia
Who should pay when your robot breaks the law?
Since it's inevitable I'll take the bullet and bring up Asimov's three laws of robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. 0. Ike was horrified when people started talking about applying his three laws to real robots.
Planetary Alchemy by Alan Smale
Let’s fix Mars. Of course, the Red Planet is spectacular just as it is. Images from forty years of Mars missions have revealed its stark beauty and rose-tinted rocky grandeur. Other canyons, networks of river valleys, stream beds, gullies, channels, layered deposits, deltas and alluvial fans provide strong evidence for flowing water, crater lakes and salty seas in a much warmer and wetter period of Mars’s history. There’s a lot to like about Mars. Some time in the future we might decide we need that dusty red real estate. Such a stunning transformation may be easier than you imagine. Keeping Pressurized and Keeping Warm Down to basics. First, the air pressure. Next: Temperature. Finally, the atmospheric composition. As it turns out, all three of these are fixable with technology that we either have now, or could develop within decades. So, what would it take to free all this water and CO2? There are two sane ways of heating the surface of Mars. Even more dramatic methods are possible.
Future - Science & Environment - Global resources stock check
If we fail to correct current consumption trends, then when will our most valuable natural resources run out? As the world’s population soars, so does its consumption, and as a result we are stretching many of our natural resources to their limits. Of course, the assumption is that human ingenuity and market forces will prevent supplies from running out: we could create better or cheaper extraction methods, recycle materials, find alternatives to non-renewable sources, or reduce consumption. The hope is that talks at the Rio+20 Earth summit will help to steer the world economy on a more sustainable path. If you want to see the data we used to construct this infographic, you can find it here [PDF].
9 Overlooked Technologies That Could Transform The World
What I've noticed is that most people don't really pay attention to "science" news, unless it's something that they can see immediately. I think this is at least partially because of the amount of news that comes out daily - whatever we may think about the quality of news, there is just a flood of it, which makes picking out "interesting" items difficult. When I talk about (just for example) the idea of gene therapy, most people think that it is still complete science fiction, as opposed to a very near-term product that will be available. Of course, CSP has been around for years, so it isn't really "new" to the average person. What they don't realize is the way that efficiencies have improved... Finally, of course, for a majority of people, the only science fiction they think of it Star Wars/Trek, or (advanced!) If you are on friendly terms with a non-technical coworker, ask them about any of the subjects mentioned here, you will be surprised at their response.
Imagining the Super-Enhanced Athlete of the Future
Sorry ‘Prometheus’ fans: No interstellar travel for five more centuries
When do we get one? (AP) Possibly not. A fascinating recent research paper by Marc G. Here’s Millis’s reasoning: Imagine we merely wanted to launch a small, 11-ton probe that took 75 years to get to our closest star, Alpha Centauri. And humans don’t exactly have that energy just lying around. The good news, Millis notes, is that we could probably have a small colony ship that contained a bunch of humans ready even sooner, by the year 2200 or so. Below is a graph showing how soon different future spaceships might arrive depending on how fast the world’s energy supply grows. Millis, who’s now at the Tau Zero Foundation, also raises an interesting paradox. Anyway, there are more numbers in Millis’s paper (pdf), which is available on Arxiv.
10 of the Weirdest Futurist Scenarios for the Evolution of Humanity
Curious to know which of these visions you feel is the most and least plausible. I've got to hand it to you, Mr. Dvorsky. A lot of those ideas are pretty hair-brained, but you were able to weave an article from them anyhow. First off, I would say that the future will hold some combination of "all of the above", with no one particular hypothesis prevailing in the next few hundred years as each hypothesized outcome exploits a unique ecological niche. That said, brain size is DEFINITELY correlated with intelligence. The reason Americans' heads are getting bigger may be due to the high rate of C-sections in the US. I actually agree with you about speciation. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Wow, surprised to see so many people in support of the uploading scenario. Did Rob Schneider give you permission to use his face on that top photo?? Heh, that actually occurred to me, too. Hm...None of the above. Glad to hear it!
You Can't Run From the Cop Car of the Future
