AI this week: Elon Musk’s AI-dominated future

This week’s headlines

• The Pentagon wants it increase Its hordes of autonomous drones with some AI. File it under Things that will keep you up at night.
• OpenAI has acknowledged that AI text detector is generally inactive. Cool.
• When concerned about the push of AI political manipulation development, Google has announced that any political ads hosted on its platform must disclose whether they use AI. I’m not sure that would really solve the problem, but it’s a nice gesture nonetheless.
• UNESCO, the specialized agency of the United Nations focusing on arts, culture and education, urged government regulates innovative AI in schools. I doubt they noticed How terrible it is ChatGPT has been adopted for universities in the US, where students are using it to cheat like there is no tomorrow.
• Last but not least: two US senators introduced Bipartisan legislation to adjust AI. One of them is Josh Hawley, who doesn’t have the best skills p technologypolicy track record In the world.

Top Story: Elon’s Ultimate AI Corporation

Over the past decade, Elon Musk has invested heavily in a series of increasingly bizarre businesses, many of which have dark undertones. From Him brain-computer interface startup Neuralink, to his pet Tesla project “Optimus,” the bipedal vehicle robotto OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT (which Musk Co-Founder), Musk has helped create a group of strange, sci-fi-tinged businesses that are actively pursuing technological innovations. Now, Musk’s new biographer, Walter Isaacson, has speculated that many of these enterprises are part of Musk’s broader plan to usher in a bold new era of intelligence. artificial. IN one article published in Time, Isaacson argues that most of Musk’s various startup investments and business ventures are part of a broader strategy to promote the creation of “artificial general intelligence ” or AGI.

Are you new to AGI? This concept is is clearly ambiguous. Essentially, it opposes the emergence of the scary AI future we all dream (or nightmare) about — the “singularity” where artificial intelligence becomes more than just a rote mechanism of human-led algorithmic manipulation (“random parrot,” as recent major language models are called), but is a self-learning organic intelligence that mirrors—or even surpasses—the kind of intelligence that humans naturally hold.

In the interview with Isaacson, Musk apparently told me that he thinks his various ventures – like Neuralink, Tesla’s Optimus and a neural network training supercomputer called Dojo – could bound together “in pursuit of the goal of artificial general intelligence.” .”

The crux of this supposed master plan may be Musk’s recent launch another startup, xAI. Isaacson seems to think that Musk plans to dissolve many of his other businesses (including xAI and X, aka the website formerly known as Twitter — which Musk bought last year for 44 billion USD) into a large enterprise. The result could be a massive artificial intelligence consortium designed to push technological boundaries beyond their current limitations.

However, many critics maintaining that AGI is quite far away. While Musk may aim to be the technological savior who brings about the robot revolution—according to countless science fiction movies—would ultimately destroy the human race, the jury seems to be out on whether that is actually possible in the near or even the near term. On the other hand, Isaacson’s book about Musk will be published shortly. Biography is expired next Tuesday.

Interview: Michael Brooks, on the challenges ahead for the Robotaxi industry

This week’s interview includes a recent conversation with Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. Michael’s organization has been many times express criticism of the self-driving car industry and raised concerns about the potential road hazards it poses. When GM’s Cruise and Google’s Waymo recently went on to expand commercial operations for their robotaxis in San Francisco (one big step forward in the rise of the self-driving car industry), we thought this would be a good opportunity to talk to Michael about the challenges posed by automated road travel. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What do you think about the recent developments with Cruise and Waymo in San Francisco?

There’s been a lot going on lately…I think San Francisco has really realized that there’s a problem here. I think they’re starting to ask: ‘Why do we really need this? Why do we need more vehicles on the road to cause traffic congestion?’ But you know, at the same time Cruise was expanding across America. They’re in Raleigh, they’re in Austin. There are many other cities in other states where they are going to be present.

Have you been following how the self-driving car industry is trying to shape the regulatory environment surrounding their vehicles??

What the auto industry has tried to do across the country is policy control at the state level. That takes away the ability of the sheriff or police chief in San Francisco to say, ‘Hey, these cars have to be kept off my street today. There is a safety issue.” That’s the focus [what was expressed at] DMV and Public Utilities Hearing in SF…the people who actually live in these cities and suffer the negative impacts of these cars have no say or any control over whether they are deployed on the streets theirs or not. This is a regulatory setup that autonomous vehicle companies love. There are sometimes significant political differences between cities and states, and automakers know it will be difficult for cities to fight back. [against the states] when they are in a situation like this. So they like the idea of ​​the state’s regulatory environment right now. Ultimately, they want a federal plan that prevents states from doing anything. I think the power that states think they have right now may be fleeting.

There has been a lot of discussion about the potential of self-driving cars to reduce road deaths. Do you think, hypothetically, there is some public health benefit here?

Hypothetically, yes. However, these vehicles will need to be tested at speeds higher than 30 mph if they are to be deployed more widely (30 mph is the speed at which Cruise was recently approved for commercial operation). in San Francisco; meanwhile, Waymo has been approved to travel at speeds up to 65 mph). We see a lot of death and destruction at higher speeds—and that’s where a lot of truly human judgment and error comes into play. Autonomous vehicles will have to solve that problem if they want to become something people can use across the country. Currently, the best scenario for this technology is very short rides on closed tracks where nothing scares them and they know they will have a Wi-Fi signal and won’t be running over concrete. Things happen so fast in higher speed car crashes; Without testing cars in those environments and demonstrating that they provide some safety benefit, it’s hard to know what will happen to these products in the future.

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