Automotive and spaceflight entrepreneur Elon Musk issued a series of tweets on September 4th that downplayed the threat posed by the nuclear ambitions of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying that the race to develop more powerful artificial intelligence is more likely to trigger World War III instead.
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Researchers with the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) development project have had to shut down two artificial intelligence programs because they began to develop their own internal language that the researchers couldn’t decipher. On the surface, the invented language looks like gibberish, but when the researchers analyzed it, they realized that the word patterns represented a more efficient lingo that only the two AI "agents" could understand.
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One of the biggest barriers to the implementation of useful artificial intelligence in our culture is the limitations imposed by our computer hardware: modern computer chips have their circuits arranged in a two-dimensional layout, running programs that are meant to mimic our own three-dimensional neurological processes. The 2D setup was, and indeed still is, better suited to the more linear processing that the majority of our computer programs require, but running AI-based programs presents a sizable drop in efficiency — it is apparent that if AI is to grow as a valuable tool, a new form of computer hardware will be required to accommodate it.
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Most of us are familiar with the theories that as humans, we’ve lost some a number of the natural senses that our ancient ancestors used to employ, ranging from our current concept of a "sixth sense", to the 360 senses described in ancient Egyptian writings. While many of us get by with only five senses to guide us, a company called Cyborg Nest is developing an implant that will hopefully re-enable one of these ancient abilities.
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