Tesla and SpaceX boss has doubled down on his dire warnings about the danger of artificial intelligence. The billionaire tech entrepreneur called AI more dangerous than nuclear warheads and said there needs to be a regulatory body overseeing the development of super intelligence, speaking at the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin, Texas on Sunday. It is not the first time Musk has made frightening predictions about the potential of artificial intelligence — he has, for example, called AI vastly more dangerous than North Korea — and he has previously called for regulatory oversight.Musk, however, is resolute, calling those who push against his warnings “fools” at SXSW.

“The biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are,” said Musk.

“This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea — which is fundamentally flawed.” Based on his knowledge of machine intelligence and its developments, Musk believes there is reason to be worried.

Russia has issued a veiled threat to “retaliate” against SpaceX’s satellite internet system Starlink for aiding the Ukrainian military.

A Russian representative named Konstantin Vorontsov issued the warning last week at a United Nations working group meeting on reducing space threats.

Vorontsov—who was reportedly a former acting Deputy Director of Russia’s Foreign Ministry Department—didn’t name SpaceX or Starlink by name. But he noted: “We would like to underline an extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of outer space technologies and has become apparent during the events in Ukraine. Namely, the use by the United States and its allies of the elements of civilian, including commercial, infrastructure in outer space for military purposes,” according to the unofficial translation  of his statement.

Vorontsov then issued his veiled threat by saying: “It seems like our colleagues do not realize that such actions in fact constitute indirect involvement in military conflicts. Quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”

https://www.pcmag.com/

In short: “It may be useful, but for safety’s sake you don’t want to set it (or really any distinctive emitter) up in Ukraine anywhere close to where you would not want a Russian bomb dropping,” Weaver said.
Shortly after this story was originally published, Musk also weighed in on Twitter, saying “Important warning: Starlink is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution.”
He went on to advise users in Ukraine to “turn on Starlink only when needed and place antenna away as far away from people as possible,” and to “place light camouflage over antenna to avoid visual detection.”

Elon Musk and his companies have a commitment to fearless innovation. The incredible accomplishments that his companies have achieved include cutting-edge electric vehicles with Tesla, next-generation space-flight capabilities with SpaceX, and the development of critical brain-machine interfaces with Neuralink, to name a few.

Musk’s most recent announcement was on behalf of Tesla, and was yet another ode to fearless innovation. Last week, during Tesla’s much anticipated “AI Day,” an event meant to showcase the company’s revolutionary strides in artificial intelligence technology, Musk announced the next frontier for the company: developing the Tesla Bot, a “general purpose, bi-pedal, humanoid robot capable of performing tasks that are unsafe, repetitive or boring.”

Elon Musk described the project in detail: “Basically, if you think about what we’re doing right now with the cars, Tesla is arguably the world’s biggest robotics company…because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels. With the full self-driving computer, the inference engine on the car (which will keep evolving, obviously), Dojo, and all the neural nets recognizing the world, understanding how to navigate through the world, it kind of makes sense to put that onto a humanoid form.” Musk described the purpose behind this bot, atleast initially: “it’s intended to be friendly of course, and navigate through a world built for humans and eliminate dangerous repetitive and boring tasks.” Musk also explained that a useful humanoid robot should be able to navigate the world without being explicitly trained step-by-step, and instead, should be able to perform advanced tasks with cognitive understanding of simple commands, such as“pick up groceries.”

Source: https://www.forbes.com/

In recent weeks, China‘s space program has made news by revealing some of its long-term ambitions for spaceflight. These include establishing an Earth-Moon space economic zone by 2050, which, if successful, could allow the country to begin to dictate the rules of behavior for future space exploration. Some have questioned whether China, which has flown six human spaceflights in the last 16 years, can really build a large low-Earth space station, send taikonauts to the Moon, return samples from Mars, and more in the coming decade or two. But what seems clear is that the country’s authoritarian government has long-term plans and is taking steps toward becoming a global leader in space exploration.

By one important metric—orbital launches—China has already reached this goal. In 2018, the country set a goal of 35 orbital launches and ended up with 39 launch attempts. That year, the United States (29 flights) and Russia (20) trailed China, according to Space Launch Report. It marked the first time China led the world in the number of successful orbital launches. This year, China is set to pace the world again. Through Sunday, the country has launched 27 orbital missions, followed by Russia (19), and the United States (16). Although nearly a month and a half remain in this year, a maximum of six additional orbital launches are likely from the United States in 2019.

To be fair, China’s space launch program has not been without hiccups. The country’s space program is still trying to bring its large Long March 5 vehicle back into service after a catastrophic failure during just its second mission, in July 2017. And the country had three failures in 2018 and 2019, compared to just one in the United States and Russia combined.

The United States has taken a step back this year in part due to decreased activity by SpaceX. The company launched a record 21 missions last year but has so far launched 11 rockets in 2019. A flurry of missions remains possible in the next six weeks for the company, including a space station resupply mission in early December, a commercial satellite launch, and additional Starlink flights.

Another big factor has been a slow year for United Launch Alliance. The Colorado-based company has launched just two Delta IV-Medium rockets this year, one Delta IV-Heavy, and a single Atlas V mission. The company may launch Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft before the end of 2019, giving the Atlas V rocket a second launch. It is possible that Rocket Lab, which has flown its Electron rocket from New Zealand five times in 2019 and is planning at least one more mission before the end of the year, will have more launches than United Launch Alliance for the first time. Sometime next year, Rocket Lab should also begin to add to the US tally for orbital launches as it opens a new facility at Wallops Island, Virginia.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/

William Wagner, the director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, a 250-strong team focused on organ and tissue failure, is at the center of possibly one of the most exciting projects in biomedical research today: can you use 3D printers to create new organs for people in space?

The ability to create new organs using stem cells is an exciting area of research that could help save lives, ending the scourge of donor shortages. Studying the concept further in microgravity could teach the team more about how these cells act, while enabling them to build more complex organs that could inform research on Earth. Early findings also suggest that these studies could reveal more about certain diseases. This vision came a bit closer to reality this week, when Wagner’s institute announced a multi-year research alliance with the International Space Station’s United States National Laboratory to explore the area further. The institute will develop facilities on Earth while working with the lab on flight opportunities to study experiments in the orbiting lab.

“There’s been a lot of neat discovery science done on the space station,” Wagner says. “Let’s see what happens when we put stem cells in space. Oh, gosh, they stay more stem-like and they divide better! Okay, well, now what?”

Slowly but surely, organ printing is developing. At a 2016 conference, CELLINK detailed a future where organ shortages were a thing of the past. A team in May 2017 succesfully implanted artificial ovaries in mice. A Rutgers University group of researchers created a 3D-printable water gel that could one day help researchers print organs.

SpaceX’s CRS-18 resupply mission, which launched July 21 carrying Nickelodeon slime, also carried a Techshot biofabrication utility designed for exploring this area further: Wagner’s team is focused on using stem cells to fabricate new organs. These cells, which can further split into specialized cells, are also being used in the nascent area of lab-grown meat. Wagner explains that both areas involve similar problems of growing cells in a certain manner and rate. But while lab-based burgers could hit plates as early as 2021, printed livers and the like are nowhere near ready. “I can tell you from my perspective, organ printing’s got a long, long, long way to go,” Wagner says. “There’s a lot of barriers. At the same time, it’s exciting. There’s a lot of hope there if we can overcome any of these barriers.”

Source: https://www.inverse.com/

SpaceX has signed its first customer to fly on the company’s huge new rocket, the BFR, the company says. The passenger will fly on the monster ship around the Moon, though there are no details yet regarding when the trip will happen.

The BFR, or the Big Falcon Rocket, is the giant rocket that SpaceX is currently developing to send humans to the Moon and Mars. The BFR design, presented by CEO Elon Musk last year, consists of a combined rocket and spaceship, called the BFS for Big Falcon Spaceship. The main rocket will have 31 main Raptor engines and be capable of sending up 150 tons to low Earth orbit, according to that presentation.

In February 2017, SpaceX announced plans to send two passengers around the Moon on the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, claiming that the flight would happen at the end of 2018. SpaceX never named the passengers, and, ultimately, Musk admitted during the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy that the trip probably wasn’t going to happen. “We’re sort of debating whether to do that on Falcon Heavy or BFR,” Musk said that  before the launch in February of this year. “It will sort of depend on how well BFR development is going as to whether we focus on BFR for deep-space human flight or whether we do that on Falcon Heavy.”

Source: https://www.spacex.com/