Lifeboat Foundation

Though questions abound.

SpaceX head Elon Musk and other industry leaders write that autonomy will lead to wider and faster war.

The prospect of tanks, machine guns, and drones that think for themselves becoming widespread is giving tech luminaries the heebie-jeebies.

In an open letter today (Aug. 21), a group of specialists from 26 nations called for the United Nations to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons. The signatories include Tesla CEO Elon Musk and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, as well as other leaders in robotics and artificial-intelligence companies. (Google acquired DeepMind in 2014.)

Continue reading “‘We Do Not Have Long to Act’: Tech Heads Warn UN About Autonomous Arms” »

A real push for space is happening.

Think billionaires and outer space and three names quickly come to mind: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.

Tesla head warns of dangers of AI and pushes for regulation as OpenAI he backed beats best human players in online DotA 2 championship.

(SpaceX) SpaceX launched 6,400 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station on Monday afternoon, and the roughly 100,000 people watching the live video online got to experience a rare shot of the reusable portion of the rocket sticking its landing in real time.

It was SpaceX’s 40th Falcon 9 mission and 11th rocket launch this year.

Continue reading “SpaceX landed another rocket on target after launching supplies to the Space Station — watch live footage of the perfect landing” »

This week electrovehicle and space transit magnate Elon Musk unveiled his master plan for the human race to become “a multi-planetary species”, starting with travel to Mars. But while I know it’s an act of remarkable hubris for me to even say this, I believe SpaceX’s plans for their Interplanetary Transport System have some pretty glaring flaws. The good news is they are flaws that are easily corrected by applying some decades-old solutions from the American and Soviet space-faring experience.

After going over the system architecture and basic spacecraft design, I think there are places where the system can be made to use less fuel, reduce manufacturing complexity, increase crew room, deliver more payload, and more.

Tonight during Valve’s yearly Dota 2 tournament, a surprise segment introduced what could be the best new player in the world — a bot from Elon Musk-backed startup OpenAI. Engineers from the nonprofit say the bot learned enough to beat Dota 2 pros in just two weeks of real-time learning, though in that training period they say it amassed “lifetimes” of experience, likely using a neural network judging by the company’s prior efforts. Musk is hailing the achievement as the first time artificial intelligence has been able to beat pros in competitive e-sports.

Tesla’s solar-powered house comes to life.