Free Republic

If you can't resist the urge to check your phone over and over, even if you're out with friends, Meta has a solution: check your glasses instead...Meta's Reality Labs division burns cash at an alarming rate, which has concerned investors over the years...Meta has had its fair share of flops, like the entire promise of its social metaverse...But with the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Meta has created a remarkable piece of technology, unlike any other consumer-facing product on the market -- we have yet to test it ourselves, so we can't quite say just how groundbreaking this really is, but it...

...Futurists have long debated the arrival of the singularity, when human and artificial intelligence will merge, a concept borrowed from the world of quantum physics.... /

The world is awash in predictions of when the singularity will occur or when artificial general intelligence (AGI) will arrive. Some experts predict it will never happen, while others are marking their calendars for 2026. A new macro analysis of surveys over the past 15 years shows where scientists and industry experts stand on the question and how their predictions have changed over time, especially after the arrival of large language models like ChatGPT. Although predictions vary across a span of almost a half-century, most agree than AGI will arrive before the end of the 21st century. SNIP

Elon Musk post on X: "We are on the event horizon of the singularity."

The following is excepted from a long Q&A i had with Grok3 today. I found the substance somewhat chilling but also somewhat encouraging, and feel the need to share it because i'm interested in feedback on what i think is an extremely important topic. To me it feels like we (humanity as a whole) are sleepwalking into very dangerous waters. Alarms should be going off, yet we're told climate change is the only thing that we should be alarmed about. Maybe i'm overestimating the threat, but that hits at the essence of what i am hoping to get feedback about....

Some of you folks might find this interesting. It is most a discussion of the current state of development of AI and the pace of development. The person being interviewed is the co-founder of an AI company, is immersed in the industry, and seems to have a pretty good grasp on what is going on behind the scenes. Bio of Mitch Randall from source:Mitch Randall is the CEO of Ascendant AI and innovator behind the SkyWatch Passive Radar UAP tracking system. Skywatch was developed through the Galileo Project and hopes to detect UAP using reflected signals from existing transmitters as...

The time to figure out how to use generative AI and large language models in your code is now.Mea culpa: I was wrong. The artificial intelligence (AI) singularity is, in fact, here. Whether we like it or not, AI isn’t something that will possibly, maybe impact software development in the distant future. It’s happening right now. Today. No, not every developer is taking advantage of large language models (LLMs) to build or test code. In fact, most aren’t. But for those who are, AI is dramatically changing the way they build software. It’s worth tuning into how they’re employing LLMs...

There are various definitions of the Singularity, but they all roughly mean the time when computing power exceeds the capabilities of all human intelligence. That date is now roughly expected to arrive as early as 2060. John von Neumann, one of the greatest mathematicians, computer scientist, and polymath of the twentieth century, is generally credited as the first to articulate the singularity as "accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not...

Dating back to Genesis and to some of the most primordial of myths, man’s history is replete with cautionary tales created to impart wisdom to any misguided soul seeking to make a lesser god of himself or his species. Be it the fruit first plucked by Eve from the biblical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or Icarus’ hubristic flight on waxen wings, or the fable of the gamine Pandora’s curiosity, the moral was clear: Not all knowledge was meant for the finite minds of us mortals, nor should we fly too close to the sun lest we perish....

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday confirmed plans for his newest company, called Neuralink Corp., revealing he will be the chief executive of a startup that aims to merge computers with brains so humans could one day engage in “consensual telepathy.” Speaking to writer Tim Urban on the explainer website Wait but Why, Mr. Musk confirmed a Wall Street Journal report last month that Neuralink aims to implant a tiny brain...

Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface ... when brains and computers can interact directly, that's it, that's the end of history, that's the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what's happening...

During the last few years, the semiconductor industry has been having a harder and harder time miniaturizing transistors with the latest problem being Intel’s delayed roll-out of its new 14 nm process. The best way to confirm this slowdown in progress of computing power is to try to run your current programs on a 6-year-old computer. You will likely have few problems since computers have not sped up greatly during the past 6 years. If you had tried this experiment a decade ago you would have found a 6-year-old computer to be close to useless as Intel and others were...

The new company, called Merge Labs, aims to merge humans and machines together through artificial intelligence and is raising funds at a $850 million valuation, according to FT. The startup reportedly is aiming to raise $250 million in total investment and OpenAI’s ventures team is expected to supply much of the new capital.

All great things must come to an end, and such is the story of Big Balls. You've done well, Big Balls! You've done well. 19-year-old Edward Coristine had a short run at DOGE, but he made the best of his time. He helped reduce federal spending, and also addressed the widespread fraud and abuse within our federal government. Big Balls was going to study at Northeastern University, but it seems that plan may be no more. He's a former Neuralink employee and also founded Tesla.Sexy LLC. And while we're going to miss him at DOGE, we wish him the best...

For Elon Musk, giving sight to the blind isn't just a first century phenomenon. The Tesla and X CEO brain implant venture, Neuralink, filed trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on March 3 for "Telepathy," "Telekinesis," and "Blindsight," hinting at a future where human thought could transcend traditional communication and control. The company, co-founded by Musk in 2016, is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI), a system that decodes neural signals to operate external devices. Musk has touted telepathy as Neuralink’s first product, designed to empower people with paralysis to "control a computer or phone just...

... Elon Musk would ultimately turn this quality to his advantage when, after nearly eight years of being quadriplegic, Noland agreed to allow the world’s richest man to implant an electronic chip into his brain. In January 2024, Noland became the first human recipient of a brain-computer interface (BCI) developed by Musk’s company, Neuralink. If it worked, it would allow him to control a computer using only the power of his mind. Only four months after he first heard about Neuralink, Noland was on an operating table, with a purpose-built robot poised to insert the N1 chip into his motor...

This video contains excerpts of Sam Altman's 9/15/16 interview with Elon Musk. They were the original Co-Chairs of OpenAI. Here, they openly promote the connection of AI and transhumanism (the merging of the human brain/mind with technology, as is being developed by Musk's Neuralink company). Elon Musk himself said that there's a "ten to twenty percent chance AI goes BAD." We are gambling with the future of every man, woman, and child on earth. At the very least, we should ensure that those who are involved in the Stargate Project are ethical and sensible human beings. There is a serious...

Musk demoed the company’s brain-computer interface technology on Friday in live pigs. He described it as “like a Fitbit in your skull.” Musk said the Neuralink can help fight blindness, memory loss, insomnia, and other medical conditions. lon Musk’s brain-machine interface company, Neuralink, conducted a live demo of its technology on Friday, showing a coin-sized device without wires. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO brought along three pigs, who had varying levels of interest in cooperating. Eventually, the audience was shown real-time neural signals from one of the pigs, which Musk named Gertrude. According to Musk, Gertrude has had the implant...

An experimental eye implant could be the secret to restoring a patient’s central vision—the part of our eye that lets us see faces, details, and letters more clearly. Many patients now using the implant as part of a clinical trial have reported successful results. The implant was developed by Science Corporation, a competitor to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which Musk plans to use to merge humans and AI together. The company announced preliminary results for its latest clinical trial this week, reporting that some study participants can now see well enough to read from books, play cards, and more. All of...

Neuralink posted a livestream on X featuring Noland Arbaugh, the first person to use Neuralink's technology that enables control of a computer via thought. In the video on Wednesday, Arbaugh said that he is 29 years old and noted that he is paralyzed below his shoulders due to a "diving accident" around 8 years ago. He demonstrated his ability to move the cursor on the computer screen and play chess using the Neuralink technology. And at the request of the Neuralink engineer who was also on the video, Arbaugh paused music that had been playing. In an apparent reference to...