Elon Musk muses at SpaceX’s Mission Control. (SpaceX Photo)
Billionaire brainiac Elon Musk is following up on his interest in (and wariness about) artificial intelligence by backing Neuralink Corp., a company devoted to developing neural implants, The Wall Street Journal says.
Business filings suggest that Neuralink would build devices designed to treat or diagnose neurological conditions, and conceivably augment human cognitive powers.
The Journal quoted entrepreneur-futurist Max Hodak as confirming Musk’s involvement in Neuralink, which Hodak said was still an “embryonic” venture.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin during his White House swearing-in ceremony in February. (White House via YouTube)
Mnuchin made his comments during a “News Shapers” sitdown with Axios’ Mike Allen. His observations are pointed enough, and brief enough, that they’re worth an extended quote:
Mnuchin: “In terms of artificial intelligence taking over American jobs, I think we’re like so far away from that, not even on my radar screen.”
Allen: “How far away?”
Mnuchin: “Far enough that it’s …”
Allen: “Seven more years?”
Mnuchin: “Seven more years? I think it’s 50 or 100 more years.”
Oren Etzioni, the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, asks the audience at a TEDx talk to raise their hands if they think AI is evil. (TEDx Seattle via YouTube)
Three years after its founding, Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence is racking up recognition in the field of AI research – and some of its research will have an impact on the burgeoning AI market.
The institute, known as AI2, was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2014 with longtime computer science researcher Oren Etzioni as its CEO. Since its founding, AI2 has spawned two spin-offs: Kitt.ai, which was created a little more than a year ago; and Xnor.ai, which made its debut this month.
AI2 has built its workforce up to 75 people, which Etzioni says makes it the largest nonprofit AI research center in North America. And AI2 is building up its street cred as well.
An artist’s conception shows a Ford autonomous vehicle that has a heads-up display, but no steering wheel. (Ford via YouTube)
Ford Motor Co. says it’s investing $1 billion over the next five years in a Pittsburgh startup called Argo AI to develop the virtual-driver system for Ford’s autonomous vehicles.
Argo AI was founded only a few weeks ago by CEO Bryan Salesky, who directed hardware development for Google’s self-driving cars; and chief operating officer Peter Rander, who led Uber’s program to develop self-driving cars.
Salesky and Rander, as well as other Argo AI executives, have worked on robotics and AI at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which helps explain the placement of the startup’s headquarters.
The technology coming out of the collaboration could be licensed to other companies, Ford President and CEO Mark Fields said today in a statement announcing the deal.
The Beneficial AI conference developed 23 guiding principles for AI. (Future of Life Institute)
Hundreds of AI researchers, business leaders and just plain geniuses have signed onto a statement of cautionary principles for artificial intelligence, including a requirement to build in the ability for human authorities to audit how an AI platform works.
This Asilomar conference focused on concerns about the rapid rise of AI, voiced by luminaries ranging from British physicist Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
Musk called attention to the findings today in a series of tweets that ended up endorsing the idea of building AI tools into devices that interface with the human brain.
Meta says its search tool traces connections involving 17 million researchers. (Meta via YouTube)
The multibillion-dollar Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced its first acquisition today: a startup called Meta that is developing an artificial intelligence program for searching through scientific studies.
“We will be working to make Meta even more powerful and useful to the scientific community, and are committed to offering these tools and features for free to all researchers,” the initiative’s president of science, Cori Bargmann, and chief technology officer Brian Pinkerton said in a Facebook posting.
The acquisition is subject to shareholder and court approval.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks about the “upscaling” effect of AI at the DLD tech conference in Munich. (DLD via YouTube)
Experts on employment trends have long raised concerns about how job markets are being disrupted so quickly by artificial intelligence and automation are disrupting the job market, and now it sounds as if Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shares those concerns.
Experts say human intelligence and artificial intelligence are likely to work together in the decades ahead. (Credit: Christine Daniloff / MIT file)
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Omidyar Network anchor a newly formed $27 million fund to support research into the social impacts of artificial intelligence.
Awards will be made from the fund to support a global cross-section of research aimed at applying the humanities, social sciences and other disciplines to the development of AI for the public interest. The MIT Media Lab and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society will serve as the initiative’s founding academic institutions.
The AI program known as AlphaGo has mastered the game of Go. (Credit: Google DeepMind)
For the past week or so, a mystery player has been logging into online Go game servers and beating the world’s best. Today, the player’s identity was revealed at last.
It was none other than AlphaGo, the artificial-intelligence program that triumphed over Go master Lee Sedol last March in a widely publicized $1 million showdown.
Google DeepMind’s co-founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis, let the world in on the secret today in a tweeted statement.
President Barack Obama sits for a 3-D portrait being produced by the Smithsonian Institution. (White House Photo / Pete Souza)
Dealing with the coming revolution in artificial intelligence is likely to require modernizing America’s social safety net, White House experts said today, in what may well be the Obama administration’s last official word on the subject.
Today’s report focuses on the potential economic impacts of AI, and draws upon analyses from the Council of Economic Advisers, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The opportunities offered by AI are likely to be a key driver for future productivity and wage growth, said Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
“As we look at AI, our biggest economic concern is that we won’t have enough of it,” he told reporters during a teleconference.
