Neuralink Elon Musk. Part seven: the great fusion

Eccentric in the best sense of the word entrepreneur, playboy, philanthropist Elon Musk known around the world. He decided to bring humanity into space, to colonize Mars, to abandon a disposable rockets. He decided to make the world cleaner, transplanted us from cars with internal combustion engines to self-driving cars. While unfolding these businesses, he does not sit idly by. He conceived Neuralink that will help us become new people. Without borders and without weaknesses, as it should be in the new world (Elon musk). To document the crazy ideas Mask, as always, volunteered Tim urban from WaitButWhy (he wrote about the artificial intelligence, the colonization of Mars and SpaceX). We present one of the best works of modern popular science journalism. Further, in the first person.

Part 2:

Part 3: Flying over the nest of neurons

Part 4: brain-computer interfaces

Imagine that an alien space traveller visits a new star and finds that it is spinning around the three planets, and all life. The first will be identical to the Earth times, 10 million years BC. The second will be identical to Earth time 50 000 years BC. The third will be identical to Earth time in 2017.

the Alien is not versed in primitive biological life, but decided to fly around all three planets, looking at each with the help of telescope. At first he sees a lot of water, trees, mountains and few signs of animal life. He sees a herd of elephants on the African plain, a group of dolphins swimming in the ocean, and a few creatures here and there, living their lives.

On the second planet even more animals, but they are not much different. There is something unusual random small dots of flickering light, dotting the earth.

Bored, he moves on to the third planet. Wow. He sees aircraft flying above the earth, a giant square of gray earth with her towering buildings, ships of different sizes plying the sea, long railway stretching across the continent, and his space ship almost collides with the satellite on the approach.

Going home, he announces the discovery. "Two planets with primitive life and one with a reasonable life."

His conclusions seem logical and understandable, but he was wrong.

really strange is the first planet. On the second and third planets have intelligent life — is equally reasonable. So equal that you can steal a baby from the second planet and to substitute for them the child on the third planet, and both will grow up as normal people without any problems. The same people.

And yet, how did this happen?

the Colossus of men. Here's how.

Ever wondered why people impress us as much as the achievements of mankind?

Because people remain the same people from the second planet.

Bring a human child chimpanzee group and ask them to grow it in the style of Tarzan, and as an adult, this person will know how to run through the woods, jumping from tree to tree, looking for food and masturbating. In fact it is each of us, in fact.

Humanity, on the other hand, — it is a super intelligent, extremely inquisitive, thousand-year Colossus with 7.5 billion neurons. It was he who built the third planet.

the Invention of language allowed every person with a brain to compress their knowledge into the kernel before death, and this seed sprouted into a tower that grew higher and higher, until one day did not become the brain of the great Colossus, who built us a civilization. Since then, the Colossus all Human invents and invents, gets better and better with time. Obsessed by the desire to create value, the Colossus moves with great speed and we feel it because we live in most unusual times in history.

Remember, I said that we could live on the border between the two big eras of communication?

it May be that we are at a great historical juncture. After 1000 years of human life and 3.8 billion years of life on earth, this century will mark our transition from the era of one planet in megaplanet era. This century can be the century when the earth rod will be able to pull out the genetic code from the clutches of evolution and learn to reprogram yourself. Living today people can witness the moment when biotechnology will finally liberate human life from the laws of nature and pass it to the will of each person.

the Colossus of man has reached a whole new level of power, the power that can destroy the era length in 3.8 billion years — and put us on the brink of numerous tipping points that will lead to unimaginable changes. And if our friend is an alien one finds a fourth planet that is identical to Earth in the year 2100, we can say for sure that it won't be like the third planet.

I Hope you like the third planet, because we live on it. But we come to the fourth planet, whether we like it or not.

If I had to summarize everything that makes the Mask, it would be quite simple:

He wants to prepare us for the fourth planet.

He thinks the broad categories and see the life on the planet only with maximum coverage. Therefore, his actions seem completely divorced from reality (and at the same time fantastically insightful). It is also concerned.

Not that he considered the fourth planet a bad place — he admits that it may be so, and that the generations who live today, without realizing it for the first time seeing a real threat to the survival of humanity.

At the same time, living people today also for the first time live with the hope of a truly utopian future — which defies even death and taxes. The fourth planet is our promised land.

If you look from afar, it becomes obvious how high the stakes.

And the outcome is determined not only by the whim of the case — it is determined by the whim of a Human Colossus. The fourth planet appears only because it creates Colossus. And our future will be like Paradise or hell — it depends on what will make the Colossus. Perhaps in the next 150 years, possibly 50. 25.

the Sad thing about this story is that the Giant Human is not optimized for maximum success safe transition to best possible fourth planets for most people — it's optimized for the fourth planet in any way possible as quickly as possible.

Knowing all this, Elon has dedicated his life to the attempt to influence the Colossus of a Human, to bring his motivation into line with the long-term interests of the people. He knows that it is impossible to rewrite the Human Colossus — if only the threat to survival does not arise directly from every human face, and this doesn't normally happen until the very last moment, therefore, refers to the Colossus as his pet.

If you want your dog sat, you associate the command "sit" to obtain fun. Colossus for Human pleasure is a juicy new industry that is exploding at the same time in demand and supply.

Elon saw that the dog was of a Colossus of a Human peeing on the carpet, constantly throwing carbon into the atmosphere — and instead of punishing the dog and persuade you not to write on the carpet (which, incidentally, is trying unsuccessfully to do a) or to restrict its behavior (trying unsuccessfully to make governments), he has created an electric car that will soon conquer the world. The automotive industry is shifting this way, and nine years later, after Tesla released its first car, the number of companies that have electric vehicles in its product range, changed from zero to almost everyone. Dog Colossus took a tip and change their behavior.

Elon saw the dog Colossus Human trying to keep all eggs on one planet, in spite of all these turning points in their history, so he created SpaceX to learn to land the rocket, which will reduce the cost of space travel at 99% and will accelerate the development of this industry. His plan for Mars is not to convince humanity that it's cool to build a civilization on the red planet, in order to guarantee life insurance for the species — and to create a functioning permanent freight and passenger transit to Mars, because when the time comes, Mars will be established enough value, that they are interested in Colossus.

But the worst, according to Ilona, that Colossus is trying to teach Colossus a Computer to think. According to Ilona, and many others, the development of Superintelligent artificial intelligence is the greatest threat to the survival of humanity. And it's not hard to understand why. The mind gives us godlike power over all other creatures on Earth — and for them the power of the people...