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 artificial intelligence, colonization of Mars and SpaceX). We present one of the best works of modern popular science journalism. Further, in the first person.

Part 1: Colossus Of Human

Part 2: Brain

Part 3: Flying over the nest of neurons

Part 4: brain-computer interfaces

Part 5: Task Neuralink

Part 6: dawn of the magicians

Part 7: the Great fusion

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 2017.

The alien does not understand the 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 ground.

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 approach.

Going home, he announces the discovery. “Two planets with primitive life and one with intelligent life”.

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

Actually strange will be 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 Human Colossus. 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, is 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 true 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.

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 pretty 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 worried.

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 are.

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. Or 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 their 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 thing is, 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 man not the sweet time. If parts of bodies of animals could do something valuable, we would have created a large industry, processing of animals and selling these body parts — and it was so. Sometimes we kill them for kicks, for fun. But do it without hate, without desire to hurt anyone, it just happened that all of these beings, or the ecosystem, got in the way of our interest, action, actions, movements. People love to blame mankind for strong violence, but any kind would do the same — was a selfish, first and leading.

The problem of other beings is not that we are selfish, and that we have tremendous power over them. The power that was provided by the intellectual advantage.

It is therefore logical to fear the prospects of intentional creation of something with a (probably, to the greatest extent) is much more intelligence than we — especially in light of the fact that every person on the planet could be the first one to do it.

And everything goes very quickly. Elon talks about the rapid progress, which makes game-playing AI Google:

Had two of these cases, when AlphaGo defeated human players one-on-one, beat Lee Sedalia in four games out of five, and now he will have to beat each person in each game playing at the same time with 50 of the best players, and will always beat them, forever and ever. After only a year.

And that we are talking about such a harmless thing as AlphaGo. But the degree of freedom, where the AI can win is growing. Go much more degrees of freedom than in chess, but if you take some of the strategies in real time, like League of Legends or Dota 2, which is much more degrees of freedom than in them while the AI can not win. But you’ll learn. Then followed a reality with the maximum number of degrees of freedom.

Obviously, there is nothing to worry about:

Over the past few years, I realized that the AI is definitely much greater than human intelligence. There is a certain risk that something bad happens, something we can’t control, can’t control humanity. After a certain point or group of people monopolisitic AI, or the AI will go to free swimming, something like that. Maybe, maybe not.

But in the typical form of the Colossus of the Human “collective will not be vulnerable to AI”.

When I interviewed Ilona in 2015, I asked him whether he ever participate in the creation of artificial superintelligence. He said: “to be honest, I don’t think we need to create it.” And when I later said that creating something more intelligent than yourself, like the Darwin error (a phrase I stole from nick Bostrom), Elon said, “We’ll get the Darwin award collectively”.

Now, two years later, he says the following:

I really tried to sound the alarm on the subject of AI, but it is obvious that any influence is not exerted (laughs), so I decided: fuck it, let’s develop it so that all was well.

He accepted the reality of the Human Colossus is not going away until one day I Wake up Colossus Computer. It to be.

Regardless of what you say, no one knows what will happen when the Colossus Computer learns to think. In a long article on the topic of AI, I examined the arguments on both sides, one of which is convinced that artificial superintelligence will be the solution to all our problems, and the other that humanity is a bunch of children playing with a bomb, you don’t understand. Personally, I’m still not decided on a camp you trust more, so it seems most rational to prepare for the worst and do everything you can to boost the chances of success. Many experts agree with that logic but can’t agree on a strategy for the safe creation of the ISI. People just don’t know the answer. What precautions can be taken in the face of world which is impossible to understand?

Elon also recognizes that does not know the answer, but working on a plan that, in his opinion, will give us the best result.

Plan Ilona

Abraham Lincoln was proud of himself, when he came up with this line:

— and that government of the people, controlled by the people and for the people, will never disappear from the face of the earth.

Honestly — the place is good.

The whole idea is “about people, for people, for the people” is the basis of democracy.

Unfortunately, people unpleasant. Therefore, democracy becomes unpleasant. But it is unpleasant, as a rule, is a fairy tale compared to the alternatives. Elon believes so:

I think the defense team is very important. I think it was Churchill said, “democracy is the worst of all management systems, except for all the others”. Well, when good king is a philosopher on the level of Plato. It would be cool. But now, most dictators do not think so. Therefore, they are terrible.

In other words, democracy is the way of escape from a monster hiding in the sewers.

It often happens in life, when the risk is a good strategy, which will provide a chance for the best possible outcome, but when the stakes are highest, the correct course must be safe. Power is one of those situations. Therefore, even if democracy guarantees a certain level of mediocrity, Elon said that “it is unlikely that you are in USA you will find many people who would favour a dictatorship, regardless of what they think about a particular President.”

And as Elon sees it, the AI is perfect strength and power, the development of AI will become the ultimate safe strategy for the development of the situation. Therefore, his strategy of minimizing existential risk of AI is that the power of AI will be for the people, for the people, managed by people.

To implement this concept in the field of AI, Elon approached the situation from different angles.

“For the people and for the people”, he and Sam Altman have created OpenAI — the self-proclaimed “non-profit research company AI, the opening and the receiving course for the development of safe artificial General intelligence level.”

Usually when humanity is working on something new, it all starts with the innovation of several people. When they succeed, born industry, and the Human Colossus jumps on Board to in droves to settle on the Foundation laid by the pioneers of the industry.

But what if these pioneers worked the magic wand that would give whoever owned it, the vast, unstoppable power over all others, including power over that no one else could do the magic wand? Interesting situation, isn’t it?

So Elon is considering current efforts in the development of AI. And since he can’t stop people from trying to create a magic wand, his solution is to create an open, collaborative and transparent laboratory for the development of magic wands. When a laboratory is being developed something of a breakthrough, it immediately becomes open and known to everyone, and not concealed in secret.

On the one hand, this approach has its drawbacks. The bad guys are also trying to create a magic wand, and you don’t want to be the first magic wand fell into the hands of bad guys. And now the bad guys can benefit from all the innovation that is divided lab. This is a serious problem.

But the lab also helps because millions of other people trying to create a magic wand. For concealed pioneers this raises serious competition, and it becomes less likely that any inventor can create a magic wand long before others will do it. Most likely, when the first magic wand in the end will appear along with it will be thousands of other different sticks with different capacities, created by different people for different reasons. If the world will be a magic wand, says Elon, at least we are sure that they will be in the hands of different people around the world — and not in the hands of one omnipotent wizard.

If everyone is from the planet krypton, it’s all right. But unless one is Superman with the makings of a Hitler, we will have problems.

In a broader sense, a magic wand one of the innovator is likely to serve the needs and goals of its inventor. But if you do future industry of wands collective task in a wide variety of needs and goals will allow you to create many magic wands that will satisfy the needs of the masses.

That is, as a democracy.

Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, the Wright brothers and Alan Turing were in luck that the revolution began with their breakthroughs. But when you are dealing with the invention of something incredibly powerful, you cannot sit idly by and allow innovators to indulge too much remains for the case.

OpenAI is an attempt to democratize the creation of artificial intelligence to the entire Human Colossus worked on it during the pioneer phase. Elon sums up like this:

AI will definitely surpass humans in ability. As long as it is tied to human will, in particular, the amount will large numbers of people, his actions will be determined by a large number of people, because it will function in accordance with their will.

And now, you’ve got a superstrong AI at the human level or above, which is made by the people and for the people. This reduces the likelihood that the world AI will be in the hands of one bad man or a closely controlled monopoly.

Now all we have left is the people.

But now it will be easier. Remember, the Colossus of the Human creates an artificial superintelligence for the same reason, which creates the machines, conveyors and computers — as its complement, to shift the work to outsourcing. The machines come for us, factory conveyors produce for us details computers store information, organize and think.

Creating computers that can think, will become our greatest invention — they enable us to produce the outsourcing of our most important and high performance. Thinking has created all that we have, so just imagine the power that will come from the supermind thinking add-ons. And addition people, by definition, belongs to the people.

There’s only one thing —

AI high caliber do not very similar to other inventions. The rest of our technology is great in that it can create, but in the end all it is — a soulless machine with a narrow, limited intelligence. AI that we are trying to create will be smart as a man, as indeed “insanely smart” people. It will be fundamentally different from anything we’ve done before, why do we expect that it will apply the normal rules?

Technology has always belonged to us is so obvious a point that it seems pointless to bring him in. But could it be that if we do something smarter than human, driving them won’t be so easy?

Could it be that the creature understands better than any man on Earth, can refuse to serve as a Supplement, will be created for this? We don’t know what problems may occur — but we have to assume that Yes, they can occur.

And if it be so, our hands would be a serious problem.

Because, as shown by human history, when the planet appears something smarter than others, for all others it’s bad. And if AI will be the most intelligent object on the planet and suddenly will not completely belong to us, he is left to himself. So we find ourselves in the category of “all others”.

So people who get monopolistic control over the AI, in and of themselves are a problem — and this problem OpenAI is trying to solve. But this problem can be faded beside the prospect of uncontrollable AI.

It does not give Ilona to sleep. He sees this as only a matter of time before artificial superintelligence will appear on this planet, and when that happens, it is very important that we not become “all others” for him.

That’s why in the future world, consisting of AI and the “all others”, we will have only one good option:

Become AI.

* * *

Remember, earlier I said that magic hats are divided into two ideas that we need to be aware of:

  1. Absolutely incredible idea
  2. Super-duper-amazing absolutely incredible idea

It is here that we come to the second.

These two ideas imply Elon, when he describes magic hat tertiary digital layer in our brains. First, we found that cerebral interface, the concept is akin to put our devices in our heads — thus turning the brain into the device. Like this:

Your devices give you super powers cyborg and open a window into the world of digital technology. The array of electrodes of your magic hat is a new brain structure between your limbic system and cortex.

But your limbic system, the cortex and the magic hat — it’s just the hardware part. When you feel the job of your limbic system, you are not interacting with the physical part of it — and with the information inside. It is the activity of this physical system, which is bubbling in your mind, makes you angry, scared, swear or feel the hunger.

The same with your bark. Napkin wrapped around your brain stores and organizes information, but when you think, see, hear or feel anything, you interact with the information. Visual cortex itself is nothing to you does is the photon flow of information passing through it, gives you an experience of the presence of the visual cortex. When you are immersed in memories, in order to get something you are looking for is not in the neurons, you are looking at information that is stored in them.

The limbic system and the cortex is just gray matter. The flow of activity in the gray matter forms the familiar inner characters, a monkey brain and a rational brain.

What does that say about your tertiary digital layer?

It says that although in your brain will really be a physical device — the array of electrodes, the primary component with which you will deal, will be information that passes through the array.

And just as the feelings and motivations of the limbic system, thought and loquacious voice of the crust would be felt as part of you — your inner self — activity flowing through your magic hat, will become part of you and your essence.

The vision of Elon era of the magician is that among the many applications of the magic hat one of its destinations will be the interface between your brain and the cloud-based AI system. This AI system, he believes, will be a real character in your mind, how does your monkey man, and you will feel it on a par with others. He says:

I think apparently there is a way to make it so that the tertiary layer will be felt as part you. Not as an external device, and how you.

On paper it makes sense. Most of your “thinking” takes place in your cortex, but when you’re hungry, you don’t say, “my limbic system hungry,” you say, “I’m hungry”. Similarly, Elon thinks when you are trying to find a solution and your AI will find the answer, you don’t say, “my AI found the answer,” you say, “eeee, I found the answer”. When your limbic system wants to procrastinate, and your bark wants to work, no contractions between external entities is not happening, just you are the one trying to be more disciplined. Similarly, when you come up with a working strategy, and your AI will not agree, this will be a true opposition and have a dialogue — but it will be your inner dialogue, not a debate between one speaker and the second. This dialogue will be similar to meditation.

On paper it makes sense.

But when I first heard how Elon talks about this concept, I couldn’t have something to catch. No matter how many times I tried to absorb this idea, but I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to hear AI in his head, he’s always been for me the external system with which I am associated. It was not me.

But then, one night, while working on this article, I read quotes Ilona, and everything suddenly fell into place. AI will me. To the full extent. I understand.

And again lost the thread. The next day I tried to explain Epiphany to a friend, and we both felt confused. I went back to the thought “damn, but it won’t be quite myself, it will link with me.” Since I could not capture the desired idea by the tail. The best analogy I’ve picked up, is the space-time — a single cloth. For a second it seemed to me intuitive that time moves slower when you move fast. But the thought was gone again. I printed these lines, but they don’t strike me as intuitive.

The idea of “artificial intelligence” is particularly complex because it combines two dizzying concepts — brain-computer interface and abilities that he will give you, and artificial intelligence overall level. Today, people simply can not understand either one of these ideas, because in the imaging process, we are guided by their life experiences, and these concepts are completely new for us. It’s like trying to imagine a color you’ve never seen.

That’s why when I hear Elon speaks with conviction on this topic, I am somewhere in the middle, at the same time trusting him and sharing his words in two. Rushing there and back. But assuming that he is the one who grasped the intuitive representation of space-time, and also one of the few who knows how to colonize Mars, I try to listen to what he says.

But he says it’s all about bandwidth. Obviously, the capacity needs to make a magic hat useful. But Elon believes that when it comes to interaction with AI, high bandwidth is not just preferable, but essential for prospects to be AI, if compared with the simple use of AI. Here is what he thinks about it:

The problem is that the throughput of communication is extremely low, especially at the exit. When you display information on your phone, you move very slowly with two fingers. It’s insanely slow communication. If the bandwidth is too low, your integration with AI will be very weak. Considering the limitations of low bandwidth, it loses its meaning. AI will just try to live with yourself, because we are too slow to communicate with him. The faster the communication, the more you can integrate — the slower the communication, the less. And the more we are divided the more the AI will be “others” — the more likely it is that he spit on us. AI will be separate and smarter than we like to make sure that their optimization will not hurt humanity? If we reach the close of symbiosis, the AI won’t, he will be with you in a relationship, as well as you’re related to your limbic system.

Elon sees the bandwidth of communication is a key factor which will determine the level of integration with AI, and this level of integration is a key factor, if we can affect the AI in the future:

We have a choice: either to stay and become useless as a pet, or to merge with AI.

However, to be an indoor kitty is still a good outcome.

No real understanding of what kind of AI will be on the planet when we reach the era of artificial superintelligence, the integration of people and the AI itself will be protection from extinction of humans as species. Our vulnerability in the era of the AI will manifest itself in the form of bad people that control the AI, or a runaway AI that does not act in accordance with the values of the people. In a world in which millions of people control the power AI that can think with AI, protect yourself by using AI, see AI, because it is integrated with it — people are less vulnerable. People will be more powerful, and it’s scary, but as Elon says, if every man will be a Superman one Superman will be difficult to cause great harm — like equilibrium. And we are unlikely to lose control of the AI, because it will be widely distributed on the planet, and his purpose will be different.

But time is of essential importance. And it highlights Elon:

The pace of progress in this direction are important. We do not want to develop digital superintelligence before we are able to provide a good fusion with brain-computer interface.

When I reflected on it all, I have one question: will the cerebral interface enough to make the integration possible and probable. Elon noted that the difference between our speed of thought and speed of thinking the computer will still be great.

But the increase in throughput will make it much higher. And rightly so. Will this solve all problems? No. Is it right? Yes. If you move in one direction, why look around?

So Elon has launched a Neuralink.

He launched Neuralink to accelerate our progress in the age of wizards — in a world where, in his words, “anyone who wants to Supplement itself, the AI will be able to afford it, and where there are billions of individual Simbiotel AI people who will jointly make decisions about the future.” A world where AI’s will for people, from people and for the people.

* * *

I suspect that some of you believe that crazy world in which we lived the last 38 000 words, can be our future, but some part of you refuses to believe it. And here I am understand, he is the same.

But the crazy part of it should not be the reason that it is hard to believe. Remember: George Washington died when he saw 2017. And our future will be for us inconceivably shocking. The only difference is that now the time flies even faster than during George.

The concept of carried out the future talks about the magic of our collective wisdom — and about the naivety of our intuition. Our brains evolved at a time when progress was moving very slowly, so our equipment is calibrated under it. And if we do not actively reject your intuition — the part of us that read about the future as something outlandish and refuses to believe that it’s possible we will live in ignorance and die in denial.

The reality is that we are moving in the close flow in a very narrow place, and nobody knows what will be there when we get there. Many people are afraid to think about it, and I like it. Because when we were born, we did not live in the normal world as normal people — we live in a horror movie. Some people will take this information and try to go one-up with Elon, making every effort to have this film had a happy ending — and thank them. Because I’d rather be a spectator who is watching this movie with popcorn and Cola, rooting for the good guys.

In any case, I think it’s good from time to time to climb the tree and to remind myself what a gorgeous time we live in. And trees so many around. Meet one of them soon.

Part 1: Colossus Of Human

Part 2: Brain

Part 3: Flying over the nest of neurons

Part 4: brain-computer interfaces

Part 5: Task Neuralink

Part 6: dawn of the magicians

Part 7: the Great fusion

Neuralink Elon Musk. Part seven: the great fusion
Ilya Hel


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