December 2009

Best of Singularity Blog

by Socrates

Even though it has been only a bit more than a month since the beginning of this blog I am happy to note that there is already a tight group of people who have subscribed to my feed and continue to come back and read my posts on a regular basis. I want to take this opportunity to do 2 things: First and foremost I want to thank you all for the generous gift of your interest, your time and your moral support. I cherish those dearly and promise to do my best to provide you with more interesting, more relevant and better written singularity content during the new 2010. In the end, without you — my readers, both the Singularity Weblog and the Singularity Symposium website will be not only pointless but will cease to exist. It is your [...]

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Mobile Phone Codes Cracked

by Socrates

A German computer scientist has published details of the secret encryption code used to protect the conversations of more than 4bn mobile phone users. Read the full BBC News article. Related articles by Zemanta GSM security defeated by German hacker: NYT on CCC (boingboing.net) CellPhone Encryption Cracked (pindebit.blogspot.com) Code That Protects Most Cellphone Calls Is Divulged (Kevin J. O’Brien/New York Times) (techmeme.com) Code That Protects Most Cellphone Calls Is Divulged (nytimes.com)

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The Last Decade in Business and Technology

by Socrates

To review the major events of the last decade in business and technology check out this cool 3 min video: You can also watch Ten Years of Changes in Technology as seen by the BBC News.

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Smart Weapons for the 21st Century

by Socrates

Continuing on the topic of future military technology here is a CNN video report about the future of smart infantry weapon-systems. In the video below Col. Doug Tamilio takes CNN to the testing grounds for a first look at the Army’s newest infantry weapon. Can we foresee the impact of such “smart weapons”? (by “smart” what we really mean to say is that they are more “deadly” because for example they possess “fire-and-forget” type of capabilities). Can we prevent them from falling into the “wrong” hands? (Of course, the “wrong” hands are any hands other than those of “our” soldiers.) Will those smart weapons decrease the loss of innocent life (i.e. civilians, women and children) or will they increase it? What happens when we pair the above “smart weapons” with the “smart machines” from the Dawn of the Kill-Bots blog [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 5)

by Socrates

Part 5: The Future of (Military) AI — Singularity While being certainly dangerous for humans, especially the ones that are specifically targeted by the kill-bots, arming machines is not on its own a process that can threaten the reign of homo sapiens in general. What can though is the fact that it is occurring within the larger confluent revolutions in Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics (GNR). Combined with exponential growth trends such as Moore’s law we arguably get the right conditions for what is referred to as the Technological Singularity. In 1945 Alan Turing famously predicted that computers would one day play better chess than people. Fifty years later, a computer called Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion Gary Kasparov. Today, whether it is a mouse with a blue-tooth brain implant that directs the movements of the mouse via laptop, [...]

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IBM: 5 Innovations that will Change Cities in the Next 5 Years

by Socrates

Buildings that know when they need to be fixed before something breaks; sensors that tell the fire department details of a fire before they receive the emergency phone call; smart water and sewage systems that filter and recycle water. . . See the modern city as it will be in 5 years time as foreseen by IBM. (Main story at http://asmarterplanet.com)

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 4)

by Socrates
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Part 4: Military Turing Test — Can robots commit war-crimes? Now that we have identified the trend of moving military robots to the forefront of military action from their current largely secondary and supportive role to becoming a primary direct participant or (as Foster-Miller proudly calls its MAARS bots) “war fighters” we have to also recognize the profound implications that such a process will have not only on the future of warfare but also potentially on the future of mankind. In order to do so we will have to briefly consider what for now are assumed to be broad philosophical but, as robot technology advances and becomes more prevalent, will eventually become highly political, legal and ethical issues: Can robots be intelligent? Can robots have conscience? Can Robots commit war crimes? In 1950 Alan Turing introduced what he believed was [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 3)

by Socrates
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Part 3: The Present — close infantry support and force multiplier Not surprisingly, once robots began migrating from the production lines to the military, death became not an accidental but deliberate and heavily invested in outcome. In 2002 the Air Force officially changed the Predator’s designation from RQ-1 (R for reconnaissance) to MQ-1 (M for multi-use). Not just for intelligence gathering anymore, Predators were then officially capable of carrying hell-fire missiles. Even before the official change in its military designation, it was well known that the CIA had already possessed several Predators capable of carrying weapons and conducting bombing raids. So, whatever the official beginning, the Predator was probably the first modern actively armed robotic or unmanned war machine. The first officially reported person to have been deliberately killed by robot was Mohammed Atef. In November 2001 missiles fired from [...]

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