Friday, July 03, 2015

Kurzweil's Schedule

Raymond Kurzweil
Raymond Kurzweil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In his estimate, current exponential growth of computing will continue until human-level intelligence is achieved around 2029. Merging with artificial intelligence will then follow, sometime in the 2030s as humans will be "a hybrid of biological and nonbiological thinking," wherein we connect our brains to the cloud to harness massive computational power. Beyond that? "As you get to the late 2030s or the 2040s, our thinking will be predominately nonbiological. The nonbiological part will ultimately be intelligent and have such vast capacity it'll be able to model, simulate, and understand fully the biological part. We will be able to fully backup our brains."
Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil have a fundamental disagreement. Kurzweil thinks Artificial Intelligence is a faster, better computer. Musk thinks it is a nuclear weapon.

Longer Lives

Artificial Intelligence (John Cale album)
Artificial Intelligence (John Cale album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Exponential Finance: Financial Advice In the Age of AI and Long Life
most financial advisors as we’ve known them won’t be around much longer. ...... in the next ten years, half of all the financial advisors in this country will be gone ...... Not unlike other industries, like medical diagnostics, for example, artificial intelligence may soon perform many of the technical skills of financial advice better than their human counterparts. ...... AI won’t soon replace the uniquely human relationships clients seek from the best advisors. ...... “We are therapists, counselors, marriage consultants, and psychologists as much as we are financial planners” ...... Charles Schwab disrupted the industry back in 80s, putting many traditional stock brokers out of business. But they reinvented themselves as wealth planners. ..... “You don't see financial planners and financial advisors using a slide rule or a calculator and a number two pencil and a yellow pad.” ..... one of the greatest challenges they face is convincing their clients that instead of planning to live to 95—which is as far as financial planning software goes at the moment—they should plan to live longer. Perhaps much longer. ...... the first person to reach age 150 has already been born ...... Chances are, if you make it another 30 years, you'll make it another 100 ...... Instead of the traditional linear progression—birth, school, job, retirement, death—our lives will become more cyclical. That is, we’ll go to school, get our first job, work for awhile, take a five- or ten-year break, and then go back to school to reinvent ourselves and start our next career cycle. Rinse and repeat. ...... Discrete college degrees, he thinks, will be replaced with lifelong learning.
A lot of that recycling needs to happen already even before people have started living longer.

Digitizing Money For The Poor

I have an enormous interest in finance for the people at the very bottom. I think magical advances are possible. And there is also a lot of money to be made.


Exponential Finance: Who Will Be the Instagram or Uber of Finance?
Instagram was acquired for a billion dollars the same year Kodak went bankrupt. Though Kodak invented the digital camera behind Instagram’s business model—they failed to fully embrace it and paid the price. Uber is a five-year-old transportation company worth $40 billion, and they don't own a single car or bus. ....... relatively small organizations are rapidly rising up to take on big traditional players with little more than an app on a smartphone. So, what models are leading contenders to become the Instagram or Uber of finance? ..... As smartphones become ubiquitous in the developing world, it's possible many of the world’s unbanked billions in developing countries will skip traditional finance, a little like how they leapfrogged landlines for cell phones. ....... bank-free, digital cash will be a force to be reckoned with. ........ blockchain’s potential is massive—not just for cryptocurrencies, but anything of value. The same technology that records and confirms Bitcoin transactions can, in theory, do the same thing for “a will, a deed, a title, a license, intellectual property, an invention, or any type of financial instrument.” ...... Machines doing what machines do best, and humans doing what humans do best. Better together than either one alone. ...... By more fully digitizing finance (parts of it are, of course, already digitized), we can supercharge commerce and reduce the cost of doing business. ...... Even now, the digital camera market is shrinking as point-and-shoot cameras are replaced by smartphones. ...... Reality has surpassed science fiction.

Elon Musk And Tesla Shareholders

Longer, Healthier Life

Human genome
Human genome (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I think I would like to live past 100. What about you? I have seen pictures in newspapers of people who have done it without any Singularity type help. All of them were slim though.

If you do exercise, you can be as vibrant at 80 as you are at 40, almost.

How Computers Will Crack the Genetic Code and Improve Billions of Lives
Machine learning and data science will do more to improve healthcare than all the biological sciences combined. ..... the most epic challenge — extending the healthy human lifespan ..... Your genome consists of approximately 3.2 billion base pairs (your DNA) that literally code for "you." ..... Your genes code for what diseases you might get, whether you are good at math or music, how good your memory is, what you look like, what you sound like, how you feel, how long you'll likely live, and more. ..... Each person's genome produces a text file that is about 300 gigabytes. ...... The genome of the 100 trillion + microorganisms living in our bodies. There are 10 times as many microbial cells than human cells, and their effects on our bodies are enormous and massively understudied........ With millions and millions of documents/websites/publications online that were already translated, and a crowd of 500 million users to correct and "teach" the algorithm, GT can quickly and accurately translate between 90 different languages.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Elon Musk: Funny Or Die




Elon Musk: Satellite Internet



15 billion is such a small amount for something this important. The US government should so angel invest.




Hyperloops And Self Driving Cars

They don't stand at cross purposes. Hyperloops are for long distances, and self driving cars are inside the city transportation, so you need neither drivers nor parking space. The two compliment each other.

With the Hyperloop, you skip that whole thing about building roads. They seem to need such little land, that maybe you don't even need to do land acquisition.

So you take 45 minutes to go from LA to NYC, and then you hop out and get into a self driving car, and it takes another 45 minutes to get to your home in The Bronx. The Hyperloop is going to make the self driving car look antique.



Hyperloop



New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes is mind blowing. That might be the most popular track.




It takes an Elon Musk to save America the embarrassment of China and Japan outdoing it on bullet trains.



The Hyperloop could actually be producing excess energy. If there are solar panels on the top everywhere, that is more energy than it needs. Good thing.




The Hyperloop would be a great way to connect India's four largest cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata. Why are they still talking bullet trains in India? The Hyperloop is cheaper. Much cheaper. Just like India skipped landlines, and went straight to mobile phones, it should skip bullet trains and go straight to the Hyperloop.

Elon Musk has a Head Of State status. He is totally making impact. This guy will soon qualify for a membership of the G7.