Collective Consciousness vs. AI

Posted on July 23, 2018 by marcia

ALTERNATIVE NEWS

Elon Musk And Over 2400 AI Scientists Sign Pledge Against Killer Robots

July 22, 2018

IN BRIEF

The Facts:More than 2,400 AI scientists and researchers have signed a pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).
Reflect On:Are we as individuals, working together on shared concerns for all humans on the planet, starting to see the power we have to effect positive change?

It is not an uncommon story in the history of science and technology: the most brilliant and innovative minds of their time discover, create, and invent technologies that can have hugely positive benefits for mankind as a whole. Inevitably, the largest and wealthiest ‘consumer’ of such technologies is the Military-Industrial Complex, and the main ways these technologies are produced in our world are as tools of control, warfare, and human suffering.

In earlier times scientists and inventors didn’t have much say in how their work was used, and could often be persuaded that their use in military applications was actually for the benefit of humankind. Today, those naive days are gone, and the landscape is different. Some of the most prominent minds that are creating advanced technologies are starting to speak out more and more about how their work is being used in the world.

More Than 2400 Signatories

Elon Musk of SpaceX and Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind are among more than 2,400 signatories to the pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems, also known as LAWS. The signatories are scientists who specialize in artificial intelligence, (AI) and have declared that they will not participate in the development or manufacture of robots that can identify and attack people without human oversight. The pledge was created by the Future of Life Institute:

LETHAL AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS PLEDGE

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to play an increasing role in military systems. There is an urgent opportunity and necessity for citizens, policymakers, and leaders to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI.

In this light, we the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine. There is a moral component to this position, that we should not allow machines to make life-taking decisions for which others – or nobody – will be culpable. There is also a powerful pragmatic argument: lethal autonomous weapons, selecting and engaging targets without human intervention, would be dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual. Thousands of AI researchers agree that by removing the risk, attributability, and difficulty of taking human lives, lethal autonomous weapons could become powerful instruments of violence and oppression, especially when linked to surveillance and data systems. Moreover, lethal autonomous weapons have characteristics quite different from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the unilateral actions of a single group could too easily spark an arms race that the international community lacks the technical tools and global governance systems to manage. Stigmatizing and preventing such an arms race should be a high priority for national and global security.

We, the undersigned, call upon governments and government leaders to create a future with strong international norms, regulations and laws against lethal autonomous weapons. These currently being absent, we opt to hold ourselves to a high standard: we will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons. We ask that technology companies and organizations, as well as leaders, policymakers, and other individuals, join us in this pledge.

The Power Of Public Shaming

The pledge hopes to amount to more than just words. In calling on countries to legislate laws, technology companies to not accept contracts, and individuals to voice their support against lethal autonomous weapons, they hope to sway public opinion overwhelmingly against LAWS, and in doing so shame any person or group who would go ahead with its development. There is some precedent for this approach working, according to Yoshua Bengio, an AI pioneer at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms:

This approach actually worked for land mines, thanks to international treaties and public shaming, even though major countries like the US did not sign the treaty banning landmines. American companies have stopped building landmines

The timing of this pledge is crucial. The military is one of the largest funders and adopters of AI technology. With advanced computer systems, robots can fly missions over hostile terrain, navigate on the ground, and patrol under seas. More sophisticated weapon systems are in the pipeline. Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who signed the pledge, had this to say about it:

We need to make it the international norm that autonomous weapons are not acceptable. A human must always be in the loop.

We cannot stop a determined person from building autonomous weapons, just as we cannot stop a determined person from building a chemical weapon. But if we don’t want rogue states or terrorists to have easy access to autonomous weapons, we must ensure they are not sold openly by arms companies.

Collective Consciousness Rising

This pledge is but one example of how people are implicating themselves in the future of the planet. No longer are we waiting on the sidelines and leaving decisions up to corporations, the military, or our political leaders. When we identify ourselves not as a race, culture or nation but as a planet, where all of humankind is considered part of the family, then we get to have greater access to the power of our collective consciousness. Once we harness that power, no initiative that is for the benefit of humanity is beyond our abilities.

from: https://www.collective-evolution.com/2018/07/22/elon-musk-and-over-2400-ai-scientists-sign-pledge-against-killer-robots/

Consciousness in the Universe

Posted on July 15, 2017 by marcia

The Universe May Be Conscious, Prominent Scientists State

by PHILIP PERRY

Net of Being. Alex Grey.

What consciousness is and where it emanates from has stymied great minds in societies across the globe since the dawn of speculation. In today’s world, it’s a realm tackled more and more by physicists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists. There are a few prevailing theories. The first is materialism. This is the notion that consciousness emanates from matter, in our case, by the firing of neurons inside the brain.

Take the brain out of the equation and consciousness doesn’t exist at all. Traditionally, scientists have been stalwart materialists. But doing so has caused them to slam up against the limitations of materialism. Consider the chasm between relativity and quantum mechanics, or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and you quickly start to recognize these incongruities.

The second theory is mind-body dualism. This is perhaps more often recognized in religion or spirituality. Here, consciousness is separate from matter. It is a part of another aspect of the individual, which in religious terms we might call the soul. Then there’s a third option which is gaining ground in some scientific circles, panpsychism. In this view, the entire universe is inhabited by consciousness.

A handful of scientists are starting to warm to this theory, but it’s still a matter of great debate. Truth be told, panpsychism sounds very much like what the Hindus and Buddhists call the Brahman, the tremendous universal Godhead of which we are all a part. In Buddhism for instance, consciousness is the only thing that exists.

Such is the focus of the famous Zen koan, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” One must come to the realization that everything we experience is filtered through and interpreted by our mind. Without it, the universe doesn’t exist at all or at least, not without some sort of consciousness observing it. In some physics circles, the prevailing theory is some kind of proto-consciousness field.

Is consciousness derived from an invisible field that inhabits our universe? Getty Images.

In quantum mechanics, particles don’t have a definite shape or specific location, until they are observed or measured. Is this a form of proto-consciousness at play? According to the late scientist and philosopher, John Archibald Wheeler, it might. He’s famous for coining the term, “black hole.” In his view, every piece of matter contains a bit of consciousness, which it absorbs from this proto-consciousness field.

He called his theory the “participatory anthropic principle,” which posits that a human observer is key to the process. Of this Wheeler said, “We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago.” In his view, much like the Buddhist one, nothing exists unless there is a consciousness to apprehend it.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, is another supporter of panpsychism. Koch says that the only theory we have to date about consciousness is, it’s a level of awareness about one’s self and the world. Biological organisms are conscious because when they approach a new situation, they can change their behavior in order to navigate it, in this view. Dr. Koch is attempting to see if he can measure the level of consciousness an organism contains.

He’ll be running some animal experiments. In one, he plans to wire the brains of two mice together. Will information eventually flow between the two? Will their consciousness at some point become one fused, integrated system? If these experiments are successful, he may wire up the brains of two humans.

UK physicist Sir Roger Penrose is yet another supporter of panpsychism. Penrose in the 80’s proposed that consciousness is present at the quantum level and resides in the synapses of the brain. He is famous for linking consciousness with some of the goings on in quantum mechanics.

Dr. Penrose doesn’t go so far as to call himself a panpsychist. In his view, “The laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.”

In Buddhism consciousness emanates from the brain. Neuroscientists agree. Getty Images.

Veteran physicist Gregory Matloff of the New York City College of Technology, says he has some preliminary evidence showing that, at the very least, panpsychism isn’t impossible. Hey, it’s a start. Dr. Matloff told NBC News, “It’s all very speculative, but it’s something we can check and either validate or falsify.”

Theoretical physicist Bernard Haisch, in 2006, suggested that consciousness is produced and transmitted through the quantum vacuum, or empty space. Any system that has sufficient complexity and creates a certain level of energy, could generate or broadcast consciousness. Dr. Matloff got in touch with the unorthodox, German physicist and proposed an observational study, to test it.

What they examined was Parenago’s Discontinuity. This is the observation that cooler stars, like our own sun, revolve around the center of the Milky Way faster than hotter ones. Some scientists attribute this to interactions with gas clouds. Matloff took a different view. He elaborated in a recently published piece, in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research.

Unlike their hotter sisters, cooler stars may move faster due to “the emission of a uni-directional jet.” Such stars emit a jet early on in their creation. Matloff suggests that this could be an instance of the star consciously manipulating itself, in order to gain speed.

Observational data shows a reliable pattern anywhere Parenago’s Discontinuity is witnessed. If it were a matter of interacting with gas clouds, as is the current theory, each cloud should have a different chemical makeup, and so cause the star to operate differently. So why do all of them act in exactly the same way?

Jets out of cooler stars may be a conscious act. Wikipedia Commons.

Though it isn’t much to go on, the unveiling of the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, whose mission it is to map stars, may provide more data to further support or weaken this view. On another front, Dr. Matloff posits that the presence of a proto-consciousness field could serve as a replacement for dark matter.

Dark matter supposedly makes up around 95% of the universe, although, scientists can’t seem to find any. So, for the sake of argument, if consciousness is a property that arises on the subatomic level with a confluence of particles, how do these tiny little bits of consciousness coalesce?

Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposes a slightly different take on panpsychism, called integrated information theory. Here, consciousness is a manifestation with a real, physical location, somewhere in the universe. We just haven’t found it yet. Perhaps this heavenly body radiates out consciousness as our sun radiates light and heat.

Dr. Tononi has actually puts forth a metric for measuring how much consciousness a thing has. The unit is called phi. This translates into how much control a being can enact over itself or objects around it. The theory separates intelligence from consciousness, which some people assume are one in the same.

Take AI for example. It can already beat humans in all kinds of tasks. But it has no will of its own. A supercomputer which can enact change in the world outside of a programmer’s commands, would therefore be conscious. Many futurists from Ray Kurzweil to Elon Musk believe that day is coming, perhaps in the next decade or so, and that we should prepare.

from: http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/the-universe-may-be-conscious-prominent-scientists-state

Stephen Hawking & The Perils of AI

Posted on June 28, 2016 by marcia

Stephen Hawking: Governments are engaged in an AI arms race that could destroy humanity

“Mankind is in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.”

By Matt Agorist –

June 28, 2016

On Monday, English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, Stephen Hawking went on the Larry King show. He was less than optimistic about the future of humanity.

Six years ago, Hawking was on the King show and said, “Mankind is in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.” When asked if he thought humanity has changed since their last visit, Hawking replied, “We have certainly not become less greedy or less stupid.”

In summarizing the last six years,
Stephen Hawking said, “Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding; they have gotten worse since then.”

Hawking’s faith in humanity is apparently dwindling as the theoretical physicist predicted little more than doom and gloom. “The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100. Air pollution has increased by 8 percent over the past five years. More than 80 percent of inhabitants of urban areas are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution,” he said.

Hawking says that addressing pollution is a major concern, but we’ve yet to do so.

“The increase in air pollution and the emission of increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Will we be too late to avoid dangerous levels of global warming?” he said.

If humans don’t kill themselves with pollutions, according to Hawking, it will be the robots that do us in. When King asked Hawking about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI), Hawking explained that when government is involved in technological evolution, the outlook is bleak.

“Governments seem to be engaged in an AI arms race, designing planes and weapons with intelligent technologies. The funding for projects directly beneficial to the human race, such as improved medical screening seems a somewhat lower priority.”

When King asked Hawking about his views on Ray Kurzweil’s theory of the singularity, Hawking shot it down as “too optimistic.”

“I think that his views are both too simplistic and too optimistic. Exponential growth will not continue to accelerate, something we don’t predict will interrupt it as has happened with similar forecasts in the past,” he said.

As he continued, Hawking alluded to the fears that some people hold about AI wiping humanity from the earth because of having differing goals.

Hawking said. “Once machines reach the critical stage of being able to evolve themselves, we cannot predict whether their goals will be the same as ours.”

King goes on to ask Hawking, “Will artificial intelligence ever go on to render human society obsolete?”

“Artificial intelligence has the potential to evolve faster than the human race. Beneficially AI could co-exist with humans and augment our capabilities. But a rogue AI could be difficult to stop.”

After claiming humans are stupid, greedy, and AI will destroy the world, Hawking noted that it is still important to pursue the cause of AI as it will be highly beneficial to humans in the future.

Via Free Thought Project

from: https://www.intellihub.com/stephen-hawking-governments-are-engaged-in-an-ai-arms-race-that-could-destroy-humanity/

Buying Into Giving Up…

Posted on June 28, 2016 by marcia

TREXIT?: TRANSNATIONALISM AND TRANSHUMANISM AND WHY THEY ARE THE REAL ISSUES OF 2016

NASHVILLE — Are you ready to cede your body to the global body and to Transhumanist technology under Transnationalists’s control? Or, are you looking for the Trexit?

U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, recently invited a group of Northeastern University commencement students to see the future with him. As they peered into his crystal ball, Kerry urged his audience to see a world with no nations or borders.

Imagine. One world. No boundaries. It sounds wonderful, futuristic, hopeful; like an apple anyone would wish to pluck from a tree.

This is the transcendent world vision of the Transnationalists.

Transnationalism is a new type of consciousness. Also called Globalism, it is a social agenda, or revolution, grown out of the accelerating technology-driven interconnectivity and interdependence between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states.

Free flows of capital and people (legal and illegal) across the sphere of earth is one goal of Transnationalism. The unity of all of the rolling stones of humanity into a monolithic rock is the other.

As Kerry noted, hiding behind walls in this ‘new’ borderless world will be impossible.

The ‘walls’ reference was a shot at Donald Trump, who wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

What Kerry did not say is that this wall-less world will happen via technology…which sooner than later will be implanted in our bodies. The technology we now depend on for our very lives in the online world will soon mesh with our flesh and make our flesh and blood lives a transparent and open book. No physical walls will be necessary.

The technical term for meshing our flesh with technology is Transhumanism. Not every Globalist advocate is a Transhumanist, but sooner or later, they will realize that turning humans into cyborgs IS the globalist agenda and certainly is the key to its success.
If Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, SONY and other mega corporations driving Globalism have their way, this technology will soon come off your desktop and inside your body. Soon equals 2020-2030.

Clearly, Globalism offers unparalleled new opportunities matched only by its potential for unmatched tyranny. This is its great danger. Combined with Transhumanism, the results could be catastrophic for humanity. In fact, it is the end of the human race as we know it.

WE are the ones who are deciding the future for all of humanity. Many seek a Trexit. Others embrace a Trentrance or the Transhuman/Transnationalist route.

AGENDA 2030

One World government and one economy is the globalist’s next “great leap forward” in what the UN calls the “new universal agenda” for humanity that it hopes will be fulfilled by 2030. Called “Agenda 2030”, this far-reaching program was unanimously adopted on September 25, 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly. Its noble goal is to improve the lives of poor people the world over.

According to the Agenda, by 2030, the majority of us will cease identifying ourselves with the nationality or country of our birth and will instead get religion and see ourselves as “global citizens” living in the light.

Massive redistribution of wealth is the cornerstone of the Agenda.

Whether or not the 1% who control 85% of the world’s wealth will voluntarily give their billions away is yet to be seen.

Whether or not “Agenda 2030” is a positive development is also yet to be determined.

“Agenda 2030” has raised alarm bells among analysts who do not see it as a way for all of us to “love each other”. They see it as a move toward a global totalitarian state.

Membership is mandatory. Non-negotiable. It is already a done deal.

Some believe this plan can only be achieved by absolute dictatorial power or at the point of a gun. My belief is that no guns will be involved. Microchips will do the job. The UN has already begun giving biometric identity cards to refugees in order to track them as they make their way to their new homes. “Agenda 2030” calls for ALL of humanity to have biometric cards in their hands by 2030. These cards may literally be IN our hands, YOUR hands. This is why Transnationalism and Transhumanism are linked.

If we the people do not like the Agenda, now is the time to speak.

Silence is consent.

Britain’s June 23, 2016 vote to Brexit the Globalist EU will have a lot to say about the rise of Transnationalism and Transhumanism across the globe and the fulfillment of the UN’s agenda.

America’s vote in November will amplify the feelings on both sides of Brexit.

The larger choice here is to take the Transnational / Transhuman path or to Trexit.

SMARTEN UP

Socialist Democrats in America have the global body or Global U (a pun on you) of Agenda 2030 in mind. They aim to unify the human body. Their message is “come together”. “Smarten up”.

Donald Trump’s popularity is partly attributed to his stand against Transnationalism. Instead of eliminating walls, Trump is promising to build one between US and the World.
Donald Trump’s America First strategy is as mosaic as his autocratic lawgiver tendencies and he is wrong about building the Wall, but not completely. Personally, I think we need gates, not walls.
Trumps stand-ins are providing further warnings or insight into the possible ‘dark side of the light’ of Transnationalism or Globalism, which they equate with Fascism.
The perceived global stakes of Trump’s America First strategy are spelled out in a May 12, 2016 USA Today editorial by Senator Jeff Sessions who wrote: “For the first time in a long time, this November will give Americans a clear choice on perhaps the most important issue facing our country and our civilization: whether we remain a nation-state that serves its own people, or whether we slide irrevocably toward a soulless globalism that treats humans as interchangeable widgets in the world market.”

Sessions is partly right about globalism being soulless. Some believe the process of globalization will result is a religion-less world. Others think it will lead to greater understanding among the world’s religions. Globalism’s relationship with religion and spirituality is complex.
Sessions is totally right about the globalist agenda to treating humans as widgets, which means “mechanical devices”, in the globalist marketplace.
For clarity, what I believe Sessions should have said is that ‘soulless globalism’ treats humans as interchangeable ‘smart’ or transhumanist widgets in the world market. ‘Smart’ widgets or things are electronic objects connected to and communicating with the Internet.
Sessions and Globalists alike must realize that, since 2003, the U.S. Government has been promoting the transformation of our bodies into widgets via smart technology and the evolution of humanity into a hive mind. This is the core of globalist apple. By ‘smart’ is not meant more intelligent. It means interfaced with computer technology that makes us more watchable, programmable, trackable and controllable.

PLAYING GOD
In my 2015 book, “The Skingularity Is Near”, I documented how this smart technology is now in the wearable phase, but ULTIMATELY is aimed at our skin.

In the wearable phase body-born devices are being used to augment the human body. These include “smart” watches and sensors.

These devices will become less and less about performing functions such as biometric measuring for us and more and more about our identity. These devices will resemble jewelry with an extraordinary array of functions.

The ultimate wearable is Google’s proposed nano-nutrient garment that is designed to promote longevity. This robe of many colors will send nano bots into every orifice of your body on missions to seek and destroy pathogens in your blood and keep your arteries clean as a whistle. The result will be dramatically extended life spans. It echoes the miracle garments or robes of power of the ancient gods. It is the coat of light once worn by Adam and Eve, who were hermaphrodites or two-sexed.

The wearable phase will not last long. This technology will shrink in the immediate future so that systems can be embedded or implanted in the body. The smart phone in your hand will sooner-than-you-think be implanted in your ear.

SkinTrack, a new wearable technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University, basically turns the entire lower arm into a touchpad. It differs from previous skin-to-screen approaches because SkinTrack requires the user to wear a special ring that propagates a low-energy, high-frequency signal through the skin when the finger touches or nears the skin surface.
Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

In another few blinks of the eye, smart contact lenses that will give us super-human vision and will offer heads-up displays, video cameras, medical sensors and more. These are ‘safest’ of these new technologies. Sony, Samsung and Google have all filed patents for smart contact-lens technology in the early months of 2016.

2020 here we come!

Or is it 2030?

By ‘safe’ I don’t mean they won’t have potential harmful effects. Rather, I mean that like other implantables, smart lenses can be removed or inserted by the user. They are not under or in the skin permanently.

Google’s Verily Life Sciences is leading the way to bring the IoT to your eyeball. In the new “cognitive era”, as IBM calls it, human beings will hike over to Best Buy, or some other electronics outlet, to pick out your new lens. Your natural lens will be removed from your eyeball. A fluid will be injected into your eye. In a few moments this fluid will fuse with your eye’s lens capsule. As it solidifies your new eye contains storage, battery, sensors, a radio and other electronics. When you leave the store you will now be a transhuman being who will have perfect vision, the ability to see in the dark, sensors to detect blood glucose levels and other applications we haven’t yet dreamed of.

Of course, with super vision glasses comes supervision. The great fear is that the implantation of this technology will come at a cost greater than our organic eye lenses. It will cost us our free will and will turn us into emotionless cyborgs.

Another Google start-up, Magic Leap, has raised a billion dollars to create an implantable contact lens that injects computer-generated images or floats virtual objects into the real world field of view. Called the world’s most secretive startup, its aim is to bring magic back into the world by rethinking the relationship technology has with people. It’s aim is remove the shackles binding humanity by tossing away the boxes on our desk by uniting the brain and body with technology.
Actually, Google may want you to think about eliminating your physical body altogether.

Its chief futurist, author Neal Stephenson, is most famous for the concept of “Metaverse” from his 1992 sci-fi classic Snow Crash. Stephenson imaged a virtual universe where users create avatars to communicate and interact. Who needs a physical body when your avatar is so much better?

TRANSHUMANISM
Brexit just put a wrench in that plan, just like the rejection of Google Glass slowed down Google’s aim to control your body, mind…and soul.
Transhumanism promises to take the potentials of this right to new levels. Life extension via synthetic organs, drugs and other new technologies eliminate the barriers to our pursuit of life, liberty and immortality.

Transhumanism is a human re-engineering project based on the meshing of human flesh with ‘smart’ technology or electronic devices.
Born out of NASA’s realization in 1962 that we will not be able to transcend earth in our flesh and blood suits, the U.S. Government began working on the transformation of humans into cyborgs (a term coined by NASA).

Transhumanism is aimed at perfecting the human body by seeding it with or ceding it to Artificially Intelligent technology, giving it a new layer of skin, and connecting every human on the planet to the Internet of Things (IoT). In less than ten years every organ and body part will be replaceable by a technological version.

These new technologies comprise the Internet of Things (IoT) that drives Transnationalism / Globalism.
The IoT is presently composed of 20 billion+ ‘smart’ things or widgets — phones, toasters, refrigerators, cars, computers — that will balloon to over 50 billion such smart things by 2020.
The IoT will essentially become an Artificially Intelligent global brain of which each individual human brain is a neuron.

How the Internet of Things Will Change Everything-Including Ourselves.
Presently included among these things are nearly four billion human beings, who are rapidly shedding all that is human and adopting the transhuman upgrades devised by the wizards of Silicon Valley. If you wonder how dependent, if not addicted, we are to these technologies we are just try to take our cell phones away. Just try to run a One World without them.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerburg, has made it is his life to goal to have every human being online as a human being thing. Facebook will be the portal or conduit linking all human being things.

Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of these present and future Facebook users do not have toilets or clean water. They are the poor the UN seeks to uplift. How turning them into smart things and wiring them to IoT will make them better humans is an, as yet, unanswered question.

However, it is certain that the Internet is a great leveler. Take a look at this Microsoft Empowering commercial. “Today, more than half the world’s population does not have access to the Internet. We believe that everyone deserves the social and economic opportunities afforded by connectivity.”

Ultimately, the “global citizen” view promoted by transnationalism is a transient step toward a trans-earth or multi-planet civilization with transhumans (machine-enhanced humanoids) transcending the boundaries of earth life and coming and going between earth, the moon, Mars and beyond.

I am for helping the ‘poor’ to elevate their lives and for transcending the boundaries of earth. But I’m just not sure about doing so as man-chines.

As I discussed in “The Skingularity Is Near”, Transhumanism is the fulfillment of both the Christian prophecy and ethos of a “new”, “perfected” human and America’s “we can do anything with the right technology” attitude.

Ever since Adam and Eve were evicted from Eden, humanity has sought to redeem itself and reclaim our original perfect status.

Some Globalists and Transhumanists believe our species should embrace our transition to smart human being things as part of our hive evolution and our return to perfection. For them, a new human race connected by implanted technologies is a quantum leap. Others believe this vision is trumped-up.

However, human rights advocates, including this author, warn that as technology becomes more and more invasive and merges with us we become and more transparent. Privacy (or hiding) will become impossible. Homo sapiens as a species will cease to exist.

In this way, the 2016 American election is a vote for Transhumanism and Transnationalism or against it. Will we make a Trentrance or a Trexit?

You decide.

from: http://www.williamhenry.net/2016/06/trexit-transnationalism-and-transhumanism-and-why-they-are-the-real-issues-of-2016/

What We Know About The Bilderbergs

Posted on June 13, 2015 by marcia

We know where the meetings are held

The location of the meetings is now public. Last year, the Danish capital of Cophenhagen was the venue of choice.

This year, the world’s elites will travel to the Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol in the Austrian Alps.

We know who attends them

The group releases a list of attendees. From the UK this year George Osborne and Ed Balls are attending.

Other people going to the 2015 meet-up include José Barroso, the former EU Commission President, and executives from firms including Google, BP, Shell, and Deutsche Bank.

We know what’s on the agenda

Prior to meetings the group releases broad subject areas for debate. This year, all we know is that they’ll be discussing “Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Chemical Weapons Threats, Current Economic Issues, European Strategy, Globalisation, Greece, Iran, Middle East, NATO, Russia, Terrorism, United Kingdom, USA, US Elections”.

A lot of these subjects hints are very broad-ranging. ‘United Kingdom’, for instance, could be a reference to the Brexit, the recent elections, or both.

We know they take security very seriously

Austrian Police officers check cars near the town of Telfs The area around the meetings is put into complete lockdown. There is no need to rely on private security: national governments of host countries cooperate fully and provide police protection.

This year’s summit starts on Thursday but already a zone around the Interalpen-Hotel Tyro has been established by Austrian police with security checks on vehicles entering and exiting the area.

Arrests have been made at previous meetings, including of journalists trying to find out what is going on.

But… we’ll never know what was said

People who attend the events do not, as a rule, talk about the specifics of what was discussed. This includes politicians whose job is to represent their constituents.

There are no minutes taken of the meetings, and no reports are made of any conclusions reached. No votes are taken and no policies proscribed. Journalists trying to interview participants at meetings have previously been arrested.

The specifics of most international summits and meetings tend to be fairly opaque, but some public announcement is usually made as to conclusions reached.

Not so with the Bilderberg Group; the global establishment departs as quietly as it arrives.

from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/3-things-we-know-about-the-secretive-bilderberg-group-and-1-thing-well-never-know-10307054.html

Musk & Hawking On Dangers of AI

Posted on May 6, 2015 by marcia

Don’t let AI take our jobs (or kill us): Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk sign open letter warning of a robot uprising

Letter says there is a ‘broad consensus’ that AI is making good progress
Areas benefiting from AI research include driverless cars and robot motion
But in the short term, it warns AI may put millions of people out of work
In the long term, robots could become far more intelligent than humans
Elon Musk has previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines to ‘summoning the demon’

By Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com

Artificial Intelligence has been described as a threat that could be ‘more dangerous than nukes’.

Now a group of scientists and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have signed an open letter promising to ensure AI research benefits humanity.

The letter warns that without safeguards on intelligent machines, mankind could be heading for a dark future.

A group of scientists and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking (pictured), have signed an open letter promising to ensure AI research benefits humanity.

The document, drafted by the Future of Life Institute, said scientists should seek to head off risks that could wipe out mankind.

The authors say there is a ‘broad consensus’ that AI research is making good progress and would have a growing impact on society.

It highlights speech recognition, image analysis, driverless cars, translation and robot motion as having benefited from the research.

‘The potential benefits are huge, since everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable,’ the authors write.

Elon Musk previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines, to ‘summoning the demon’

But it issued a stark warning that research into the rewards of AI had to be matched with an equal effort to avoid the potential damage it could wreak.

For instance, in the short term, it claims AI may put millions of people out of work.

In the long term, it could have the potential to play out like a fictional dystopias in which intelligence greater than humans could begin acting against their programming.

‘Our AI systems must do what we want them to do,’ the letter says.

‘Many economists and computer scientists agree that there is valuable research to be done on how to maximise the economic benefits of AI while mitigating adverse effects, which could include increased inequality and unemployment.’

Other signatories to the FLI’s letter include Luke Muehlhauser, executive director of Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Frank Wilczek, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel laureate.

The letter comes just weeks after Professor Hawking warned that AI could someday overtake humans.

Space X Founder Elon Musk: AI is our ‘biggest existential threat’

GOOGLE SETS UP AI ETHICS BOARD TO CURB THE RISE OF THE ROBOTS

Google has set up an ethics board to oversee its work in artificial intelligence.

The search giant has recently bought several robotics companies, along with Deep Mind, a British firm creating software that tries to help computers think like humans.

One of its founders warned artificial intelligence is ‘number one risk for this century,’ and believes it could play a part in human extinction

‘Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this,’ DeepMind’s Shane Legg said in a recent interview.

Among all forms of technology that could wipe out the human species, he singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the ‘number 1 risk for this century.’

The ethics board, revealed by web site The Information, is to ensure the projects are not abused.

Neuroscientist Demis Hassabis, 37, founded DeepMind two years ago with the aim of trying to help computers think like humans.

Speaking at event in London, the physicist told the BBC: ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.’

This echoes claims he made earlier in the year when he said success in creating AI ‘would be the biggest event in human history, [but] unfortunately, it might also be the last.’

In November, Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Space-X and Tesla, warned that the risk of ‘something seriously dangerous happening’ as a result of machines with artificial intelligence, could be in as few as five years.

He has previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines, to ‘summoning the demon’.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AeroAstro Centennial Symposium in October, Musk described artificial intelligence as our ‘biggest existential threat’.

He said: ‘I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence.

‘I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.

‘With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and … he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.’

The letter issued a stark warning that research into the rewards of AI had to be matched with an equal effort to avoid the potential damage it could wreak

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