The merger of Humans and Machines has Already Begun

The oldest surviving great work of literature tells the story of a Sumerian king, Gilgamesh, whose historical equivalent may have ruled the city of Uruk some time between 2800 and 2500 BC.

A hero of superhuman strength, Gilgamesh becomes instilled with existential dread after witnessing the death of his friend, and travels the Earth in search of a cure for mortality.

Twice the cure slips through his fingers and he learns the futility of fighting the common fate of man.

Merging With Machines

Transhumanism is the idea that we can transcend our biological limits, by merging with machines. The idea was popularised by the renowned technoprophet Ray Kurzweil (now a director of engineering at Google), who came to public attention in the 1990s with a string of astute predictions about technology. Continue reading

A Survival Guide for the Coming AI Revolution

In computer vision, features are the parts of an image that are used to classify an object. For example, the nose, ears and tail may be used as features to distinguish that a picture is a cat. (Modified from pixabay.com)

 

If the popular media are to be believed, artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to steal your job and threaten life as we know it. If we do not prepare now, we may face a future where AI runs free and dominates humans in society.

The AI revolution is indeed underway. To ensure you are prepared to make it through the times ahead, we’ve created a handy survival guide for you.

Step 1: Recognizing AI

The first step in every conflict is knowing your target. It is crucial to acknowledge that AI is not in the future; it is already here. Continue reading

Rich and powerful warn robots are coming for your jobs

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Some of the richest, smartest and most powerful humans have an important message for the rest of us as they convened this week to discuss pressing global issues: the robots are coming.

“Most of the benefits we see from automation is about higher quality and fewer errors, but in many cases it does reduce labor,” Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, said on Tuesday during a panel on “Is Any Job Truly Safe?”

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Building work starts on first all-robot manufacturing plant in China’s Dongguan

Construction work has begun on the first factory in China’s manufacturing hub of Dongguan to use only robots for production, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

A total of 1,000 robots would be introduced at the factory initially, run by Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology Co, with the aim of reducing the current workforce of 1,800 by 90 per cent to only about 200, Chen Xingqi, the chairman of the company’s board, was quoted as saying in the report.

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