“If the government regulates against use of drones or stem cells or artificial intelligence, all that means is that the work and the research leave the borders of that country and go someplace else.”–Peter Diamandis
Automation and artificial intelligence continue to be hot topics–and getting hotter. I’ve heard more than one call to limit or ban them in the last week. That won’t work, for the very reason Peter Diamandis states in the quote above. There are over 200 countries in the world; there is no global governance that can impose the same restrictions on all of them. We have no choice but to proceed. Proceed with caution, of course. Proceed with our eyes open and with a close monitoring of the consequences. But proceed we must.
Automation/artificial intelligence–Swedish company Wheelys announced the opening in Shanghai of an automated, app-controlled, convenience store that will operate virtually staff-free. After a successful mini-test in a small Swedish town, the new store will attempt proof-of-concept in a busy urban environment.
Google’s director of research, Peter Norvig, said that he does not buy the doomsday scenarios of rampant, runaway artificial intelligence destroying mankind. Speaking in an interview with CNBC, though, he did warn that massive workplace disruption is coming. “The pace may be so rapid as to create disruptions. We need to find ways to mitigate that,” he said.
Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly, writing in the online forum Backchannel, said that he thinks the advent of superhuman AI is a myth.
Elon Musk–It wouldn’t be The Future This Week without something from Elon. He graced the annual TED talk conference and sat down to be interviewed by TED curator Chris Anderson to discuss his ambitious plans for Tesla, SpaceX, hyperloops and his new effort to build a network of highways under Los Angeles.
Musk, speaking in the same interview, said that one of his Tesla vehicles will make an autonomous trip from Los Angeles to New York by the end of this year. The promise is that after the initial programming in of the destination, there will be no human intervention.
Mars/NASA–the space agency unveiled a multi-step plan to land astronauts on the red planet by 2033.Human spaceflight to Mars has been in NASA’s sites for years now–but until now there was no concrete plan. That changed this past week when
The view from 2033
A reminder that the Seeking Delphi™ podcast is available on iTunes, and has a channel on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook.
Seeking Delphi™ 
Wondering if you are covering Quantum Computation, Optical Hortaculture, or
Constructor Theory?
Your work is much appreciated!
Best to you
John Mason
Loverspointpublishing.com
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Covering whatever I come across that seems important. I must admit I’m not familiar with the latter two on the list. I’ll look into it. Thanks for visiting and commenting. 🙂
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On further investigation, I am fascinated with the concept of constructor theory. I’m a big fan of David Deutsch and just watched his video on it. If you read some of my earlier posts, I think physics, and more specifically, what we know about physical reality, is important in futures thinking. But quantum mechanics and chaos and complexity may tell us more about what we can’t do–which is precisely predict the future–than what we can do. Constructor theory seems to be more directed at what it is possible to do. I’m going to contact the group at Oxford doing this and see if somebody would be willing to be interviewed on the Seeking Delphi podcast.
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