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It’s been a weird day for weird science. Not long after researchers claimed victory in performing a head transplant on a monkey, the US military’s blue-sky R&D agency announced a completely insane plan to build a chip that would enable the human brain to communicate directly with computers. What is this weird, surreal future?

It’s all real, believe it or not. Or at least DARPA desperately wants it to be. The first wireless brain-to-computer interface actually popped up a few years ago, and DARPA’s worked on various brain chip projects over the years. But there are shortcomings to existing technology: According to today’s announcement, current brain-computer interfaces are akin to “two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem.” They just aren’t fast enough for truly transformative neurological applications, like restoring vision to a blind person. This would ostensibly involve connect a camera that can transmit visual information directly to the brain, and the implant would translate the data into neural language.

To accomplish this magnificent feat, DARPA is launching a new program called Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) that stands to squeeze some characteristically bonkers innovation out of the science community. In a press release, the agency describes what’s undoubtedly the closest thing to a Johnny Mneumonic plot-line you’ve ever seen in real life. It reads:

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Imagine a Quantum computer and/ or device that can perform “all possible operations” with the associated data all at once; and not just performing a series of operations. Meaning, with Quantum Entanglement processing, our AI machines could truly outperform all of us. No longer a fantasy or myth; it will be real.


Bizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links — not space-time — constitute the fundamental structure of the universe.

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With AI, why have attorneys or judges anymore. Frankly, AI is proving to be the most unbiased judges/ decision makers already. And, AI can develop contracts and patent agreements, etc. better than most humans. Plus, AI will outperform humans in discovery work on cases. So, we truly in just 3 years may not need judges and attorneys anymore.


Our list of Truly Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools You Can Use Today was out of date the minute we published it. We knew that would happen and are absolutely thrilled when we discover new capabilities that belong on this list. One we just learned about is EverLaw, provider of perhaps the world’s most advanced litigation platform, designed to be easy to use and programmed to leverage the most powerful technologies available, including cloud computing, mobile solutions and yes, artificial intelligence.

We found Everlaw and learned about their prediction engine and other key platform characteristics from an a16z blog post introducing a new investment. From a16z:

There is also a need for modern solutions to deeply technical problems — such as searching terabyte corpora for relevant documents (the state-of-the-art is mostly keyword search) or identifying clusters of relevant documents based on machine learning techniques (versus relying on humans to manually sift through and connect millions of documents). Historically, an industry vertical with such a legacy business model and architecture (i.e., very slow to change) would have a very hard time attracting top computer science talent to improve the space.

Guessing my earlier posting about imagining you’re in a scenario that you must decide to either to have a chip implant v. waiting on a nanobot is not that far fetched. Nonetheless, there are truly careers that will not be replaced by robot such as artist’s works, designers, etc. And, new careers and companies will be created throughout the AI and Quantum evolution. https://lnkd.in/b5i5C-X


Think you are too smart to be replaced by a robot in your job? Think again.

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Now everyone can eventually feel like their mother-in-law is always with them. A computer that never stops talking and always has an opinion on everything.


IBM and the University of Michigan are working on a conversational computing system that will transform human-machine communication.

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Researchers have demonstrated the effects of superposition on the scale of everyday objects.

Of the weird implications of quantum mechanics, superposition may be the hardest for humans to wrap their minds around. In principle, superposition means that the same object can exist in more than one place at the same time.

Ordinarily, superposition is only relevant on the microscopic scale of subatomic particles. Effects on this scale are the key to some possibly groundbreaking technologies, like quantum computing. No one has ever demonstrated quantum effects on the scale of Schrödinger’s cat –the mythical unobserved cat in a box that is both alive and dead at the same time.

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It’s leading to a different way of thinking about computing.

This year’s Detroit auto show is proving that autonomous driving is no longer a techie’s pipe dream. Even holdout Akio Toyoda has finally joined the parade. The self-driving car is coming.

But behind that development is an even more profound change: artificial intelligence (also known as “deep learning”) has gone mainstream. The autonomous driving craze is just the most visible manifestation of the fact that computers now have the capacity to look, learn and react to complex situations as well or better than humans. It’s leading to a profoundly different way of thinking about computing. Instead of writing millions of lines of code to anticipate every situation, these new applications ingest vast amounts of data, recognize patterns, and “learn” from them, much as the human brain does.

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Imagine: What happens when you’re in 2027 on the job competing with other AI; and there is so much information exposed to you that you’re unable to scan & capture all of it onto your various devices and personal robot. And, the non-intrusive nanobot for brain enhancement is still years away. Do you finally take a few hundred dollars & get the latest chip implant requiring a tricky surgery for your brain or wait for the nanobot? These are questions that folks will have to assess for themselves; and this could actually streamline/ condition society into a singularity culture. https://lnkd.in/bTVAjhb


A mom pushes a stroller down the sidewalk while Skyping. A family of four sits at the dinner table plugged into their cell phones with the TV blaring in the background. You get through two pages in a book before picking up your laptop and scrolling through a bottomless stream of new content.

Information technology has created a hyper-connected, over-stimulated, distracted and alienated world. We’ve been living long enough with internet-connected computers and other mobile devices to have begun to take it for granted.

But already the next wave is coming, and it promises to be even more immersive.