Lifeboat Foundation

The feeling that we belong to something much larger and deeper than ourselves has long been a common human experience. Palaeontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin wrote about “a noosphere” of cognitive realisation evolving towards an “Omega point” of divine planetary spiritualisation. But it is hard to envisage that ever occurring. It is easier to envisage that we belong in an evolving intelligent power that has entered a momentous posthuman dimension though artificial intelligence.

Some futurists believe we are on the way to realising a posthuman world in which we will live on as cyborgs, or in some new embodiment of intelligent power that will absorb and supersede human intelligence. It is no longer fanciful to foresee a future in which we will have everyday interactions with androids that are powered by artificial general intelligence. They will look, move, and seem to think and respond like a human person, be skilled in simulating emotional responses realistically, and greatly out-perform us in mental activities and manual tasks. It may be we will regard them only as tools or mechanical assistants. But from their expression of human-like behaviours we may become attached to them, even to the extent of according them rights. Their design will have to ensure they don’t carry any threat, but will we be able to trust fully that this will remain the case given their technical superiority? And how far can we trust that the military, malicious groups, and rogue states won’t develop androids trained to kill people and destroy property? We know only too well about our human propensity for violent conflict.

It would be ironic if, to gain more power and control over the world, we used our human intelligence to create AI systems and devices which, for all the benefits they bring, end up managing our lives to our detriment, or even controlling us. And irony, as Greek dramatists were well aware, is often a component of fate.

Under a new announcement, AUKUS members have unveiled their plans to make use of advanced AI to hunt for Chinese submarines.

Took-ranch/Wikimedia Commons.

Continue reading “AUKAS allies plan AI-power to pinpoint China’s stealth submarines” »

Military tech startup Anduril Industries is shaking up the U.S. defense industry as it is one of the few privately held technology companies finding success as a Defense Department contractor. But what makes the company’s software so unique that it is being used across multiple branches of the U.S. military and in both the Russia-Ukraine War and Israel-Hamas War?

WSJ explains how this startup is operating in order to disrupt the U.S. defense industry.

Continue reading “Can Palmer Luckey Reinvent the U.S. Defense Industry?” »

US-China consensus on regulating the military use of AI mentions no specifics, amid challenge posed by the lack of a common definition for such systems Mutual vulnerability could still push the rival powers to create a common set of binding regulations, observers say.

America calls and raises the AI bet with the B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

U.S Air Force.

This incident, whose timing peculiarly lined up with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States, caused China to suddenly change tact and want to talk about nukes and AI.

Continue reading “The AI military race is led by American tech. Is there a challenger?” »

Prosperity7, the venture capital fund of Aramco Ventures, invested in Rain Neuromorphics in February 2022.

Wikimedia Commons.

Moving aggressively in the AI arms race, Washington has compelled Saudi Aramco to sell its shares in Rain Neuromorphics Inc, an AI chip startup backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, reported Bloomberg.

Continue reading “US regulator compels Aramco to divest Altman-backed AI chip startup” »

Number 4 Hamilton Place is a be-columned building in central London, home to the Royal Aeronautical Society and four floors of event space. In May, the early 20th-century Edwardian townhouse hosted a decidedly more modern meeting: Defense officials, contractors, and academics from around the world gathered to discuss the future of military air and space technology.

Things soon went awry. At that conference, Tucker Hamilton, chief of AI test and operations for the United States Air Force, seemed to describe a disturbing simulation in which an AI-enabled drone had been tasked with taking down missile sites. But when a human operator started interfering with that objective, he said, the drone killed its operator, and cut the communications system.

Space Warfare concepts from science fiction often involve war between planets, and we will discuss the science of that, and war inside a fully colonized solar system or Dyson Swarm.

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Cover Art by Jakub Grygier: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jakub_grygier.

Continue reading “The Interplanetary War” »

Guardrails AI companies add to their products to prevent them from causing harm “aren’t enough” to control AI capabilities that could endanger humanity within five to ten years, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Axios’ Mike Allen on Tuesday.

The big picture: Interviewed at Axios’ AI+ Summit in Washington, D.C., Schmidt compared the development of AI to the introduction of nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War.