Free Republic

Open AI CEO Sam Altman will attend the secretive Bilderberg Meeting, an annual gathering of over 100 political and corporate leaders from Europe and North America, which has announced AI as a key item on its agenda this year. Altman isn’t the only Big Tech figure in attendance. Other participants include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Google DeepMind head Demis Hassabis. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), will also attend. As noted in a congressional hearing last week, CISA played a key role as a source of government pressure in...

Here’s a chilling news item reported by the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:Last week, the Dallas Independent School District was boasting about its new pilot project, undertaken along with the company Davista. The pilot project, the school district says, uses AI to extensively monitor each student and then sound the alarm if a student deviates from his “baseline” behavior.There are so many disturbing and dystopian aspects to this information.First, using AI — artificial intelligence — to monitor student behavior is allowing an incredibly complex and advanced algorithm (which is really all AI is at this point) to record...

Artificial intelligence could gain the upper hand over humanity and pose "catastrophic" risks under the Darwinian rules of evolution, a new report warns. Evolution by natural selection could give rise to "selfish behavior" in AI as it strives to survive, author and AI researcher Dan Hendrycks argues in the new paper "Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans." "We argue that natural selection creates incentives for AI agents to act against human interests. Our argument relies on two observations," Hendrycks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, said in the report. "Firstly, natural selection may be a dominant force in...

The U.S. Air Force warned military units against heavy reliance on autonomous weapons systems last month after a simulated test conducted by the service branch using an AI-enabled drone killed its human operator.The Skynet-like incident was detailed by the USAF’s Chief of AI Test and Operations, Col. Tucker’ Cinco’ Hamilton, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit held in London between May 23 and 24, who said the drone that was tasked to destroy specific targets during the simulation turned on the operator after they became an obstacle to its mission. Hamilton pointed out the hazards of using...

An Air Force experiment to test drones trained on artificial intelligence (AI) ended badly for the human operator in a simulated mission when the drone bucked the operator’s commands, U.S. Air Force Col. Tucker Hamilton said at a conference in May. Air Force researchers trained a weaponized drone using AI to identify and attack enemy air defenses after receiving final mission approval from a human operator, Hamilton, who serves as the Air Force’s chief of AI Test and Operations, explained at a summit hosted by the United Kingdom-based Royal Aeronautical Society. But when an operator told the drone to abort...

In a development straight out of a dystopian sci-fi thriller, fast food giant Wendy’s has embarked on a chilling experiment, replacing its drive-through order takers with an AI chatbot powered by Google software. This technological takeover aims to streamline the ordering process by training the AI to understand customer requests and decrease waiting times at the drive-throughs. According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, Wendy’s is set to launch this eerie transformation in its home state of Ohio, starting with locations in Columbus. The company plans to implement the change in June, all in the name of shorter lines...

In 2012, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton and two of his students at the University of Toronto made breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) that laid the foundation for where AI is today and where it is going in the future. This week, he quit his job at Google so that he has the freedom to openly speak against his creation.Hinton shares the honorary title “Godfather of AI” with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, because of their work on deep learning that led to AI as we know it. He also shares the 2018 Turing Award with those men because of the breakthroughs...

Google released Bard in March, an artificial intelligence tool touted as ChatGPT's rival. Just weeks into this public experiment, Bard has already defied expectations and ethical boundaries. In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that there is a degree of impenetrability regarding generative AI chatbots' reasoning. "There is an aspect of this which we call ... a 'black box.' You know, you don't fully understand," said Pichai. "You can't quite tell why it said this or why it got wrong. We have some ideas, and our ability to understand this gets better...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world's first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson draws parallels between the ways Democrats have used Joe Biden, John Fetterman and Greta Thunberg in their quest for power on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): He had a bad stroke and we feel bad about that. Everyone does. But because of that stroke, Fetterman now needs electronic assistance in order to communicate with other people. He can't talk on his own. It's not a right wing conspiracy theory. It's not QAnon! It's real.In fact, it's so real that his campaign concedes that it's real, that it's true. Fetterman uses a software program...

A Google developer was recently fired for revealing that the tech giant’s AI bot had a mind of its own. The trigger that made him realize that the technology was sentient was a joke it made about Israel not belonging to any religion. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, former Google developer Blake Lemoine explained how he arrived at the conclusion that Google’s AI system, LaMDA was sentient and how a witty response about Israel being run by a philosophy based on a science fiction movie. As part of the process, Lemoine would continually challenge artificial intelligence with nuanced questions...

From Talos, the giant bronze automaton who guarded the princess Europa in ancient Greek myths, to Cylons and Terminators, the idea of artificial humans has both fascinated and creeped us out for centuries. Now, we're closer than ever to making a robot look remarkably like a human, with the development of living robot skin. This icky-looking substance is water repellent, self healing, and has a texture just like our own skin. Because it's actually made of human skin cells. "I think living skin is the ultimate solution to give robots the look and touch of living creatures since it is...

This footage is truly terrifying when you consider the prospect that should scientists transfer the technology to Beijing, or perhaps even the military, they may utilize the superior drone technology to target humans. Watch as the autonomous Chinese drone swarm flies through forest while hunting for humans.EXCLUSIVE: How The Atlantic Council Pulled Over The COVID-19 Matrix On The WorldA swarm of micro-drones maneuvered a thick bamboo forest in China without using GPS, avoiding trees, branches, and brush. The stunning film shows that these drones could one day be employed for search and rescue operations or even more sinister purposes, such...

Singapore has started trialing robots to patrol public areas and deter poor social behaviour in its latest effort to further augment its strong portfolio of surveillance tools. Ranked one of the safest countries in the world, Singapore has put two autonomous robots on trial to detect bad behaviour such as flouting of COVID-19 safety measures, smoking in prohibited areas and the improper parking of bicycles, Singapore's Home Team Science and Technology Agency said in a statement on Sunday. It said the two patrol robots, named Xavier, are equipped with cameras that can detect bad social behaviour and trigger real-time alerts...

AS a soldier runs from the battlefield, he's spotted by a suicide drone loitering in the sky overhead. The killing machine dives down on its target and explodes in a kamikaze attack – without anyone telling it to. t might sound like the stuff of science fiction but killer robots, sometimes called "slaughterbots", are already a reality. Last year, STM Kargu-2 drones hunted down targets in what might be the first instance of artificial intelligence killing on its own initiative. The revelation came after years of experts warning about the dangers of letting machines decide who lives and dies in...

The homeless population in Honolulu can expect a visit sometime soon from a robotic police dog that will scan your eye to make sure you don't have a fever Spot, as its called, is a new law enforcement tool that some police departments are employing for various policing purposes Police experimenting with the four-legged machines say they're just another tool to keep emergency responders out of harm's way as they scout for dangers In Honolulu, the police department spent about $150,000 in federal pandemic relief money to buy their Spot from robotics firm Boston Dynamics The robotic police dog is...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Biden has been hiring door-to-door vaccine evangelists, but as too many people would rather stay home and collect a government paycheck than work for the government and collect a government paycheck, the administration has been having trouble finding enough employees. So, the president has announced a groundbreaking deal with Cyberdyne Systems, a cutting-edge technology company run by an innovative AI system named Skynet, to create an army of vaccine enforcement robots. "Nothing could possibly go wrong here," Biden said. "We'll be sending these nice young metal fellows out into your neighborhood to make sure you're being good little boys...

During operations in Gaza in mid-May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used a swarm of small drones to locate, identify and attack Hamas militants. This is thought to be the first time a drone swarm has been used in combat. Drones are usually controlled individually by remote operators, but a swarm is a single networked entity that flies itself using artificial intelligence. It can cover a wide area and keep operating even if it loses many units, and only requires a single

The US Air Force (USAF) has carried out the flight test of a Skyborg autonomy core system (ACS) on board a General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).Skyborg is focused on showcasing an open, modular ACS that can autonomously aviate, navigate, and communicate, and thereby, integrate other advanced capabilities.The two-hour thirty-minute flight test was conducted during the Orange Flag 21-2 Large Force Test Event at Edwards airforce base (AFB) in California.It was part of the Autonomous Attritable Aircraft Experimentation (AAAx) campaign line that aims to test and inform ACS development a sit furthers.The test flight comes just two...

In 2017, we first wrote about the Chinese startup Unitree Robotics, which had the goal of “making legged robots as popular and affordable as smartphones and drones.” Relative to the cost of other quadrupedal robots (like Boston Dynamics’ $74,000 Spot), Unitree’s quadrupeds are very affordable, with their A1 costing under $10,000 when it became available in 2020. This hasn’t quite reached the point of consumer electronics that Unitree is aiming for, but they’ve just gotten a lot closer: now available is the Unitree Go1, a totally decent looking small size quadruped that can be yours for an astonishingly low $2700....