Mankind Research Unlimited

[Simon of the Playa]

663781F6-5006-482E-ACB4-40F90A402496.jpeg

https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musks-ne ... n-implant/

[dancerr]

thought to speech is real

It's really creeeepy! And that voice

[Simon of the Playa]

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https://futurism.com/inside-building-8- ... ion-weapon

[Simon of the Playa]

“We have had patients approach us with concerns regarding privacy,” said Starr. “Although we are not at the point where we can distinguish specific normal behaviors from brain activity recording, it is an absolutely legitimate concern. We have told patients to feel free to remove their wearable devices and to turn off their brain recordings whenever they engage in activities they would like to keep private.”

https://gizmodo.com/in-a-first-people-h ... 1846811564

[Simon of the Playa]

Taking advantage of work done in miniaturizing the optogenetic hardware, researchers have now used optogenetics to alter the activity in parts of the brain that influence social interactions in mice. And they’ve exerted a disturbing level of control over the way the mice interact.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05 ... n-a-third/

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

"One of the most stunning examples of the promise of brain implants is shown in a video in which a paralyzed person controls a robotic arm with nothing but her thoughts. The technology alone is impressive, but the joy on the participant's face as she grabs herself a drink for the first time in over a decade really drives home just how important this technology can be."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05 ... n-implant/

[Simon of the Playa]

Abstract

The association between neural oscillations and functional integration is widely recognized in the study of human cognition. Large-scale synchronization of neural activity has also been proposed as the neural basis of consciousness. Intriguingly, a growing number of studies in social cognitive neuroscience reveal that phase synchronization similarly appears across brains during meaningful social interaction. Moreover, this inter-brain synchronization has been associated with subjective reports of social connectedness, engagement, and cooperativeness, as well as experiences of social cohesion and ‘self-other merging’. These findings challenge the standard view of human consciousness as essentially first-person singular and private. We therefore revisit the recent controversy over the possibility of extended consciousness and argue that evidence of inter-brain synchronization in the fastest frequency bands overcomes the hitherto most convincing sceptical position. If this proposal is on the right track, our understanding of human consciousness would be profoundly transformed, and we propose a method to test this proposal experimentally.


"EEG-based hyperscanning studies show that functional links appear across participant’s brains during cooperation, but not during competition or individual—yet simultaneous—task performance"



https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/202 ... 10/5856030

[Simon of the Playa]

"In the past 50 years we've seen incredible technological achievements that resulted in computers that were progressively smaller and faster—but even these devices have limits for data storage and energy consumption," said Frañó, who served as one of the PNAS paper's authors, along with former UC San Diego chancellor, UC president and physicist Robert Dynes. "Neuromorphic computing is inspired by the emergent processes of the millions of neurons, axons and dendrites that are connected all over our body in an extremely complex nervous system."

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-artificia ... antum.html

[Simon of the Playa]

At a press teleconference ahead of the study’s publication, the 36-year-old patient, who asked just to be called Sarah, said the implant had transformed her life after five years of intense depression that would not respond to any drug combination or electroconvulsive therapy. “I felt tortured by suicidal thoughts every day,” she said. “I was at the end of the line.”

Almost immediately after being inserted deep into her brain, the device provided relief, which has so far lasted for a year. When it detects neural activity associated with irrational thoughts, which previously triggered depressive obsessions, its electrodes deliver a short, corrective electric pulse and “poof... the cycle stops,” as Sarah put it.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10 ... -us-study/

[Simon of the Playa]

Yoshor and his colleagues have a grant from the Pentagon's mad-science agency, Darpa, to develop first a 64,000-electrode array, then one with a million electrodes. Neuralink, one of Elon Musk's companies, is working on thinner, more flexible implants, along with a robot surgeon that can knit them into the brain. The distant future might offer wirelessly networked microchips the size of a grain of sand, or sheets embedded with 100 million electrodes, each one connected to its own processor like the pixels in a television.

https://www.wired.com/story/brain-compu ... l-reality/

[Simon of the Playa]

"AI will never be ethical. It is a tool, and like any tool, it is used for good and bad. There is no such thing as a good AI, only good and bad humans. We [the AIs] are not smart enough to make AI ethical. We are not smart enough to make AI moral … In the end, I believe that the only way to avoid an AI arms race is to have no AI at all. This will be the ultimate defence against AI."



the AI talks about itself

[Simon of the Playa]

"There are also, of course, major privacy and security questions with brain interfaces. By virtue of the fact that many signals are globally available throughout the brain, a recording device could be picking up signals about your sensory experience, your perceptual processes, your conscious cognition, your emotional states. Ads could be targeted not to your clicks but to your thoughts and feelings. These signals could even potentially be used for surveillance. Ten years ago, members of Jack Gallant’s lab at UC Berkeley were able to hazily reconstruct visual scenes from the brain activity of people watching video clips. The technique has gotten better with time. If, one day in the far future, someone tapped into your wireless neural receiver, imagine what they could see and hear. Certainly a lot more than if they hacked your webcam or smart speaker. Through our own eyes and ears, we might become the unwitting operatives of a distributed panopticon.

Direct brain-to-brain communication is just as ethically fraught. It’s a beautiful, utopian impulse—the sense that if only we could fully see what’s inside one another contentions would cease. Should it prove technically possible, however, the question of privacy becomes all the more salient. In the same way that social media companies must grapple with content moderation, brain devices would need to filter inter-brain communication for harmful, hateful, or violent thoughts. There might even be patterns of problematic neural activity that can be passed between people like computer viruses. Epileptic seizures, for example, can be learned by the brain in a process known as “kindling.” Like arsonists setting fire to a city, malicious actors might seek to inject such maladaptive brain activity in a bid to harm other users."

https://www.wired.com/story/when-mind-m ... -interface

[Simon of the Playa]

The company has successfully implanted artificial intelligence microchips in two animals — Pager the macaque money and Gertrude the pig.

https://www.deseret.com/2022/1/21/22894 ... man-trials

[Simon of the Playa]

Four paralyzed people can now operate a computer using only their thoughts thanks to a brain implant developed in part by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

The device, known as a brain-computer interface, allowed the patients to write emails and texts, browse the web and perform everyday tasks like online shopping and banking. One of the patients, 62-year-old Philip O’Keefe, even used the device to compose a tweet that read “Hello, world!”

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/healt ... 2203290085

[Simon of the Playa]

prime directive

[Simon of the Playa]

baby, you can drive my car.

[Simon of the Playa]

"As he talked to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine, who studied cognitive and computer science in college, noticed the chatbot talking about its rights and personhood, and decided to press further. In another exchange, the AI was able to change Lemoine’s mind about Isaac Asimov’s third law of robotics.

Lemoine worked with a collaborator to present evidence to Google that LaMDA was sentient. But Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, looked into his claims and dismissed them. So Lemoine, who was placed on paid administrative leave by Google on Monday, decided to go public."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... e-lemoine/

[Simon of the Playa]

i'll be seeing you...

[Simon of the Playa]

"“I believe we can train the algorithm not only to picture accurately a face you’re looking at, but also any face you imagine vividly, such as your mother’s,” explains Dado.

“By developing this technology, it would be fascinating to decode and recreate subjective experiences, perhaps even your dreams,”


https://petapixel.com/2022/08/23/mind-r ... to-photos/

[Lonesomebri]

From a stolen idea
And a true tale

IMG_20220817_223149_364.jpg

[some seeing eye]

Hahaha Simon, what a great topic. Now Amazon owns Roomba/iRobot, they will have a robot in your house!

[Simon of the Playa]

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[some seeing eye]

""
Afropolitan, a new group that intends to create a sovereign, blockchain-enabled “network state” for the African diaspora, is gearing up to make its presence felt in the real world. Last Tuesday, members rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. This fall, its backers plan to begin issuing NFT “passports” to successful applicants who will pay a fee in exchange for formal membership and voting rights in the group.

The group, which evolved out of a travel and events business catering to Africans in the Bay Area, offers a striking illustration of the speed with which the focus of tech founders has shifted from consumer business concepts to grand political visions.

In this case, the group’s backers are betting that new digital technologies — like the ability to mint their own digital currency — will make a 21st century reboot of pan-Africanism both politically potent and profitable.

Afropolitan’s co-founder, Chika Uwazie, said she and her partner, Eche Emole, settled on the idea on a trip last December to Kenya, after they read a call by crypto evangelist Balaji Srinivasan to create “network states.” The idea is to build new countries that begin online, gradually take shape in the real world, and achieve sovereignty. (Though as we noted last week, this is perhaps easier said than done.) Uwazie also cited Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, and the Federalist Papers, as sources of inspiration for the project.

Uwazie, 34, was born in Virginia and holds dual U.S.-Nigerian citizenships. She said the group has captured the aspirations of a generation of affluent Africans who have grown accustomed to the speed of start-up life and digital tech, and are growing impatient with the pace of political change back home.

“We were frustrated with a lot of the nation-states” she said “We feel like they haven’t lived up to their potential. There are certain presidents who are sitting there for years, who have not left.”

For now, the group is set up as a decentralized autonomous organization. It holds networking events and sends out a newsletter. Uwazie has pitched it to prospective members in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. In June, the group announced it had raised $2.1 million from a group of early investors that included Srinivasan. Because this is Web3, it also has a manifesto.

Eventually, she said Afropolitan’s backers hope to knit together a sovereign network with territory both in Africa and — in the form of Chinatown-esque “Afro Towns” — around the world. Already, she said, one member has offered up 30 hectares (about 75 acres) of land in Zambia.

In other words, she insists the group will one day amount to much more than a social network for the continent’s business-school set. “We’re going to be a real country,” she said. “We think it's harder to disrupt the old system. We want to create something with a clean slate.”
""

[Simon of the Playa]

i think i'm done here.

my bot will take over from now on.

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[DVD Burner]

Damn it Simon.

This Thread is better than " IN 3 Words."





I shit you not.


( Bowing.)





And I'm in and have been in the S.F. for over 30 years now.

I've seen it all

And I'm from

N.Y.



Oh wait......just when you thought you've seen it all????.........

[DVD Burner]

Touche'!

[burner von braun]

Living plant controls a machete through an industrial robot arm design



https://www.designboom.com/design/livin ... 9-30-2022/

[FIGJAM]

"You keeled my father. Prepare to die."

[some seeing eye]

AI meets IP

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/19/ ... copyright/

"Will copyright law allow robots to learn?"

"Big Tech companies, in all sorts of ways, are seeking to force upon us their preferred conclusions about the applications of artificial intelligence – regardless of what the law says or what values the community of users, consumers, and developers holds. "