Larry Page, Elon Musk, at DARPA Robotics Challenge

What big business is eyeing up as the next big commercial opportunity: namely, autonomous robot technology that can operate in a human environment. Or to put it another way: Terminator. Although we’re repeatedly told that the robots are not Terminator; that they’re not going to kill us; or make us their slaves; that there is nothing to fear.

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RT @GammaCounter: The NSA has a kind of art via departement @gohsuket

The artist has also reconstructed the Terminator-style metal skull that appears as an emblem for an NSA program that maps the global Internet. Another piece focuses on documents from the NSA’s British counterpart, published last year by The Intercept, that discuss the use of deception and manipulation techniques against targeted groups of people.

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James Lovelock: ’Saving the planet is a foolish, romantic extravagance’

He points out that for half a century now, computing power has roughly doubled every two years – a trajectory of growth known as Moore's Law – and that computers are already capable of many actions far beyond what humans can do. In his scariest scenario, which sounds disturbingly close to the premise of the Arnie Schwarzenegger Terminator movies, he warns that computers could morph into an autarkic life form powerful enough to "destroy us, our carbon life forms, and inherit the Earth". Luckily he thinks this outcome unlikely, and in the end has no fear of the Rise of the Machines. "Computers are entirely rational creations. But true intelligence, the ability to create and to invent, is intuitive – and you can't do rational intuition."

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RT @ggreenwald: Pentagon spending tens of millions of dollars on sci-fi super-hero “Iron Man” suit for troops

The U.S. military command in charge of special operations is betting tens of millions of dollars on a science fiction suit that would wrap troops in high-tech body armor and effectively afford them superhuman abilities. Back in the real world, SOCOM is offering up its own high-dollar prizes to the private sector — as well as academia and Hollywood special effects designers — to deploy exoskeleton-clad super soldiers against the United States’ enemies around the world.

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The Tech Threat

The United States and other developed countries are in the midst of a digital revolution that may be even more profound than the industrial revolutions of the past. Advances in robotics, cognitive computing and other digital technologies promise untold benefits in a world of leisure hard to imagine. But there is also a dark side to this technological change. It could lead to joblessness for most and extreme inequality, threatening economic health and political stability. Tension over rising inequality and a lack of good-paying middle class jobs is growing in Silicon Valley and nearby San Francisco, the epicentre of computerisation and the information economy. In San Francisco, buses for Google, Facebook and other companies ferry high-paid tech workers to their jobs in Silicon Valley. This allows tens of thousands to live in the city, fuelling popular anger over gentrification and high housing prices that are pushing longtime residents out.

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Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by billion in government subsidies

Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

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