“Summoning the Demon”: Robots with Artificial Intelligence May Eventually Turn People into Pets [+video]

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elonRobots will use humans as pets once they achieve a subset of artificial intelligence known as ‘superintelligence’.

This is according to SpaceX-founder Elon Musk who claims that when computers become smarter than people, they will treat them like ‘pet Labradors’.

His comments were made in a recent interview with scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who added that computers could choose to breed docile humans and eradicate the violent ones.

Elon Musk has already likened artificial intelligence to ‘summoning the demon’.

But in his latest interview, Musk said his fears revolve around something known as superintelligence. . .

Musk also said humanity needs to be careful about what it programs superintelligent robots to do. (Read more from “Robots with Artificial Intelligence Could Turn People into Pets? [+video]” HERE)

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Elephants Help Rescue 18-Wheeler Truck Stuck in Louisiana

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elephantshelp1Forget calling for a tow truck — there’s another road rescue team in place and they probably work for peanuts. But seriously, while it might sound like a joke to have a couple of elephants helping out a stuck semi-truck on the side of the road, it’s all too delightfully true.

A pair of pachyderms was put to work assisting the 18-wheeler trailer they were traveling in when it got stuck on the side of the highway in Nachitoches Parish, LA, reports WTVR.com. They’re seen in photos of the incident leaning against the truck, guided by their handler, as the vehicle appears to be on the verge of tipping over . . .

“When deputies arrived on scene, they were astounded to find two elephants keeping the 18-wheeler from overturning,” a sheriff’s department spokesman wrote. “The truck became stuck after the driver pulled off the edge of the soft shoulder. Recent rains caused the ground off of the shoulder to be soft.” (Read more from “Elephants Help Rescue 18-Wheeler Truck Stuck in Louisiana” HERE)

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This Woman Was Sent to a Psych Ward for Claiming Obama Did This [+video]

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BBA Long Island woman’s insistence that President Obama follows her on Twitter made doctors at the Harlem Hospital psych ward think she was delusional and suffering from bipolar disorder — but she was actually telling the truth, a lawsuit charges.

Kam Brock’s frightening eight-day “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” ordeal at the mental facility included forced injections of powerful sedatives and demands she down doses of lithium, medical records obtained through her suit filed in Manhattan Federal Court show.

They also indicate that doctors didn’t believe the leader of the free world followed her on Twitter — though @BarackObama follows over 640,000 accounts, including hers. They were also skeptical she worked at a bank, records show.

“I told (the doctor) Obama follows me on Twitter to show her the type of person I am. I’m a good person, a positive person. Obama follows positive people!” Brock, whose Twitter handle is @AkilahBrock, said . . .

Adding insult to insanity, the hospital hit Brock with a bill of $13,637.10, she charges in her suit seeking unspecified damages. (Read more from “This Woman Was Sent to a Psych Ward for Claiming Obama Did This [+video]” HERE)

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New York Post: Aliens Killed Kennedy and Other Wild Tales of UFOs and Presidents

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KENNEDYLittle-known fact: The late comedian Jackie Gleason was good friends with President Richard Nixon. Even weirder? Both men were obsessed with UFOs.

This new book by Larry Holcombe — who’s been studying UFOs for 50 years — does make some wild and thinly substantiated claims. But it’s too fun to pass up.

To wit: Gleason’s ex-wife told Esquire magazine that one night, after a day spent golfing, Nixon “showed up at Gleason’s home and whisked him away to Homestead Air Force Base, where they entered a hanger in a high-security area.” There, the two men supposedly gazed upon the wreckage of a UFO and its dead alien cargo. Holcombe, a clear believer, breaks down every rumor about UFO visitation and the government’s “involvement” in it.

There are many stories of sightings by high-level people, and it’s no secret that the government has looked into many of these reports over the years.

In October 1969, outside of a Lions Club meeting in Leary, Ga., Holcombe writes that Jimmy Carter and some fellow club members “noticed a strange light in the western sky.” (Read more from “New York Post: Aliens Killed Kennedy! And Other Wild Tales of UFOs vs. The USA” HERE)

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Urban Death Project Seeks to Compost Dead Humans to Feed the Crops: Has It Really Come to This?

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Photo Credit: Natural News

Photo Credit: Natural News

A Seattle architect named Katrina Spade has proposed a new solution for urban food production: convert the recently deceased into nutritious compost to feed the food crops.

The project is called the Urban Death Project, and it describes the process of turning dead humans into food as follows:

The Urban Death Project is a compost-based renewal system. At the heart of the project is a three-story core, within which bodies and high-carbon materials are placed. Over the span of a few months, with the help of aerobic decomposition and microbial activity, the bodies decompose fully, leaving a rich compost. The Urban Death Project is not simply a system for turning our bodies into soil-building material. It is also a space for the contemplation of our place in the natural world, and a ritual to help us say goodbye to our loved ones by connecting us with the cycles of nature.

The Urban Death Project website describes the project as a 501(c) non-profit, and a fundraising effort is due to launch March 30th on Kickstarter. The donate page explains, “Your gift supports the creation of a meaningful, equitable, and ecological alternative for the care and processing of our deceased.” (Read more from “Urban Death Project Seeks to Compost Dead Humans to Feed the Crops: Has It Really Come to This?” HERE)

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Cornell Researchers Create Online Simulator to Map Zombie Outbreak for Real Medical Purposes

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zombie outbreakWhile tools like shotguns, baseball bats and flame throwers might prove invaluable during the zombie apocalypse, there’s another tool — which takes a more cerebral approach to the problem — that might also come in handy. Infection-mapping tool Zombietown USA lets you chart the spread of the zombie outbreak and know exactly where you should flee to last the longest when the brain eaters start taking over the US. You can even adjust sliders to account for different variables, so your escape route can be the most efficient possible.

Though Zombietown USA seems like a gag, it actually grew out of hard science. As we reported earlier, a group of researchers at Cornell University, inspired by the book “World War Z” by Max Brooks, modeled the way in which a zombie outbreak might spread and determined your best bet was to run for the hills.

Zombietown USA grew out of their research and accompanies a paper graduate students Matt Bierbaum, Alex Alemi and several of their peers recently submitted to arXiv, an online depository for physics papers. The paper, “You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies,” uses zombies as a basis to model any disease, including ones that might actually strike.

“We wanted to study zombies using many of the scientific tools used for actual disease, albeit in a fun context,” Bierbaum, told me. “We hope in this way to introduce the real methods and science behind diseases to a broader audience and show the fun in science.”

“Zombies, while maybe not a ‘real’ disease, is a unique model of diseases compared to those that are traditionally studied,” Bierbaum said. “In standard disease models as well as zombies, an infection takes place when there is contact between an infected host and a healthy one — someone sneezing on someone else, or a zombie biting a healthy human. In standard disease models, infected individuals recover when they get better on their own. A zombie, however, only recovers when it is actively killed (canonically, by destroying the brain).” (Read more from “Cornell Researchers Create Online Simulator to Map Zombie Outbreak” HERE)

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Rise of Artificial Intelligence is Already Creating Real Robot Romance

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Lego heartConvincing people to have a romantic relationship with a computer might be easier than it sounds. At this year’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, a chatbot on Tinder convinced a number of users that she was a cute 25-year-old woman eager to strike up a romantic relationship. Too bad “Ava” turned out to be just an Instagram account for a character in an upcoming film (“Ex Machina”) about the implications for romance in the era of artificial intelligence.

In many ways, “Ava” was playing a simplified form of Alan Turing’s famous “imitation game” by trying to convince human conversational partners that it was human — or at least human enough to get Tinder users to watch a trailer for a movie. In one conversational exchange captured by AdWeek, Ava used a typical chatbot tactic — keeping a human off-balance by asking questions you wouldn’t expect from a computer (“Have you ever been in love?” and “What makes you human?”) — to convince male, techie-hipsters at SXSW that she was a real woman.

We’ve already seen evidence that carrying on a relationship with a bot is easier than it sounds. Consider the Invisible Boyfriend (and Invisible Girlfriend) experience, which really started as a clever way to use technology to cover up a lack of a romantic significant other. It turns out the experience was so addictive that people started to fall for the Invisible Boyfriend bot — even when they knew the whole relationship was made up — and paid for — from the beginning.

In an era when teens rely so much on text messages to launch, maintain and end relationships, it’s perhaps no surprise that a bot experience such as Invisible Boyfriend or Ava could take off. If you think about the typical teen romance carried out via text message these days, it’s essentially a chatbot experience powered by a really powerful computer — the human brain. The witty reply, the shared insider lingo between two lovers, the concerned text from a lover demanding a rapid reply — this could all be simulated by an artificially intelligent chatbot.

No wonder AI thought leader Ray Kurzweil has suggested that a real-life human-AI romance might be possible in as little as 15 years. In his review of the 2013 Spike Jonze film “Her” (in which the character played by Joaquin Phoenix carries on a romantic relationship with a disembodied operating system called “Samantha”), Kurzweil said he expected similar types of advances by the year 2029: “Samantha herself I would place at 2029, when the leap to human-level AI would be reasonably believable.” (Read more from “Rise of Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Attitudes on Robot Romance” HERE)

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Dr. Pepper: The Doctor Of Choice For A 104-Year-Old Woman [+video]

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d pepperA Fort Worth woman is celebrating her 104th year of life. “Well at 103 I didn’t think I’d make it, but I’m still perking along.”

At 104 years old, Elizabeth Sullivan says she doesn’t need the advice of real doctors. So she keeps another doctor close by.

“People try to give me coffee for breakfast. Well, I’d rather have a Dr. Pepper.” Sullivan fell in love with the soft drink’s trademark “23 flavors” when she was in her 60’s. “I started drinking them about 40 years ago. Three a day.

Every doctor that sees me says they’ll kill you, but they die and I don’t. So there must be a mistake somewhere.”
For her birthday she got a very big surprise. A beautiful cake shaped like what else, Dr. Pepper.

Commenting on her special day she said, “When you live to be 104 and still can talk to nice people, you deserve some Dr. Pepper, but I never expected this.” (Read more from “Dr. Pepper: The Doctor Of Choice For A 104-Year-Old Woman [+video]” HERE)

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Notorious KKK Grand Wizard Who Vanished in 1984 Resurfaces In a Completely Unexpected Place

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A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who now lives in Belize, alongside the very race of people he fought to segregate, has told Daily Mail Online: ‘I don’t hate blacks… Ain’t that something?’

Breaking his 30-year silence Bill Wilkinson – once the most powerful white supremacist in the world – hit back at claims he is a racist.

Speaking from the sun-drenched hotel resort he owns and where Daily Mail Online tracked him down, Wilkinson said: ‘Don’t call me racist, I don’t hate blacks.

Photo Credit: Daily Mail

‘I never have hated blacks, I still don’t hate blacks, I don’t hate anyone.’

But in a baffling contradiction Wilkinson added that he had not ‘changed’ since his KKK days. (Read more from “Notorious KKK Grand Wizard Who Vanished in 1984 Resurfaces In a Completely Unexpected Place [+video]” HERE)

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EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”

The funding is going toward creating a prototype and market analysis for the device. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels. (Read more from “EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower” HERE)

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