AI Weapons

Stephen Hawking and others have signed a letter urging the world not to start a new artificial intelligence arms race, arguing that these weapons will be…

…feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.

Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.

street congestion ideas

Here is a nice compendium from Plan Philly on dealing with urban street congestion. Although, the term congestion to most people implies high traffic volumes and low speeds, which you could argue are acceptable in cities. I will admit though that here in Philadelphia we need solutions to temporary delivery, loading and contractor parking. These legitimate business activities block bike lanes, sidewalks, and travel lanes because they often have no choice. I’ve done it myself. Pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers can curse at each other all day – but the same person can be all three at various times, so we are cursing at ourselves. We need solutions and compromises that work for everyone. There are some good, pretty obvious ideas in this article that really shouldn’t encounter bureaucratic or political resistance: larger loading zones, metering loading zones, letting people reserve them in advance, congestion pricing, and off-hours delivery, to name a few.

“Uber for kids”

What’s the busy, car-free urban soccer mom (or dad) to do when they occasionally need to pack the kid off to a remote inaccessible (except by car) suburban area? Here’s an idea for an Uber-like service where the drivers are certified in childcare.

Parents schedule a ride with a ‘CareDriver’ and are sent a short bio for that driver, a picture, and are required to enter in a code word for the ride. The parent then relays that information to the child, and then to the school or daycare organization from which the kid is getting picked up. That way, little Tommy or Patty knows how to identify their ‘CareDriver’ through both the photo and the code word.

Parents can track the ride in real time through the app and have multiple methods of contacting the driver at any time…

All of the drivers on the platform go through a rigorous, 15-point certification process. They must have at least five years of child care service experience, alongside passing a number of background checks, criminal background checks, as well as getting fingerprinted. HopSkipDrive also ensures that their drivers are TrustLine certified, which cofounder Joanna McFarland describes as the gold standard of childcare certification in the state of California.

suburban office parks

The Washington Post covers the deflating market for suburban office parks in the D.C. area.

The building was built in 1989, and it shows: a mountain of tinted glass and beige concrete in commercial dullsville. Over the past decade, its value dropped by 64 percent. The largest tenant, the National Institutes of Health and its contractors, started packing up two years ago as leases expired. By 2014, the owner reported cash-flow problems, foreclosure arrived this past January, and that was it for 6116 Executive Blvd…

“I think, as with many other things, our younger folks are more inclined to be Metro-accessible and more urban,” Marriott chief executive Arne Sorensontold The Washington Post in March, after announcing the plans to move.

If tastes keep trending away from office parks, buildings like 6116 Executive Blvd. and 10400 Fernwood Rd. may soon be hollow, oversize memorials to the Way We Worked.

chemicals and cancer

I’ve tended not to obsess over chemicals and cancer, because I think there are other risks that are much higher and much more clearly proven (like the high odds of death every time you set foot in or anywhere near a motor vehicle, to give one example.) I also tend to accept some chemicals, like water disinfectants, food preservatives, drugs, even pesticides, as somewhat necessary evils – we actually know they have a downside, but they do more good than harm on balance. In a sense, it is a “luxury” that many of us avoid violence and infectious diseases long enough to get old and die of cancer. Cancer is at least to some extent a random phenomenon. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking for safer alternatives to these chemicals that do the same good. If we don’t look we won’t find them. And then, there are chemicals that are known to be harmful, and have no positive effects. Triclosan comes to mind. The companies using cynical fear-based marketing to force these on people should be punished.

All that aside, our food, water, air, and consumer products are full of chemicals, with the result that our bodies are full of chemicals. We don’t have good information on what most of them are doing to us, and especially what combinations of them may be doing to us. Here’s an interesting article that estimates what fraction of cancers are caused by chemicals in the environment, as opposed to lifestyle choices, genetics, and plain old bad luck.

Assessing the carcinogenic potential of low-dose exposures to chemical mixtures in the environment: the challenge ahead

Lifestyle factors are responsible for a considerable portion of cancer incidence worldwide, but credible estimates from the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) suggest that the fraction of cancers attributable to toxic environmental exposures is between 7% and 19%. To explore the hypothesis that low-dose exposures to mixtures of chemicals in the environment may be combining to contribute to environmental carcinogenesis, we reviewed 11 hallmark phenotypes of cancer, multiple priority target sites for disruption in each area and prototypical chemical disruptors for all targets, this included dose-response characterizations, evidence of low-dose effects and cross-hallmark effects for all targets and chemicals. In total, 85 examples of chemicals were reviewed for actions on key pathways/mechanisms related to carcinogenesis. Only 15% (13/85) were found to have evidence of a dose-response threshold, whereas 59% (50/85) exerted low-dose effects. No dose-response information was found for the remaining 26% (22/85). Our analysis suggests that the cumulative effects of individual (non-carcinogenic) chemicals acting on different pathways, and a variety of related systems, organs, tissues and cells could plausibly conspire to produce carcinogenic synergies. Additional basic research on carcinogenesis and research focused on low-dose effects of chemical mixtures needs to be rigorously pursued before the merits of this hypothesis can be further advanced. However, the structure of the World Health Organization International Programme on Chemical Safety ‘Mode of Action’ framework should be revisited as it has inherent weaknesses that are not fully aligned with our current understanding of cancer biology.

CRISPR

Here’s some more info on CRISPR, a genetic engineering technique some people are saying will be revolutionary.

 The Bacterial Origins of the CRISPR Genome-Editing Revolution
Sontheimer Erik J. and Barrangou Rodolphe. Human Gene Therapy. July 2015, 26(7): 413-424. doi:10.1089/hum.2015.091.

Like most of the tools that enable modern life science research, the recent genome-editing revolution has its biological roots in the world of bacteria and archaea. Clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) loci are found in the genomes of many bacteria and most archaea, and underlie an adaptive immune system that protects the host cell against invasive nucleic acids such as viral genomes. In recent years, engineered versions of these systems have enabled efficient DNA targeting in living cells from dozens of species (including humans and other eukaryotes), and the exploitation of the resulting endogenous DNA repair pathways has provided a route to fast, easy, and affordable genome editing. In only three years after RNA-guided DNA cleavage was first harnessed, the ability to edit genomes via simple, user-defined RNA sequences has already revolutionized nearly all areas of biological science. CRISPR-based technologies are now poised to similarly revolutionize many facets of clinical medicine, and even promise to advance the long-term goal of directly editing genomic sequences of patients with inherited disease. In this review, we describe the biological and mechanistic basis for these remarkable immune systems, and how their engineered derivatives are revolutionizing basic and clinical research.

condensation

Here’s an article on using condensation as a water supply. It’s a somewhat obvious idea – first, collect all that air conditioner condensate and use it for something. Second, use solar energy to condense some more.

The machine is based on Spanish technology. Local developers John Vollmer and Moses West are testing it out and allowing it to be evaluated by numerous entities, including the military.

The machine takes water from the air in the form of humidity and converts it into drinking water. It’s not a new process, but the machine does it on a large scale and much more economically than before.

“As long as you have 30 percent humidity or greater, there’s no such thing as a drought,” West said.

Lloyds of London is worried about food

Lloyds of London says we should be worried about the food supply. And yes, they have insurance for that.

Global demand for food is on the rise, driven by unprecedented growth in the world’s population and widespread shifts in consumption patterns as countries develop. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that global agricultural production will need to more than double by 2050 to close the gap between food supply and demand. As this chronic pressure increases, the food system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to acute shocks…

Sudden disruptions to the supply chain could reduce the global food supply and trigger a spike in food prices, leading to substantial knock-on effects for businesses and societies. The food system’s existing vulnerability to systemic shocks is being exacerbated by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation, and heightening political instability…

A shock to the global food supply could trigger significant claims across multiple classes of insurance, including (but not limited to) terrorism and political violence, political risk, business interruption, marine and aviation, agriculture, environmental liability, and product
liability and recall. These losses could be compounded by the potential for a food system shock to last for many years; and the ability of insurers to pay claims quickly is expected to be an important factor in post-shock recovery. More broadly, the insurance industry may also be affected by impacts on investment income and the global regulatory and business environment.

jeep hacker

Yes, hackers can really take over cars. Here’s a Wired article where it’s done on purpose.

Miller and Valasek’s full arsenal includes functions that at lower speeds fully kill the engine, abruptly engage the brakes, or disable them altogether. The most disturbing maneuver came when they cut the Jeep’s brakes, leaving me frantically pumping the pedal as the 2-ton SUV slid uncontrollably into a ditch. The researchers say they’re working on perfecting their steering control—for now they can only hijack the wheel when the Jeep is in reverse. Their hack enables surveillance too: They can track a targeted Jeep’s GPS coordinates, measure its speed, and even drop pins on a map to trace its route.

All of this is possible only because Chrysler, like practically all carmakers, is doing its best to turn the modern automobile into a smartphone. Uconnect, an Internet-connected computer feature in hundreds of thousands of Fiat Chrysler cars, SUVs, and trucks, controls the vehicle’s entertainment and navigation, enables phone calls, and even offers a Wi-Fi hot spot. And thanks to one vulnerable element, which Miller and Valasek won’t identify until their Black Hat talk, Uconnect’s cellular connection also lets anyone who knows the car’s IP address gain access from anywhere in the country. “From an attacker’s perspective, it’s a super nice vulnerability,” Miller says.

From that entry point, Miller and Valasek’s attack pivots to an adjacent chip in the car’s head unit—the hardware for its entertainment system—silently rewriting the chip’s firmware to plant their code. That rewritten firmware is capable of sending commands through the car’s internal computer network, known as a CAN bus, to its physical components like the engine and wheels. Miller and Valasek say the attack on the entertainment system seems to work on any Chrysler vehicle with Uconnect from late 2013, all of 2014, and early 2015. They’ve only tested their full set of physical hacks, including ones targeting transmission and braking systems, on a Jeep Cherokee, though they believe that most of their attacks could be tweaked to work on any Chrysler vehicle with the vulnerable Uconnect head unit. They have yet to try remotely hacking into other makes and models of cars.