Tesla CEO Elon Musk is on a mission to link human brain with computers in coming four years

Image Credits: Reuters

Tesla Inc founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices. Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.

“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,” Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. bit.ly/2oWJcMw Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.

“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview. “If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.” The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.

In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a “medical research” company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself.

Reuters

Publish date: April 21, 2017 2:48 pm| Modified date: April 21, 2017 2:48 pm

Tesla will recall 53,000 cars globally to fix a parking brake issue

Image Credits: Reuters

Tesla Inc said on Thursday it would recall 53,000 of its Model S and Model X cars globally to fix a parking brake issue. Shares of the U.S. luxury electric car maker were down nearly 1 percent at $302.77 in afternoon trading, following its biggest ever recall.  Tesla’s total production for 2016 was 83,922 vehicles and included both Model S and Model X.

“The electric parking brakes installed on Model S and Model X vehicles built between February and October 2016 may contain a small gear that could have been manufactured improperly by our third-party supplier,” Tesla said in a statement on its website. The car maker said there had been no accidents or injuries due to the issue.

Tesla said less than 5 percent of the vehicles being recalled may be affected and it would take less than 45 minutes to replace the brakes. The company also said it would send an official recall notice to its customers.  Tesla, led by entrepreneur Elon Musk, had said last year it would recall 2,700 Model X sport utility vehicles in the United States due to a faulty locking hinge in third-row seats.

The company said on Thursday it was working with Italian supplier Freni Brembo SpA to get the replacement parts. Brembo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters

Publish date: April 21, 2017 8:53 am| Modified date: April 21, 2017 8:53 am

Donald Trump meets tech leaders: Silicon Valley caught off guard by olive branch

Image: Reuters

By Anirudh Regidi /  15 Dec 2016 , 17:12

To say that Silicon Valley was caught off guard by Donald Trump’s election to the Presidential Office would be something of an understatement.

The months and weeks leading up to the election saw Silicon Valley actively do everything in its power to oppose Trump. Campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton numbered in the millions, media outlets went all out in a war against Trump and Silicon Valley’s elite were not reticent about their stance against him.

“Both sides made no secret of their disdain for each other during the election campaign,” reads a report in Reuters.

Immigration, trade, encryption, net-neutrality; Trump and the Valley never saw eye-to-eye on any of these during the election. Trump’s innate racism, talk of building walls, building an immigrants’ registry, make in America, opposition to net neutrality and more painted him as the most technology-hostile president that America had ever seen. Is it any wonder that Silicon Valley didn’t want him in power?

But Trump is in power, or will be, come 20 January. What’s the Valley going to do now?

In an unexpected twist, Trump invited Silicon Valley’s Elite to a meeting in Trump tower, Manhattan, where he planned to discuss Silicon Valley’s fears and better understand the situation there.

Given what happened during the election, Silicon Valley’s reaction to the invite would have been something to behold. Re/code’s Kara Swisher described my feelings best when she said, “Hoo boy, would I have liked to be in the room when Sheryl Sandberg/Tim Cook/Larry Page/fill-in-your-billionaire-tech-leader-here were reacting to the tech summit invite.”

Now this is awkward

How do you decline an invite from the soon-to-be most powerful man in the world, one who can directly influence the future of your company, nay, your industry, and the man who you deliberately and pointedly dissed in the past?

Awkward is hardly the word for it.

I’m still not entirely convinced that the likes of Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Satya Nadella and others weren’t just called to Trump’s castle to kiss the proverbial ring. Reports and statements made by Trump staff and various company spokespersons are quite positive, however.

Jeff Bezos claimed that the meeting was “very productive”, Elon Musk is joining one of Trump’s business advisory boards and Oracle’s Safra Catz gave reporters a thumbs-up after the meeting. The signs all seem good; but can we trust them?

Now that he’s president (or soon to be one), do any of these CEOs have the courage to speak against Trump? There’s more than money at stake, after all.

Trump still hasn’t clarified his stand on immigration, net neutrality’s fate still hangs in the balance and Trump’s belief in science and global warming is still a big question mark.

Analogue vs digital

Has the summit actually achieved anything? I honestly don’t know. Some, like Re/code and The Stranger believe that these Silicon Valley executives are just “legitimising a fascist”. Others, like Bill Gates, have compared Trump to JFK and gone on record to state that Trump will drive America with innovation.

Given Bill Gates’ response, I’m almost tempted to admit that Trump is actually doing the smart thing here. He is a businessman, he’s worth over $10 billion and he’ll soon be the president of the United States of America. That’s no small feat.

As a businessman, a traditional, brick and mortar businessman, so to speak, Trump is far removed from the cutting edge tech world that is Silicon Valley. As a businessman, Trump understands money and Silicon Valley is telling him, as, I’m sure, are his advisors, that interfering with Silicon Valley will cost the country a great deal in terms of jobs, revenue and technological edge.

Trump’s supporter and advisor, Peter Thiel, is an investor in Silicon Valley himself and he sits on Facebook’s board of directors. If nothing else, he’s sure to see the merit in ensuring that Silicon Valley functions smoothly and also the merit in ensuring that Trump sees it too.

Trump might be an opportunist, racist, fascist, bigot and anything else that comes to mind, but he seems to know which side of his bread is buttered and his olive branch to Silicon Valley is proof of that.

If this is indeed a façade, it’s in the cracks that we’ll see glimpses of the truth. If not, Trump actually might “Make America Great Again!” Either way, turbulent times lay ahead.

US President-elect Donald Trump invites Silicon Valley’s top CEOs to summit, and they’d better not miss it

Image: Reuters

By Anirudh Regidi /  12 Dec 2016 , 12:29

US President-elect Donald Trump has invited CEOs of some of the largest tech companies in the world to attend a summit on Wednesday.

These invites have gone to the likes of Alphabet’s Larry Page, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Intel’s Brian Krzanich and more, reports Re/code.

Interestingly, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos also rated an invite, though it’s unclear if he’s actually going to attend the event. The meeting, slated for the fourteenth of this month, will take place at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Silicon Valley has been very wary of Trump since he won the US Presidential Election. Many in the Valley had gone out of their way to support Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, in the Presidential Election and Trump himself doesn’t have an amicable relationship with them.

Jeff Bezos in particular has been targeted by Trump on multiple occasions. Bezos himself has been very critical of Trump and Trump has targeted Amazon for its outsourcing of jobs, research and development and more. Bezos-owned Washington Post has also been particularly harsh on Trump during the elections.

Bezos isn’t alone. Trump’s gone after Apple as well. He event went on to call the company out on its “tax evasion” and lashing out at it for not cooperating with the FBI in the San Bernadino iPhone case. The purpose of the summit isn’t clear at the moment, but we’re sure Trump will tweet about it soon.

Brain-drain

Jesting aside, it’s quite likely that the summit is intended to address Silicon Valley’s growing trepidation at a future under Trump. Silicon Valley’s biggest fear surrounds Trump’s stance on immigration.

The Valley relies very heavily on “highly-skilled” immigrants to fill positions that are otherwise hard to fill. Foreign students who come to the US not only bring in money, they also represent a significant investment in terms of money, time and other resources and to have their newly acquired skills deported back to their home countries would be a huge loss.

The US H1-B Visa program currently admits around 65,000 skilled workers and 20,000 graduate workers, almost all of whom are quickly swallowed up by American industries. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s soon-to-be-appointed Attorney General is very much against the H1-B program and Silicon Valley is terrified.

In an industry that lives on the cutting edge of technology, and sometimes beyond that, any delay in filling such positions, a loss of skilled labour and more, all of this represents a terrible loss for the Valley.

But that’s not all.

Manufacturing

Another issue that worries Silicon Valley is Trump’s insistence on bringing back manufacturing to the US, particularly the manufacture of the iPhone. In fact, Trump has proposed to impose heavier taxation on goods manufactured in China.

Economists and Silicon Valley see no point in doing this. Even if it was economically feasible to bring over a multi-billion dollar manufacturing and supply chain industry from Asia to the US, the sheer cost of labour in the US would push up the cost of manufacturing a product by three times or more. This would eat into the profits of companies forced to manufacture in the US, resulting in minimal gains to the economy.

A report on Forbes even suggests that bringing manufacturing to the US will provide no measurable economic benefit, making the whole endeavour meaningless.

The Indian connection

Trump has been vocal about his support for India, going so far as to say, “If I am elected president, the Indian and Hindu community will have a big friend in the White House.” But this is the same man who claimed that Pakistan “is not our friend” and then told Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, “Your country is amazing.”

 Follow

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

“Get it straight: Pakistan is not our friend. We’ve given them billions and billions of dollars, and what (cont) http://tl.gd/fcuq8f 

10:11 PM - 17 Jan 2012

 
•  2,6942,694 Retweets
 
•  2,0192,019 likes

While Trump might love India, he also hates immigrants and if he gets his own way, we might see a drastic decline in the issue of work- or study-related visas. Indian firms like TCS and Infosys are heavily reliant on the H1-B visa program to get their workers to the US. These companies also rely on the ability to outsource a lot of work to India as it cuts down on their own expenditure in the US.

A lot to discuss

Clearly, Silicon Valley’s CEOs have a lot to discuss with Trump. Whether they like it or not, Trump will be the president of the United States and the only way forward is to help him understand their side of the story and the impact that any hasty decision will have on the American economy, and, indirectly, the rest of the world.

Ignoring Trump will do more harm than good.

Microsoft and Elon Musk-backed OpenAI sign Azure agreement

  16 Nov 2016 , 17:11

OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research firm backed by Tesla Motors Inc’s Elon Musk and other prominent tech executives, has signed an agreement to run most of its large-scale experiments on Microsoft Corp’s flagship cloud service, Azure. OpenAI will use Azure for its experiments in deep learning and AI, and Microsoft will collaborate with the company on advancing research and creating new tools and technologies.

Musk, along with venture capitalist Sam Altman, co-chairs OpenAI, whose backers apart from Musk include Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services and tech investor Peter Thiel and LinkedIn Corp co-founder Reid Hoffman.  OpenAI is an early adopter of Microsoft’s Azure N-Series Virtual Machines service, which will be generally available from December.

These cloud-computing services, which are powered by Nvidia Corp graphics chips, are designed for the most intensive computing workloads, including deep learning and simulations.

“In the coming months we will use thousands to tens of thousands of these machines to increase both the number of experiments we run and the size of the models we train,” OpenAI said in a blogpost. The non-profit was created last December for the purpose of creating AI that augments human capabilities.

The investors have committed $1 billion to the startup, but OpenAI said it expects to spend only a “tiny fraction” of that in the next few years. OpenAI will continue to release open-source software to make it easier for people to run large-scale AI workloads on the cloud, and will provide Microsoft with feedback to ensure that Azure’s capabilities keep pace with its advances in AI.

Reuters

General Motors decides to increase the production of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars

Image Credit: REUTERS

  07 Nov 2016 , 09:06

General Motors Co is ramping up production of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars at a factory north of Detroit and is on track to start delivering vehicles as promised by the end of the year, company officials said on Friday.

Barring a last-minute stumble, GM will be first to offer an electric car with more than 200 miles of driving range at a starting price of less than $40,000 before tax credits. Silicon Valley electric car maker Tesla has said its entry in this new market segment, the Model 3, will launch next year. The Bolt and the Model 3 represent contrasting strategies to push electric vehicles into the mainstream of the U.S. auto market.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the company will overhaul its Fremont, California, factory to build as many as 500,000 Model 3 sedans and related models a year. Tesla’s Model 3 design prototypes show a car aimed at German luxury sedans such as the Audi A3 or A4. Musk has said nearly 400,000 people have put down deposits on the Model 3.

GM, however, is taking a more cautious approach. The $37,495 Bolt, with a 238-mile range, is a compact, utilitarian hatchback with design features such as a thin front seat to increase rear-seat legroom, aimed at making the car attractive to drivers for ride-hailing services.

GM’s Maven car-sharing operation will receive Bolts to offer drivers who want to work for GM’s ride-hailing partner, Lyft. Company officials will not say how many customers have tried to order Bolts from dealers. GM is also hedging its bets on production targets after getting burned in the past by over-estimating demand for electric or hybrid cars. Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars represent just 1 percent of the U.S. light-vehicle market, despite government efforts to promote cleaner cars.

At GM’s Orion assembly plant, Bolts are rolling off the same final assembly line as gasoline-fueled Chevrolet Sonic sedans and hatchbacks. During a tour on Friday, every fourth or fifth car on the line was a Bolt. The Orion plant is working on one shift, building at a pace of about 90,000 cars a year.

GM redesigned the Orion assembly operation to allow workers to build either Bolts or Sonics and can shift production depending on demand, said Yves Dontigny, launch manager for the Bolt. At one assembly station, after a Sonic body is mated to its gasoline engine and axles, a carrier wheels the battery pack for a Bolt into place. The same workers secure it to a Bolt body hanging on a carrier overhead.

Reuters

Elon Musk: After three month hiatus, SpaceX will return to flight in December

Image Credit: Reuters

  05 Nov 2016 , 11:05

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday his space launch company is aiming to return its rockets to flight in mid-December following a launch pad accident two months ago.

During an interview with CNBC, Musk said investigators had figured out why a Falcon 9 rocket burst into flames on 1 September as it was being fueled for a routine, preflight test.

The accident destroyed a $200 million Israeli communications satellite and grounded the Falcon 9 fleet for the second time in 14 months.

The cause of the accident was a fueling system issue that inadvertently produced solid oxygen inside the rocket’s upper stage tank. The oxygen then reacted with a carbon composite bottle containing liquid helium that sits inside the oxygen tank, triggering an explosion.

“I think we’ve gotten to the bottom of the problem,” said Musk, who is also chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc. He added that the issue had never been encountered in the history of rocketry.

Musk did not specify what mission would launch next, nor whether SpaceX would fly from a new launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, or from its West Coast site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceX’s primary launch pad, located just south of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, was damaged in the Sept. 1 accident. SpaceX has declined to release details on the extent of damage.

The company has a backlog of about 70 missions, worth more than $10 billion.

Also on Friday, NASA and Orbital ATK Inc said Orbital’s next cargo run to the International Space Station would use the heavier-lift Atlas 5 rocket, made by United Launch Alliance, rather than Orbital’s Antares booster. The switch will allow NASA to fly an extra 660 pounds (300 kg) of cargo to the station while SpaceX returns to flight.

NASA hired Orbital and SpaceX to fly cargo to the station after the shuttles were retired in 2011.

Terms of Orbital’s contract with United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, were not released. The launch is targeted for early 2017, NASA said.

Reuters

Tesla’s Musk adds solar roofs to his clean energy vision

  29 Oct 2016 , 13:50

By Nichola Groom

Tesla Motors Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk on Friday unveiled new energy products aimed at illustrating the benefits of combining his electric car and battery maker with solar installer SolarCity Corp.

The billionaire entrepreneur showed of solar-powered roof tiles that eliminate the need for traditional panels and a longer-lasting home battery, which Tesla calls the Powerwall, aimed at realizing his vision of selling a fossil fuel free lifestyle to consumers.

“This is sort of the integrated future. An electric car, a Powerwall and a solar roof. The key is it needs to be beautiful, affordable and seamlessly integrated,” Musk said while showcasing the products on homes that once served as the set of the television show “Desperate Housewives.”

Musk is the biggest shareholder in both Tesla and SolarCity, which is run by two of his first cousins. Analysts have been dubious of the deal’s proposed synergies, with some suggesting the merger is a way for Tesla to rescue money-losing SolarCity. A vote on the acquisition is scheduled for Nov. 17.

The rollout of the product, expected as soon as next summer, would be “unwieldy” if the two companies are not combined, Musk told reporters.

Having two separate companies “slows things down, makes them more expensive. It’s worse for shareholders,” he said.

Musk refused to answer a reporter’s question about how Tesla’s balance sheet would accommodate the acquisition of SolarCity.

By incorporating solar modules into rooftops, Tesla is hoping to succeed with a solar technology that to date has had little success. Just this year, Dow Chemical said it would stop selling a solar shingle it

Schiaparelli lander to attempt a dangerous landing on Mars

Image: ISRO

  19 Oct 2016 , 09:35

The search for life on Mars may take a giant leap on Wednesday when a space lander is due to touch down on the red planet in Europe’s first attempt to land a craft there since the Beagle 2’s “heroic failure” more than a decade ago. The disc-shaped 577-kg (1,272 lb) Schiaparelli lander, which will test technologies for a rover due to follow in 2020, is expected to enter Mars’s atmosphere at a speed of nearly 21,000 km (13,049 miles) per hour at 1442 GMT.

It will use a parachute and thrusters to slow down before touching down on the planet’s surface only six minutes later. The lander is named for Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer who in 1877 began mapping the topography of Mars, extending study of what are now known as the planet’s canals, a mistranslation of the Italian word canali, or channels.

Schiaparelli is part of the European-Russian ExoMars program, which will search for signs of past and present life on Mars and represents only the second European attempt to land a craft on the red planet, after Britain’s Beagle 2 was ejected from the Mars Express spacecraft in 2003 but never made contact after failing to deploy its solar panels upon landing.

At the time it was dubbed “a heroic failure”. Landing on Mars, Earth’s neighbor some 35 million miles (56 million km) away, is