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

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