UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Choosing Sides

If tech experts are to be believed, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the world. But those same experts don’t agree on what kind of effect that transformation will have on the average person. Some believe that humans will be much better off in the hands of advanced AI systems, while others think it will lead to our inevitable downfall.

How could a single technology evoke such vastly different responses from people within the tech community?

Artificial intelligence is software built to learn or problem solve — processes typically performed in the human brain. Digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri , along with Tesla’s Autopilot, are all powered by AI. Some forms of AI can even create visual art or write songs.

There’s little question that AI has the potential to be revolutionary. Automation could transform the way we work by replacing humans with machines and software. Further developments in the area of self-driving cars are poised to make driving a thing of the past. Artificially intelligent shopping assistants could even change the way we shop. Humans have always controlled these aspects of our lives, so it makes sense to be a bit wary of letting an artificial system take over.

Image credit: Silver Blue/Flickr

The Lay Of The Land

AI is fast becoming a major economic force. According to a paper from the McKinsey Global Institute Study reported by Forbes, in 2016 alone, between $8 billion and $12 billion was invested in the development of AI worldwide. A report from analysts with Goldstein Research predicts that, by 2023, AI will be a $14 billion industry.

KR Sanjiv, chief technology officer at Wipro, believes that companies in fields as disparate as healthcare and finance are investing so much in AI so quickly because they fear being left behind. “So as with all things strange and new, the prevailing wisdom is that the risk of being left behind is far greater, and far grimmer, than the benefits of playing it safe,” he wrote in an op-ed published in Tech Crunch last year.

Games provide a useful window into the increasing sophistication of AI. Case in point, developers such as Google’s DeepMind and Elon Musk’s OpenAI have been using games to teach AI systems how to learn. So far, these systems have bested the world’s greatest players of the ancient strategy game Go, and even more complex games like Super Smash Bros and DOTA 2.

On the surface, these victories may sound incremental and minor — AI that can play Go can’t navigate a self-driving car, after all. But on a deeper level, these developments are indicative of the more sophisticated AI systems of the future. Through these games, AI become capable of complex decision-making that could one day translate into real-world tasks. Software that can play infinitely complex games like Starcraft, could, with a lot more research and development, autonomously perform surgeries or process multi-step voice commands.

When this happens, AI will become incredibly sophisticated. And this is where the worrying starts.

AI Anxiety

Wariness surrounding powerful technological advances is not novel. Various science fiction stories, from The Matrix to I, Robot, have exploited viewers’ anxiety around AI. Many such plots center around a concept called “the Singularity,” the moment in which AIs become more intelligent than their human creators. The scenarios differ, but they often end with the total eradication of the human race, or with machine overlords subjugating people.

Several world-renowned sciences and tech experts have been vocal about their fears of AI. Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously worries that advanced AI will take over the world and end the human race. If robots become smarter than humans, his logic goes, the machines would be able to create unimaginable weapons and manipulate human leaders with ease. “It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate,” he told the BBC in 2014. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Elon Musk, the futurist CEO of ventures such as Tesla and SpaceX, echoes those sentiments, calling AI “…a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization,” at the 2017 National Governors Association Summer Meeting.

Neither Musk nor Hawking believe that developers should avoid the development of AI, but they agree that government regulation should ensure the tech does not go rogue. “Normally, the way regulations are set up is a whole bunch of bad things happen, there’s a public outcry, and after many years, a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry,” Musk said during the same NGA talk. “it takes forever. That, in the past, has been bad, but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.”

Hawking believes that a global governing body needs to regulate the development of AI to prevent a particular nation from becoming superior. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently stoked this fear at a meeting with Russian students in early September, when he said, “The one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world.” These comments further emboldened Musk’s position — he tweeted that the race for AI superiority is the “most likely cause of WW3.”

Musk has taken steps to combat this perceived threat. He, along with startup guru Sam Altman, co-founded the non-profit OpenAI in order to guide AI development towards innovations that benefit all of humanity. According to the company’s mission statement: “By being at the forefront of the field, we can influence the conditions under which AGI is created.” Musk also founded a company called Neuralink intended to create a brain-computer interface. Linking the brain to a computer would, in theory, augment the brain’s processing power to keep pace with AI systems.

Other predictions are less optimistic. Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at SETI believes that AI will succeed humans as the most intelligent entities on the planet. “The first generation [of AI] is just going to do what you tell them; however, by the third generation, then they will have their own agenda,” Shostak said in an interview with Futurism.

However, Shostak doesn’t believe sophisticated AI will end up enslaving the human race — instead, he predicts, humans will simply become immaterial to these hyper-intelligent machines. Shostak thinks that these machines will exist on an intellectual plane so far above humans that, at worst, we will be nothing more than a tolerable nuisance.

Image source: Max Pixel

Fear Not

Not everyone believes the rise of AI will be detrimental to humans; some are convinced that the technology has the potential to make our lives better. “The so-called control problem that Elon is worried about isn’t something that people should feel is imminent. We shouldn’t panic about it,” Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates recently told the Wall Street Journal. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg went even further during a Facebook Live broadcast back in July, saying that Musk’s comments were “pretty irresponsible.” Zuckerberg is optimistic about what AI will enable us to accomplish and thinks that these unsubstantiated doomsday scenarios are nothing more than fear-mongering.

Some experts predict that AI could enhance our humanity. In 2010, Swiss neuroscientist Pascal Kaufmann founded Starmind, a company that plans to use self-learning algorithms to create a “superorganism” made of thousands of experts’ brains. “A lot of AI alarmists do not actually work in AI. [Their] fear goes back to that incorrect correlation between how computers work and how the brain functions,” Kaufmann told Futurism.

Kaufmann believes that this basic lack of understanding leads to predictions that may make good movies, but do not say anything about our future reality. “When we start comparing how the brain works to how computers work, we immediately go off track in tackling the principles of the brain,” he said. “We must first understand the concepts of how the brain works and then we can apply that knowledge to AI development.” Better understanding of our own brains would not only lead to AI sophisticated enough to rival human intelligence, but also to better brain-computer interfaces to enable a dialogue between the two.

To Kaufmann, AI, like many technological advances that came before, isn’t without risk. “There are dangers which come with the creation of such powerful and omniscient technology, just as there are dangers with anything that is powerful. This does not mean we should assume the worst and make potentially detrimental decisions now based on that fear,” he said.

Experts expressed similar concerns about quantum computers, and about lasers and nuclear weapons—applications for that technology can be both harmful and helpful.

Definite Disrupter

Predicting the future is a delicate game. We can only rely on our predictions of what we already have, and yet it’s impossible to rule anything out.

We don’t yet know whether AI will usher in a golden age of human existence, or if it will all end in the destruction of everything humans cherish. What is clear, though, is that thanks to AI, the world of the future could bear little resemblance to the one we inhabit today.

Just that morning as the first annual Devils Tower UFO Rendezvous revved up a few miles down the road, Jim Gruehl conducted inventory and counted 40 different alien items for sale at the Devils Tower Trading Post in Hulett.

Rubbery masks, socks, stickers, magnets, T-shirts, plush toys, feet-tall plastic green men, mugs, shot glasses and signs seemingly channelling messages from afar were in stock.

“Send More Tourists, The Last Ones Were Delicious,” read one sign. “Spaceship Parking Only,” was another

This may be the center of the universe for alien memorabilia.

“It’s absolutely because of ‘Close Encounters,’” said store general manager Gruehl.

Devils Tower, the signature character in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” owns the horizon in this eastern region of Wyoming, a unique monolith of symmetrical rock standing 5,112 feet above sea level .

It emanates the same magnetic attraction as it did 40 years ago when “Close Encounters” made its debut, and in 1906 when President Theodore Roosevelt designated it the first National Monument.

More than 500,000 accounted-for people visit each year along with an uncounted number of aliens.

Some of the gravitation was sparked by the Steven Spielberg movie released in 1977 and re-released for a 40th anniversary this month.

For a few days in mid-September, Planet Hulett, population 383,

located in the shadow of Devils Tower, was transformed by true believers in unidentified flying objects, becoming the epicenter of the ongoing search for intelligent life in the universe.

The Sept. 14-16 program was organized by Laurie Tucker and others and included lectures on “UFOs Are Real” and “Alien Abduction.”

Tucker, who owns vehicles with Wyoming license plates “C-UFO” and “UFOS,” ensured the agenda featured a community parade with alien theme, a costume contest and a Devils Tower mashed potato sculpture contest. This was a tribute to a movie scene when a UFO-obsessed Richard Dryfuss shaped Devils Tower at the dinner table.

“I take it more seriously,” Tucker said of UFOs, “but I also have fun with it.”

Tucker said a tentative reach-out to Dreyfuss was aborted when she heard he commands $70,000 an appearance.

That’s a lot of mashed potatoes.

In another “Close Encounters” homage, the Main Street Civic Center played the 135-minute movie when the heavens did not cooperate and an outdoor show was rained out.

Frieda Dent, 93, ran the movie. She remembered filming in the 1970s and how some Hulett residents were extras in a panic scene as government officials cleared the Devils Tower area.

“Every time I see it, I see something different,” Dent said.

The locals’ attitude seemed to be, “Hey, who are we to say there’s nobody else out there?”

Science or science

fiction

UFOs have long fascinated, perplexed, tweaked imaginations, been pshawed, or described as fabrications of the crazy.

The debut of American UFO consciousness, as well as Exhibit A of accusations of government conspiracy to hush up spaceships penetrating U.S. air space, basically dates to Roswell, N.M., in 1947.

A crashing flying saucer was reported in the July 8 edition of the Roswell Daily Record. The mysterious “flying disc” was taken into custody on a ranch by the U.S. military and soon after was identified as “a weather balloon.”

Seven decades later in Hulett, the weather balloon theory still didn’t fly.

Scientists say the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Since it presupposes a visiting alien culture would be more advanced technologically than humans, it was suggested aliens may have checked out earth long ago with only mild interest and UFO sightings could be periodic reconnaissance follow-ups.

During a panel discussion it was noted many scientific ideas or inventions were dismissed as harebrained long before being proven.

When Columbus set off to sail the ocean blue in 1492, a large segment of the population still believed his ship was going to drop right off the edge of the flat earth.

How many people living in 1850 envisioned the jet plane, putting a man on the moon via rocket ship or the cell phone?

“I don’t think we can actually think of anything that’s impossible,” said astronomer Marc D’Antonio, whose presentation was titled, “The Real Science of E.T.”

Generally, in science fiction movies aliens are portrayed as looking quite different from the human race. They are either good guys who wish to make friends, such as in the 1982 “E.T-The Extraterrestrial,” or guys who want to annihilate everyone, such as in the 1996 “Independence Day.”

Speaker Richard Beckwith, former city attorney of Rock Springs, gave a talk titled “UFOs Are Real.”

“It’s not a belief system, it’s science,” Beckwith said. “If you can’t say what an object is, you can’t say what it is not. It’s a big universe.”

With such a massive universe, traveling across it for millions is an issue of relevance. In some films astronauts are placed in suspended animation for years as they hurtle towards destinations.

“Light speed is the speed limit of the universe,” D’Antonio said of the 186,000 miles-per-second measurement.

That could be an obstacle for reaching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy – the nearest one – 662 trillion kilometers – from Earth.

D’Antonio said aliens may have, or humans might someday, make “an end run around it.”

Have Americans been conditioned for that in “Star Trek” by “Beam me up, Scotty?”

“That’s exactly right,” D’Antonio said.

Speaking of movies, the new version of “Close Encounters” had been available for just a week, but when asked, about half of the 50 listeners said they had already seen it.

Many participants made pilgrimages to Devils Tower; one of them being Alejandro Rojos of Arizona, a first-time viewer who said, “It’s incredible.”

Rojas, a host for “Open Minds” radio, and a science and entertainment blogger for the Huffington Post, talked about “Close Encounters,” “E.T” and “Gremlins,” saying Spielberg was probably influenced by a highly publicized UFO incident in Kelly, Ky., in 1955.

Five adults and seven children in a farmhouse where no alcohol was drank attested they spent four hours employing gunfire to hold off little men from a spaceship that landed on the property.

The aliens were described as 2-to-4 feet tall with claw-like hands and later “little green men” was appended to the narrative. Subsequently, little green men became a somewhat standard look for aliens in the media.

Alien abduction

The movie “Fire In The Sky” differs considerably from Spielberg’s work.

Based on the book of the same name by Travis Walton, who was played in the 1993 film by D.B. Sweeney, it is purported to be the true story of a mind-bending alien abduction. Despite being a better-documented incident than others, Walton ever since has been derided as crazy.

“It never goes away,” said Walton as he began telling his spell-binding tale.

The Arizona logger, then 22, and six other crew members, were driving out of a national forest on Nov. 5, 1975. They halted when they saw a bright light through some trees and stopped to investigate. Walton, on the passenger side, jumped out of the truck.

“There was a clearly defined metallic disc outlined against the sky,” Walton said. “It was frightening and beautiful.”

Feeling entranced, Walton began walking toward the UFO as his co-workers yelled to get back in the vehicle.

A beam of light lasered Walton with “a stunning sort of force.” He was hurled 20 feet and knocked unconscious. Convinced Walton was dead, his friends fled to report to authorities.

Walton, weak and scared, woke in a strange room surrounded by aliens. When left alone he made a run for it through the craft, but was re-captured. Eventually released, he staggered sobbing to a phone booth to call relatives.

Walton had been missing for five days and a widespread manhunt was conducted. Fellow loggers were interrogated and suspected of murder, though they passed polygraph, drug and sobriety exams. So did Walton.

Despite the passage of years, at times Walton teared up in his telling. No one has shaken his or the other loggers’ story, with multiple lie detector tests passed. But the incident is still called an elaborate hoax.

“I’m certain I’m not the only one,” Walton said of being abducted by aliens. “It’s very common for things we fear to become the butt of jokes.”

Walton was asked if he had emerged from merely being lost in the woods for five days having likewise lost 10 pounds from lack of food and water, whether he might not have been declared a hero for surviving.

Walton paused. “It might have been completely different,” he said.

The Tower

Devils Tower is completely different. It cannot be mistaken for any other rock formation.

Square-like, with striations on its sides, its composition is molten rock. But its origins are as mysterious as UFOs.

Devils Tower is considered sacred in Cheyenne and Arapahoe oral traditions long predating “Close Encounters.” Visitors pause for reflection on benches at its base, necks craning upward, perhaps scanning for aliens still hovering from the movie.

A National Park Service ranger was asked how often she is quizzed about the movie laughed, and said, “Hundreds of times a day.”

Four female workers at the visitors center gift shop wore matching lycra alien-design pants and hobnobbed with a few-foot-tall alien modeling a Devils Tower zip-up sweatshirt. A new sticker reading, “Hello, my name is Lloyd” was slapped on his chest.

There were numerous Lloyd-lookalikes at the cold, but not rained-on Hulett parade. Jude Talaba of Boulder, Colo., like a ventriloquist held an alien in her arms, and said, “He was born just three days ago.” As in purchased.

Andy Bears drove a golf-cart disguised as a spaceship. Strapped in, he said, “I can’t get out.” Another alien abduction.

Ivy Flores manufactured a Devils Tower for her float consisting of a barrel covered in tinfoil and sprayed brown, with stones and foliage around the base, like the genuine article.

Smaller rocks and greens were available when others shaped mashed potato Devils Towers like build-your-own sundaes.

Giraffe Girl, Lit Eimi, claimed to be an alien from “everywhere” who parachuted in. Her full giraffe outfit included a tail.

“I do like humans,” she said. “I love humans. All of them.”

Her age, Eimi said, is “Infinity. But they tell me I was born on July 18, 1991.”

James Neiman, 87, and wife Sally, 83, love to dress up and she ordered spiffy alien duds online. Yet the senior-citizen aliens lost out in the costume contest to a 9-year-old from the wrong movie.

In impeccable character imitation wearing a red, hooded sweatshirt, pushing a bicycle with an E.T. doll in a basket perched on the handlebars, Ben Harrison as Elliott won the crowd applause.

Devils Tower beckoned, but prepared to pedal skyward, Harrison could not gain l }ift-off because the chain busted on his bike during the parade.

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