In 2020, wildfires scorched 45 million acres (18 million hectares) in Australia, and fifty-eight thousand wildfires burned 10.27 million acres (4.16 million hectares) in the United States. California suffered an estimated $100B total economic cost from wildfires in a single year. Beyond numbers, people who faced incinerated homes and apocalyptic orange skies endure a lasting emotional impact.
R&D is accelerating in the vital field of brain-machine interfaces (BMI). Elon Musk recently disclosed in a Clubhouse interview that at Neuralink, his BMI venture, a monkey is playing video games via neural implants. He also made some signature provocative projections like his ultimate goal of connecting brains with a powerful AI. “The future of the world will be controlled by the combined will of the people of the earth.” He said, “That might be the most important thing that a device like this achieves.”
AI personal identification schemes are more and more capable of discerning who we are, and how we are. Recent research shows how our children’s virtual reality (VR) gaming systems can name users’ identities just by measuring how they move their heads, arms, and hands. In at least one notable case, the VR system supplier’s Privacy Policy grants a long list of rights to use and distribute those patterns.
