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Spectator
3 days ago
- Spectator
The AI apocalypse is the least of our worries
What is your p(doom)? This is the pseudo-scientific manner in which some people express the strength of their belief that an artificial superintelligence running on computers will, in the coming decades, kill all humans. If your p(doom) is 0.1, you think it 10 per cent likely. If your p(doom) is 0.9, you're very confident it will happen. Well, maybe 'confident' isn't the word. Those who have a high p(doom) and seem otherwise intelligent argue that there's no point in having children or planning much for the future because we are all going to die. One of the most prominent doomers, a combative autodidact and the author of Harry Potter fan-fiction named Eliezer Yudkowsky, was recently asked what advice he would give to young people. He replied: 'Don't expect a long life.' Expressing such notions as probabilities between 0 and 1 makes them sound more rigorous, but assigning numerical likelihoods to one-off potential catastrophes is more like a game of blindfold darts: no one agrees on how such figures should be calculated. Just as no one actually knows how to build an artificial superintelligence or understands how one, if it were possible, would behave, despite reams of science-fictional argumentation by Yudkowsky and others. Everyone's just guessing, and going off the vibes they get from interacting with the latest chatbot. The AI doomers are the subject of too many chapters in Tom Ough's book, which traces the career of one of their godfathers, the philosopher Nick Bostrom and his Future of Humanity Institute, a research unit latterly shut down by the University of Oxford. It also excitedly relates Rishi Sunak's creation of the UK's AI Safety Institute, which earlier this year was renamed the AI Security Institute when it was announced that the American AI company Anthropic would be helping the UK to 'enhance public services'. Presumably the implication that AI might be unsafe was distasteful to the American corporation, currently valued at $100 billion. Probably AI doomerism as a whole is just another millennarian apocalypse cult. No one mentioned here, at least, seems bothered by the harms that existing AI is causing – from destroying students' ability to think to helping lawyers plead arguments with reference to made-up cases or decimating the creative class as a whole – inasmuch as what is called 'AI' is a set of giant plagiarism machines that are fed illegally acquired artwork and books and simply spit out probabilistically recombined copies of them. Much more dangerous in the real world are the other classes of 'existential risk' – catastrophes that could cause the extinction of the human race, or at least a very bad few decades for billions of people. What about an asteroid strike, for example? A space rock 10km across did for the dinosaurs, and over Earth's long history the planet has, as Ough amusingly puts it, resembled 'not so much an island paradise as a coconut shy'. So he talks to the scientists who successfully conducted the first asteroid-deflection experiment, when Nasa crashed a spacecraft into one named Dimorphos in 2022 and successfully altered its trajectory. Not as glamorous as sending Bruce Willis to nuke it but arguably more practical. Ough also talks to people worried about solar storms – a big enough coronal mass ejection could bring down power grids and electrical equipment over an entire hemisphere of Earth – and about supervolcanoes, which are like volcanoes but bigger and could cause something resembling a global nuclear winter lasting years. It turns out that there are even people working on 'defusing' volcanoes by drilling carefully into their magma chambers – though it is a bit worrying that only 30 per cent of the world's active volcanoes are monitored for signs they might be getting ready to blow. Other chapters consider nuclear war, and the potential for saving people in a real nuclear winter by converting the fungi that will flourish in such conditions into a mass food source; or the prospects for reversing some global warming by geoengineering – seeding the high atmosphere with sulphur particles that reflect sunlight. (This one might go wrong.) The dangers of biowarfare, meanwhile, have never really gone away. Indeed they are greater than ever, Ough argues, in a high-tech world of benchtop DNA synthesis of novel pathogens. The conceit of this book is that all the men and women studying such risks are part of a global society of superhero boffins that the author names the 'anti-catastrophe league'. And it would indeed be pleasing if they all worked together in a giant spaceship, like the Avengers. Ough's style is at times misfiringly jokey (I don't think anyone needs to be told that Hollywood is 'that ever-reliable purveyor of public collective-consciousness epiphenomena'). But he writes with vim and colour about a lot of interesting subjects. My favourite chapter follows the people who are really interested in drilling extremely deep holes into the Earth, trying to beat the impressive record of the Soviets, who made a borehole 12km down. Do more of this and you'd have lots of cheap geothermal energy to power, er, more AI data centres. So how worried should we be? Here the dubious applicability of probability arithmetic raises its head once again. Because huge natural catastrophes, such as supervolcano explosions or big asteroids hitting Earth, have been observed to happen only once every 10,000 or 100 million years, as it might be, Ough takes it that we're relatively safe from such things right now, and that they are really problems for our descendants to worry about. But that is an irrational assumption. There is no law to say that events will continue to follow a regular temporal pattern, and one of those extremely dangerous events could easily happen tomorrow. After reading this entertainingly dark book, your p(doom) might be very low for the AI apocalypse but much higher for other kinds.
Daily Record
4 days ago
- Daily Record
Amelia Earhart theory that 'changes everything' as pilot claims missing aircraft is found
Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were never seen again after setting out from Lae, New Guinea, in July 1937, with a British pilot now claiming to have found the wreckage In July 1937, the renowned female aviator Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, embarked on a journey from Lae, New Guinea, and were never seen again. Despite the most costly sea and air search in American history at that time, no trace of the pioneering female pilot or her aircraft has ever been discovered. Now, nearly nine decades later, a British pilot believes he has located the wreckage of the female flight pioneer's lost plane. Captain Justin Myers, a pilot with almost a quarter-century of experience, is '99 per cent certain' that he has pinpointed the exact spot where Earhart crash-landed. By examining magnified images from Google Earth, Myers identified a collection of shapes he thinks are remnants of the downed aircraft, reports the Express. Moreover, he asserts that these underwater objects correspond precisely to the dimensions of Earhart's Lockheed Electra 10E. According to Myers, Earhart and Noonan crashed on the east coast of Nikumaroro Island, a secluded coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The pilot is now urging for an expedition to the site to validate his theories. Captain Myers is not the first to propose that Earhart and Noonan may have crashed near Nikumaroro Island. Earhart was expected to land at Howland Island to refuel, approximately 400 miles (640km) north of the atoll. However, a combination of low fuel and adverse weather conditions may have led the aircraft off its intended path, resulting in an attempted emergency landing on the minuscule Nikumaroro Island. Previous explorations have unearthed artefacts such as makeshift tools, fragments of clothing, and a piece of plexiglas that corresponds to an Electra window. This has led many of those searching for Earhart's wreckage to theorise that the pilot may have managed to land near the island and reached the shore before ultimately succumbing to the harsh elements. What sets Captain Myers' discovery apart is his claim of having found photographic evidence of the crashed plane via Google Earth. In a blog post, Captain Myers reveals his interest in Nikumaroro Island was sparked after viewing a documentary about Earhart's final flight. He penned: 'Poor sleep, upper wind predictions not being accurate, probably fatigue and some anxiety would likely have played a part in the disappearance. '. Myers went on to say: 'As a pilot, I thought to myself, if I was in Amelia's position trying to find a needle in a hay stack low on fuel and to be honest if we were in her position no doubt using some choice language, where would I force land my Lockheed Electra 10E?' Choosing a long, sandy stretch on the island's East coast, Captain Myers zoomed in to discover a 'dark coloured perfectly straight object. '. Intriguingly, the Google Earth measuring tool revealed the object to be 39 feet (12 meters) in length, identical to the Lockheed Electra 10E. Captain Myers penned: 'A day or so later I had another look, just like that Bang! '110ft to the west of the metal section was what appeared to be a perfect half exposed radial engine measuring 4-4.5ft in diameter. 'Just under the engine is a wheel, again half exposed, the wheel is perfect and is in absolute proportion in size; I was struggling to see this was anything other than the debris of a lost vintage aircraft that has been hidden away for years. '. The Mysterious 'Taraia Object' While Captain Myers admits he can't be entirely certain this is Earhart and Noonan's Electra, he is convinced it is a vintage plane of the same size. He revealed to Popular Science: 'The bottom line is, from my interests from a child in vintage aircraft and air crash investigation, I can say that is what was once a 12-metre, 2-engine vintage aircraft. What I can't say is that is definitely Amelia's Electra. 'If this is not Amelia's Electra 10 E, then it's the answer to another mystery that has never been answered. '. Myers added: 'This finding could answer some questions to someone who disappeared many years ago. '. The pilot now expresses his desire for an expedition to be launched to investigate the objects and confirm once and for all whether they are Earhart's plane. However, he has had little success in gaining support for his proposal. Myers revealed that he forwarded the information to the National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S., the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, and the air crash investigation team in Brisbane. He also attempted to engage Purdue University with the information to see if any historians would be intrigued enough to initiate an investigation. Despite his outreach over three years ago, Myers is still awaiting a response. The lack of response from Purdue University is likely due to the fact that the university already has its own plans to search for Earhart's wreckage. Just last month, researchers announced the launch of an expedition to investigate the so-called 'Taraia Object', a visual anomaly inside the Nikumaroro lagoon widely believed to be the downed Electra. The university's expedition is scheduled to set sail from Majuro in the Marshall Islands on 5 November and will spend five days on Nikumaroro inspecting the Taraia Object. If the initial expedition proves successful in confirming the identity of the aircraft, the researchers plan to return for larger excavation efforts in 2026 to uncover and help return what remains of Earhart's plane. In a statement at the time, Richard Pettigrew, director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, said: 'What we have here is maybe the greatest opportunity ever to finally close the case. 'With such a great amount of very strong evidence, we feel we have no choice but to move forward and hopefully return with proof. '.
Scotsman
4 days ago
- Scotsman
What time is Alien: Earth out on Disney+ and Hulu?
Alien: Earth is set to crash land on Disney Plus this week 🚨 Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Alien: Earth is set to make its highly anticipated debut. The TV show is a spin-off of the iconic horror franchise. But when exactly will the episode be out? On Earth no-one can hear you scream… wait that's not how it goes? The iconic Alien franchise is coming home to our planet and the small screen. Xenomorphs will be scrambling across your TV over the coming weeks. Noah Hawley, who previously adapted Fargo for television, is at the helm of this highly anticipated horror sci-fi series. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Alien: Earth is the latest entry in the iconic franchise and it is about to crash land on Disney Plus/ Hulu. Here's all you need to know: What time is Alien: Earth out on Disney Plus? Alien: Earth is coming to Disney Plus | Disney Plus The show is set to air on FX in the US and will stream on Hulu via Disney Plus for American audiences. For those outside the states, particularly in the UK, it will be available to watch on Disney+. Alien: Earth will start with a two-episode premiere today (August 12) that will be available from 8pm ET/ 5pm PT in America. However, it will not land on Disney Plus for UK and European audiences until Wednesday (August 13). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It will be available to watch from 1am British time. Meaning it will be waiting for you on Wednesday after work. Why does it come out later in the UK? Due to the difference in time zones between America and the UK, it means that episodes of the show will arrive on this side of the pond a day later. The show will be released weekly on Tuesdays (starting August 12) in the US, but British audiences won't get the episodes until Wednesdays (from August 13). It is a similar situation that has been seen plenty of times this year with shows like Andor, Daredevil: Born Again and more. How many episodes will be available this week? Alien: Earth is set to begin with a two-episode premiere. It means fans can tuck into a double helping of Xenomorph terror, if they are so inclined. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The show is set to have eight episodes in total in its first season. Episodes three through eight will be released one per week. It is due to conclude on September 23/24 based on the current schedule. What to expect from Alien: Earth? The synopsis for the show, via Disney, reads: 'When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat in FX's highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley. 'Alien: Earth is set in 2120 when five corporations - Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold - wield the power of nations, and proprietary advancements in technology provide the promise of a new tomorrow.' If you love TV, check out our Screen Babble podcast to get the latest in TV and film. Surprisingly cheap way to stream Sky Atlantic, Netflix and more (aff) £ 22.00 Sky TV Buy now Buy now Sky's latest TV deals are more affordable than you might expect – with the best value arguably being the Ultimate TV package. For just £22/month, you get Netflix, Discovery+, Sky Atlantic and over 35 extra channels including Sky Max, Sky Witness, Sky Documentaries and more. There are no upfront fees, and it's a 24-month contract. If you're after the basics, Essential TV starts from £15/month with Netflix and Sky Atlantic included, while sports fans can add Sky Sports for £35/month. All three plans offer strong value for new Sky customers.
