Day: 23 January 2024

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Stephen Hawking organised a time travel party in 2009

Time travel

A time travel party organised by Stephen Hawking in 2009.

This was an experiment that Hawking conducted to test the possibility of backward time travel. He invited people from the future to attend a reception at his university, but he did not send out the invitations until after the party. He hoped that someone from the future would find the invitation and use a wormhole time machine to come back and prove that time travel is possible.

However, no one showed up at his party. He said that he liked simple experiments and champagne. He also said that he had experimental evidence that time travel is not possible. He explained that warping space and time could trigger a bolt of radiation that would destroy the spaceship and maybe the space-time itself.

Is time travel to the future possible?

Based on the current scientific understanding, time travel to the past seems to be very unlikely, if not impossible. There are many paradoxes and inconsistencies that arise from the idea of changing the past.

Time travel
Stephen Hawking organised a time travel party in 2009

Time travel to the future, however, may be possible, but only in a limited sense. According to the theory of relativity, time passes at different rates depending on the speed and gravity of the observer. This means that someone who travels very fast or near a massive object could experience less time than someone who stays still or far away from the mass.

Time dilation

This is called time dilation, and it has been experimentally confirmed. However, this does not allow the traveller to return to their original time, as they would have aged less than the rest of the world.

So, in summary, time travel is unlikely, but it is acknowledged that there are some intriguing possibilities and mysteries that remain to be explored.

Never say never!

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A new powerful AI is coming but the techies have no clue as to what it will look like

AGI

That’s reassuring then, and they are creating it

Leaders at some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies are expecting a form of AI on a par with, or even exceeding human intelligence to arrive sometime in the near future. But what it will eventually look like and how it will be applied are unknown.

Artificial General Intelligence or AGI is coming soon

Leaders from OpenAI, Microsoft and Google’s DeepMind, and many other major tech companies debated the risks and opportunities presented by AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2024.

AI has become the talk of ‘town’ around the world through 2023, mainly due to the success of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular generative AI chatbot, brought to us by Microsoft. Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, are powered large language models, algorithms trained on vast quantities of data, but are not AGI.

Executives at some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies see ‘artificial general intelligence,’ or AGI, a hypothesized form of AI with intelligence on a par or better than humans. This prospect is both exciting and worrying.

Concern

AI and AGI have created concern among governments, corporations and public consultation groups worldwide, owing to the risks around the lack of transparency of AI systems; social manipulation through computer algorithms; job losses due to increased automation; surveillance; and data privacy and worse… the lack of human control!

Extinction event possible

Many industry leaders in technology have warned that AI could lead to an ‘extinction-level’ event where machines become so powerful they get out of control and wipe out humanity.

A new powerful AI is coming but the techies have no clue as to what it will look like

Several prominent technology leaders, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak for example, have called for a pause in AI development, stating that a moratorium would be beneficial in allowing society to catch up.

Turing test

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have passed the Turing test, a test called the ‘imitation game,’ which was developed by British computer scientist Alan Turing to determine whether someone is communicating with a machine and a human. The one big area where AI is lacking is common sense.

It has been reported on many occasions, that the tech world is taking steps to ensure that the AI race doesn’t lead to a ‘Hiroshima moment.‘

Will AGI be created in the image of humans?

Let’s hope not.

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Dow hits new record high breaching 38000 for the first time ever

Dow Jones index up

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) reached a new high on 22nd January 2024, closing at 38,001.81 points

One year chart for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) reached a new high on 22nd January 2024, closing at 38,001.81 points

The index reached 38109.20 points in intraday trading. Recently the S&P500 and the Nasdaq set new highs.

The Dow

The Dow Jones is a market index that tracks the performance of 30 large US companies. It is also known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) or simply ‘the Dow’.

The DJIA is one of the oldest and most widely followed stock market indicators in the world. It reflects the health and sentiment of the U.S. economy and business sector.

The index was created in 1896 by Charles Dow and Edward Jones, who were journalists at The Wall Street Journal. The first calculation was done on 30th June 1896, with a base value of 40.

Some 128 years later, the index has a value of 38001 – a record high!