The book by Max Tegmark draws attention to the dangers and benefits that await humanity as a result of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies development. Cosmologist and astrophysicist Tegmark, realizing the impossibility to predict the AI development, offers exciting scenarios of civilization development options for tens, thousands, millions and billions of years. The analysis of the opposite scenarios is aimed at the idea formation that the consequences of creating a general AI, superior to the human level, will be more significant than from all other achievements of civilization. Tegmark is one of the founders and leaders of the “Beneficial AGI” movement, he presents the results of the discussion of the issues he raises with leading experts in the field of AI. Tegmark concludes his book with a call to optimism: “My book urge you to think about what future you would like, and not what future scares you, this way we can find goals for which it’s worth working”.
The Russian Federation is located at the crossroads of the trade routes of the Eurasian continent, where a significant volume of the transport flow of the world’s trade is formed. The transport potential of the territory of Russia, when implemented as an Integral Transit Transport System (ITTS), is comparable to the benefits from the traditional export of hydrocarbons and other raw materials. Analyzing the efficiency of transport systems, the key is the energy approach. The concept of ITTS is considered, based on all known and being developed transport lines, including high-speed vacuum magnetic levitation transport (VMLT). The fundamental problems are discussed being on the way to achieving the maximal speed, energy efficiency and throughput of VMLT. The preliminary findings are presented obtained from experiments on the test model of the VMLT route. It is concluded that there is a need for a deeper study of the properties of magnetic and superconducting materials in extreme high fields, power and speed regimes to search for fundamentally new technical solutions for the creation of VMLT
A transition from the industrial to the post-industrial phase of the development of civilization takes place currently. In the traditional phase of development (until the twentieth century), the researchers and thinkers focus was on the nature study. In the industrial times (XX century) - the machines world was comprehended and developed. The most important result of this period was the creation of computers. Now the world is entering to the post-industrial phase, where the focus is on the person. This is changing applied mathematics, computer reality. There is a bifurcation in which a significant part of applied mathematics is becoming an industry. A number of promising innovative projects draw attention in this context. There is a transition from "continuous" to "discrete" mathematics, largely associated with the development of cryptography. Another feature of the moment is the neural network revolution in machine learning, which gave a new powerful impetus to the artificial intelligence (AI) development progress. It led to the widespread use of devices and systems that solve "intelligent" problems at the human level and above. The possibilities for solving very complex problems are limited by means that contradict the established views that thinking and reason are based on the soul, which has limitless possibilities. The strong AI (general AI, AGI) creating problem is not in building devices with magical capabilities, but in creating limited systems that can learn to solve many of the problems available. An important AGI property should be cooperation with people, taking into account civilizational norms. This property has not only a technical side, it depends on social relations. Sustainable development requires an agency approach to AGI. Modern applied mathematics has faced fundamental difficulties in complex problems. Multiple increases in the performance of computing systems did not lead to breakthrough results. As new paradigms, "analog" computing systems working with the use of new principles are neural networks and quantum computers. It is shown that these approaches, at best, can help to solve the "past tasks", and not the "future tasks" associated with the post-industrial phase of the development of civilization. The domestic applied mathematics efforts should be used to solve the central problems of the post-industrial society development in Russia using interdisciplinary approaches. This can make it possible to return to the number of countries with advanced technologies in the most important modern production areas. The alternative directions of the science development related to the human capabilities expansion are considered. The key one is related to AI, which can change reality. The article pays special attention to alternative approaches to AI development.
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