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The Mars One mission aims to establish a colony on the red planet

It now has a list of 50 men and 50 women from an original 200,000 entries

Five of them are from the UK, including three physics students

Shortlist will be cut to 40, with four individuals chosen for the first mission

Chris Hadfield, former ISS commander, said that mission may not deliver

It's been described as a 'suicidal mission' that is doomed to fail.

Despite this, 100 people including five Britons have been shortlisted for the Mars One mission, which aims to send people to live on the red planet.

The five British candidates are all under the age of 35 and hope to be chosen to be among the final crew of four who are set to begin their new lives in just 10 years time - and ultimately die on Mars.

The team is scheduled to arrive in 2025 following a gruelling seven-month journey from Earth.

'The large cut in candidates [from 200,000 to 100] is an important step towards finding out who has the right stuff to go to Mars,' said Bas Lansdorp, co-founder of the Dutch Mars One mission.

'These aspiring Martians provide the world with a glimpse into who the modern day explorers will be.'

The Mars 100 Round Three candidates were selected from a pool of 660 candidates after participating in personal online interviews.

They include 50 men and 50 women who successfully passed the second round.

The majority of the 100 applicantscome from the US, 31 come from Europe, 16 from Asia, seven from Africa and seven from Australia. The full list can be viewed here.

The British hopefuls comprise three science students, a laboratory technician and a self-confessed adrenaline junkie.

Hannah Earnshaw, 23, a PhD student in astronomy at Durham University, is among the British hopefuls. Her interests include rock climbing, hiking and astronomy.

She said: 'Human space exploration has always interested me so the opportunity to be one of the people involved was really appealing. The future of humanity is in space.

MEET THE BRITISH CANDIDATES FOR THE MARS ONE MISSION

'My family is pretty thrilled. They're really happy for me. Obviously it's going to be challenging, leaving Earth and not coming back. I've had support from my friends and family and we can still communicate via the internet.'

Maggie Lieu, 24, an astrophysics PhD student at the University of Birmingham was also chosen.

She said: 'Space travel has been a dream of mine for a very long time, and now I have the opportunity for something even bigger. Mars is a challenge. It is highly risky, and an enormous responsibility as well as an adventure.'

She told the Express: 'It would be incredible to be the Adam and Eve of another planet.

WHAT AWAITS THE ADVENTUROUS COLONISTS?

What about when they arrive?

'Because it is a colonisation programme, it's inevitable that eventually someone will procreate and it would be incredible to be the first mother on Mars.'

'...I'm sure it would be a challenge - nobody has done any research on giving birth in a low-gravity environment - but just being able to say that your baby was a Martian would be really funny.'

In a blog post, Ms Lieu said that it is not her sole aim to get pregnant on Mars, writing: 'I am more than just a human vessel/lab experiment.'

But, she believes that if humans want to start a colony, reproduction is a subject that needs to be discussed.

'There is a lack of research on everything from insemination to pregnancy to giving birth in low gravity environment. So the dangers involving such are unknown,' she said.

Talking about the ethics of having children in the colony, she said: 'I think that raising a child on Mars is no different than that on Earth,' pointing to women in developing countries who give birth at high personal risk.

She acknowledges that giving birth on Mars could be dangerous and that children would be raised in a confined space, but they won't know any better.

'They will be growing up with some of the most intelligent people of Earth, they will be eating healthy foods (grown on mars as opposed to all the junk food we have access to on Earth) and they will have a largely unexplored terrain as their back garden. I couldn't think of anything better,' she wrote.

'Of course being the mother of the first martian would be a privilege, I would never be so stupid as to race for the title. My priority is the research.

'In my opinion Mars will only become a suitable environment for a child after the colony settles, which would be many years after the first crew land.'

WHAT DANGERS COULD THE COLONISTS FACE?

Ms Lieu is not too daunted about the prospect of leaving her family behind, because she thinks technology will advance rapidly so that she will one day be able to come home to Earth.

Dr Alison Rigby, a 35-year-old laboratory technician from Kent is also through to the next round of selection.

She said: 'My family is very close-knit and supportive, but they are still worried about the prospect of me going to Mars.

'I can understand their concerns; as time passes I realise more and more how deeply they feel for me and I for them. However as a potential representative of humanity on Mars I feel I have a responsibility to far more people.

'I believe that the MarsOne Project and indeed every endeavour that will contribute to humanity becoming a space-faring, multiplanet species are of vital importance to the long term survival of our species.

Ryan Macdonald, 21, from Derby, is the only British male among the 100 shortlisted candidates in round three.

A sci-fi fan and physics student at Oxford University, he's currently designing a Thermal-IR camera for a future sample return mission to Mars's moon Phobos, which could one day select the first landing site on the moons of Mars.

Of his enthusiasm for the Mars One mission, he said: 'To search for evidence of past or present life, to speak to and inspire school children back on Earth, to build the first civilisation on another planet... How could anyone say no to that!'

He told The Guardian: 'The most important thing to do in life is to leave a legacy. A lot of people do that by having a child, having a family. For me this would be my legacy.'

He said that in hundreds of years, people will remember the first four people to step foot onto Mars.

ASTRONAUT CHRIS HADFIELD'S FEARS FOR THE MISSION

Clare Weedon, 27, from Addleston, Surrey, is the only Briton who doesn't work in science and instead works as a systems information manager for Virgin Media.

A self-confessed adrenaline junkie, she said: 'I believe there is more to life than marriage and babies and I soon hope to escape the office environment and travel the world solo for some amazing life experiences.'

There are also three other UK-based candidates; Alexandra Doyle, 29, a law graduate from South Africa, living in Rutland, Lucie Ferstova, 25, from the Czech Republic, living in Emsworth and Zaskia Antel, a 20-year-old student from Bolivia living in Hove, East Sussex.

While the experience may be amazing, it will certainly be tough.

The crew of four will have to contend with temperatures as low as -62C and high radiation levels.

They could also be at risk of suffocation, starvation and dehydration.

If all goes well, additional teams would join the settlement every two years, with the intention that by 2033 there would be over twenty people living and working on Mars.

There, they will collect data, plant oxygen-producing vegetation and set the foundation for human colonisation.

In spite of the risks, more than 200,000 people from around the world applied when the Netherlands-based group called for volunteers to join the mission in 2011.

In the next stage, which may involve 'rigorous, potentially televised competitions' to test individuals' responses to stressful situations, the current shortlist will be reduced to 40.

The time frame for this next stage depends on how long it takes the team to sort through the 100 on the list, but candidates are expected to know whether they have made the cut by the end of this year.

Individuals who are were not selected will have a chance to re-apply in a new application round set to open later this year.

SCHEDULE FOR MARS ONE MISSION

Chris Hadfield, former commander of the ISS, recently told Elmo Keep, writing in Medium that the mission may not deliver on this promise.

'There's a great, I don't know, self-defeating optimism in the way that this project has been set up,' Hadfield told Medium.

'I fear that it's going to be a little disillusioning for people, because it's presented as if for sure it's going to happen.'

Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, said earlier last year it will be documenting the progress of the group of hopefuls as they compete for a 2025 ticket to the red planet.

Candidates do not need to have any scientific qualifications and an audience vote will be used to make the final choice.

Any chosen Mars settlers will then be required to dedicate eight years of their lives preparing for the 300 million-mile (482 million km) pioneering mission.

Igore Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences told the Voice of Russia that the largest risk is the huge amounts of radiation the volunteers will receive.

MARS ONE FOUNDER DENIES PEOPLE DONATING BIG MONEY TO THE MISSION WILL BE CHOSEN FOR THE TRIP

Echoing Mr Hadfield's concerns, he said he doubts that the volunteers for this trip know enough science and technology to take the risk.

Ms Earnshaw said she is 'not surprised' by scepticism surrounding the project.

Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reportedly found that any manned mission to Mars would result in the crew dying after 68 days, while critics have pointed out that the estimated cost of Mars One is a fraction of the amount proposed by Nasa.

The privately-funded mission is estimated to cost $6 billion (£4 billion) and is set to be filmed for a reality television series.

Ms Earnshaw said: 'It's a very ambitious mission and requires lots of things going right for humans to leave the planet. But this project is encouraging other people to talk about the wider implications.

'It's definitely feasible. Space travel is risky but at the same time, there is a time scale in place.'

Mr Lansdorp admitted that anyone hearing about the Mars One project for the first time would be 'sceptical'.

'We've heard for so many decades about the difficulties of travelling to Mars,' Mr Lansdorp said.

'There is a huge difference between returning from Mars and a one-way, permanent settlement.

"We don't need to develop the capability of launching rockets from Mars. It's a whole different mission.'

Before any humans are sent to Mars, the Dutch organisation has to find funds to send a robotic lander and communications satellite to the planet.

If that goes well, the next step will be to send an 'intelligent' rover to scope out a landing spot for habitation modules and life support systems which will be sent up on rockets before the first humans arrive.

The robotic lander and orbiter are scheduled to lift off in 2018, followed by a scouting rover in 2020 and six cargo missions in 2022.

But Mr Hadfield claims Mars should not be a target for colonisation at this point, but targets much closer need to be considered.

WHY IS THE MARS ONE MISSION A ONE WAY TRIP?

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Meet the five Britons who could live on MARS

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The Mars One mission aims to establish a colony on the red planet It now has a list of 50 men and 50 women from an original 200,000 entries Five of them are from the UK, including three physics students Shortlist will be cut to 40, with four individuals chosen for the first mission Chris Hadfield, former ISS commander, said that mission may not deliver It's been described as a 'suicidal mission' that is doomed to fail.

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Burglars use drone helicopters to target homes

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Burglars use drone helicopters to target homes

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is on track to begin commercial passenger spaceflights before the end of next year, the company's chief executive said.

For years, Branson has been optimistically forecasting the start of rides aboard SpaceShipTwo, an air-launched suborbital spaceplane that is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots to an altitude of about 62 miles (100 kilometers).

During the suborbital hop, passengers will be able to experience a few minutes of microgravity and see the limb of Earth set against the blackness of space.

Virgin Galactic's commercial spaceplane Spaceshiptwo, shown here during a glide test in December 2016.

Credit: Virgin Galactic

Branson has been more circumspect in his schedule projections since an October 2014 fatal accident during a test flight of Virgin's first vehicle. But in an interview with The Telegraph earlier this month, the billionaire entrepreneur said he'd be "very disappointed" if the program isn't well underway by the end of next year.

Virgin Galactic is one of three companies in the Virgin Group's spaceflight division, known as Galactic Ventures. On Wednesday (April 26), Galactic Ventures chief executive George Whitesides, a soft-spoken, former NASA staff chief, said Branson's expectations for commercial flights in 2018 are realistic.

"We're well into test flight now," Whitesides told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Virgin CEO addressed the committee along with other industry leaders during a hearing on reducing regulation barriers in the space industry.

Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides confirmed on April 26, 2017, that the company plans to fly space tourists in 2018.

Credit: Getty Images

"We're looking forward ... to a fairly big transition of our staff to your state of New Mexico," Whitesides added in response to a question from Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat.

Virgin Galactic intends to base its commercial spaceflight service at New Mexico's Spaceport America, which was finished five years ago at a cost of nearly $220 million.

Construction funds for the spaceport came from state oil and gas taxes and from bonds, which were backed by a quarter-cent tax levied by the two counties closest to the 18,000-acre spaceport.

" Spaceport America and many New Mexicans hope to see full commercial spaceflight operations begin as soon as possible," Udall told Whitesides.

The second in a planned fleet of Virgin spaceships is undergoing testing in Mojave, California. So far, the ship, known as VSS Unity, has made three glide flights. The company has not said when Unity's first powered test flight will be, nor how many flights are expected before the start of commercial service.

About 500 people have signed up to take a ride on SpaceShipTwo. Tickets are currently selling for $250,000.

Follow Irene Klotz on Twitter. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Virgin Galactic Aims to Fly Space Tourists in 2018, CEO Says

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is on track to begin commercial passenger spaceflights before the end of next year, the company's chief executive said. For years, Branson has been optimistically forecasting the start of rides aboard SpaceShipTwo, an air-launched suborbital spaceplane that is designed to carry six passengers and two pilots to an altitude of about 62 miles (100 kilometers).

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Virgin Galactic's aims to fly space tourists in 2018.

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NASA's plan to fly a quiet supersonic jet by 2021

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Advantages: Quick, Can use to pay for things, cool, can be used on new cars etc. to lessen the need for keys; less plastic

Disadvantages: Not very secure, someone could forge your fingerprint,

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a woman suffered concussion at Seattle 2016 pride parade after drone crashed on her

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future : UK police creating a task force to prevent drone smuggling
could make them less noisy and more appealing
make them more accessible to everyone (delivery)

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Pros:
Much cheaper than human employment
More active and efficient
Robots are more precise
Can work in any environmental condition
Can be used in industries that impose health concerns on humans
Cons:
Increases unemployment rates
Cannot handle unexpected situations
Still require employees to work with robots
Lack empathy and causes an emotionless workplace
If coding goes wrong, entire company suffers
Still have to pay for repairs

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Click here to see this page in other languages: Chinese French German Japanese Korean Russian

" Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence, so amplifying our human intelligence with artificial intelligence has the potential of helping civilization flourish like never before - as long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial."

Max Tegmark, President of the Future of Life Institute

What is AI?

From SIRI to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing rapidly. While science fiction often portrays AI as robots with human-like characteristics, AI can encompass anything from Google's search algorithms to IBM's Watson to autonomous weapons.

Artificial intelligence today is properly known as narrow AI (or weak AI), in that it is designed to perform a narrow task (e.g. only facial recognition or only internet searches or only driving a car). However, the long-term goal of many researchers is to create general AI (AGI or strong AI). While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.

Why research AI safety?

In the near term, the goal of keeping AI's impact on society beneficial motivates research in many areas, from economics and law to technical topics such as verification, validity, security and control. Whereas it may be little more than a minor nuisance if your laptop crashes or gets hacked, it becomes all the more important that an AI system does what you want it to do if it controls your car, your airplane, your pacemaker, your automated trading system or your power grid. Another short-term challenge is preventing a devastating arms race in lethal autonomous weapons.

In the long term, an important question is what will happen if the quest for strong AI succeeds and an AI system becomes better than humans at all cognitive tasks. As pointed out by I.J. Good in 1965, designing smarter AI systems is itself a cognitive task. Such a system could potentially undergo recursive self-improvement, triggering an intelligence explosion leaving human intellect far behind. By inventing revolutionary new technologies, such a superintelligence might help us eradicate war, disease, and poverty, and so the creation of strong AI might be the biggest event in human history. Some experts have expressed concern, though, that it might also be the last, unless we learn to align the goals of the AI with ours before it becomes superintelligent.

There are some who question whether strong AI will ever be achieved, and others who insist that the creation of superintelligent AI is guaranteed to be beneficial. At FLI we recognize both of these possibilities, but also recognize the potential for an artificial intelligence system to intentionally or unintentionally cause great harm. We believe research today will help us better prepare for and prevent such potentially negative consequences in the future, thus enjoying the benefits of AI while avoiding pitfalls.

How can AI be dangerous?

Most researchers agree that a superintelligent AI is unlikely to exhibit human emotions like love or hate, and that there is no reason to expect AI to become intentionally benevolent or malevolent. Instead, when considering how AI might become a risk, experts think two scenarios most likely:

1. The AI is programmed to do something devastating: Autonomous weapons are artificial intelligence systems that are programmed to kill. In the hands of the wrong person, these weapons could easily cause mass casualties. Moreover, an AI arms race could inadvertently lead to an AI war that also results in mass casualties. To avoid being thwarted by the enemy, these weapons would be designed to be extremely difficult to simply "turn off," so humans could plausibly lose control of such a situation. This risk is one that's present even with narrow AI, but grows as levels of AI intelligence and autonomy increase.

2. The AI is programmed to do something beneficial, but it develops a destructive method for achieving its goal: This can happen whenever we fail to fully align the AI's goals with ours, which is strikingly difficult. If you ask an obedient intelligent car to take you to the airport as fast as possible, it might get you there chased by helicopters and covered in vomit, doing not what you wanted but literally what you asked for. If a superintelligent system is tasked with a ambitious geoengineering project, it might wreak havoc with our ecosystem as a side effect, and view human attempts to stop it as a threat to be met.

As these examples illustrate, the concern about advanced AI isn't malevolence but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we have a problem. You're probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you're in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there's an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. A key goal of AI safety research is to never place humanity in the position of those ants.

Why the recent interest in AI safety

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and many other big names in science and technology have recently expressed concern in the media and via open letters about the risks posed by AI, joined by many leading AI researchers. Why is the subject suddenly in the headlines?

The idea that the quest for strong AI would ultimately succeed was long thought of as science fiction, centuries or more away. However, thanks to recent breakthroughs, many AI milestones, which experts viewed as decades away merely five years ago, have now been reached, making many experts take seriously the possibility of superintelligence in our lifetime. While some experts still guess that human-level AI is centuries away, most AI researches at the 2015 Puerto Rico Conference guessed that it would happen before 2060. Since it may take decades to complete the required safety research, it is prudent to start it now.

Because AI has the potential to become more intelligent than any human, we have no surefire way of predicting how it will behave. We can't use past technological developments as much of a basis because we've never created anything that has the ability to, wittingly or unwittingly, outsmart us. The best example of what we could face may be our own evolution. People now control the planet, not because we're the strongest, fastest or biggest, but because we're the smartest. If we're no longer the smartest, are we assured to remain in control?

FLI's position is that our civilization will flourish as long as we win the race between the growing power of technology and the wisdom with which we manage it. In the case of AI technology, FLI's position is that the best way to win that race is not to impede the former, but to accelerate the latter, by supporting AI safety research.

The Top Myths About Advanced AI

A captivating conversation is taking place about the future of artificial intelligence and what it will/should mean for humanity. There are fascinating controversies where the world's leading experts disagree, such as: AI's future impact on the job market; if/when human-level AI will be developed; whether this will lead to an intelligence explosion; and whether this is something we should welcome or fear. But there are also many examples of of boring pseudo-controversies caused by people misunderstanding and talking past each other. To help ourselves focus on the interesting controversies and open questions -- and not on the misunderstandings -- let's clear up some of the most common myths.

Timeline Myths

The first myth regards the timeline: how long will it take until machines greatly supersede human-level intelligence? A common misconception is that we know the answer with great certainty.

One popular myth is that we know we'll get superhuman AI this century. In fact, history is full of technological over-hyping. Where are those fusion power plants and flying cars we were promised we'd have by now? AI has also been repeatedly over-hyped in the past, even by some of the founders of the field. For example, John McCarthy (who coined the term "artificial intelligence"), Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude Shannon wrote this overly optimistic forecast about what could be accomplished during two months with stone-age computers: "We propose that a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence be carried out during the summer of 1956 at Dartmouth College [...] An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves. We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer."

On the other hand, a popular counter-myth is that we know we won't get superhuman AI this century. Researchers have made a wide range of estimates for how far we are from superhuman AI, but we certainly can't say with great confidence that the probability is zero this century, given the dismal track record of such techno-skeptic predictions. For example, Ernest Rutherford, arguably the greatest nuclear physicist of his time, said in 1933 --- less than 24 hours before Szilard's invention of the nuclear chain reaction --- that nuclear energy was "moonshine.'' And Astronomer Royal Richard Woolley called interplanetary travel "utter bilge'' in 1956. The most extreme form of this myth is that superhuman AI will never arrive because it's physically impossible. However, physicists know that a brain consists of quarks and electrons arranged to act as a powerful computer, and that there's no law of physics preventing us from building even more intelligent quark blobs.

There have been a number of surveys asking AI researchers how many years from now they think we'll have human-level AI with at least 50% probability. All these surveys have the same conclusion: the world's leading experts disagree, so we simply don't know. For example, in such a poll of the AI researchers at the 2015 Puerto Rico AI conference, the average (median) answer was by year 2045, but some researchers guessed hundreds of years or more.

There's also a related myth that people who worry about AI think it's only a few years away. In fact, most people on record worrying about superhuman AI guess it's still at least decades away. But they argue that as long as we're not 100% sure that it won't happen this century, it's smart to start safety research now to prepare for the eventuality. Many of the safety problems associated with human-level AI are so hard that they may take decades to solve. So it's prudent to start researching them now rather than the night before some programmers drinking Red Bull decide to switch one on.

Controversy Myths

Another common misconception is that the only people harboring concerns about AI and advocating AI safety research are luddites who don't know much about AI. When Stuart Russell, author of the standard AI textbook, mentioned this during his Puerto Rico talk, the audience laughed loudly. A related misconception is that supporting AI safety research is hugely controversial. In fact, to support a modest investment in AI safety research, people don't need to be convinced that risks are high, merely non-negligible -- just as a modest investment in home insurance is justified by a non-negligible probability of the home burning down.

It may be that media have made the AI safety debate seem more controversial than it really is. After all, fear sells, and articles using out-of-context quotes to proclaim imminent doom can generate more clicks than nuanced and balanced ones. As a result, two people who only know about each other's positions from media quotes are likely to think they disagree more than they really do. For example, a techno-skeptic who only read about Bill Gates's position in a British tabloid may mistakenly think Gates believes superintelligence to be imminent. Similarly, someone in the beneficial-AI movement who knows nothing about Andrew Ng's position except his quote about overpopulation on Mars may mistakenly think he doesn't care about AI safety, whereas in fact, he does. The crux is simply that because Ng's timeline estimates are longer, he naturally tends to prioritize short-term AI challenges over long-term ones.

Myths About the Risks of Superhuman AI

Many AI researchers roll their eyes when seeing this headline: " Stephen Hawking warns that rise of robots may be disastrous for mankind." And as many have lost count of how many similar articles they've seen. Typically, these articles are accompanied by an evil-looking robot carrying a weapon, and they suggest we should worry about robots rising up and killing us because they've become conscious and/or evil. On a lighter note, such articles are actually rather impressive, because they succinctly summarize the scenario that AI researchers don't worry about. That scenario combines as many as three separate misconceptions: concern about consciousness, evil, and robots.

If you drive down the road, you have a subjective experience of colors, sounds, etc. But does a self-driving car have a subjective experience? Does it feel like anything at all to be a self-driving car? Although this mystery of consciousness is interesting in its own right, it's irrelevant to AI risk. If you get struck by a driverless car, it makes no difference to you whether it subjectively feels conscious. In the same way, what will affect us humans is what superintelligent AI does, not how it subjectively feels.

The fear of machines turning evil is another red herring. The real worry isn't malevolence, but competence. A superintelligent AI is by definition very good at attaining its goals, whatever they may be, so we need to ensure that its goals are aligned with ours. Humans don't generally hate ants, but we're more intelligent than they are - so if we want to build a hydroelectric dam and there's an anthill there, too bad for the ants. The beneficial-AI movement wants to avoid placing humanity in the position of those ants.

The consciousness misconception is related to the myth that machines can't have goals. Machines can obviously have goals in the narrow sense of exhibiting goal-oriented behavior: the behavior of a heat-seeking missile is most economically explained as a goal to hit a target. If you feel threatened by a machine whose goals are misaligned with yours, then it is precisely its goals in this narrow sense that troubles you, not whether the machine is conscious and experiences a sense of purpose. If that heat-seeking missile were chasing you, you probably wouldn't exclaim: "I'm not worried, because machines can't have goals!"

I sympathize with Rodney Brooks and other robotics pioneers who feel unfairly demonized by scaremongering tabloids, because some journalists seem obsessively fixated on robots and adorn many of their articles with evil-looking metal monsters with red shiny eyes. In fact, the main concern of the beneficial-AI movement isn't with robots but with intelligence itself: specifically, intelligence whose goals are misaligned with ours. To cause us trouble, such misaligned superhuman intelligence needs no robotic body, merely an internet connection - this may enable outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Even if building robots were physically impossible, a super-intelligent and super-wealthy AI could easily pay or manipulate many humans to unwittingly do its bidding.

The robot misconception is related to the myth that machines can't control humans. Intelligence enables control: humans control tigers not because we are stronger, but because we are smarter. This means that if we cede our position as smartest on our planet, it's possible that we might also cede control.

The Interesting Controversies

Not wasting time on the above-mentioned misconceptions lets us focus on true and interesting controversies where even the experts disagree. What sort of future do you want? Should we develop lethal autonomous weapons? What would you like to happen with job automation? What career advice would you give today's kids? Do you prefer new jobs replacing the old ones, or a jobless society where everyone enjoys a life of leisure and machine-produced wealth? Further down the road, would you like us to create superintelligent life and spread it through our cosmos? Will we control intelligent machines or will they control us? Will intelligent machines replace us, coexist with us, or merge with us? What will it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence? What would you like it to mean, and how can we make the future be that way? Please join the conversation!

Recommended References

Many of the organizations listed on this page and their descriptions are from a list compiled by the Global Catastrophic Risk institute; we are most grateful for the efforts that they have put into compiling it. These organizations above all work on computer technology issues, though many cover other topics as well. This list is undoubtedly incomplete; please contact us to suggest additions or corrections.

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Benefits & Risks of Artificial Intelligence - Future of Life Institute

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What are the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence (AI)? Why do we need research to ensure that AI remains safe and beneficial?

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225kg of illicit drugs recovered from prisons in 2016
over 20,000 mobile phones and sim cards recovered
criminals using drones to smuggle phones and drugs into prisons jailed for a combined total of over 40 years

drones used for good things like Police

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Pros:
Avoids human errors
Deals with mundane tasks
Tasks risks on behalf of humans
Faster decision making
Cons:
Loss of jobs
Lack of judgement
Takes control away from humans

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pros:
you have friend
easy to monitor people
can prevent cyber crimes and other crimes such as terrorism
cons:
its assuming everyone is guilty until proven innocent
citizens have no choice whether they have someone watching them or not
invasive
unreasonable
goes against the right to privacy

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problems with catching the criminal

easy to get away with
no real way of tracking
incredibly hard to control
encourages gangs
creates tensions within the inmates

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Advantages : easy, quick, efficient, carry medicine to remote areas, delivers food, improved accuracy, less human power involved meaning less cost for buyer, can fly 50mph for 10 miles away from its base at a height of around 100m
Disadvantages : used for drug smuggling, can break, used to smuggle packages into prison, expensive to make, possible noise, could interfere with air traffic, hard to deliver to people living in flats/tower blocks, short battery life so you would have to live near a drone station, people worried they would be misused e.g. to film people, people would need a special landing pad in their garden - some people don't have gardens, for terrorism

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A Zipline drone designed for delivering medical supplies and blood.

The RQ-7 Shadow is capable of delivering a 20 lb (9.1 kg) "Quick-MEDS" canister to front-line troops.

A Wingcopter drone delivering COVID-19 test kits in Scotland.[1]

A delivery drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used to transport packages that include medical supplies, food, or other goods. Given their life-saving potential, use cases for medical supplies in particular have become the most widely-tested type of drone delivery, with trials and pilot projects in dozens of countries such as Australia, Canada, Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, the UK, the US among others (see below). Delivery drones are typically autonomous and electric, sometimes also operated as a part of a fleet.

Drones are nowadays also being used to ferry/delivery of personnel in the form of Air Taxis. Dubai and India are presently carrying out trials of Air Taxis.

In December 2013, the DHL parcel service subsidiary of Deutsche Post AG tested a "microdrones md4-1000" for delivery of medicine.

Drones can be used to transport medicinal products such as blood products, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and medical samples. Medical deliveries are able to fly into and out of remote or otherwise inaccessible regions, compared to trucks or motorcycles. Medical drone delivery is credited with saving lives during emergency deliveries of blood in Rwanda and post-hurricane relief in Puerto Rico.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, drones made medical deliveries of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 tests in the United States, Israel, and Ghana. In partnership with the Ghana Ministry of Health, Zipline drones delivered thousands of COVID-19 vaccine vials in Ghana during 2020 and 2021. University of British Columbia (UBC) has. selected Drone Delivery Canada Corp for UBC's " Remote Communities Drone Transport Initiative" program. This solution will be used to transport a variety of cargo for the benefit of the Stellat'en First Nation, located in the Fraser Lake area of Central Northern British Columbia.

In August 2022, St Mary's Hospital on the Isle of Wight was selected to participate in a pilot scheme for receiving medicine delivered by delivery drones, with the shipments being flown in from the Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust's pharmacy on the mainland.

Drones have been proposed as a solution for rapidly delivering prepared foods, such as pizzas, tacos, and frozen beverages.

Foodpanda has piloted food deliveries in Singapore using multirotor drones from ST Engineering and in Pakistan using VTOL drones from Woot Tech. Early prototypes of food delivery drones include the Tacocopter demonstration by Star Simpson, which was a taco delivery concept utilizing a smartphone app to order drone-delivered tacos in San Francisco area. The revelation that it didn't exist as a delivery system or app led to it being labelled a hoax. A similar concept named the "burrito bomber" was tested in 2012.

Manna drone delivery has been successfully delivering orders by drone from Tesco, local coffee and bookshops, takeaways via Just Eat in the town of Oranmore in County Galway since October, and has proved so popular that 35 per cent of the 3,000 or so homes in its delivery area have tried the service.

Flytrex has delivered over 55K orders by drone in three towns in North Carolina and Texas since 2022, including Starbucks coffee, Walmart, Chick-fil-A, Papa John's pizza and more. 12 months since launching its service it reported over 70% of the household within service area have used the service at least once, reaching over 42% retention.

Different postal companies from Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Ukraine have undertaken various drone trials as they test the feasibility and profitability of unmanned delivery drone services. The USPS has been testing delivery systems with HorseFly Drones.

The shipping line Maersk and the Port of Rotterdam have experimented with using drones to resupply offshore ships instead of sending smaller boats.

In February 2014, the prime minister and cabinet affairs minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that the UAE planned to launch a fleet of UAVs for civilian purposes. Plans were for the UAVs to use fingerprint and eye-recognition systems to deliver official documents such as passports, ID cards and licenses, and supply emergency services at accidents. A battery-powered prototype four-rotor UAV about half a meter across was displayed in Dubai.

In the United States, initial attempts at commercial use of UAVs were blocked by FAA regulation, but were later allowed. In June 2014, the FAA published a document that listed activities not permitted under its regulations, including commercial use, which the organization stated included "delivering packages to people for a fee" or offered as part of a "purchase or another offer." The agency issued waivers to many organizations for less restrictive commercial uses, but each had to apply individually. In August 2016, the FAA adopted Part 107 rules that allowed limited commercial use by right. Drone operation under these rules is restricted to line-of-sight of the pilot and is not allowed over people, implying many applications like delivery to populated areas still requires a waiver. They also require the UAVs weigh less than 55 lb (25 kg), fly up to a maximum of 400 feet (120 m), at a speed of no greater than 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), only be operated during daytime, and that drone operators must also qualify for flying certificates and be at least 16 years old. In 2019, the FAA began certifying drone delivery companies under conventional charter airline Part 135 rules, with some accommodations for drones (such as that the pilot manual did not need to be carried on board). In preparation for higher volumes of drone traffic, the FAA finalized the Remote ID regulation in December 2020, giving manufacturers 18 months and operators 30 months to comply with the requirement for self-identification transmissions outside of designated areas. At the same time, the FAA added a Operations Over People and at Night rule to Part 107. Nighttime operations require anti-collision lights and additional pilot training. For flight over people or moving vehicles, drones are put into four categories depending on capability of injury to people, with the least restricted category having a full Part 21 airworthiness certificate.

In December 2013, in a research project of Deutsche Post AG subsidiary DHL, a sub-kilogram quantity of medicine was delivered via a prototype Microdrones "Parcelcopter", raising speculation that disaster relief may be the first industry the company will use the technology.

In August 2014, Google revealed it had been testing UAVs in Australia for two years. The Google X program known as " Project Wing" announced an aim to produce drones that can deliver products sold via e-commerce.

In February 2015, Hangzhou-based e-commerce provider Ali Baba started delivery drone service in a partnership with Shanghai YTO Express in which it delivered tea to 450 customers around select cities in China.

In 2015, an Israeli startup Flytrex partnered with AHA, Iceland's largest eCommerce website, and together they initiated a drone delivery route which demonstrated reducing delivery time from 30 minutes, to less than 5 minutes.

In March 2016, Flirtey conducted the first fully autonomous FAA approved drone delivery in an urban setting in the U.S.

A partnership between 7-Eleven and Flirtey resulted in the first FAA-approved delivery to a residence in the United States in July 2016, delivering a frozen Slurpee. The following month, the company partnered with Domino's in New Zealand to launch the first commercial drone delivery service.

In China, JD.com has been developing drone delivery capabilities. As of June 2017, JD.com had seven different types of delivery drones in testing across four provinces in China (Beijing, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Jiangsu). The drones are capable of delivering packages weighing between 5 and 30 kg (11 to 66 lbs) while flying up to 100 km/h (62 mph). The drones fly along fixed routes from warehouses to special landing pads where one of JD.com's 300,000 local contractors then delivers the packages to the customers' doorsteps in the rural villages. The e-commerce giant is also working on a 1 metric ton (1,000 kg) delivery drone which will be tested in Shaanxi.

In January 2018, Boeing unveiled a prototype of a cargo drone for up to 500 lb (227 kg) payloads, an electric flying testbed that completed flight tests at the Boeing Research & Technology research center in Missouri.

In 2016, Zipline began their partnership with the government of Rwanda to construct and operate a medical distribution center in Muhanga. Rwanda has a mountainous geography, poor road conditions, and a long rainy season, making an aerial delivery system more cost efficient and timely than traditional road-based deliveries. As of May 2018, they had delivered over 7,000 units of blood using drones. By October 2020, Zipline had made over 70,000 medical deliveries by drone and expanded operations across Rwanda and Ghana.

Their drones are small fixed-wing electric airplanes, enabling them to fly fast and over long distances (up to 180 km round-trip on a single charge), in all weather seen in Rwanda. Zipline drones use an assisted take-off to enter flight, and for landing they use an arresting gear-inspired mechatronic recovery system.

During a delivery, the Zipline drone does not land, but instead descends to a low height and drops the package to the ground, slowed by a parachute-like air brake.

Wing's aircraft delivering goods in Vuosaari, Helsinki.

The company Wing incubated by Google X began commercial deliveries in Christiansburg, Virginia in October, 2019. It carries parcels up to three pounds, using a tether for the final drop. As of April 2020, shippers were limited to FedEx, Walgreens, Sugar Magnolia, Mockingbird Café, and Brugh Coffee. Wing had obtained an FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate in April, 2019, which allowed it to charge to carry third-party cargo, and to operate out of the line of sight of the pilot. It also delivered over a thousand meals to Virginia Tech students and employees in a fall 2016 test program.

Wing announced it had conducted around 100,000 drone deliveries in August 2021, since launching trial services in September 2019. Wing uses two aircraft designs. The first features 12 hover motors and two cruise motors, which is the faster of the two flying machines, while the second design has four cruise motors and a slightly longer wing. Combining hover and cruise motors allows the aircraft greater manoeuvrability and speed for navigating urban environments.

As of May, 2020, UPS has made over paid 3,700 drone deliveries under Part 107 rules to WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. In May 2020, UPS began taking prescriptions via Matternet M2 drone under part 107 rules about half a mile from a CVS to a central location in The Villages, Florida, from which a UPS employee makes the home delivery by golf cart.

In 2020, UPS also began drone deliveries between the central Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center campus in Winston-Salem and the health system's other locations. Another delivery service began for UC San Diego Health.

In June 2019, UPS Flight Forward obtained a Part 135 Air Carrier certificate from the FAA, allowing longer-distance and nighttime flights.

Founded in 2019, Manna operates a fleet of delivery drones in Ireland, with . Manna was the first company in Europe to receive a European-wide license to operate commercial drone deliveries. Their drone carries 3.5kg (~8lb) with ~30,000 cm ³[citation needed ]. With commercial partnerships with Tesco, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Samsung and local vendors of pharmacy, takeaway food, coffee, pastries, books and hardware store, Manna has completed over 100,000 delivery flights as of March 2022.[citation needed ]

Swoop's drones can complete round trips of around 260 kilometres (160 mi) and can carry a maximum weight of 18 kg, which works out as 10 test kits or up to 50 vials of blood. The drones have a wingspan of 2.4m (nearly 8 feet) and are required to fly below 122m (about 400 feet) to ensure they don't collide with manned aircraft.

There have been several efforts in the field of scientific research aimed at advancing drone delivery technology. These scientific initiatives have not only focused on the technical aspects of drone technology but have also delved into the logistical and operational challenges associated with drone delivery, such as route planning.

Drug cartels have used UAVs to transport contraband, sometimes using GPS-guided UAVs.

From 2013 and 2015, UAVs were observed delivering items into prisons on at least four occasions in the United States while four separate but similar incidents occurred in Ireland, Britain, Australia and Canada as well. Though not a popular way of smuggling items into prisons, corrections officials state that some individuals are beginning to experiment with UAVs.

In November 2013, four people in Morgan, Georgia, were arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle contraband into Calhoun State Prison with a hexacopter.

In June 2014, a quadcopter crashed into an exercise yard of Wheatfield Prison, Dublin. The quadcopter collided with wires designed to prevent helicopters landing to aid escapes, causing it to crash. A package containing drugs hung from the quadcopter and was seized by prisoners before prison staff could get to it.

Between 2014 and 2015, at two prisons in South Carolina, items such as drugs and cell phones were flown into the area by UAVs with authorities and one prison not knowing how many deliveries were successful before gaining the attention of authorities.

A delivery drone's design configuration is typically defined by the use-case of what is being delivered, and where it must be delivered to.

A common configuration is a multirotor - such as a quadcopter or octocopter - which is a drone with horizontally-aligned propellers. Another common configuration is a fixed-wing design. A multirotor design provides power to lift the drone and payload, redundancy to powertrain failure, and an ability to hover and descend vertically ( VTOL). However, a multirotor configuration is less efficient and produces more noise. A fixed-wing configuration provides an order of magnitude increase in range, flight at higher airspeeds, and produces less noise, but requires more space for take-off, delivery, and landing.[citation needed ]

There are also hybrid approaches (for example Wingcopter or Swoop Aero) that use multiple horizontal rotors for take-off and landing, and vertical rotors paired with a fixed-wing for forward flight.

There are many sensors in the drone which are necessary for it to fly autonomously. Inertial sensors such as an accelerometer help the drone remain in flight by providing data to allow the autopilot to adjust motor speeds (multirotor configuration) or control surface deflections (fixed-wing configuration) to steer the drone. Navigation sensors such as a GPS or magnetic sensors aid the drone to fly along a specific path or to a specific waypoint by measuring the drone's location and orientation with respect to the earth. Air flow sensors allow the drone to measure the air speed, temperature, and density, and that information maintain safe control of the aircraft. The drone may also use these sensors to estimate the wind speed and direction to assist with package delivery and/or landing manoeuvres.

Delivery drones need powerful motors to keep both the drone steady along with the load. Brushless DC motors are most typically used in drones because they have become cheap, lightweight, powerful, and small. The propeller blades of the drone turn at very high speeds, so the optimal material used for these rotor blades maximizes the strength to weight ratio. Some are made from carbon-fiber reinforced composites while others are made of thermoplastics because they are cheaper so the cost of replacement when the drone crashes is smaller. Lithium ion batteries are used in most drones because they offer enough energy and power, and they are relatively light so they do not weigh down the drone too much.

Delivery drones rely on ground control systems both for safe operations and for their commercial operations. For safe operations, the drone operator needs to manage their fleet of aircraft and how they integrate into the broader airspace. For commercial use cases, the ground systems allow for receiving and tracking orders.

For regulatory compliance in numerous countries, drone delivery companies integrate parachute recovery systems. Parachute recovery systems can be unguided and guided. Drone delivery companies that incorporate this technology enable them to fly in more complex operations, such as over people. Drone delivery companies will purchase the integration service and parachute recovery systems from specific manufacturers. Some say the parachute recovery system manufacturers are similar to airbag/seat belt manufacturers in the automotive industry. Parachute Recovery System companies include AVSS - Aerial Vehicle Safety Solutions from Canada, Dronavia from France, Fruitychutes from the USA.

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A delivery drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used to transport packages that include medical supplies, food, or other goods. Given their life-saving potential, use cases for medical supplies in particular have become the most widely-tested type of drone delivery, with trials and pilot projects in dozens of countries such as Australia, Canada, Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, the UK, the US among others (see below).

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e.g seeing if the ball crossed the goal line
Pros:
More reliable and accurate, Better med care, specific training for the person
Cons:
Expensive,Only few have access, Invades privacy

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eg surgical robot, rehabilitation robots, pharmacy automation
pros:
no human error
higher level of precision
no emotional aspect (don't need time off)
dont need to be payed
cons:
high initial cost
put people out of jobs
dangerous if something goes wrong
no compassion or human side
high maintenance cost

# data[].attributes.body
eg. paying for products using facial recognition software
Pros: can be used to catch criminals, authorize payments, access facilities
cons: any errors

# data[].attributes.body
Safety
Traffic
Time

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I don't want to turn this blog into all self-driving cars, all the time. But there is one question I've heard about self-driving cars multiple times in the last few weeks that I really want to answer. This is, why would self-driving cars even be a big deal? Let me run down some rough calculations of the benefits.

First up is the most obvious: saved lives. When I hear people say that "autonomous cars won't work" I want to ask "Compared to what?". Because human-driven cars don't work very well either. In 2012, there were 30,800 fatal car crashes. These crashes lead to the deaths of 22,912 drivers and passengers of cars, 4,957 on motorcycles, 4,743 pedestrians, and 726 on bicycles. So if autonomous cars worked so poorly that they killed 10,000 people a year they would still be saving around 20,000 lives.

It may be true that for emotional reasons voters will nevertheless find this unacceptable, but that's no excuse for people rationally discussing costs and benefits to wave away the potential life savings of a highly imperfect autonomous car. The official value of a statistical life used by the Department of Transportation is $9.2 million, so if autonomous cars can save 30,000 lives a year this is a yearly benefit of $276 billion. In addition to the lost lives, the CDC estimates that the deadly crashes in 2005 also lead to $41 billion in medical and work loss costs. So the total cost of deadly crashes per year is around $317 billion.

Then there are the non-deadly crashes. The NHTSA estimates there were 2,362,000 people injured in auto crashes in 2012. In it's cost-benefit guide, the Department of Transportation has several tier of car crash injuries with estimated costs. These range from $27,600 for a minor injury, to $432,400 for a moderate, to $5.4 million to unsurvivable. If we conservatively estimate an average injury cost of $80,000 (which is also the lowest injury tier from the Minnesota DOT), then this implies a total annual cost of crash injuries of $189 billion.

Then there are crashes where nobody is hurt. The US census estimates there were 10.8 million motor vehicle crashes in 2009. To avoid double-counting, we'll assume only half of these weren't already counted above in the 2.3 million injuries and 30,000 deaths. That leaves 5 million non-injury crashes, which the Minnesota DOT estimates cost $7,400 on average, for a total cost of $37 billion (this is consistent with the US DOT estimate of $3,927 per vehicle). This puts the non-fatal crash total up to $226 billion.

The next major source of savings is that time spent in the car will be free to do stuff other than driving. This is a huge deal if you consider how much time people spend in cars. In the last 12 months to August, we traveled an estimate 2.9 trillion vehicle miles in our cars. That's almost 10,000 miles per person in the U.S. per year. If we extremely conservatively assume that the average travel speed is 60 miles per hour, and that each vehicle holds one person, this translates to around 49.6 billion hours spent in the car, or 157 hours per person in the U.S. per year. The DOT uses an average value of travel time savings of $12.98 for cost-benefit analysis. But that's probably too high for these purposes, since being in a car doesn't save you any time, but rather lets you spend that time napping, reading, or whatever else you can do in your car. So let's conservatively assume that the value of time spent doing what you want in the car instead of not driving is worth 15% the normal cost-benefit value, or about $2 an hour. This would imply a time savings worth $99 billion every single year. Again this is extremely conservative. With less conservative assumptions like 30 mph average speed and $5 an hour value of time savings this can quickly balloon to $500 billion dollars.

So in total we have $317 billion from fatal crashes, $226 billion for non-fatal crashes, and $99 billion in time savings. That's a total of $642 billion a year in welfare that self-driving cars can generate. These are extremely conservative back of the envelope calculations, and it misses a lot of important benefits like senior citizens who currently can't drive at all right now, and the cost savings to households who gain much cheaper access to cars by renting them by the hour. But even leaving all those benefits out, $642 billion is a really, really big deal.

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The Massive Economic Benefits Of Self-Driving Cars

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I don't want to turn this blog into all self-driving cars, all the time. But there is one question I've heard about self-driving cars multiple times in the last few weeks that I really want to answer. This is, why would self-driving cars even be a big deal? Let me [...]