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Artificial intelligence connected with emotions 🧠

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Artificial intelligence connected with emotions 🧠

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Bill Gates: Rich nations should shift entirely to synthetic beef

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We spoke to the Microsoft cofounder about his new book, the limits of his optimism, the tech breakthroughs and energy policies we need-and how his thinking on climate change has evolved.

In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates lays out what it will really take to eliminate the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change.

The Microsoft cofounder, who is now cochair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and chair of the investment fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, sticks to his past argument that we'll need numerous energy breakthroughs to have any hope of cleaning up all parts of the economy and the poorest parts of the world. The bulk of the book surveys the technologies needed to slash emissions in "hard to solve" sectors like steel, cement, and agriculture.

He stresses that innovation will make it cheaper and more politically feasible for every nation to cut or prevent emissions. But Gates also answers some of the criticisms that his climate prescriptions have been overly focused on "energy miracles" at the expense of aggressive government policies.

The closing chapters of the book lay out long lists of ways that nations could accelerate the shift, including high carbon prices, clean electricity standards, clean fuel standards, and far more funding for research and development. Gates calls for governments to quintuple their annual investments in clean tech, which would add up to $35 billion in the US.

Gates describes himself as an optimist, but it's a constrained type of optimism. He dedicates an entire chapter to describing just how hard a problem climate change is to address. And while he consistently says we can develop the necessary technology and we can avoid a disaster; it's less clear how hopeful he is that we will.

I spoke to Gates in December about his new book, the limits of his optimism, and how his thinking on climate change has evolved.
Gates is an investor either personally or through Breakthrough Energy Ventures in several of the companies he mentions below, including Beyond Meats, Carbon Engineering, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats, and Pivot Bio. This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
Q: In the past, it seemed you would distance yourself from the policy side of climate change, which had led to some criticisms that you are overly focused on innovation. Was there a shift in your thinking, or was it a deliberate choice to lay out the policy side in your book?

A: No, that's absolutely fair. In general, if you can do innovation without having to get involved in the political issues, I always prefer that. It's more natural for me to find a great scientist and back multiple approaches.

But the reason I smile when you say it is because in our global health work, there's a whole decade where I'm recognizing that to have the impact we want, we're going to have to work with both the donor governments in a very deep way and the recipient governments that actually create these primary health-care systems.

And my naïve view at the beginning had been "Hey, I'll just create a malaria vaccine and other people will worry about getting that out into the field." That clearly wasn't a good idea. I realized that for a lot of these diseases, including diarrhea and pneumonia, there actually were vaccines. And it was more of a political challenge in getting the marginal pricing and the funds raised and the vaccine coverage up, not the scientific piece.

Here, there's no doubt you need to get government policy in a huge way. Take things like clean steel: it doesn't have other benefits. There's no market demand for clean steel. Even carbon taxes at low costs per ton aren't enough to get clean steel on the learning curve. You need like a $300-a-ton type of carbon tax. And so to get that sector going, you need to do some basic R&D, and you need to actually start having purchase requirements or funds set aside to pay that premium, both from government and perhaps companies and individuals as well.

But, you know, we need a lot of countries, not just a few, to engage in this.

Q: How do you feel about our chances of making real political progress, particularly in in the US, in the moment we find ourselves in?

A: I am optimistic. Biden being elected is a good thing. Even more encouraging is that if you poll young voters, millennials, both who identify as Republican and Democrats, the interest in this issue is very high. And they're the ones who will be alive when the world either is massively suffering from these problems or is not, depending on what gets done. So there is political will.

But there's a lot of interplay [between politics and innovation]. If you try and do this with brute force, just paying the current premiums for clean technology, the economic cost is gigantic and the economic displacement is gigantic. And so I don't believe that even a rich country will do this by brute force.

But in the near term, you may be able to get tens of billions of dollars for the innovation agenda. Republicans often like innovation.

I'm asking for something that's like the size of the National Institutes of Health budget. I feel [it's politically feasible] because it creates high-paying jobs and because it answers the question of-well, if the US gets rid of its 14% [of global emissions], big deal: what about the growing percent that comes from India as it's providing basic capabilities to its citizens?

I just imagine a phone call to the Indians in 2050 where you say, Please, please, build half as much shelter because of the green premium [for clean cement and steel]. And they're like, What? We didn't cause these emissions.

Innovation is the only way to [reduce those price premiums].

Q: You've said a couple of times you're optimistic, and that's sort of famously your position on these things. But of course, optimism is a relative term. Do you think we can realistically hold warming to or below a 2 °C increase at this point?

A: That would require us to get the policy right, to get many, many countries involved, and to be lucky on quite a few of the technological advances. That's pretty much a best case. Anything better than that is not at all realistic, and there are days when even that doesn't seem realistic.

It's not out of the question, but it requires awfully good progress. Even something like, do we get [an energy] storage miracle or not? We can't make ourselves dependent on that. Batteries today can't, within a factor of 20, store for the seasonal variation that you get [from intermittent sources like wind and solar]. We just don't make enough batteries; it would be way too expensive. So we have to have other paths-like fission or fusion-that can give us that reliable source of electricity, which we'll be even more dependent on than ever.

Q: In the book you cover a broad array of hard-to-solve sectors. The one I still have the hardest time with, in terms of fully addressing it, is food. The scale is massive. We've barely begun. We fundamentally don't have replacements that completely eliminate the highly potent emissions from burping livestock and fertilizer. How hopeful are you about agriculture?

A: There are [companies], including one in the [Breakthrough Energy Ventures] portfolio called Pivot Bio, that significantly reduce the amount of fertilizer you need. There are advances in seeds, including seeds that do what legumes do: that is, they're able to [convert nitrogen in the soil into compounds that plants can use] biologically. But the ability to improve photosynthesis and to improve nitrogen fixation is one of the most underinvested things.

In terms of livestock, it's very difficult. There are all the things where they feed them different food, like there's this one compound that gives you a 20% reduction [in methane emissions]. But sadly, those bacteria [in their digestive system that produce methane] are a necessary part of breaking down the grass. And so I don't know if there'll be some natural approach there. I'm afraid the synthetic [protein alternatives like plant-based burgers] will be required for at least the beef thing.

Now the people like Memphis Meats who do it at a cellular level-I don't know that that will ever be economical. But Impossible and Beyond have a road map, a quality road map and a cost road map, that makes them totally competitive.

As for scale today, they don't represent 1% of the meat in the world, but they're on their way. And Breakthrough Energy has four different investments in this space for making the ingredients very efficiently. So yeah, this is the one area where my optimism five years ago would have made this, steel, and cement the three hardest.

Now I've said I can actually see a path. But you're right that saying to people, "You can't have cows anymore"-talk about a politically unpopular approach to things.

Q: Do you think plant-based and lab-grown meats could be the full solution to the protein problem globally, even in poor nations? Or do you think it's going to be some fraction because of the things you're talking about, the cultural love of a hamburger and the way livestock is so central to economies around the world?

A: For Africa and other poor countries, we'll have to use animal genetics to dramatically raise the amount of beef per emissions for them. Weirdly, the US livestock, because they're so productive, the emissions per pound of beef are dramatically less than emissions per pound in Africa. And as part of the [Bill and Melinda Gates] Foundation's work, we're taking the benefit of the African livestock, which means they can survive in heat, and crossing in the monstrous productivity both on the meat side and the milk side of the elite US beef lines.

So no, I don't think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat. I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they're going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behavior of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.

So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it's possible. But it's one of those ones where, wow, you have to track it every year and see, and the politics [are challenging]. There are all these bills that say it's got to be called, basically, lab garbage to be sold. They don't want us to use the beef label.

Q: You talk a lot in the book about the importance of carbon-removal technologies, like direct air capture. You also did come out and say that planting trees as a climate solution is overblown. What's your reaction to things like the Trillion Trees Initiative and the large number of corporations announcing plans to achieve negative emissions at least in part through reforestation and offsets?

A: [To offset] my own emissions, I've bought clean aviation fuel. I've paid to replace natural-gas heating in low-income housing projects with electric heat pumps-where I pay the capital cost premium and they get the benefit of the lower monthly bill. And I've sent money to Climeworks [a Switzerland-based company that removes carbon dioxide from the air and stores it permanently underground].

For the carbon emissions I've done-and I've gotten rid of more than what I emit-it comes out to $400 a ton.

Any of these schemes that claim to remove carbon for $5, $15, $30 a ton? Just look at it.

The idea that there are all these places where there's plenty of good soil and plenty of good water and just accidentally, the trees didn't grow there-and if you plant a tree there, it's going to be there for thousands of years-[is wrong].

The lack of validity for most of that tree planting is one of those things where this movement is not an honest movement yet. It doesn't know how to measure truth yet. There are all sorts of hokey things that allow people to use their PR budgets to buy virtue but aren't really having the impact. And we'll get smarter over time about what is a real offset.

So no, most of those offset things don't stand up. The offset thing that we think will stand up is if you gather money from companies and consumers to bootstrap the market for clean steel and clean cement. Because of the learning-curve benefits there, putting your money into that, instead of on tree planting, is catalytic in nature and will make a contribution. We need some mix of government, company, and individual money to drive those markets.

Q: I do have to ask this: Microsoft is in the process of trying to eliminate its entire historic emissions, and there was a Bloomberg article that had a figure in there that I was a little surprised by. The company apparently wants to do it at $20 a ton? Do you think we can achieve reliable permanent carbon removal for $20 a ton eventually?

A: Very unlikely.

I mean, if you'd asked me 10 years ago how cheap solar panels would become, I would have been wrong. That went further than anyone expected.

Science is mysterious, and saying that science can do X or can't do X is kind of a fool's game. In many cases, it's done things that no one would have predicted.

But even the liquid process, which is Carbon Engineering's approach, will have a very tough time getting to $100 a ton.

With all these things, you have capital costs and you have energy costs. So getting to $20 a ton is very unlikely. There are a lot of current offset programs that claim they're doing that, and that needs a lot of auditing because to eliminate carbon, you have to keep it out of the atmosphere for the full 10,000-year half-life. Most people have a hard time economically costing out 10,000 years of costs. Believe me, these tree guys make sure that if it burns down, they find another magic place where no tree has ever grown, to replant.

But it's not to say that there aren't a few places you can plant trees, or that a few of these offset things will work, like plugging certain methane leaks-that's a high payback. We should use regulations; we should go fund those things.

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Bill Gates: Rich nations should shift entirely to synthetic beef

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Skip to Content We spoke to the Microsoft cofounder about his new book, the limits of his optimism, the tech breakthroughs and energy policies we need-and how his thinking on climate change has evolved. In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates lays out what it will really take to eliminate the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change.

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AI ‘EMOTION RECOGNITION’ CAN’T BE TRUSTED

The belief that facial expressions reliably correspond to emotions is unfounded, says a new review of the field

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As artificial intelligence is used to make more decisions about our lives, engineers have sought out ways to make it more emotionally intelligent. That means automating some of the emotional tasks that come naturally to humans - most notably, looking at a person's face and knowing how they feel.

To achieve this, tech companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon all sell what they call "emotion recognition" algorithms, which infer how people feel based on facial analysis. For example, if someone has a furrowed brow and pursed lips, it means they're angry. If their eyes are wide, their eyebrows are raised, and their mouth is stretched, it means they're afraid, and so on.

Clients can put this tech to use in a variety of ways, building everything from automated surveillance systems that look for "angry" threats to job interview software that promises to weed out bored and uninterested candidates.

But the belief that we can easily infer how people feel based on how they look is controversial, and a significant new review of the research suggests there's no firm scientific justification for it.

"Companies can say whatever they want, but the data are clear," Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and one of the review's five authors, tells The Verge. "They can detect a scowl, but that's not the same thing as detecting anger."

The review was commissioned by the Association for Psychological Science, and five distinguished scientists from the field were asked to scrutinize the evidence. Each reviewer represented different theoretical camps in the world of emotion science. "We weren't sure if we would be able to come to a consensus over the data, but we did," Barrett says. It took them two years to examine the data, with the review looking at more than 1,000 different studies.

Their findings are detailed - they can be read in full here - but the basic summary is that emotions are expressed in a huge variety of ways, which makes it hard to reliably infer how someone feels from a simple set of facial movements.

"People, on average, the data show, scowl less than 30 percent of the time when they're angry," says Barrett. "So scowls are not the expression of anger; they're an expression of anger - one among many. That means that more than 70 percent of the time, people do not scowl when they're angry. And on top of that, they scowl often when they're notangry."

"Would you really want outcomes being determined on this basis?"

This, in turn, means companies that use AI to evaluate people's emotions in this way are misleading consumers. "Would you really want outcomes being determined on this basis?" says Barrett. "Would you want that in a court of law, or a hiring situation, or a medical diagnosis, or at the airport ... where an algorithm is accurate only 30 percent of the time?"

The review doesn't deny that common or "prototypical" facial expressions might exist, of course, nor that our belief in the communicative power of facial expressions plays a huge role in society. (Don't forget that when we see people in person, we have so much more information about the context of their emotions than simplistic facial analysis.)

The review recognizes that there's a huge variety of beliefs in the field of emotion studies. What it rebuts, specifically, is this idea of reliably "fingerprinting" emotion through expression, which is a theory that has its roots in the work of psychologist Paul Ekman from the 1960s (and which Ekman has developed since).

Studies that seem to show a strong correlation between certain facial expressions and emotions are often methodologically flawed, says the review. For example, they use actors pulling exaggerated faces as their starting point for what emotions "look" like. And when test subjects are asked to label these expressions, they're often asked to choose from a limited selection of emotions, which pushes them toward a certain consensus.

People intuitively understand that emotions are more complex than this, says Barrett. "When I say to people, 'Sometimes you shout in anger, sometimes you cry in anger, sometimes you laugh, and sometimes you sit silently and plan the demise of your enemies,' that convinces them," she says. "I say, 'Listen, what's the last time someone won an Academy Award for scowling when they're angry?' No one considers that great acting."

These subtleties, though, are rarely acknowledged by companies selling emotion analysis tools. In marketing for Microsoft's algorithms, for example, the company says advances in AI allow its software to "recognize eight core emotional states ... based on universal facial expressions that reflect those feelings," which is the exact claim that this review disproves.

This is not a new criticism, of course. Barrett and others have been warning for years that our model of emotion recognition is too simple. In response, companies selling these tools often say their analysis is based on more signals than just facial expression. The difficulty is knowing how these signals are balanced, if at all.

One of the leading companies in the $20 billion emotion recognition market, Affectiva, says it's experimenting with collecting additional metrics. Last year, for example, it launched a tool that measures the emotions of drivers by combining face and speech analyses. Other researchers are looking into metrics like gait analysis and eye tracking.

In a statement, Affectiva CEO and co-founder Rana el Kaliouby said this review was "much in alignment" with the company's work. "Like the authors of this paper, we do not like the naivete of the industry, which is fixated on the 6 basic emotions and a prototypic one-to-one mapping of facial expressions to emotional states," said el Kaliouby. "The relationship of expressions to emotion is very nuanced, complex and not prototypical."

Barrett is confident that we will be able to more accurately measure emotions in the future with more sophisticated metrics. "I absolutely believe it's possible," she says. But that won't necessarily stop the current limited technology from proliferating.

AI is perfect for finding spurious connections in data

With machine learning, in particular, we often see metrics being used to make decisions - not because they're reliable, but simply because they can be measured. This is a technology that excels at finding connections, and this can lead to all sorts of spurious analyses: from scanning babysitters' social media posts to detect their "attitude" to analyzing corporate transcripts of earnings calls to try to predict stock prices. Often, the very mention of AI gives an undeserved veneer of credibility.

If emotion recognition becomes common, there's a danger that we will simply accept it and change our behavior to accommodate its failings. In the same way that people now act in the knowledge that what they do online will be interpreted by various algorithms (e.g., choosing to not like certain pictures on Instagram because it affects your ads), we might end up performing exaggerated facial expressions because we know how they'll be interpreted by machines. That wouldn't be too different from signaling to other humans.

Barrett says that perhaps the most important takeaway from the review is that we need to think about emotions in a more complex fashion. The expressions of emotions are varied, complex, and situational. She compares the needed change in thinking to Charles Darwin's work on the nature of species and how his research overturned a simplistic view of the animal kingdom.

"Darwin recognized that the biological category of a species does not have an essence, it's a category of highly variable individuals," says Barrett. "Exactly the same thing is true of emotional categories."

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AI "emotion recognition" can't be trusted

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The ability of AI to mine insights from data is phenomenal, but there's one realm in which algorithms shouldn't be trusted to make the right inferences: human emotions - specifically, judging how people feel based on their facial expressions.

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Google fires second AI ethics researcher following internal investigation

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Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, co-lead of the ethical AI team, after she used an automated script to look through her emails in order to find evidence of discrimination against her coworker Timnit Gebru. The news was first reported by Axios.

Mitchell's firing comes one day after Google announced a reorganization to its AI teams working on ethics and fairness. Marian Croak, a vice president in the engineering organization, is now leading "a new center of expertise on responsible AI within Google Research," according to a blog post.

"These decisions were made behind our backs"

Mitchell joined Google in 2016 as a senior research scientist, according to her LinkedIn. Two years later, she helped start the ethical AI team alongside Gebru, a renowned researcher known for her work on bias in facial recognition technology.

In December 2020, Mitchell and Gebru were working on a paper about the dangers of large language processing models when Megan Kacholia, vice president of Google Brain, asked that the article be retracted. Gebru pushed back, saying the company needed to be more open about why the research wasn't acceptable. Shortly afterwards, she was fired, though Google characterized her departure as a resignation.

After Gebru's termination, Mitchell became openly critical of Google executives, including Google AI division head Jeff Dean and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In January, she lost her corporate email access after Google began investigating her activity.

"After conducting a review of this manager's conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees," Google said in a statement to Axios about Mitchell's firing.

On Friday, Google announced it was making changes to its research and diversity policies, following an investigation into Gebru's termination. In an internal email, Jeff Dean apologized to staff for how Gebru's departure was handled. "I heard and acknowledge what Dr. Gebru's exit signified to female technologists, to those in the Black community and other underrepresented groups who are pursuing careers in tech, and to many who care deeply about Google's responsible use of AI. It led some to question their place here, which I regret," he said.

The ethical AI team has been in crisis since Gebru's firing in December. After the reorganization announcement yesterday, senior researcher Alex Hanna wrote that the team was not aware of Croak's appointment until the news broke publicly Wednesday night. "We were told to trust the process, trust in decision-makers like Marian Croak to look out for our best interests," she said on Twitter. "But these decisions were made behind our backs."

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Google fires second AI ethics researcher following internal investigation

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Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, co-lead of the ethical AI team, after she used an automated script to look through her emails in order to find evidence of discrimination against her coworker Timnit Gebru. The news was first reported by Axios .

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Could Reishi Be the Leather Alternative Luxury Embraces?

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If eliminating fur from your wardrobe is the sartorial equivalent of giving up red meat, then perhaps ridding a closet of leather is comparable with going vegan. One requires only a minor stylistic shift; the other forces a person to swear off near-entire categories of apparel and accessories. Leather is ubiquitous, and difficult to avoid, particularly once a shopper reaches a certain echelon of spending.

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Could Reishi Be the Leather Alternative Luxury Embraces?

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If eliminating fur from your wardrobe is the sartorial equivalent of giving up red meat, then perhaps ridding a closet of leather is comparable with going vegan. One requires only a minor stylistic shift; the other forces a person to swear off near-entire categories of apparel and accessories.

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President-elect Joe Biden should anticipate major and minor conflicts in space from even the earliest days of his presidency.

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President-elect Joe Biden should anticipate major and minor conflicts in space from even the earliest days of his presidency.

The big picture: President Donald Trump's military and civil space policies are well-documented, but Biden's record and views on space are less clear.

"They need to be prepared on day one, for space contingencies that could arise - everything from a hostile attack in space to some sort of anti-satellite test," Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told me.

It's also possible an attack could be in the "gray zone" where a country does something that isn't overt - like jamming or using one satellite to inspect another - but would put the U.S. in a tough spot, according to Harrison.

Between the lines: The Biden administration will face pressure to stay the course on some of Trump's space-related policies.

The Space Force, for example, is seen as largely beneficial by space insiders because it makes space a priority.

Some experts tell Axios they hope Biden will take a relatively hands-off approach to the Space Force, by comparison to Trump, who used the new military branch as a rallying cry for supporters.

The intrigue: While the U.S.' civil and military space programs operate separately, they often act as a united front geopolitically.

Harrison warns that the Trump administration's Artemis Accords and Artemis Moon mission to send NASA astronauts back to the lunar surface could have national security implications for the nations that have signed on as partners.

Partnering with NASA, "gives them standing geopolitically," Harrison said. "It also is going to help stimulate their own aerospace industrial base and help counter the influence of China in their regions."

Go deeper: The rise of military space powers

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Biden should anticipate conflicts in space from even the earliest days of his presidency

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President-elect Joe Biden should anticipate major and minor conflicts in space from even the earliest days of his presidency. The big picture: President Donald Trump's military and civil space policies are well-documented, but Biden's record and views on space are less clear.

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This AI reads children's emotions as they learn

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this ai reads children's emotions as they learn  - cnn

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This AI reads children's emotions as they learn

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A Hong Kong company has developed facial expression-reading AI that monitors students' emotions as they study. With many children currently learning from home, they say the technology could make the virtual classroom even better than the real thing.

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PARIS TO TRANSFORM CHAMPS-ELYSÉES INTO ‘EXTRAORDINARY GARDEN’

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A €250 million project has been approved that will turn the Champs-Elysées in Paris into a pedestrian-friendly avenue, planted with trees, by 2030. Rose Dykins reports

The French capital's famous Champs-Elysées shopping avenue is slated to become an "extraordinary" garden, according to the city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, speaking to Le Journal du Dimanche.

Plans have been drawn up to reduce the space for vehicles by half, transform the avenue's roads into green spaces for pedestrians, and create a "tunnel of trees" to improve the surrounding air quality.

Architect Philippe Chiambaretta and his agency PCA-Stream came up with the designs to turn the 1.9km Champs-Elysées into a more user-friendly, inviting and healthy public promenade. According to research carried out by PCA-Stream, two thirds of all pedestrians along the avenue are tourists. Meanwhile, Parisians account for just 5 per cent of pedestrians. The research found that locals avoid the area due to overtourism, traffic, and high pollution levels.

The "The legendary avenue has lost its splendour over the past 30 years. It has been progressively abandoned by Parisians and has been hit by several successive crises: the gilets jaunes [the yellow vests grassroots movement for economic justice, with mass demonstrations in 2018], strikes, health and economic crises etc." Champs-Elysées committee, which has been campaigning for the redesign of the area since 2018, states: The committee hosted a public consultation about what should be done to improve the Champs-Elysées and invited PCA-Stream to come up with plans to revitalise what is known as "the world's most beautiful avenue".

The €250 million project from PCA-Stream will begin by redeveloping the Place de la Concorde square at the south-east of the Champs-Elysées - which is the largest public square in Paris. This is set to be completed by 2024 by the time Paris hosts the Olympics, with the rest of the avenue to be completely renovated by 2030. Named after Elysian Fields - a mythical Greek paradise - Champs Elysées was initially designed by King Louis XIV's garderner, André le Nôtre, as a grand promenade line with elm trees. Later, in 1709, it was renamed the Champs-Elysées and extended, and it became a popular spot for picnics by the end of the century.

In 2021, although the avenue has remained a site for historical crowd-gathering events, celebrations and demonstrations, it is largely avoided by Parisians. The plans to revitalise, cutting down the congestion, and offer something more appealing for locals than the expensive luxury shops and restaurants that attract tourists, should be a catalyst for change. Paris's plans to create more pedestrian-friendly, green space in the heart of its city centre mirrors what's going on in cities all over the world, with the Covid-19 pandemic having sped up this trend. There has never been a greater need for well-planned urban gardens that create outdoor, green space for city dwellers.

Hidalgo also told Le Journal du Dimanche that, along with the Champs Elysées project, more blueprints are on the way to transform the French capital "before and after 2024", including reconfiguring the area around the Eiffel Tower into an urban park.

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Paris to transform Champs-Elysées into 'extraordinary garden'

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A €250 million project has been approved that will turn the Champs-Elysées in Paris into a pedestrian-friendly avenue, planted with trees, by 2030. Rose Dykins reports The French capital's famous Champs-Elysées shopping avenue is slated to become an "extraordinary" garden, according to the city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, speaking to Le Journal du Dimanche .

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Volkswagen y Microsoft colaboran en el desarrollo del coche autónomo

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Car.Software Organization, la empresa de software de Volkswagen creada el año pasado y que agrupa todas las competencias del grupo en este terreno, colaborará con Microsoft para construir una plataforma de conducción autónoma ejecutándose en la nube con Azure. Así se aumentará la efectividad de las ayudas a la conducción y las funciones de conducción autónoma.

Las dos compañías están combinando su experiencia, por un lado, en el desarrollo de soluciones de conducción conectada con, por otro, los conocimientos de software y trabajo en la nube, de manera que se acelere el desarrollo de servicios de movilidad. En este sentido, " la nube y el software de Azure más los datos y la capacidad de inteligencia artificial permitirán a Volkswagen ofrecer soluciones de conducción seguras y fiables rápidamente ", afirmó Scott Guthrie, vicepresidente ejecutivo de Cloud + AI en Microsoft.

Con las ayudas a la conducción y la conducción autónoma se mejora la seguridad, a la vez que se reducen los atascos y la movilidad se hace más cómoda. Pero la construcción de estas soluciones requiere computaciones a gran escala para gestionar diariamente petabytes de datos que atañen desde a la meteorología y el estado de la carretera a la detección de obstáculo y el comportamiento del conductor, para así desarrollar, simular y validad la conducción autónoma.

Car.Software Organization, aprovechando la experiencia ya recogida a través de los kilómetros realizados en tráfico real, trabajará con las posibilidades informáticas de Azure y el conocimiento de software de Microsoft para reducir los tiempos de desarrollos de meses a semanas y administrar ingentes cantidades de datos.

Se espera que los primeros prototipos del proyecto salgan a la carretera este mismo año, e stando el lanzamiento comercial de estos vehículos autónomos previsto el que viene.

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Volkswagen y Microsoft colaboran en el desarrollo del coche autónomo

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Car.Software Organization, la empresa de software de Volkswagen creada el año pasado y que agrupa todas las competencias del grupo en este terreno, colaborará con Microsoft para construir una plataforma de conducción autónoma ejecutándose en la nube con Azure. Así se aumentará la efectividad de las ayudas a la conducción y las funciones de conducción autónoma.

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Cultured meat has been approved for consumers for the first time

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Cultured meat has been approved for consumers for the first time

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Restaurant-goers in Singapore will soon get the chance to eat chicken nuggets grown in bioreactors.

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Most cultured meat is made in a similar way. Cells are taken from an animal, often via a biopsy or from an established animal cell line. These cells are then fed a nutrient broth and placed in a bioreactor, where they multiply until there are enough to harvest for use in meatballs or nuggets. A slew of startups have been founded using variations on this approach, in the belief that cultured meat will appeal to flexitarians-people who want to reduce the amount of meat they eat for ethical or environmental reasons, but don't want to give it up entirely.

The budding industry has progressed a long way since a $330,000 burger was famously cooked on TV in 2013, driven by the idea that if it's done right, meat could be produced with far lower greenhouse-gas emissions and zero animal suffering. But cost is still a hurdle: the high price of the growth factors required to develop the cells mean the price tags for pure cultured meat products are still measured in hundreds of dollars per pound, far too expensive to compete with regular meat. So Just's first chicken products will be chicken "bites" that use cultured chicken cells mixed with plant protein-although Tetrick wouldn't say in what proportion. "Chicken nuggets are already blended-this one wont be any different," he says. The bites will be labeled as "cultured chicken" on the restaurant's menu.

Singapore's decision could kick-start the first wave of regulatory approvals around the world.

"We are hoping and expecting that the US, China, and the EU will pick up the gauntlet that Singapore just threw down," says Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that works in meat alternatives. "Nothing is more important for the climate than a shift away from industrial animal agriculture."

While Just has beaten them to the punch, many big firms are already working with regulators to get their own products to market. This is not something to be rushed, Friedrich says: "It is critical for cultivated meat companies to be extra careful and to go beyond consumer expectation in ensuring consumer comfort with their products."

Memphis Meats, which counts Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and traditional meat manufacturer Tyson Foods among its many investors, has teamed up with a number of other firms, including Just and cultured-seafood makers BlueNalu and Finless Foods, to form a lobbying group that is working with US regulators to get their products approved.

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Cultured meat has been approved for consumers for the first time

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The first lab-grown, or cultured, meat product has been given the green light to be sold for human consumption. In the landmark approval, regulators in Singapore granted Just, a San Francisco-based startup, the right to sell cultured chicken-in the form of chicken nuggets-to the public. Just had been working with the regulators for the past...

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Deepak Chopra made a digital clone of himself, and other celebs could soon follow

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I'm sitting down on a sofa, talking to what looks like a Facetime with Deepak Chopra on a phone. It's not him, though. It's an animated, sometimes realistic, talking head. He asks me how I feel. I end up discussing work stress. He suggests a meditation.

For a few minutes, I'm having a little session with a Deepak that doesn't exist.

A few weeks later, I'm talking to actual Deepak Chopra on the phone about what I experienced. The successful author and personal transformation guru is launching a free AI version of himself, which will tap into his collected books and build a personal relationship with whoever's talking to him. The software, created by a company called The AI Foundation, is looking to use this technology to make virtual AI archives of anyone who wants to be immortalized or remembered. Mr. Chopra is the first on deck.

"Well, here's the reason I did it: I'm now 73 years old, and I'm in perfect health, I feel like I'm 35, but you know, the next chapter is physical death. This digital Deepak can actually consume my work after I'm gone, and probably improve on it because it learns with every interaction," Chopra tells me. He calls his AI "Digital Baby Deepak," because he sees it as a part of himself that will grow. "It can become a teenager soon and an adult, and ultimately a wise person, and it can do that very fast because it doesn't have the time limitations that humans have. It can learn simultaneously from all these interactions."

Deepak Chopra has explored AI frontiers before. Last year, he released an Alexa skill that played daily recorded reflections. This new AI initiative crosses over to add visuals, and far deeper interactive ambitions.

I will learn from it, and it will learn from me. I mean, we're twins, now.

This Digital Deepak will personalize itself based on the details we give it, which could be a lot. "If you want, you can share anything you want with it privately, it'll be very ethical about that information, including your medical records if you wish to share with them," says Chopra, "And it will be able to consult with experts and give you advice."

Chopra also sees possibilities of using his digital self to learn more about his physical self. "I will learn from it, and it will learn from me. I mean, we're twins, now."

My mind races to consultations with holograms of historical figures, like in Watchmen's alternate-2019 universe, and VR experiences I've actually had, virtually meeting Holocaust survivors. I also think about talking to my dad, who's been gone for seven years.

Building a virtual archive

The app, created by The AI Foundation, sounds exactly like the weird Black Mirror future I expected would arrive eventually, but the company's goal for AI is to record interactive archives to allow people to be remembered forever. For now, apps like Chopra's are free because they're aimed at training the AI to get better. Co-founder and CTO Rob Meadows explained what's going on in a little more detail: "Our biggest interest right now is seeing how this technology works in the world and seeing how it can create impact. We're well funded, and we don't have a critical must-make-money-right-now initiative. We want to do things the right way first."

The app will use what Meadows calls a "natural, conversational interface," and it really did just feel like I was Facetiming with Deepak. The idea, down the road, is to make this app a way to record and build an AI interface for your own database, which will include your history, your Masterclass-like classes, whatever. The app will continue to collect requests and feed those back to someone who's created an AI so they can address and record new parts, almost like a living AMA on Reddit. "We don't actually learn the master source of truth from users," Meadows tells me. "We only learn that from Deepak," he explains, or whoever is creating their AI. "What we learn from users is what users want us to learn."

The AI Foundation plans to release a tool for anyone to record and build their own AI, like a living memory archive straight out of Black Mirror's "Be Right Back." A phone could capture 3D face detail from someone and log audio over time, like a lifelogging or social media app, but for building an AI archive.

A deep well of deepfakes

I'm curious where the AI could go wrong: What about users leading it astray with false information, like hacking a chatbot? "We actually hope people will try to say things that throw it off," Meadows says of the initial beta. The app will push suggestions to AI creators to answer user requests, like an AMA or Quora. It almost sounds like a future social media coach. In a way, that's exactly the idea.

We're just at the tip of the iceberg of humanity having to deal with a new source of truth.

Rob Meadows, The AI Foundation

But what about deepfakes, which currently take the form of prerecorded digitally manipulated videos, but could eventually use realistic, interactive AI to imitate virtual figures that aren't officially endorsed, and are untrustworthy? The AI Foundation promises it has safeguards on how its AI identities are verified, but it seems like only a matter of time before lines will get really blurry... as blurry as they're getting now with photos and video.

"We're just at the tip of the iceberg of humanity having to deal with a new source of truth," Meadows admits. "One, how do we make it very clear that this isn't the real Deepak? Today, most people will be able to tell the difference: The mouth isn't exactly perfect, and it's not quite out of the uncanny valley. But we're very, very close. I can confidently say that in a year, we will be out of that spot and it'll be indiscernible for most people. That's already possible with deepfakes that aren't generated in real time, but we're on the verge of it being real time."

Meadows says the first burden of trust lies on the creator, but wants to then build tools that can detect fake media, flagging incorrect statements by AI and building software that learns on the fly. "It's not an easy problem to solve, and whether we like it or not, the world is heading there," he says. "That was really important to us from the very beginning, setting up a nonprofit to hold us accountable. We've taken a couple of hard lines: Only you can train your AI, or people that you delegate to train your AI if you're no longer here, or don't have time. And also, you own your own data. At any time, you can have your AI unlearn things," he says. It sounds noble. It's unclear how it will play out.

Digital life after death

Deepak Chopra's recent book, Metahuman, has already explored the transformation of human consciousness, and he sees his digital baby as being part of that vision.

"Five generations from now, my descendants will be able to talk to me," Chopra says. "I see three-year-olds hacking into Netflix or whatever and they've just hardly begun to speak a regular language, but they're already savvy and they enter this world taking it for granted. Twenty years ago, there was no internet the way we know it ... Imagine, five generations from now, a kid speaking to me and telling this digital Deepak what's going on."

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Deepak Chopra made a digital clone of himself to live forever. And he's not alone

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I'm sitting down on a sofa, talking to what looks like a Facetime with Deepak Chopra on a phone. It's not him, though. It's an animated, sometimes realistic, talking head. He asks me how I feel. I end up discussing work stress. He suggests a meditation.

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China's growing use of emotion recognition tech raises rights concerns

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Technology that measures emotions based on biometric indicators such as facial movements, tone of voice or body movements is increasingly being marketed in China, researchers say, despite concerns about its accuracy and wider human rights implications.

Drawing upon artificial intelligence, the tools range from cameras to help police monitor a suspect's face during an interrogation to eye-tracking devices in schools that identify students who are not paying attention.

A report released this week from U.K.-based human rights group Article 19 identified dozens of companies offering such tools in the education, public security and transportation sectors in China.

"We believe that their design, development, deployment, sale and transfers should be banned due to the racist foundations and fundamental incompatibility with human rights," said Vidushi Marda, a senior program officer at Article 19.

Human emotions cannot be reliably measured and quantified by technology tools, said Shazeda Ahmed, a doctoral candidate studying cybersecurity at the University of California, Berkeley and the report's co-author.

Such systems can perpetuate bias, especially those sold to police that purport to identify criminality based on biometric indicators, she added.

The systems also raise concerns about an emerging trend of collecting emotional data to monitor students, suspected criminals and even drivers of cars equipped with recognition tech to detect fatigue and unsafe movements.

"A lot of these systems don't talk about how they would act on the data and use it long term," Ahmed said in a phone interview.

"We are quite concerned about function creep," she added, referring to the use of data for purposes other than those for which it was collected.

Even seemingly benign applications of emotional recognition tech could lead to harm, Marda noted. "There's a slippery slope with this kind of surveillance," she said.

"Let's say a school wants to introduce a camera system to see if students are eating nutritious meals at school - it then may be quickly transformed into an emotion recognition system, and then who knows what next?"

Many of the companies identified in the report are smaller Chinese startups that specialize in a particular kind of emotional recognition tool.

But the report also pointed out some major international firms involved in the market.

Lenovo, the world's biggest personal computer maker, for example, markets "smart education solutions" that include "speech, gesture and facial emotion recognition," noted the report.

The firm has sold education technology to more than a dozen Chinese provinces, but Article 19 researchers say it is unclear how many have deployed the systems.

Lenovo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Article 19 is worried that the kind of technology being marketed in China could be increasingly hooked into surveillance systems all over the world.

"When you have CCTV all around a city it doesn't cost that much to add a new emotion recognition service," explained Marda. "This is not just a China problem."

At this stage, the global market for emotional recognition technology is relatively small, the report said.

But the researchers cautioned that it is developing quickly, and without much scrutiny.

"We documented around 30 companies selling this technology," Ahmed said. "That very well could be just the tip of the iceberg."

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China's growing use of emotion recognition tech raises rights concerns

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Technology that measures emotions based on biometric indicators such as facial movements, tone of voice or body movements is increasingly being marketed in China, researchers say, despite concerns about its accuracy and wider human rights implications.

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How '15-minute cities' will change the way we socialize

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For a long time, Solène Fraioli says she "refused to admit" that Paris could be a stressful place. The 29-year-old waitress, who grew up on the city's outskirts but now lives in a studio in a historic central district, was dazzled by its infinite opportunity - from Monday-night jazz concerts to West African cuisine and capoeira classes. But Fraioli began to recognise that living in the City of Light had certain disadvantages - particularly its frenetic, nonstop energy. "Paris is a city that is always on the move," she says. "Everyone, all the time, everywhere."

That conveyor belt of choice came crashing to a halt with the coronavirus pandemic. But for Fraioli, the two-month lockdown that began on 17 March - confining her to a 1km radius of her home - gave her a nuanced, enriching view of her neighbourhood. "I discovered it's possible to feel like you're in a small village in Paris," she says. "To get to know your neighbours, to maintain good links with shopkeepers, to favour local craftsmen and shops over large supermarkets. I even joined a citizens' movement where people prepare food baskets for homeless people. I thought I would have a hard time living the lockdown, but I was perfectly at home, in a quiet place."

She's not the only one who felt this way. "Unexpectedly, this experience strengthened the bonds I had with some people," says Valentin Jedraszyk, a 25-year-old civil servant living in the south of Paris. "It led me to criss-cross the small streets of my district more than usual and thus to discover magnificent places just a stone's throw from my home."

Parisian Solène Fraioli says lockdown gave her a nuanced, enriching view of her neighbourhood - and appreciation she didn't have before (Credit: Solène Fraioli)

The impact on how dense cities like Paris function, and how people that live in them interact, has been undeniable. The way we communicate, travel, consume and socialise had been moulded by the pandemic restrictions. Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specialising in complex systems and innovation at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, believes there "will never be" a return to city life as it was before the coronavirus struck.

When the pandemic shuttered city centres, he says, it showed how important social links are - but through a different prism. "Many people never visited shops close to their homes before because they were busy. They didn't know their neighbours or the parks nearby. The pandemic made us discover this. We have rediscovered locality, and this has improved quality of life."

Moreno, who is also Paris City Hall's special envoy for smart cities, is regarded as the key theorist behind the recent resurgence in a new model for urban planning that seems almost custom built for this localised future: the '15-minute city'. The concept is to improve quality of life by creating cities where everything a resident needs can be reached within a quarter of an hour by foot or bike. The 15-minute city requires minimal travel among housing, offices, restaurants, parks, hospitals and cultural venues. Each neighbourhood should fulfil six social functions: living, working, supplying, caring, learning and enjoying.

Moreno has been working on the concept - seen as a response to both the climate crisis, by bolstering green initiatives at neighbourhood level and reducing travel, and ever-growing urban sprawl that pushes those on the peripheries further out - since long before the pandemic arrived. But he says Covid-19 has rapidly kickstarted a trend toward localisation, putting the 15-minute city on the agenda of metropolitan areas around the world.

'City of proximities'

Many experts and planners have provided elements feeding into the 15-minute city concept over past decades. In the 1920s, American urban planner Clarence Perry proposed the idea of the liveable "neighbourhood unit" before the mass influx of private cars and city zoning arrived later in the 20th Century. Copenhagen pedestrianised its main shopping street in 1962, before other densely-built European cities took the same approach to their downtowns. Then New Urbanism, an urban design movement promoting walkable cities, swept across the US in the 1980s.

Yet the 15-minute city of today represents a major departure from the past, responding to climate change, Covid-19 and globalisation. While past initiatives focused on ease of travel, walkability and public services, Paris has taken an all-encompassing approach to bring a greener take on those aspects as well as including workplaces, cultural activities and the more ephemeral nature of social connections.

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, made it the centrepiece of her successful 2020 re-election campaign, outlining four major principles - proximity, diversity, density and ubiquity - and has since appointed a commissioner for the 15-minute city, Carine Rolland. For the latter, above all the aim is to create what she calls "a city of proximities" - not only between structures but people.

In 15-minute cities, each neighbourhood should fulfil six social functions: living, working, supplying, caring, learning and enjoying (Credit: City of Paris)

"We know sometimes large cities can be tiring and can create a sense of anonymity," says Rolland. "But proximity means that we will, through our social links, rediscover our way of living in cities. We want open spaces, but ones for doing nothing in particular, where people can meet each other or encounters can happen as much as possible. We live better when we live together, and this will rework our social fabric."

The transformation of neighbourhoods has been well underway since Hidalgo took office in 2014, with the Paris mayor banning high-polluting vehicles, restricting the quays of the Seine to pedestrians and cyclists, and creating mini green spaces across the city - since 2018, more than 40 Parisian school grounds have been transformed into green "oasis yards". More than 50km of bike routes known as " coronapistes" have also been added since the pandemic struck and last month renovation of the Place de la Bastille was completed as part of a €30m redesign of seven major squares. Hidalgo has pledged a further €1bn euros ($1.2bn, £916m) per year for the maintenance and beautification of streets, squares and gardens.

With Paris leading the way, other cities around the world have been enticed by this model for resilient, vibrant communities. Madrid, Milan, Ottawa and Seattle are among those to have declared plans to copy its approach. Melbourne has adopted a long-term strategic plan for 20-minute neighbourhoods. C40 Cities, a city-led coalition focused on fighting climate change, has gone as far as promoting the 15-minute city idea as a blueprint for post-Covid-19 recovery.

"It's tracing a path of community resilience," says Flavio Coppola, C40 Cities' programme manager for urban planning. "It reduces emissions through transportation, but also neighbourhoods are more resilient. It also means changing land use to allow offices but also 'third spaces' for people who are working remotely. So, at the neighbourhood-level, they will be more resistant to shocks."

The shift in structure of cities will also mean that individuals themselves will be more resistant to shocks, according to Richard Bentall, a psychology professor at the University of Sheffield who studied the mental health and social impacts of Covid-19. The sense of belonging promoted by 15-minute cities, he says, could make us all happier.

"We are increasingly becoming an urban species, but urban environments are linked to worse mental health," he says. "With Covid, some people suffered but others benefited. But research shows the more you interact with your neighbours, the better. If you feel a sense of belonging to your neighbourhood, that's a massive protector of your mental health. If 15-minute cities could strike this balance, then maybe a happy urban future for the human species is possible."
'More engaged inhabitants'
Finding that balance could be difficult, and sceptics are concerned the 15-minute city could worsen social divides, widening inequalities between poorer and richer districts - the latter benefiting from higher quality facilities and the former even less socially mobile than before.

"Making a space more liveable is something we can certainly achieve," says Elisa Pieri, a lecturer in sociology at Manchester University. "But we need to make sure that the amenities are up to high standards. Marginalised neighbourhoods could be landed with terrible doctors and schools. It could bring about further discrimination and inequality and territorial stigmatisation."

Valentin Jedraszyk says he discovered "magnificent places" in his home district during lockdown (Credit: Valentin Jedraszyk)

Few would dispute that residents of some disadvantaged Parisian suburbs have long faced economic and social blocks to their progress. But the way cities should guard against this danger is "by focusing first on the neighbourhoods that need the most", says Coppola of C40 Cities. "I agree there is a risk," he adds. "But our idea of 15-minute cities is about access and sustainability. It's an opportunity to use a paradigm for change."

Other concerns surround the impact of altering the very essence of what a modern city is. Elena Magrini, an analyst at the UK-based think tank Centre for Cities, warns this trend towards "the end of big cities" could also reduce creativity. "Cities allow people to mix, to be together and share ideas," she says. "Often that happens in the city centre. Can we recreate the creation and innovation if they no longer exist?"

In a dense city like Paris, which thanks to its pre-industrial roots has more than 53,000 residents per square mile, the continued mixing of people in a 15-minute future is less likely to be an issue. In much more spread-out cities like London and New York City, however, that current lack of density could pose more significant issues.

But Carlos Moreno believes that by making the 15-minute city led by and above all for its inhabitants, creativity and wellbeing will flourish, pointing to the role of participatory budgeting, which since 2014 has allowed residents to vote on 5% of the municipal spending in Paris - totalling half a billion euros.

"The pandemic has caused us to think about how to move differently, to consume differently, to live differently," he says. "We are discovering that by working differently we have more spare time, to have more time to be with our families or friends. We are discovering and appreciating our neighbourhoods much more. This will make us all more engaged inhabitants."

Moreno admits this transition will not be straightforward - but some key goals are already lined up such as making every street in Paris cycle-friendly by 2024.

"The 15-minute city is not a silver bullet," he says. "Today our neighbourhoods are segregated by money - rich, poor, middle class, workers, bars, offices. There's great segregation. But what we must do is use 15-minute cities to focus on the common good. With enough funding and support, deployed in the right way, we can guarantee they are for the people."

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How '15-minute cities' will change the way we socialise

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For a long time, Solène Fraioli says she "refused to admit" that Paris could be a stressful place. The 29-year-old waitress, who grew up on the city's outskirts but now lives in a studio in a historic central district, was dazzled by its infinite opportunity - from Monday-night jazz concerts to West African cuisine and capoeira classes.

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This 3D-Printed Ribeye Steak Is Made of Actual Living Cells

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What if I told you that you could enjoy a juicy, mouth-watering, delicious ribeye steak without harming a single animal? Thanks to advances made in 3D "bioprinting," this is actually a possibility. Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech startup, just created the world's first slaughter-free ribeye steak. And it looks positively scrumptious.

We first heard about this impressive development over at Design Taxi. Turns out, Aleph Farms teamed up with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology's biomedical engineering faculty to create the food item. The lab-grown steak is said to have all the qualities of the real deal, including texture and taste.
Aleph Farms
So how did they accomplish such a thing? Aleph Farms used a culture of live animal tissue. These living cells are then cloned, incubated, and cultivated in a lab setting. The four primary cells that make up the "meat" of the steak are muscle tissue, fat, blood, and support cells. Together, they create the "ink" used to print the steak. This magical process is also totally cruelty free.

Aleph Farms first forayed into the lab-grown meat business back in 2018. That's when they debuted the world's first slaughter-free steak. But the 3D bioprinting technology is a major step up. According to The Daily Mail, these new ribeye steaks could sell for around $50 when they hit dining areas as early as next year.

" With the realization of this milestone, we have broken the barriers to introducing new levels of variety into the cultivated meat cuts we can now produce," Aleph Farms' co-founder Shulamit Levenberg said in a statement.

These 3D printed steaks come during a time of increased awareness of the damaging effect the meat industry has on our environment. According to PETA, it takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef. In fact, scientists say that reducing meat and dairy intake is the biggest way to reduce your impact on Earth.

So yeah, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about Aleph Farms' new 3D-printed steak. Not only does it sound delicious in all the right ways, but it could help save the planet. More of this, please.

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This 3D-Printed Ribeye Steak Is Made of Actual Living Cells

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What if I told you that you could enjoy a juicy, mouth-watering, delicious ribeye steak without harming a single animal? Thanks to advances made in 3D "bioprinting," this is actually a possibility. Aleph Farms, an Israeli food-tech startup, just created the world's first slaughter-free ribeye steak. And it looks positively scrumptious.

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Por qué los vehículos conectados y autónomos pueden ser un riesgo para la privacidad: "Hacen falta mecanismos de protección"

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El avance de tecnologías como el coche conectado o el coche autónomo deja un buen número de preguntas sobre qué ocurre con la privacidad de los datos de uso del vehículo.

"Tesla tiene una cámara dentro del coche y no sabemos qué hace con ella", alertó durante el foro sobre privacidad CPDP un experto en biometría.

Microtracking y macrotracking son dos de las formas en las que un vehículo registra todos los movimientos: desde cambios de carril o giros hasta la información que le aporta el GPS o las cámaras para prevenir colisiones.

Descubre más historias en Business Insider España.

En un contexto en el que la industria automovilística camina hacia el coche autónomo, hay un elemento que puede estar pasándose por alto: el uso que fabricantes, empresas tecnológicas o aseguradoras pueden hacer de los datos que generan los vehículos. No solo los autónomos, sino los coches conectados y prácticamente todos los vehículos que utilizamos a diario, especialmente aquellos equipados con algún sistema de navegación o vinculación a dispositivos móviles: la privacidad de los datos relacionados con los viajes o los comportamientos al volante.

Tesla, una de las referencias mundiales en vehículos eléctricos y asistentes a la conducción con su Autopilot y su siguiente evolución, llamada Full Self-Driving con la que quiere llegar al coche autónomo, recibió no hace mucho el dudoso honor de ser reconocida en los galardones 'Gran Hermano' que entrega cada año la Asociación para la Protección de Datos de Alemania en la categoría de movilidad, debido a su "extensa y perpetua vigilancia de sus pasajeros y los alrededores de sus vehículos", destacando que, según la propia compañía, no autorizar la recopilación de datos que recoge el vehículo a través de sus sensores puede repercutir en una "funcionalidad reducida, daño serio o inoperatibilidad" del coche, según citó la organización alemana al darle el galardón.

Fuera de la ironía del premio a la compañía de Elon Musk, lo cierto es que este es un tema que preocupa y que está por resolver. "Tesla tiene una cámara dentro del coche que no sabemos qué va a hacer con ella, probablemente sea para identificar al conductor, pero no está claro. O recientemente General Motors presentó un coche en el CES 2021 con sensores biométricos", alertó el responsable de investigación y desarrollo de la empresa francesa de biometría Idemia, Jean-Loup Dépinay, recientemente durante una mesa redonda en una de las conferencias internacionales sobre privacidad más importantes del mundo, la CPDP.
Un hacker revela qué vigila la cámara interior del Model 3 y Model Y de Tesla
Las dudas parten de que no está claro quién es el dueño de los datos que genera un vehículo conectado, tales como la información sobre la trayectoria del vehículo, las grabaciones de otros coches, motocicletas o peatones con los que se encuentra.

"Los coches autónomos graban todo lo que está alrededor: los peatones, las matrículas de los otros coches... Hacen falta mecanismos de protección sobre la privacidad de estos datos", alertó el experto en privacidad de la compañía alemana de componentes para vehículos AVL, Florian Stahl, durante esta conferencia.

Microtracking y macrotracking: cómo tu coche recuerda todos tus movimientos

La industria de la automoción ha puesto el foco durante los últimos años en la seguridad, sacrificando en este camino a la privacidad, según el investigador de la Universidad de Budapest Gergely Biczkok. "Los coches recogen datos y pueden revenderlos, en algunos casos no tienes más opciones que aceptarlo cuando lo compras, o no comprarlo", explicó durante su intervención en la mesa redonda. Entre los terceros pueden estar aseguradoras, compañías de productos o servicios basados en tu localización, o compañías de alquiler de vehículos o flotas.

Este investigador húngaro realizó, junto a otros compañeros, un experimento de ingeniería inversa para descubrir cómo un coche recogía los datos sobre el movimiento del vehículo y probar que podría ser útil para la investigación de accidentes. Lo que hicieron fue conectar una placa Raspberry Pi 3 a la unidad CAN (Control Area Network) de un Opel Astra de 2005 a través del puerto de diagnóstico del ordenador de a bordo para extraer la información que recolecta el ordenador de a bordo e intentar reconstruir el movimiento realizado por el vehículo a partir de ellos.

Lo que descubrieron es que e l sistema es capaz de registrar un cambio de carril, una maniobra para evitar un obstáculo, e incluso un giro brusco con cambio de velocidad, según publicaron en este paper de 2018 que puede encontrarse en la base de datos científica Research Gate. "El resultado fue bueno para nuestra investigación, pero es malo para nuestra privacidad", explicó Biczkok durante la mesa redonda.
4 retos que todavía debe superar el coche autónomo para llegar a las calles
Según su investigación, los vehículos realizan dos tipos de seguimiento. Uno de ellos es el microtracking, que fue el que comprobaron en el experimento y consiste en registrar las maniobras, los giros o los cambios de velocidad. "Puede ser utilizado con técnicas forenses para reconstruir un accidente y mejorar la seguridad, pero también es un problema para la privacidad porque puede revelar los comportamientos que realiza el conductor, por ejemplo para las aseguradoras", advirtió.

El segundo tipo es el macrotracking, en el que ya entran en juego otros sensores, como los elementos de geolocalización o las cámaras que utilizan los vehículos autónomos para alertar de los obstáculos. "Esto es reconstruir todas las rutas, utilizando las señales, incluso sin datos GPS. Esto es abrir la caja de pandora de la localización", alertó.

"Si algo hace tu vida más fácil puedes usarlo, pero a cambio vas a dar alguna información que deberías considerar"

A la información sobre los movimientos del vehículo se unen otros elementos que pueden sumarse próximamente a la automoción, como el uso de la biometría para comprobar la identidad del conductor y saber si es el dueño, o de qué conductor se trata, en el caso de una empresa de flotas. "La biometría es cada vez una tendencia más importante", explicó el responsable de investigación y desarrollo de la empresa francesa de biometría Idemia, Jean-Loup Dépinay.

En otros casos, las cámaras pueden servir para auxiliar a compañías con conductores profesionales, como camioneros o conductores de ferrocarriles, de manera que tengan un servicio que les alerte cuando se puedan quedar dormidos o pierdan la concentración sobre su tarea. "Y no solo se trataría de su situación en el momento, sino de lo que ocurre antes, con sensores que puedan determinar si han dormido mal, o tienen algún problema de salud", explicó el investigador Juha Röning, de la Universidad de Oulu (Finlandia).

Aún con esas ventajas, en todos estos casos se produce una tensión entre privacidad y seguridad. "El reglamento de protección de datos da al usuario un papel central, si el usuario lo acepta se puede utilizar, pero también si se rebela contra ello pueden ocurrir casos como el de WhatsApp", recordó, en referencia a la marcha atrás de la última actualización de la plataforma de mensajería ante el rechazo de los usuarios a su última actualización de privacidad. "Creo que es un tema de compromiso: recogemos datos, pero a la vez damos anonimización", opinó Röning.
Por qué el reconocimiento facial y los datos biométricos solo deberían usarse en situaciones excepcionales, según los expertos
En definitiva, se trata de un conflicto común en la compra de tecnología, que también debería entrar en el debate a la hora de considerar un vehículo. "No tiene por qué ser un coche, puede ser un gadget que utilices en tu casa: si algo hace tu vida más fácil, puedes usarlo, pero a cambio vas a dar una información que deberías considerar", resaltó el investigador finlandés.

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Por qué los vehículos conectados y autónomos pueden ser un riesgo para la privacidad: "Hacen falta mecanismos de protección"

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El avance de tecnologías como el coche conectado o el coche autónomo deja un buen número de preguntas sobre qué ocurre con la privacidad de los datos de uso del vehículo. "Tesla tiene una cámara dentro del coche y no sabemos qué hace con ella", alertó durante el foro sobre privacidad CPDP un experto en biometría.

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When AI sees a man, it thinks “official.” A woman? “Smile”

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When AI sees a man, it thinks “official.” A woman? “Smile”

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Concerns about bias in image recognition services from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

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Men often judge women by their appearance. Turns out, computers do too.

When US and European researchers fed pictures of members of Congress to Google 's cloud image recognition service, the service applied three times as many annotations related to physical appearance to photos of women as it did to men. The top labels applied to men were "official" and "businessperson"; for women they were "smile" and "chin."

"It results in women receiving a lower-status stereotype: that women are there to look pretty and men are business leaders," says Carsten Schwemmer, a postdoctoral researcher at GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Köln, Germany. He worked on the study, published last week, with researchers from New York University, American University, University College Dublin, University of Michigan, and nonprofit California YIMBY.

The researchers administered their machine vision test to Google's artificial intelligence image service and those of rivals Amazon and Microsoft. Crowdworkers were paid to review the annotations those services applied to official photos of lawmakers and images those lawmakers tweeted.

The AI services generally saw things human reviewers could also see in the photos. But they tended to notice different things about women and men, with women much more likely to be characterized by their appearance. Women lawmakers were often tagged with "girl" and "beauty." The services had a tendency not to see women at all, failing to detect them more often than they failed to see men.

The study adds to evidence that algorithms do not see the world with mathematical detachment but instead tend to replicate or even amplify historical cultural biases. It was inspired in part by a 2018 project called Gender Shades that showed that Microsoft's and IBM's AI cloud services were very accurate at identifying the gender of white men but very inaccurate at identifying the gender of Black women.

The new study was published last week, but the researchers had gathered data from the AI services in 2018. Experiments by WIRED using the official photos of 10 men and 10 women from the California State Senate suggest the study's findings still hold.

All 20 lawmakers are smiling in their official photos. Google's top suggested labels noted a smile for only one of the men, but for seven of the women. The company's AI vision service labeled all 10 of the men as "businessperson," often also with "official" or "white collar worker." Only five of the women senators received one or more of those terms. Women also received appearance-related tags, such as "skin," "hairstyle," and "neck," that were not applied to men.

Amazon and Microsoft's services appeared to show less obvious bias, although Amazon reported being more than 99 percent sure that two of the 10 women senators were either a "girl" or "kid." It didn't suggest any of the 10 men were minors. Microsoft's service identified the gender of all the men but only eight of the women, calling one a man and not tagging a gender for another.

Google switched off its AI vision service's gender detection earlier this year, saying that gender cannot be inferred from a person's appearance. Tracy Frey, managing director of responsible AI at Google's cloud division, says the company continues to work on reducing bias and welcomes outside input. "We always strive to be better and continue to collaborate with outside stakeholders-like academic researchers-to further our work in this space," she says. Amazon and Microsoft declined to comment; both companies' services recognize gender only as binary.

"False image of reality"

The US-European study was inspired in part by what happened when the researchers fed Google's vision service a striking, award-winning image from Texas showing a Honduran toddler in tears as a US Border Patrol officer detained her mother. Google's AI suggested labels including "fun," with a score of 77 percent, higher than the 52 percent score it assigned the label "child." WIRED got the same suggestion after uploading the image to Google's service Wednesday.

Schwemmer and his colleagues began playing with Google's service in hopes it could help them measure patterns in how people use images to talk about politics online. What he subsequently helped uncover about gender bias in the image services has convinced him the technology isn't ready to be used by researchers that way and that companies using such services could suffer unsavory consequences. "You could get a completely false image of reality," he says. A company that used a skewed AI service to organize a large photo collection might inadvertently end up obscuring women businesspeople, indexing them instead by their smiles.

Prior research has found that prominent datasets of labeled photos used to train vision algorithms showed significant gender biases, for example showing women cooking and men shooting. The skew appeared to come in part from researchers collecting their images online, where the available photos reflect societal biases, for example by providing many more examples of businessmen than businesswomen. Machine-learning software trained on those datasets was found to amplify the bias in the underlying photo collections.

Schwemmer believes biased training data may explain the bias the new study found in the tech giant's AI services, but it's impossible to know without full access to their systems.

Diagnosing and fixing shortcomings and biases in AI systems has become a hot research topic in recent years. The way humans can instantly absorb subtle context in an image while AI software is narrowly focused on patterns of pixels creates much potential for misunderstanding. The problem has become more pressing as algorithms get better at processing images. "Now they're being deployed all over the place," says Olga Russakovsky, an assistant professor at Princeton. "So we'd better make sure they're doing the right things in the world and there are no unintended downstream consequences."

One approach to the problem is to work on improving the training data that can be the root cause of biased machine-learning systems. Russakovsky is part of a Princeton project working on a tool called REVISE that can automatically flag some biases baked into a collection of images, including along geographic and gender lines.

When the researchers applied the tool to the Open Images collection of 9 million photos maintained by Google, they found that men were more often tagged in outdoor scenes and sports fields than women. And men tagged with "sports uniform" were mostly outdoors playing sports like baseball, while women were indoors playing basketball or in a swimsuit. The Princeton team suggested adding more images showing women outdoors, including playing sports.

Google and its competitors in AI are themselves major contributors to research on fairness and bias in AI. That includes working on the idea of creating standardized ways to communicate the limitations and contents of AI software and datasets to developers-something like an AI nutrition label.

Google has developed a format called " model cards " and published cards for the face and object-detection components of its cloud vision service. One claims Google's face detector works more or less the same for different genders but doesn't mention other possible forms that AI gender bias might take.
This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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When AI sees a man, it thinks "official." A woman? "Smile"

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Men often judge women by their appearance. Turns out, computers do too. When US and European researchers fed pictures of members of Congress to Google 's cloud image recognition service, the service applied three times as many annotations related to physical appearance to photos of women as it did to men.

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3D-printed house in Italy is made from locally-sourced clay

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Sustainable 3D-printed prototype house in Italy is made from locally-sourced clay
Originating from a collaboration between architect Mario Cucinella and 3D-printer manufacturer WASP, TECLA is a prototype eco-house built near Ravenna, northern Italy, entirely made by 3D-printing a material based on locally-sourced clay.

TECLA (an acronym which stands for "Technology and Clay") is a habitat consisting of two interconnected housing units, each covered by a semi-spherical dome.
The units have been built using multiple printing units operating simultaneously. Crane WASP is defined by the manufacturer as "a collaborative 3D printing system capable of printing houses" and can print various materials - such as earth-based materials, concrete mortar, and geopolymers - with a maximum speed of 300 mm/s and a maximum printing area of 50 sqm per unit.

The design of the habitat features two or more "cocoon-like" housing units, whose shape vaguely resembles that of a sea urchin, in which structure, insulation, and finishes coincide.
The thick raw earth walls of the units have a hollow structure consisting of several clay "waves", which makes them at the same time relatively lightweight, resistant, and highly insulating.
About 200 printing hours are required to build each unit, which consists of 350 clay layers, each 12 mm thick.
The walls of the TECLA housing units are composed of several wave-shaped partitions each consisting of 350 clay layers.
According to WASP, the use of raw earth as the primary construction material will make it easier to create modular and zero-waste dwellings also in environments to which it would be difficult to transport other materials such as concrete or steel; furthermore, the company's 3D-printing building technology and equipment will be available through a "Maker Economy Starter Kit" suitable for self-production.

Together with WASP we aim at developing an innovative 3D-printed prototype for a habitat that responds to the increasingly urgent climate revolution and the needs of changes dictated by community needs. We need a paradigm shift in the field of architecture that gets closer to the needs of people, thus finding an answer for the "Earth" within the "earth". A collaboration that becomes the union between empathic architecture and the application of new technologies. (Mario Cucinella).
Now in an advanced stage of construction, TECLA is scheduled for completion in spring 2021.
The prototype habitat has been built by two WASP Crane units working in parallel. According to the manufacturer, combining WASP's 3D printers with the "Maker Economy Starter Kit" will allow communities in rural and/or remote areas of the world to create clusters of low-cost dwelling units quickly and easily. Two renderings of the interior of the TECLA house in summer and winter scenarios. All images courtesy of MCA Mario Cucinella Architects (https://www.mcarchitects.it/) and WASP (https://www.3dwasp.com/en/)

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3D-printed house in Italy is made from locally-sourced clay | Inexhibit

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Sustainable 3D-printed prototype house in Italy is made from locally-sourced clay Originating from a collaboration between architect Mario Cucinella and 3D-printer manufacturer WASP, TECLA is a prototype eco-house built near Ravenna, northern Italy, entirely made by 3D-printing a material based on locally-sourced clay.

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AI Can Now Turn You Into a Fully Digital, Realistic Talking Clone.

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AI Can Now Turn You Into a Fully Digital, Realistic Talking Clone.

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It is important to distinguish this technology from a “deepfake.” Deepfakes take a target face and overlay it on top of existing or newly-recorded footage. What Hour One is doing here is allowing for completely original content to be created as though it were being spoken by the real person. Hour One is calling the result a “photoreal digital human.”

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Hour One describes itself as a "video transformation company" that wants to replace cameras with code, and its latest creation is the ability for anyone to create a fully digital clone of themselves that can appear to speak "on camera" without a camera or audio inputs at all.

The company has debuted its digital clone technology in partnership with YouTuber Taryn Southern. In the video above, Southern is a fully digital creation that was created as a collaborative experiment between Southern and Hour One. The company uses a proprietary AI-driven process to provide automation to video creation, which enables presenter-led videos at scale without needing to put a person in front of a camera.

Hour One says that experts (which are not cited) predict that in the next five to seven years, 90% of content will be synthetic, or generated using computers instead of cameras. The company believes that issues arising from the Coronavirus Pandemic have exacerbated the need for this technology and fast-tracked it.

"When the pandemic hit, production all over the world shut down. People were looking for alternate ways to make content and I was curious about what could be produced with AI-generated video," says Southern. "Experimenting with AI video production has been similar to working with AI music. It provokes important conversations around the future of identity and trust, and will undoubtedly change the future of production."

In order to create the "AI Clone," Southern had to go into a studio and stand in front of a green screen so she could be captured from multiple angles. She also had to say several sets of words so that the program would be able to replicate her voice. In the video below, she describes the process as just reading a couple of scripts and singing a song. The entire process in front of the camera took just seven minutes.

From there, hundreds of videos can be generated in a matter of minutes just by submitting text to the platform. A creator would not need to record any audio at all.

On the plus side, it doesn't look like it would be possible to create an AI person without this studio time, but it also means that it would theoretically be possible to obtain the AI version of Southern and input any texts into the program which the AI would read as though it were her. The ramifications of that are daunting.

Still, Hour One argues that the benefits of its technologies outweigh the possible downsides. The company claims that with this technology, content creators will see a drastic reduction in the time and cost of video production to a matter of minutes. Additionally, a video can be created without a time-intensive routine to look presentable for the camera (AI Taryn jokes that she can now create new YouTube videos "without the real Taryn having to shower or leave her bed.").

Additionally, any AI clone can speak multiple languages which allow for greater distribution of content to more people around the world.

It is important to distinguish this technology from a "deepfake." Deepfakes take a target face and overlay it on top of existing or newly-recorded footage. What Hour One is doing here is allowing for completely original content to be created as though it were being spoken by the real person. Hour One is calling the result a "photoreal digital human."

While this process may not lend itself to all types of content (like comedy, for instance, which relies heavily on performance and timing), Hour One argues it could be highly effective for news formats, for which the focus is on timeliness and quality of writing and reporting, and other kinds of presenter-led content.

"In our increasingly virtual work environment, Hour One's technology is also being applied to e-learning, e-commerce, and digital health - places where a human presenter is highly valuable," the company says.

Hour One's photoreal digital human technology is rolling out now, with multiple examples available on its website. While the early iteration of the technology may look slightly short of truly real, it is quite close. Hour One will likely iterate and improve on this design in the months and years ahead.

Hour One is accepting applications for anyone to become an "Hour One character" on its website as well, for those who want to submit for consideration.

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AI Can Now Turn You Into a Fully Digital, Realistic Talking Clone

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Hour One describes itself as a "video transformation company" that wants to replace cameras with code, and its latest creation is the ability for anyone to create a fully digital clone of themselves that can appear to speak "on camera" without a camera or audio inputs at all.

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Cricket-based snacks are surprisingly delicious

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Cricket-based snacks are surprisingly delicious

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Bug-based snacks have come a long way in the US in the past decade. Here are a few choices to get you started.

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Elon Musk says SpaceX will get humans to Mars in 2026

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Elon Musk's timeline for SpaceX landing humans on Mars has wavered over the years.

On Sunday, he said 2026 will be the year to send a crewed mission to Mars. In 2017, he said 2024.

Space industry experts believe SpaceX will reach Mars, but not as soon as it hopes.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Elon Musk is still confident that 2026 will be the year that his space company SpaceX lands humans on Mars, where he hopes to build a human settlement.

In a wide-ranging interview with the audio-only Clubhouse app on Sunday, Musk said it will take "five and a half years" before a crewed mission of SpaceX's Starship rocket could land on the Red Planet.

"The important thing is that we establish Mars as a self-sustaining civilization," he said.

But Musk's timeline for reaching Mars has wavered over the past few years. The billionaire said in 2017 his "aspirational" timeline was for SpaceX to send cargo ships to Mars in 2022, followed by a crewed mission two years later.

In October, Musk said the space company has a "fighting chance" of sending an uncrewed Starship rocket to Mars in 2024 - two years later than he previously hoped. He echoed his ambition in December saying he is "highly confident" SpaceX will launch an uncrewed rocket to the planet in 2024, followed by a crewed mission in 2026.

With five and a half years to go, experts say SpaceX may be waiting a few more years to achieve its goal.

Greg Autry, a commercial space industry expert, told Insider he thinks Musk will get to Mars, on his own or with NASA in 2029 or 2031. The window is dependent on when the Earth lines up with Mars, which is every 26 months. But Autry warned that space projects are challenging and rarely on time - Musk's goal is no exception.

"It's a matter of finances and will. Elon has both," he said.

All of his projects, from Tesla to SpaceX to the Boring Company, include extremely ambitious time frames and usually take much longer than expected, according to Autry. "That should not minimize either power of setting an aggressive date, nor the magnificence of what he eventually achieves," he said.

Musk said in January 2020 he plans to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050. This involves building 1,000 Starship rockets over 10 years - that's 100 Starships every year - and launching an average of three Starships per day. "There will be a lot of jobs on Mars!" he added.

SpaceX launched a prototype of its Starship rocket 10km above Boca Chica, Texas, on Tuesday, but it exploded during a landing attempt. This is the second time a Starship rocket has launched and burst into flames. The first time was in December.

Read more: SpaceX is finalizing a massive new funding round. Here's why investors are clamoring for one of the world's most valuable startups.

Despite the Starship rocket being tried and tested, Autry pointed out that the booster, life support system, reentry system, and ability to refuel on Mars haven't been tested yet - and some haven't even been built. This means it's most likely going to take more time to build the tech beyond Starship to support a civilization on Mars.

"There is a lot of work there that is overshadowed by the dramatic tests of the landing system," Autry said.

Musk's ambitious targets stem from a mix of motivational charisma, planning fallacy and being "ubercapable of getting things done," Autry said.

"When he thinks about how long it will take to build a rocket he is perhaps guilty of imagining 5,000 Elon Musks on the job at SpaceX and more of them at his suppliers and in the governmental offices he needs to license or fund his project," said Autry, adding that this isn't realistic.

Kevin J DeBruin, a former NASA rocket scientist, told Insider Musk only has three launch opportunities left because of the planets' alignment to do tests and ensure everything goes perfectly. If the launches, new tech, system tests, and landings all go to plan and Musk has the cashflow to support it, DeBruin said it's possible SpaceX could get to Mars by 2026.

There are concerns, however, regarding the mass needed to land on Mars, DeBruin said.

Six times more mass than we already have is required, he said. "We need new landing technology to land more mass on the surface of Mars for humans to live, operate, and then leave the surface to come home."

Biological issues could also come into play. DeBruin said the longest a human has been continually in space is just under a year but the Mars trip will take much longer. "We will see more degradation of the human body," he said.

Steve Nutt, professor of materials science and aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California, told Insider that Musk intentionally makes bold predictions to "inspire his workforce to think big."

"One can argue that it's an effective strategy, and it is less important that the timeline be accurate than it is for it to be inspirational," said Nutt.

SpaceX's goal to reach Mars is "something NASA should have done long ago," said Nutt. Given that the space agency lost its vision after the big moon walk and is constrained by politics, SpaceX could fill the void, he said.

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Elon Musk says SpaceX will get humans to Mars in 2026

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Elon Musk's timeline for SpaceX landing humans on Mars has wavered over the years. On Sunday, he said 2026 will be the year to send a crewed mission to Mars. In 2017, he said 2024. Space industry experts believe SpaceX will reach Mars, but not as soon as it hopes.

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A 3D printed house is for sale in New York.

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3d printed house: builders say the method will reduce new home construction costs - cnn

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A 3D printed house is for sale in New York. Builders say it will cut housing construction costs

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The Riverhead, New York, home is listed online through Zillow with an asking price of $299,999.

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Finally, the ultimate kitchen gadget you never knew you wanted is here - but it will cost you about the same as the average UK house.

For those stumped as to what to buy the super-rich person in their lives this Christmas, how about a fully robotic kitchen that promises to whip up a choice of up to 5,000 recipes at the press of a button?

A London-based robotics company on Sunday unveiled the world's first robot kitchen, which it promises "cooks from scratch and even cleans up afterwards without complaint".
Robots on the rise as Americans experience record job losses amid pandemic
The Moley Kitchen robot, brainchild of Russian mathematician and computer scientist Mark Oleynik, promises to make restaurant standard meals without its owner having to lift a finger or order a takeaway.

It's not cheap though: the robot costs a minimum of £248,000, roughly the same as the average UK house. Oleynik acknowledged the high cost, but claims there had been 1,205 "qualified sales enquiries" from people interested in buying one. He said the price was equivalent to a supercar or small yacht. The company hopes to introduce lower-priced models in the future.

"What you are looking at here is the world's first consumer robotic kitchen," Oleynik said as he launched the robot kitchen at the Gulf information technology exhibition in Dubai. "Like all breakthrough technologies - cars, televisions and computers - it will appeal to enthusiasts, professionals and early adopters, and is priced accordingly.

"We anticipate that our pricing will be reduced significantly over time with production volume, efficiencies and economies of scale."

The robot has been developed with the assistance of Tim Anderson, a culinary innovator and winner of the 2011 series of BBC MasterChef. Anderson's cooking techniques were captured in 3D and "translated into elegant digital movement using bespoke algorithms".

Anderson and fellow chefs Nicole Pisani and Andrew Clarke have created 30 dishes to showcase the system's capabilities at launch, with new recipes added every month. The company said that ultimately customers will be able to select from a digital menu of more than 5,000 choices, as well as having the option to record their own favourite dishes.

The technology features two robotic arms with fully articulated "hands", developed in collaboration with world-leading German robotic company Schunk. Said to reliably reproduce the movements of human hands, they allow the robot to retrieve ingredients from the smart fridge, adjust hob temperature, use the sink to fill pans and pour, mix and plate up just as a human cook would.

And if you're worried about how much mess a mechanical cook can possibly make - don't. "The robot even cleans up after itself - without complaint," Oleynik said.
Topics

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The robot kitchen that will make you dinner - and wash up too

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Finally, the ultimate kitchen gadget you never knew you wanted is here - but it will cost you about the same as the average UK house. For those stumped as to what to buy the super-rich person in their lives this Christmas, how about a fully robotic kitchen that promises to whip up a choice of up to 5,000 recipes at the press of a button?

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Spain announces plans for flying taxi service in Barcelona

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Spain announces plans for flying taxi service in Barcelona

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First air taxis to fly in Catalan capital and Santiago de Compostela in 2022

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When Spain's much-missed tourists and pilgrims finally return, they may be offered a novel way to rise above the crowds and appreciate some of the country's most dramatic urban architecture.

Enaire, Spain's air navigation authority, has announced plans to begin demonstrating flying taxis in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela in 2022.

"We need to move urban mobility into the third dimension: airspace. And we need to do it as efficiently and sustainably as we can," the authority's director general, Ángel Luis Arias, told an online conference this week.

Arias said Enaire was working on European projects involving the use of flying taxis and other flying vehicles to move people around urban and semi-urban areas, as well as the use of drones to deliver goods.

He added: "Enaire, in its capacity as a public company of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, is willing to fulfil its duties to attract and help any private sector companies or public organisations that are interested in allowing Spain to position itself at the forefront of the development and operation of this new sector."

Enaire is participating in two EU-funded projects that belong to Horizon 2020, the union's biggest research and innovation programme to date. One is led by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, the other by the multinational technology company Everis.

"The plan if for both projects to demonstrate air taxis in Europe in 2022," Enaire said in a statement. "Enaire will manage the flight of the first air taxis in Spain, which will take place that year in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela."

Passenger-carrying drones have been successfully flown in recent years by companies including China's Ehang and the German aviation startup Volocopter.

In July last year, the Spanish technology company Tecnalia unveiled its prototype for a pilotless, one-person air taxi. The taxi, designed to carry a person or load of up to 150kg, has a cruising height of between 100 metres and 300 metres, and can cover distances of up to 15km in 15 minutes.

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Spain announces plans for flying taxi service in Barcelona

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When Spain's much-missed tourists and pilgrims finally return, they may be offered a novel way to rise above the crowds and appreciate some of the country's most dramatic urban architecture. Enaire, Spain's air navigation authority, has announced plans to begin demonstrating flying taxis in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela in 2022.

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Swedish cities aim to become 1-minute cities

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This looks like an art project with a dose of Scandinavian design

If Paris came up with the idea for the '15-minute city' in which every place you need to be during the day is located with a 15-minute walk - Stockholm, and other Swedish cities, are responding with a '1-minute city' idea.

This project, actually known as Street Moves, involves filling up vacant parking spots on the streets with prefabricated wooden furniture of varying designs. What is even better, the local residents participate in the design and placement of the furniture so that they feel they have a say in the development of their immediate environment and a vested interest in using it.

Putting the 'local' back in localities

The design of the street furniture aims to encourage socializing and communal feel and help residents reclaim the streets back from motorized traffic. Built from light wood and reminiscent of Lego or Ikea units, the pieces of furniture can be used for sitting, chatting with friends, having a meal, storing bikes or other micro-mobility vehicles, exercising, charging electrical units or tending a garden.

This initiative, which began in the Swedish capital last autumn and is expected to spread to other major cities in the country, is not considered a lofty grandiose undertaking, the way the Paris one is. Instead, the focus here is on hyperlocality.

It is a response to the fatigue experienced by people being isolated at home during a pandemic and wanting to expand the idea of home outside of the walls of one's own apartment or house. Its ingenuity lies in the flexibility of the street furniture units which can be quickly assembled but also disassembled and moved thus playing with the idea of fixity that is usually inherent to urban fittings and landscape.

Street Moves is led by Vinnova - The Swedish national innovation agency in partnership with ArkDes Museum and Lundberg Design.

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Swedish cities aim to become 1-minute cities | TheMayor.EU

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This looks like an art project with a dose of Scandinavian design If Paris came up with the idea for the '15-minute city' in which every place you need to be during the day is located with a 15-minute walk - Stockholm, and other Swedish cities, are responding with a '1-minute city' idea.

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Travelers Turn to Tiny Homes During Covid-19

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Travelers Turn to Tiny Homes During Covid-19

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And some are mobile, making them even more attractive at a time of changing virus hot spots.

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When Janna Harris found her personal and work life abruptly disrupted by Covid-19, the Dallas resident realized she desperately needed time to decompress. She didn't care to fly or undertake a long road trip, and she wanted to avoid conventional hotels and inns with shared spaces such as elevators, lobbies and dining rooms.

A wellness coach who loves the outdoors and camping, Ms. Harris was browsing Instagram one day when up popped an advertisement for a rental from a company called Getaway House Inc. that instantly appealed to her. It was for a so-called tiny house on its own sequestered space in a rambling wooded compound near LaRue, Texas. Even better, it was just 90 minutes southeast of her Dallas home by car.

She booked it immediately and says she spent a blissful long weekend soaking up the serenity.

Tiny houses-typically dwellings smaller than 500 square feet but defined by some as "living simply in small homes"-aren't new. The "tiny house movement" has been in bloom for more than a decade, a rebellion against a perception that American homes had grown too large, too expensive, too bland and too environmentally unfriendly.

Now, tiny homes are surging in popularity as havens for travelers seeking safe and interesting harbors during the pandemic.

Getaway, which operates tiny-home rental complexes within a two-hour drive of 11 major cities, says it has never been busier and attributes much of the surge to Covid-weary, Covid-wary travelers. It says bookings for May, June and July surged 260% from the previous three months. It reported 99% occupancy across all of its properties in July and August, 97% in September, 99% in October, and November was tracking at 98%.

The 5-year-old company has about 500 rentals spread across its properties, with rates ranging from $99 to $299 a night, depending on location and size.

Ms. Harris's rental was one of 40 tiny houses in the Getaway Piney Woods compound. The homes offer the amenities of a conventional cabin-kitchen, private bath, outdoor fire pit and Wi-Fi-but the appeal of an architecturally hip and environmentally friendly space.

As for Covid concerns, the compound purposely omits communal gathering spaces and offers keyless, no-contact entry to homes.

"I didn't encounter another guest the entire time I was there," Ms. Harris says. "You can't get more distanced or safer than that."

Getaway isn't alone in offering tiny-home rentals. At Tiny Estates, a 50-unit tiny-home vacation complex near Lancaster, Pa., CEO Abigail Hobson says the resort, whose rentals run from $75 to $175 a night, was near peak occupancy in July and August, with September tapering off slightly. Many bookings came from people seeking "quarantine getaways" that allowed them to stay in "fully contained homes configured in a way that allowed them to avoid interacting with others and staying safe," says Ms. Hobson.

Safety and privacy aren't the only thing driving demand. When Austin, Texas, resident Sean Clancy and a friend-after quarantining for two weeks-decided on a monthlong road trip to Maine, Mr. Clancy scoured Craigslist, Airbnb and Google for tiny-home listings that would allow them access to their passions for running, hiking, biking and kayaking.

They also were mindful that in booking a tiny home they were aiding local economies that have been hammered by the pandemic. "We wanted to both travel safe and support local," says Mr. Clancy, the community-development director for Marathon Kids, an Austin nonprofit that promotes childhood fitness.

Like many tiny-home seekers, they were attracted to what some call the "tiny home spirit"-the fact that so many tiny homes are architecturally novel and fun and set in interesting places. One of Mr. Clancy's finds put them in a railroad caboose transfigured into a tiny home on the banks of the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pa.

As Mr. Clancy and Ms. Harris learned, finding tiny-home rentals is pretty easy. Getaway advertises exclusively on social media like Facebook and Instagram, while Tiny Estates uses social media but also posts its listings on travel site Expedia, which puts it on platforms such as Orbitz and Hotels.com.

Both Ms. Harris and Mr. Clancy say their tiny-home rentals were posted with reassuring notes about the Covid cleaning and sterilization regimens between tenants.

The surge in tiny-home interest isn't confined to just rentals, however. Jason Francis is a partner in Tiny Heirloom, a Portland, Ore., high-end tiny-home construction company who also offers consulting services to would-be tiny home buyers and builders. He says, "We've definitely seen a spike in search inquiries and general interest in tiny homes since Covid." Top-end Tiny Heirloom homes go for more than $125,000.

Some analysts who have been following the tiny-house real-estate market say the surge in interest since the pandemic began is real and an indication that it may time to invest in the tiny-house market. According to a June blog by Mashvisor, a San Francisco Bay Area real-estate investment data-analysis firm, "During the current pandemic, some tiny home builders reported a doubling in the demand for their services."

Chris Schapdick, a Hackensack, N.J., tiny-home builder, says business is booming for his tiny homes-which range from about $10,000 for a basic shell to about $50,000 for a completely finished model-and Covid is definitely a factor. He constructs most of his houses on trailers that render them mobile, which he says is an attractive feature for people who may want to vacate virus hot spots either permanently or as second homes.

"That basically turns them into luxury campers that you can pretty much take anywhere," he says. With so many people working from home during the pandemic, mobile tiny houses become mobile tiny offices that let people work anywhere there is an internet connection, he says.

Mr. Schapdick says a group of nurses who treat hospitalized Covid patients recently expressed interest in buying his budget tiny houses to park in the driveways of their conventional homes. The idea is to use them more or less as decontamination/quarantine stations so they don't risk spreading the virus to their families.

"Covid is getting people to think very creatively about tiny houses," says Mr. Schapdick, who got into the tiny-home business after building one for himself in 2013.

He still has that tiny home-a 150-square-foot cabin nestled in the woods in upstate New York. When he built it, the house seemed like something of an indulgence. Now, he says, "it's become my retreat from this tumultuous year."
Mr. Wells is a writer in Chicago. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Travelers Turn to Tiny Homes During Covid-19

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When Janna Harris found her personal and work life abruptly disrupted by Covid-19, the Dallas resident realized she desperately needed time to decompress.

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A company created a $20,000 backyard 'office in a box' due to high demand and it may soon be available on Amazon

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Estonia-based Ööd has unveiled a $19,900 office in a box that will soon be available for purchase on Amazon.

The office comes in two sizes, with the larger one including a kitchenette and bathroom.

The smaller, almost 97-square foot Ööd office in a box can fit two people.

Ööd's office was created out of new demand, and the company has seen so much interest from US-based customers, it plans to open a branch in the US next year.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Ööd has unveiled a $19,900 backyard office in a box that will soon be available for purchase on Amazon.

The Estonia-based company was first founded in 2016 by two brothers, Jaak and Andreas Tiik, who were planning a weekend hike outing, but couldn't find a tiny home in a desirable spot that fit their aesthetic, size, or quality needs. This realization then laid the groundwork for what would become the Ööd hotel concept, which has now expanded to include five other iterations: a studio, a play room, a yoga room, a winter garden, and now, an office.
California's housing crisis is so dire, a startup just raised $3.5 million in VC funding to drop tiny houses in people's backyards

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A company created a $20,000 backyard 'office in a box' due to high demand and it may soon be available on Amazon - see inside

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Estonia-based Ööd has unveiled a $19,900 office in a box that will soon be available for purchase on Amazon. The office comes in two sizes, with the larger one including a kitchenette and bathroom. The smaller, almost 97-square foot Ööd office in a box can fit two people.

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La UE da los primeros pasos para regular la movilidad urbana aérea

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La UE da los primeros pasos para regular la movilidad urbana aérea

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Barcelona y Santiago de Compostela forman parte de dos proyectos que ensayarán desde 2022 con aerotaxis y drones autónomos.

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Barcelona y Santiago de Compostela forman parte de dos proyectos que ensayarán desde 2022 con aerotaxis y drones autónomos.

Hace ya años que la película Blade Runner mostró cómo podrían ser las megalópolis del futuro, con cielos surcados por cientos de aparatos voladores de todo tipo. La imagen puede resultar exagerada, pero la UE ya está dando los primeros pasos en ese sentido, con proyectos para testar la llamada movilidad urbana aérea.

La apuesta es monumental, en la parte técnica y por lo que está en juego: la propia UE estima que, en 2035, sólo la actividad de los drones urbanos creará 100.000 empleos directos, con un impacto superior a los 10.000 millones de euros. Y la consultora Morgan Stanley prevé que, sólo cinco años después, los servicios de aerotaxis y los prestados con drones supondrán un pastel de 1,5 billones de dólares, un 60% procedería del transporte de pasajeros. De ahí que a los agentes previsibles -Airbus, Boeing o Rolls-Royce PLC- se sumen otros como Amazon y fabricantes de coches -Hyundai, FCA o GM- forzados a convertirse en proveedores de movilidad

Pero antes toca demostrar que ese tráfico es seguro para luego desarrollar la normativa que lo regule. Ése es el objetivo de dos proyectos de la UE, que implicarán vuelos de prueba de distintos aparatos desde 2022. Algunos, en España.

Una de esas iniciativas es el proyecto CORUS-XUAM, liderado por Eurocontrol y que llevará a cabo ensayos en Barcelona. El otro, denominado AMU-LED, está coordinado por la también española Everis, acaba de arrancar y tendrá su base de operaciones local en Santiago de Compostela. Además, también se realizarán otras pruebas en Reino Unido y Países Bajos. En este segundo desarrollo participan 17 entidades de Europa y EEUU. Entre ellas las hispanas Tecnalia y Enaire, esta última involucrada en las dos iniciativas. El presupuesto es de 4,8 millones de euros.

"Se probarán distintos tipos de drones, taxis aéreos y otras aeronaves con diferentes servicios: transporte de pasajeros, de carga, entrega de equipos médicos, vigilancia, etc", señala Irene Camino, responsable del proyecto en Everis. Los primeros ensayos reales en Santiago serán de entregas de medicinas con drones. "Todos esos aspectos se irán definiendo a través de pruebas cada vez más exigentes" añade, con la idea de que las demostraciones, de las mayores realizadas hasta el momento, empiecen en el verano de 2022.

Se pretende que sean vuelos sin piloto, incluso para llevar pasajeros, "siempre que se garanticen las máximas medidas de seguridad y tengamos los permisos de las autoridades", precisa Joseba Lasa, de Tecnalia.

El objetivo es que la información obtenida sirva para que, a partir de 2023, entidades como Easa, la Agencia Europea de Seguridad Aérea, empiecen a diseñar esa movilidad aérea urbana, ahora restringida a desplazamientos concretos y autorizados. "No hay una fecha para una regulación", reconoce Lasa, "pero la parte industrial estará resuelta en esta década" por la carrera entre Japón, Europa, EEUU y China por llevar la delantera. "Aunque cada una tiene su hoja de ruta". Así, la china EHang -que prevé realizar pruebas en Sevilla y Valencia- ya ha empezado a operar vuelos comerciales de pasajeros con un dron autónomo.

corredores a distintas alturas

"A priori, llenar el espacio aéreo de vehículos autonómos será más fácil que regular el tráfico de los coches sin conductor, ya que estos últimos conviven en un ecosistema mucho más complejo con otros miles de vehículos que no son autopilotados, con peatones, con bicicletas, dentro de las ciudades..." señala Joseba Lasa, de Tecnalia.

Pero también habrá similitudes entre unos y otros. "Las alturas a las que se ensayarán los drones, los aerotaxis y las otras aeronaves, irán desde menos de 150 metros para los primeros, hasta unos 500 metros. En todo caso, siempre por debajo de los 2.000 metros que ya exigirían presurizarlos. Y la idea es que se diseñen corredores a distintas alturas, uno para cada tipo de transporte".

El objetivo es que no requieran de control desde tierra y sean 100% autónomos, "bien por sus propias capacidades o bien guiado a través de las órdenes que reciba dentro de su propio corredor". Es decir, del mismo modo que ya hay automóviles que se comunican con la infraestructura y está les avisa de cuándo se va a cerrar el siguiente semáforo. O, a través de la nube, saben que ha habido un accidente o está nevando varios kilómetros por delante. "Por eso, una parte del trabajo será reforzar los protocolos que garanticen que los vehículos se detectan y comunican entre ellos" apostilla Irene Canmino, de Everys.

Como nota curiosa, la movilidad aérea urbana exigirá el desarrollo de aeropuertos especialmente adaptados a estos nuevos vehículos, que son de despegue y aterrizaje vertical (o VTOL por sus siglas en inglés).

Conforme a los criterios de

The Trust Project

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La UE da los primeros pasos para regular la movilidad urbana aérea

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Barcelona y Santiago de Compostela forman parte de dos proyectos que ensayarán desde 2022 con aerotaxis y drones autónomos. Hace ya años que la película Blade Runner mostró cómo podrían ser las megalópolis del futuro, con cielos surcados por cientos de aparatos voladores de todo tipo.

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The maker of this $118,500 tiny home on wheels that was designed to work from home in during the pandemic saw a huge spike in interest in 2020

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New Zealand-based Build Tiny created Cyril, a tiny home on wheels for clients who wanted a work from home setup and amenities for their cats that were adopted during the country's coronavirus pandemic-induced lockdown.

Build Tiny saw an increase in domestic demand "with urgent need" during the coronavirus pandemic, the company's director and designer Gina Stevens told Business Insider in an email interview.

The home has a bathroom, kitchen, living room, lofted office, and lofted bedroom.

In terms of pet amenities, the interior has a cat door in the bathroom and a cat bridge that connects the two lofts.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Build Tiny created Cyril, a tiny home on wheels for clients who wanted a work from home setup and amenities for their cats that were adopted during the initial coronavirus pandemic-induced lockdown.

According to Gina Stevens, director and designer of New Zealand-based Build Tiny, the tiny home on wheels took a total of 13 weeks to construct.

"The design for the tiny house was completed during the 'Level Four' full lockdown we had here in New Zealand," Stevens told Business Insider in an email interview. "It was in March at the start of the pandemic where there was a lot of uncertainty, so the need for a home office was top of mind."
California's housing crisis is so dire, a startup just raised $3.5 million in VC funding to drop tiny houses in people's backyards
The clients booked Build Tiny with interior requests like an office loft with a footwell, tall kitchen bench tops, a bi-folding front door, and a cat bridge, all of which can now be found inside the little mobile home. Keep scrolling to see how all these amenities look:

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The maker of this $118,500 tiny home on wheels that was designed to work from home in during the pandemic saw a huge spike in interest in 2020

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New Zealand-based Build Tiny created Cyril, a tiny home on wheels for clients who wanted a work from home setup and amenities for their cats that were adopted during the country's coronavirus pandemic-induced lockdown. Build Tiny saw an increase in domestic demand "with urgent need" during the coronavirus pandemic, the company's director and designer Gina Stevens told Business Insider in an email interview.

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The rise of military space powers

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Nations around the world are shoring up their defensive and offensive capabilities in space - for today's wars and tomorrow's.

Why it matters: Using space as a warfighting domain opens up new avenues for technologically advanced nations to dominate their enemies. But it can also make those countries more vulnerable to attack in novelways.

"Space has already been weaponized by just about any definition," Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic & International Studies told me, citing work his organization has done to quantify the problem. "The question is, 'How are we going to respond?'"

Driving the news: From anti-satellite tests to establishing military branches dedicated to space, it is becoming an integral theater for militaries around the world.

U.S. Space Command issued a rare statement in July calling out what it called an "anti-satellite weapons test"after a Russian satellite appeared to release a projectile near another Russian satellite.

China reportedly has the technology to blind enemy satellites, according to a March 2020 report from CSIS.

The U.S. and other nations rely on satellites to keep soldiers safe and get the lay of the land on the ground.

The state of play: More countries are relying on space in ways that benefit their societies, economies and militaries, so in some ways it's logical for them to create tools to help ensure access to orbit,Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation told me.

The Space Force - which will have its one-year anniversary this month - was created in part to deter nations that threaten the U.S. in space.

"While we will extend and defend America's competitive advantage in peacetime, the ultimate measure of our readiness is the ability to prevail should war initiate in, or extend to space," Gen. John Raymond, the Space Force's chief of space operations, wrote in a planning document in November.

France and Japan have also recentlycreated their own military space divisions, showing how key space is becoming to military operations around the world today.

Yes, but: Some experts believe the U.S. is falling behind in efforts to secure its space infrastructure.

While the U.S. is ahead of every other nation in its capabilities from orbit, the country's national security satellite infrastructure - which depends on a relatively small number of extremely expensive spy satellites - is vulnerable to attack.

China, for example, sees its stance toward national security space in part as a way to counteract U.S. supremacy in orbit, according to a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The catch: While wealthy nations can use space to their advantage in a variety of ways, doing so also creates new vulnerabilities. Establishing infrastructure in space is expensive, but destroying it is relatively easy.

So far, countries have largely steered clear of destroying enemy satellites in part because of the far-reaching geopolitical implications of that kind of attack. And creating more space junk affects everyone in orbit, not just your enemies.

But some experts are concerned that could change if new norms aren't established as nations work to build out military assets in orbit.

The bottom line: The future of warfighting will continue to rely on space as more nations recognize its importance as the highest ground.

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Nations around the world are shoring up their defensive and offensive capabilities in space - for today's wars and tomorrow's. Why it matters: Using space as a warfighting domain opens up new avenues for technologically advanced nations to dominate their enemies. But it can also make those countries more vulnerable to attack in novelways.

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Elon Musk Confident That Humans Will Land in Mars in 4 to 6 Years, Living in Glass Domes

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Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk predicts that humans can be on Mars by 2026, despite NASA's plan to return to the moon in 2024.

On December 1, Musk spoke at an awards ceremony from Axel Springer. He said that he expects astronauts to land on Mars in 4 to 6 years time and added that he is confident in the timeline.

Landing on Mars

SpaceX and Tesla CEO said that the Earth-Mars synchronization happens every 26 months, the synchronization happened this year during the summer and that means in two years, there will be another event. His target year is 2026 but if space agencies and massive companies are lucky, humans can go to Mars in 2024.

Also Read: Elon Musk's 'Terrifying' MINI Brain Chip Cures Depression and Addiction?

In October 2020, Musk said that he thought the first mission to Mars of SpaceX could happen by 2024 but he eventually added that the timeline was just a guess.

The 49-year-old billionaire was asked when his first trip to orbit would happen and he said it might happen in the two or three years.

Musk told Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of Axel Springer SE, that he is concerned with creating the technology that can enable people to go to Mars and to make it habitable. He wants to create a city on Mars and have a base on the Moon.

Musk added that it is important to have a self-sustaining city on Mars as soon as possible. He is still optimistic about life on Earth but wants "life insurance" for life as a whole, providing other habitable plants.

At the Axel Springer conference, Musk opened up about his COVID-19 diagnosis and confirmed what people suspected when he was absent from the SpaceX launch last month.

Living in glass domes

In 2015, the Tesla CEO talked about putting a habitable city on Mars after the successful rocket landing by SpaceX. Meanwhile NASA's goal is to send men on a mission to Mars in 2030.

In 2016, Musk talked about how he can put human life on Mars. The CEO said that in order for humans to be able to survive in Mars, they should live in glass domes at first with all of the basic necessities that humans need to live.

Elon posted on his Twitter account that eventually, Mars could be terraformed to support life, just like Earth. The whole process would be too slow for people to witness it in our lifetime but it is important that a base is made on the Red Planet sometime soon so future civilization will be impressed on how humans got that far.

In June 2017, Musk published a paper, posted on Liebert, about making humanity a type of species that can live in more than just one planet and he laid out plans for having around a million people on Mars.

In 2018, the billionaire said that there was a 70% chance that he would move to Mars as well, but there are still a lot of studies and experiments that needs to be done because there is also a massive chance that people will die on the way to Mars.

Related Article: SpaceX Tesla Roadster Now Beyond Mars Orbit
This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Sieeka Khan
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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Elon Musk Reveals Ambitious Plan of Putting Humans in Mars, Gives 6 Years as Timeline

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Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk predicts that humans can be on Mars by 2026, despite NASA's plan to return to the moon in 2024. On December 1, Musk spoke at an awards ceremony from Axel Springer. He said that he expects astronauts to land on Mars in 4 to 6 years time and added that he is confident in the timeline.

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Nasa rover to begin search for ancient Mars life after safe landing

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Nasa's Perseverance rover is in position to begin exploring the surface of Mars for signs of ancient life, after US space scientists successfully landed the most sophisticated vehicle sent from Earth to another planet.

Joyful but socially distanced celebrations broke out on Thursday evening at California's Jet Propulsion Lab, headquarters of the $2.7bn mission, when a radio signal from Perseverance confirmed it had touched down at Jezero crater, close to the Martian equator, after a 470m km flight.

The masked scientists and engineers cheered, clapped and fist-bumped as they celebrated the rover's safe landing. A minute or two later the first picture appeared, a fuzzy black-and-white image of the crater floor. Vivid colour photos are expected soon.

"This is a fantastic day for planetary science, with a new precision landing system delivering Perseverance to the right spot," said Professor Andrew Coates, a University College London space scientist who was involved in previous Mars missions.

"With Perseverance there now and then Europe's Rosalind Franklin rover arriving in 2023, I think we are going to find out once and for all in the next few years whether there is or has been life on Mars," he added.

Perseverance survived the famous "seven minutes of terror", a term coined for previous Mars landings for the time it takes to decelerate from the entry speed of 20,000kph, when the craft reaches the atmosphere, to a touchdown at slower than walking pace.

The landing technology deployed was an upgraded version of the one on Curiosity, the last Nasa rover to land on Mars, in 2012. Added features included a range trigger to guide the opening of the craft's parachute and maximise the chance of a gentle touchdown.

Perseverance will spend the next month or so going through a thorough check of all its instruments. Then its first job will be to move a short distance to launch an ultralight helicopter for the first powered flight on an extraterrestrial planet.

The 1.8kg Ingenuity rotorcraft is a technology demonstrator to show whether helicopters can perform usefully in the Martian atmosphere, which is just 1 per cent as dense as Earth's.

If it works well, Ingenuity will make five flights, providing an aerial view of the crater where Perseverance will spend the next two years, searching for signs of ancient microbes that might have flourished when water flowed on Mars about 3bn years ago.

The rover will journey around the ancient and desiccated terrain of Jezero crater, which once contained a lake, armed with instruments to probe the rocks and soil for physical and chemical signatures of biological processes. Scientists do not expect to find living organisms.

Another technology experiment is the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or Moxie, which will make oxygen out of the thin air on Mars by electrochemically breaking down carbon dioxide. If astronauts are to land and live on the red planet, they would need locally generated oxygen to breathe and to burn fuel.

Perseverance will also leave a legacy on the Martian surface for future missions. Its Sample Caching System will put broken rock and dust into metal canisters and leave them behind to be collected and brought to Earth by future missions that Nasa is planning in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

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Nasa rover to begin search for ancient Mars life after safe landing

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Nasa's Perseverance rover is in position to begin exploring the surface of Mars for signs of ancient life, after US space scientists successfully landed the most sophisticated vehicle sent from Earth to another planet.