Lifeboat Foundation

The solar revolution.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the solar roof that will be sold under a combined Tesla-SolarCity will likely cost less than a normal roof to install.

Tesla and SolarCity shareholders voted in favour of the US$2 billion deal Thursday. In late October, Musk unveiled a new solar roof product to show his vision for a combined company with SolarCity, but did not provide specifics on how much it would cost.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Says a Tesla Solar Roof Could Cost Less Than Your Crappy Normal Roof” »

This Tuesday, Microsoft announced it is partnering with OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company founded and funded by Elon Musk and other industry luminaries. OpenAI seeks to develop AI to benefit all of humanity — a goal Microsoft isn’t foreign to, with its open-source deep learning software.

“It’s great to work with another organization that believes in the importance of democratizing access to AI,” reads OpenAI’s official blog announcement about the partnership. For their part, Microsoft sees a valuable partner in OpenAI. As one spokesperson said in an interview for TechCrunch: “Through this partnership, Microsoft and OpenAI will advance their mutual goal to democratize AI, so everyone can benefit.”

OpenAI will make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform. “Azure has impressed us by building hardware configurations optimized for deep learning — they offer K80 GPUs with InfiniBand interconnects at scale,” says OpenAI. Azure is optimized for AI workloads, using its Azure Batch and Azure Machine Learning, coupled with Microsoft’s rebranded Cognitive Toolkit.

Continue reading “Microsoft Unites with Elon Musk on Breakthrough AI Project” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TK9oS7HS3Ng

Today, SpaceX filed with the FCC to obtain the rights to operate 4,400 satellites to offer internet services from orbit, a plan that was announced last year.

Elon Musk’s trust currently owns 54% of the outstanding stock of SpaceX and has voting control of 78% of the outstanding stock of SpaceX.

Continue reading “SpaceX filed with FCC to operate 4400 satellites and Elon Musk SpaceX shares are worth $8.1 billion” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=J7_RDJtkBZ0

Microsoft has announced a new partnership with Elon Musk’s OpenAI nonprofit to advance and democratize artificial intelligence. Between OpenAI and Microsoft AI and Research, open-source AI breakthroughs should not take too long to surface. Pictured here are Harry Shum, Microsoft AI and Research Group executive vice president, and Sam Altman, co-chair of OpenAI. ( Microsoft Blog )

Microsoft is partnering its artificial intelligence research arm with Elon Musk’s nonprofit OpenAI, announcing the “industry’s first cloud bot-as-a-service” on Microsoft Azure.

Continue reading “Microsoft Partners With Elon Musk-Backed OpenAI To Democratize Artificial Intelligence: What Does This Mean?” »

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research non-profit backed by Tesla’s Elon Musk, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, a Donald Trump fan called Peter Thiel, and numerous other tech luminaries, is partnering with Microsoft to tackle the next set of challenges in the still-nascent field.

OpenAI will also make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform, in part because of its existing support for AI workloads with the help of Azure Batch and Azure Machine Learning, as well as Microsoft’s work on its recently rebranded Cognitive Toolkit. Microsoft also offers developers access to a high-powered GPU-centric virtual machine for these kind of machine learning workloads. These N-Series machines are still in beta, but OpenAI has been an early adopter of them and Microsoft says they will become generally available in December.

Amazon already offers a similar kind of GPU-focused virtual machine, though oddly enough, Google has lagged behind and — at least for the time being — doesn’t offer this kind of machine type yet.

Continue reading “Microsoft teams up with Elon Musk’s OpenAI project” »

Researchers have warned it is already too late to stop killer robots — and say banning them would be little more than a temporary solution.

University at Buffalo researchers claim ‘society is entering into a situation where systems like these have and will become possible.’

Continue reading “University of Buffalo researchers say autonomous weapons ‘have and will become possible’” »

It seems like every television season plays host to a single show that takes over our cultural consciousness by coating modern fears in fantastical drama.

Game of Thrones taps into the cutthroat nature of modern politics, while The Walking Dead plays into our ever-present fear of a worldwide contagion. This year, with Elon Musk’s dire warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence, Siri and Alexa permeating our personal lives, and self-driving cars threatening to run down groups of children, Westworld is posed to be that show.

Westworld is complex. It’s that complexity, interwoven with mysteries and plot twists, that produces the hours of online speculation and wild fan theories that are the hallmark of anything worth watching.

Continue reading “8 technologies in Westworld and when we’ll see them” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fze5spdN3nU

I figured that if Elon Musk’s Hyperloop system ever became reality, it would essentially be a super-fast train system. Meaning we’d enter at a Hyperloop station in L.A. and exit at a Hyperloop station in San Francisco. But the forthcoming Hyperloop One system in Dubai, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, will actually get riders from door to door.

To explain: Hyperloop One, which signed a deal with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority, has BIG providing the design muscle. The collaboration has yielded the idea that self-driving Hyperpods could pick passengers up anywhere in the city, like an Uber. These six-person-capacity Hyperpods would then drive to the Hyperportal and load itself onto a Transport Capsule, the actual thing that shoots through the Hyperloop tube. At the other end, the ‘pod exits the Transport Capsule and drives the passengers to their destination.

Continue reading “The Hyperloop Won’t Just Be Station-to-Station, but Door-to-Door” »

A NASA engineers explains why the fake technology that inspired Elon Musk wouldn’t work.