What Is Apple Trying to Tell Us?

Opinion | The One Danger That Should Unite the U.S. and China

Illustration by Saratta Chuengsatiansup

“China and America don’t know it yet, but the artificial intelligence revolution is going to drive them closer together, not farther apart. The rise of A.I. will force them to fiercely compete for dominance and — at the same time and with equal energy — cooperate at a depth our two countries have never attempted before. They will have no choice.

Why am I so confident about that? Because A.I. has certain unique attributes and poses certain challenges that are different from those presented by any previous technology. This column will discuss them in detail, but here are a couple to chew on for starters: A.I. will spread like a steam vapor and seep into everything. It will be in your watch, your toaster, your car, your computer, your glasses and your pacemaker — always connected, always communicating, always collecting data to improve performance. As it does, it will change everything about everything — including geopolitics and trade between the world’s two A.I. superpowers, and the need for cooperation will become ever more apparent each month.

For instance, say you break your hip, and your orthopedist tells you the world’s most highly rated hip replacement is a Chinese-made prosthetic that is infused with Chinese-designed A.I. It is constantly learning about your body and, with its proprietary algorithm, using that data to optimize your movements in real time. It’s the best!

Would you let that “smart hip” be sewn into you? I wouldn’t — not unless I knew that China and America had agreed to embed a common ethical architecture into every A.I.-enabled device that either nation builds. Viewed on a much larger, global scale, this could ensure that A.I. is used only for the benefit of humanity, whether it is employed by humans or operates on its own initiative.

At the same time, Washington and Beijing will soon discover that putting A.I. in the hands of every person and robot on the planet will super-empower bad people to levels no law enforcement agency has ever faced. Remember: Bad guys are always early adopters! And without the United States and China agreeing on a trust architecture to ensure that every A.I. device can be used only for humans’ well-being, the artificial intelligence revolution is certain to produce super-empowered thieves, scam artists, hackers, drug dealers, terrorists and misinformation warriors. They will destabilize both America and China, long before these two superpower nations get around to fighting a war with each other.

In short, as I will argue, if we cannot trust A.I.-infused products from China and it can’t trust ours, very soon the only item China will dare buy from America will be soybeans and the only thing we will dare buy from China is soy sauce, which will surely sap global growth.

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Voyager 1 ‘intercepts’ a song in the space — It came from 25 billion km away

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“Voyager 1, a NASA probe launched in 1977, intercepted a message from 25 billion kilometers away. The European Space Agency (ESA) transmitted a live performance of Johann Strauss II’s “The Blue Danube” to celebrate its 50th anniversary and Strauss’s 200th birthday. The mission aimed to showcase Voyager 1’s enduring legacy and the universal language of music.

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Have you ever thought about hearing a song coming directly from space? Well, that’s what happened last Saturday in May, when the Voyager 1 probe intercepted a message that came from 25 billion kilometers away from Earth. Many thought it was some kind of operational command or even a historical novelty, but reality surprised everyone when scientists came across a song.

Do you happen to know Voyager 1?

Before we can decipher what this music was that was intercepted and if it had any meaning, we need to look at the object that made all this possible: Voyager 1. Back in 1977, NASA designed this probe with the aim of studying other planets in the Solar System – and beyond. And it did so successfully, you see?

First, it managed to fly over Jupiter and Saturn, until it passed what experts call the heliosphere, which is nothing more than the region of influence of our Sun, and then it ventured into interstellar space. Today it is already very far from us, we are talking about 24.8 billion kilometers from Earth, that is more than 166 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. It is worth remembering that no other object created by us is further away.

All this distance becomes a challenge for sending messages back and forth. Just to give you an idea, any radio signal sent from us here on Earth to there takes about 23 hours to reach it. Of course, in addition to all this distance, Voyager 1 is already old, operates with limited systems and an antenna of only 3.7 meters, but it remains firm in its mission of receiving and sending signals. It was with this in mind (and through it) that ESA decided to do something special, and that is where music comes into play.

The song that traveled 25 km away from Earth

You might be wondering: what does ESA have to do with this intergalactic music thing? Well, it wanted to pay tribute… That’s because on June 1st, the agency turns 50 and, along with that, it also turns 200 years since the birth of composer Johann Strauss II. In other words, they combined business with pleasure and transmitted a live performance by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra directly into space — and of course, the probe responsible for this was Voyager 1 (this after it had returned to service after almost 20 years).

And what was the song? It was the waltz, The Blue Danube (An der schönen blauen Donau), composed by Strauss in 1866. If you don’t know it, it’s worth mentioning that this song became very famous for representing space. Another interesting fact is that this became even more established after being used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick.

The song that became a message to the unknown

What many people wondered was the reason for this space signal tribute, because, let’s face it, it’s not something that happens every day, so the authors of the project even explained (after joking that this was used to make aliens dance):

“The beauty of this mission lies in its boundless imagination and optimism. Music is a universal language – transcending borders, species and even galaxies. If there are life forms out there, perhaps they sense the joy, elegance and rhythm of humanity itself, and perhaps they respond with a dance of their own”

Apart from that, it also served to show how Voyager 1, even at almost 50 years old (47 to be more exact), navigating through a solitary environment, continues to inspire many people – even after “waking up” after almost two decades,”

I was using Aperture WRONG until I learned this