Want to see all of it? Here’s Elon Musk in all of his interesting glory.

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From the Roomba to “The Terminator” and everything else in between, artificial intelligence is part of our modern world. Is it something to be embraced or should we be concerned about our growing reliance on AI?

Everyone and their brother and sister binge-watched the HBO television series, “Westworld” last year. And the year before that it was the British show “Humans.” While these fantasy worlds, in which robots gain consciousness, have captured our imaginations, we aren’t quite there yet in our own world. It is true that movies, books, and television shows have long visualized the arrival of artificial intelligence, but most of us are content with watching cats ride robot vacuum cleaners on YouTube.

But should we be concerned about the further development of artificial intelligence? Some are paying close attention. A new project spearheaded by Elon Musk, the Tesla creator and Sam Altman, founder of the startup incubator Y combinator, is laying the groundwork for thinking about artificial intelligence in a more thoughtful way.

OpenAI Taking a Closer Look at Artificial Intelligence

Founded in late 2015, OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company with the mission to “build safe AI, and ensure AI’s benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.” It’s a research company without the constraints of shareholders with a goal of making sure that the artificial intelligence that we create doesn’t drive the human race to extinction. So, not only are the rest of us fascinated by (or concerned with) robots taking over the world, but so are the very people who are designing the robots we are utilizing in our work and play.

And lest you think OpenAI is some kind of vanity project of very two wealthy and paranoid techies, there has already been more than one billion dollars pledged to the project from Peter Theil of Paypal, Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn, and from Amazon Web Services, among others.

The work of the OpenAI project is really only in its infancy. The first release from the project was a beta version of the OpenAI Gym toolkit back in April 2016. The OpenAI Gym is a bundled software release that was built to help move the work of the project along and in keeping true to the openness of the project, it was released publicly. The latest release is called Universe and is another tool designed to help developers create a better framework for understanding artificial intelligence.

Intrigued? While you are waiting for season two of “Westworld,” head on over to the OpenAI Blog to read more about the ideas behind and the latest news about this compelling project.

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Elon Musk recently was a guest on Stephen Colbert’s new late night show. He shared a lot of crazy ideas that Colbert jokingly pointed out could be used for good… or evil.

The video below is a snippet of the entire interview, but in the clip, you’ll see Musk and Colbert talk about alternative energy, new inventions, and living on Mars.

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Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and all around green-energy badass, is a powerhouse of an innovator. That got us thinking that perhaps Musk should become the president of Earth. Not convinced? We’ll give you three reasons why.

1. He’s dedicated to creating clean energy for everyone

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk recently unveiled a line of “home and industrial battery packs” that he says will “change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world.”

Grist reports that the new endeavor is called Tesla Energy: “[Musk’s] goal is to riddle the world with much-needed solar power storage devices that will usher us into a post-fossil fuel, carbon-zero future, thus saving humankind from climate apocalypse.”

Musk made this announcement, appropriately, on May Day (May 1); a traditional day of renewal about Powerwall, the new battery, which will be wall-mounted and can be used in all homes. More from Tesla Motors’ press kit:

“Tesla Powerwall is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery designed to store energy at a residential level for load shifting, backup power and self-consumption of solar power generation. Powerwall consists of Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack, liquid thermal control system and software that receives dispatch commands from a solar inverter. The unit mounts seamlessly on a wall and is integrated with the local grid to harness excess power and give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own reserve.”

Read more about Powerwall’s undeniable benefits here.

2. Musk has been all about renewable energy and space exploration since a young age — and he was willing to make sacrifices to work in those fields

Musk was recently interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the interview, Musk revealed that he has always wanted to work on creating renewable energy. But to prove to himself that he could survive if he failed, he decided to live off almost nothing. To survive, he bought food in bulk from a supermarket and lived on hot dogs, pasta, and oranges. The Washington Post quoted a bit from the Tyson interview:

“‘You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after awhile,’ he said. ‘And of course pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce. And that can go pretty far, too.’ “

Now, that’s dedication.

3. He’s open about how hard it is to do what he does

Now, this isn’t the most flattering news about Musk floating around, but it’s undeniably real. In Ashlee Vance’s biography about Musk, she reports that one time, Musk got after an employe for missing a meeting to attend a child’s birth. Now, Musk has forcefully said that this isn’t true, and truly, we’ll never really know if it is or isn’t. But in a recent interview, Musk admitted to an interviewer that he doesn’t always give his kids direct attention.

Forbes reports that Musk said that often times, he is with his kids while he is working and emailing. He contends that he has to do both at once in order to get his job done. Now, that may sound harsh, but it’s probably true. While that information may not sit well with all of us, it’s at least refreshing to hear him speak his own truth.

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If it weren’t for 3D printer technology, we’d pretty much still be living in the Dark Ages.

Your computer and smart phones are practically cavemen tools these days. Besides anything Elon Musk is behind, the real impressive technology du jour is, of course, anything made on a 3D printer. Especially if it happens to be shoes.

Enter Continuum Fashion’s Myth, a collection of high heels meets high-tech 3D printed shoes. Designer Mary Huang has called them ‘computational couture.’

“The collection contrasts overtly digital geometry with very organic, natural forms,” the company says on its website. “The tree-like designs are inspired by Bernini’s statue of Apollo and Daphne– the story of the nymph who turns into a laurel tree. These designs were created to exemplify the beauty of how objects are made on a 3d printer, where the object “grows” layer by layer.

The time lapse video of a Myth shoe being printed is pretty darn amazing.

While the kitsch factor of 3D printed fashion is quite impressive enough to stand on its own, the really great thing about these 3D printed shoes is the smaller carbon footprint. The shoes can be made with less environmentally intensive materials, such as a wood composite and the urethane soles on the shoes, which are also 3D printed. And, says the brand, “these designs are a virtually zero waste product. 3D printing will be the leapfrog technology in achieving sustainable manufacturing.”

We love a good leapfrog technology, particularly if it means fashion at your fingertips and not at the cost of fossil fuels.And  as everyone knows, no matter how strange and sic-fi the future may get, couture footwear will always be in style.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, has said that the company will remove the patents decorating the walls of its Silicon Valley headquarters. It will not sue anyone who in good faith wants their electric car technology.

According to the Tesla blog, “Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”

Tesla Motors wants to clear the path for others who want to create a compelling electric car, and patents hinder that goal. The company initially garnered patents because it feared a competitor would copy its ideas and overwhelm the company financially, but that’s been far from the reality, according to Musk.

“We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.”

Musk hopes that other companies will begin to fill the electric car space, though few have tried since he co-founded Tesla Motors a decade ago and became CEO in 2008. Since then, Tesla has unveiled an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, a four door Model 5, and a larger Model X, which is scheduled to begin production in 2015. The company also sells its electric powertrain systems to Daimler for the Smart EV and to Mercedes and Toyota for the Rav4 EV.

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Rumor has it that the country’s most successful electric car company could be working with Google to introduce self-driving capabilities.

Nearly every auto manufacturer on the planet offers or is working on an electric car. For some, it’s only a tiny aspect of their fleet. For Tesla Motors, it’s everything. Dedicated only to the creation of sleek, high-performance plug-in cars, Tesla recently made headlines by announcing that it is on track to repay a $465m Department of Energy loan 9 years ahead of schedule. For car makers just struggling to break even on their EV dreams, the news was proof that Tesla is ahead of the game. Way ahead.

The success helps to explain another astounding announcement: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, is talking with Google about adding driverless technology to his already awesome line of electric vehicles.

Google is the poster company for auto-piloted vehicles, a project that is already in testing on open roadways and has the entire auto industry buzzing. In an article describing the experience of riding in an auto-piloted car, Forbes’ Joann Muller writes, “The car we were riding in was a white Lexus RX450h outfitted with a $65,000 laser sensor on the roof, and other gear that included radar sensors in the front and rear bumpers, a high-def camera looking out from the windshield, and another looking inward at the passengers…On the instrument panel, a graphic depicted each of the cars around us as a white rectangle and tracked its movement relative to ours.”

Once you get over the initial shock and horror of allowing the car to merge onto the freeway at 65 mph without your help, the idea of riding in a self-piloted vehicle starts to sound cool. Eventually, you could take a road trip to catch up on some reading, safely send a text, or perhaps even sleep. The only imperfection would be that you’re still flinging pollution into the atmosphere. But that would change with an autonomous Tesla that runs on electricity.

“I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self-driving,” Musk said in an interview. “Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.” As Engadget reports, “a hidden configuration page in current Tesla vehicles’ digital control panel reveals some additional features, including Blind Spot Detection, Adaptive Cruise and Lane Departure Warning. Though currently disabled, each could indicate plans to add automation features to the all-electric car.

The biggest hurdle, of course, is money. “The problem with Google’s current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive,” Musk said. “It’s better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what’s going on just by looking at things.”

If anyone can find a way to squeeze more tech into a car for less money, however, it’s Tesla. The company’s Model S sedan has a $69,900 base price, a far cry from The Roadster, the company’s first offering, which started at $109,000. The goal, according to Musk,  is to offer a model for about $30,000 within a few years.

Image: jurvetson and jurveston

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Mars could soon have a colony of 80,000 vegetarians. I’ve already started packing.

As any vegan or vegetarian likely knows, it can often feel like we’re from another planet. And that may soon be a reality, well, sort of. PayPal co-founder Elon Musk has made plans to develop a vegetarian colony on Mars.

Billionaire and private space entrepreneur (Musk also founded SpaceX, which created the Falcon 9 rocket NASA uses to deliver cargo to the International Space Station), Musk has detailed plans to accommodate 80,000 former earthling vegetarians on Mars, once scientists have figured out how to sustain human life on the red planet. And while it may seem as though it’s still the stuff of sci-fi movies, the technology is getting closer every day. Eric Anderson, a leading entrepreneur in the industry and chairman of Space Adventures, told RT, “I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that there will be a space hotel within the next ten years, in orbit around the Earth.”

Musk’s plans for the city include a roster of sustainable technologies beyond just the low-impact vegetarian diet, even for the journey to Mars, which would feature rockets powered by methane and liquid oxygen. “On Mars you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big,” Musk said. But it won’t be cheap. Musk estimates tickets to make the move to Mars will cost new colony members around $500,000.

While I don’t have anything close to $500,000 saved up, yet, there are actually quite a few reasons I’d consider making this move to Mars, even despite the increased radiation risk (among other threats):

1. Living with 80,000 vegetarians could be pretty cool. Sure, I could move to India…but the entire country’s not vegetarian, so it’s more challenging to be completely surrounded by “my people.”
2. Maybe a new planet devoted to vegetarian ethics could also help our species reduce some of our other propensities towards violence.
3. Two moons!
4. Even if we never made it. Even if immediately upon landing evil Martians attacked us, the trip there would certainly be the most incredible experience of my life.
5. Best Twitter hashtags ever: #iliveonmarsforreal #justsawmyfirstmartian
6. No GMOs: While Musk hasn’t yet revealed how we’d procure food on Mars, I’m hoping he’s going to leave genetically modified seeds for earth…and leaving this planet is probably the only way to truly avoid them at this point, anyway.
7. While only slightly, days on Mars are longer than Earth days.
8. Vegetarian space sex. ‘Nuff said.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: kevin dooley

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