` Further up, Elon Musk described AI as an “existential threat” to
` humanity, meaning that it could erase mankind from the universe
` entirely. This ties in with ideas of a “Great Filter” that kills off
` alien civilisations that reach a certain level of technological
` development. It's entirely possible that the reason we've never met
` aliens is because they invented artificial intelligence before they
` could build spaceships capable of interstellar travel, and that
` discovery caused their extinction.
` Accidents are killing more Americans each year, increasingly from
` overdoses and falls.
` A new report from the National Safety Council said that in 2014, more
` than 136,000 Americans died accidentally. That's up 4.2 percent from
` the year before and a jump of 15.5 percent over a decade. And the
` accident rate has risen despite a 22 percent plunge in car crash
` deaths since 2005.
` Overdose and accidental poisonings are up 78 percent over a decade —
` pushing aside car crashes as the No. 1 accidental killer in the U.S.
` They killed 42,032 people, about 6,000 more than vehicle accidents.
` Opioid overdoses killed 13,486 people in 2014, the non-profit safety
` council reported.
` Falls are up 63 percent over a decade, which experts said is a
` function of an aging society.
> Particularly vexing for Huawei is the suggestion that the
> company could be used to spy on behalf of the government
> in Beijing. Unverified assertions that the company is “
> linked” to the Chinese military appear regularly in news
> articles. The charges are largely based on the fact that
> Huawei’s media-shy founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, once
> served in the People’s Liberation Army as a telecom
> technician, and that the company (like AT&T, Sprint, and
> Verizon in the U.S.) is a military and government
> contractor in its home country. “The context of all this
> is, China is very active in espionage, as are we,” says
> James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International
> Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. At a minimum, says
> Lewis, Huawei has an image problem in cyber circles. “The
> national security community in the U.S. is united in its
> opposition to Huawei,” he says.