Special Reports & Tweets - 20150618_SpecialReport-5_Alex
Aired: 2015-06-18
Duration: 04:01


=== Star Trek Fusion (04:01) ===

[00:00:00]  Not being satisfied with laser weapons that are both invisible and silent, companies like
[00:00:15]  Boeing have announced that they're going to be taking their laser weapons to the next
[00:00:18]  level.
[00:00:20]  Previously, operators have had to pay close attention to know exactly when they've been firing these silent but deadly weapons.
[00:00:27]  Now their lasers will be equipped with Star Trek and Star Wars sound effects.
[00:00:32]  So next time Boeing's high-energy laser mobile demonstrator shoots down a drone mid-flight, it's gonna sound exactly like Han Solo's blaster.
[00:00:42]  But that isn't all that science fiction has influenced.
[00:00:45]  In addition to cell phones and ion propulsion and handheld devices, Star Trek and Star Wars have also influenced futurists like Ray Kurzweil.
[00:00:55]  Kurzweil is once again repeating his prediction that humans will meld with computers in the future.
[00:01:01]  But instead of 2045, Kurzweil is now suggesting cyborgs will be a reality by the 2030s.
[00:01:08]  The director of engineering at Google said that people will soon be able to connect their brains directly to the cloud and augment their existing intelligence with thousands of computers.
[00:01:19]  Thanks to DNA nanobots making the connection, our thinking will become a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking.
[00:01:27]  Kurzweil adds that by the early 2040s, people will be more like machines than they will be human.
[00:01:33]  And he even suggests that we'll be able to back up our brains like a hard drive.
[00:01:38]  But guess what?
[00:01:39]  Star Trek already conquered this territory in the 90s.
[00:01:43]  I am the Borg.
[00:01:45]  The cyborg represents the dark side of humanity, what happens when technology falls into the wrong hands and is used to dehumanize us.
[00:01:53]  The Star Trek Borgs became one with their technology.
[00:01:57]  It stripped them of their humanity and their individuality.
[00:02:00]  They became like zombies in a metal shell.
[00:02:03]  They were now part of a collective network on a vast computer system, controlled telepathically by this mysterious Borg Queen.
[00:02:12]  Kind of makes you think there's a possibility something could be telepathically controlling us if we ever were to upload our brains to the cloud, as Kurzweil suggests.
[00:02:22]  Assimilate this.
[00:02:26]  And even though we hear the word singularity by 2045, the fact is, man merging with machine has already happened.
[00:02:33]  Professor Kevin Warwick is head of the cybernetics and robotics department at Reading University in the UK.
[00:02:40]  In 1998, he was able to connect his nervous system to the internet via a chip implanted in his arm.
[00:02:47]  He then used the web to allow him to control a robotic arm.
[00:02:51]  And that was in the 90s.
[00:02:53]  And he, like Kurzweil and other transhumanists, give this ominous warning that by not upgrading, we would be considered subspecies in the future.
[00:03:02]  And surprise, surprise, artificial intelligence is one of the topics up for discussion at this year's Bilderberg Conference.
[00:03:10]  Former DARPA director and now Google exec Regina Dugan will be in attendance.
[00:03:16]  Dugan is helping to develop and promote the idea of an ingestible identification microchip.
[00:03:22]  Yeah, absolutely not worrisome at all that Google is now hiring military leadership.
[00:03:27]  Users would swallow a chip in pill form every day in order to obtain the superpower of having their entire body act as a biological password for cell phones, cars, doors, and other devices.
[00:03:41]  But I'm sure it means absolutely nothing that artificial intelligence will be discussed this week at a top secret meeting of the world's power brokers.
[00:03:49]  When people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have warned that artificial intelligence has the potential to destroy humanity if it falls in the wrong hands.
[00:03:59]  I have one simple request.