From fears about work and privacy to a rivalry between the U.S. and China, the series explores the promise and perils of AI. It traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society. Today, China leads the world in e-commerce and is a society that bypassed credit cards. Now shops in stores are without cashiers, where the currency is facial recognition. No country has ever moved that fast. And in a short two-and-a-half years, China's A.I. implementation really went from minimal amount to probably about 17 or 18 unicorns, that is, billion-dollar companies. The progress was powered by a new generation of ambitious young techs pouring out of Chinese universities, competing with each other for new ideas, and financed by a new cadre of Chinese venture capitalists.
Are we alone? SETI--the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence--is a privately funded project using radio telescopes and optical telescopes to scan the stars for signals.
The idea of intelligence is explored in the concepts of computers (using bits as their basic units of information), whales (in their songs and their disruptions by human activities), DNA, the human brain (the evolution of the brain stem, frontal lobes, neurons, cerebral hemispheres, and corpus callosum under the Triune Brain Model), and man-made structures for collective intelligence (cities, libraries, books, computers, and satellites). The episode ends with speculation on alien intelligence and the information conveyed on the Voyager Golden Record.
This episode covers the nature of how life may have developed on Earth and the possibility of life on other planets. Tyson begins by explaining how the human development of writing systems enabled the transfer of information through generations, describing how Princess Enheduanna ca. 2280 BCE would be one of the first to sign her name to her works, and how Gilgamesh collected stories, including that of Utnapishtim documenting a great flood comparable to the story of Noah's Ark. Tyson explains how DNA similarly records information to propagate life, and postulates theories of how DNA originated on Earth, including evolution from a shallow tide pool, or from the ejecta of meteor collisions from other planets. In the latter case, Tyson explains how comparing the composition of the Nakhla meteorite in 1911 to results collected by the Viking program demonstrated that material from Mars could transit to Earth, and the ability of some microbes to survive the harsh conditions of space. With the motions of solar systems through the galaxy over billions of years, life could conceivably propagate from planet to planet in the same manner. Tyson then moves on to consider if life on other planets could exist. He explains how Project Diana performed in the 1960s showed that radio waves are able to travel in space, and that all of humanity's broadcast signals continue to radiate into space from our planet. Tyson notes that projects have since looked for similar signals potentially emanating from other solar systems. Tyson then explains that the development and lifespan of extraterrestrial civilizations must be considered for such detection to be realized. He notes that civilizations can be wiped out by cosmic events like supernovae, natural disasters such as the Toba disaster, or even self-destruct through war or other means, making probability estimates difficult. Tyson describes how elliptical galaxies, in which some of the oldest red dwarf stars exist, would offer the best chance of finding established civilizations. Tyson concludes that human intelligence properly applied should allow our species to avoid such disasters and enable us to migrate beyond the Earth before the Sun's eventual transformation into a red giant.
This is the story of two tiny animals coming of age. In the wild woods of North America, a young chipmunk is gathering a vital store of nuts ahead of his first winter - in his way are ruthless rivals and giant predators. In the steaming rainforest, a young tree-shrew is forced deep into the jungle to find food. She must draw on all her intelligence and agility if she is to escape the ultimate jungle predator - a reticulated python!
Is mankind alone, or are there aliens out there, either waiting to be discovered, or on their way to find Earth? Professor Brian Cox spends this episode asking such questions, and what he discovers may raise a few eyebrows. He begins by exploring the human race's efforts to find neighbours in outer space, including the launch of two golden discs containing a greeting from Earth in the 1970s; they are still travelling and are now the most distant man-made objects from the planet. Brian also meets members of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, who have been monitoring radio signals for 50 years without success, before discussing the ingredients needed to make an intelligent civilisation with astrophysicist Dr Frank Drake.
Today, China leads the world in e-commerce and is a society that bypassed credit cards. Now shops in stores are without cashiers, where the currency is facial recognition. No country has ever moved that fast. And in a short two-and-a-half years, China's A.I. implementation really went from minimal amount to probably about 17 or 18 unicorns, that is, billion-dollar companies. The progress was powered by a new generation of ambitious young techs pouring out of Chinese universities, competing with each other for new ideas, and financed by a new cadre of Chinese venture capitalists.