Tesla’s New Gigafactory Is Entirely ‘Off-Grid’ And Powered By 100% Renewable Energy

Elon Musk, CEO and product architect of the company Tesla Motors, is an entrepreneur not only interested in making money, but also advancing solutions to humanity’s pressing problems. Musk is unabashed in his commitment to help transition our energy paradigm from toxic fossil fuels into clean, renewable energy.

Besides producing state-of-the-art electric cars which will be ready for the renewable future, Tesla has innovated something called the Powerwall. This home battery system is charged using electricity generated from solar panels, which has helped to open the floodgates to residential solar power generation.

Tesla’s next technological marvel is currently being built in Nevada, called the Gigafactory. It is so-named because it will ultimately manufacture 35 gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion batteries—more than the number produced worldwide in 2013. As full capacity is reached in 2020, Tesla intends to drive down the cost of their battery pack by more than 30 percent.

“Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transportation. To achieve that goal, we must produce electric vehicles in sufficient volume to force change in the automobile industry. With a planned production rate of 500,000 cars per year in the latter half of this decade, Tesla alone will require today’s entire worldwide production of lithium ion batteries. The Tesla Gigafactory was born of necessity and will supply enough batteries to support our projected vehicle demand.”

In true visionary form, Tesla Motors announced that it will power the Gigafactory with 100% renewable energy, through a combination of sources such as solar panels covering the entire rooftop and wind turbines on a nearby slope. It will essentially be off-grid.

The Gigafactory’s forward-thinking design will make it a net-zero facility, which Tesla Chief Technical Officer JB Straube expanded upon in a recent talk.

“The other interesting thing is we wanted to manage the emissions from the Gigafactory. Solar power can do some of that, but we took kind of a radical move in the beginning and said we are not going to burn any fossil fuels in the factory. You know, zero emissions. We are going to build a zero-emissions factory — just like the car. So, instead of kind of fighting this battle in hindsight, we just said we are not even going to have a natural gas pipeline coming to the factory, so we didn’t even build it. And it kind of forced the issue. When you don’t have natural gas, you know, none of the engineers can say, “Oh, but it will be more efficient, let me use just a little bit.” Sorry, we don’t even have it.

So it’s kind of been a fun activity and just, a lot of challenges that come up. But in every single step of the process, we have been able to reinvent and come up with solutions. There’s a heat pump technology that actually ends up way more efficient than just burning natural gas for steam. And then, we have a facility that has basically no emissions. The only emissions are related to the vehicles that might go there that aren’t electric or things like that. But we’ll try to attack that one piece at a time.”

Elon Musk and his team at Tesla Motors are proving that success can be achieved through responsible means. The transition to renewable energy is inevitable, and they realize that the sooner it happens, the more we can avoid damage to environmental and human health.

The Free Thought Project reported in November that within 25 years, humanity will undergo its greatest energy shift since the industrial revolution. This is being achieved through market forces, and Tesla Motors is helping to drive that market. In turn, they will justifiably profit from being on the forefront.

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By Justin Gardner via Free Thought Project

Elon Musk Forms New AI Company To Save Robotics From The Military Industrial Complex

This week, inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk announced the formation of OpenAI, which he promises will be “a non-profit artificial intelligence research company,” with the goal to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

In a press release this week the company said that “Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact. We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as is possible safely. The outcome of this venture is uncertain and the work is difficult, but we believe the goal and the structure are right. We hope this is what matters most to the best in the field.”

The release concluded that “It’s hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it’s equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly.”

Musk and a number of other notable thinkers have been making dire warnings about the dangerous potential of artificial intelligence.

Earlier this year, Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google executive Demis Hassabis, professor Stephen Hawking and over 1,000 other artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter warning the world about the dangers of weaponized robots and a “military artificial intelligence arms race” currently taking place between the world’s military powers.

According to the letter, “AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms. The endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting.”

In a recent interview, Musk talked about the need for a more free society, and even admitted that he was friendly to the ideas of anarchism.

He also built an alternative school for his children and went on to describe the process of “unschooling” that his children are involved with. Musk is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity. He is also the founder of SpaceX and a co-founder of PayPal.

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John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can purchase his books, or get your own book published at his website www.JohnVibes.com.

Stephen Hawking and 1,000 Experts Sign Letter Warning To Stop Autonomous Weaponized Robots

What do Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniac have in common? They all think that artificially intelligent weaponized robots could wreak havoc on Earth.

(ANTIMEDIA) Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google executive Demis Hassabis, and professor Stephen Hawking are among over 1,000 artificial intelligence experts who have recently signed an open letter warning the world about the dangers of weaponized robots and a “military artificial intelligence arms race” currently taking place between the world’s military powers.

According to the letter, “AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”

“The endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting,”the letter continues.

The current military technology available to the world’s governments is already a massive danger to the planet and everyone that lives here, and it is obvious, as the letter states, that the addition of artificial intelligence could make the global arms race significantly more threatening.

Many people have a hard time grasping how close this scenario is to becoming a reality, but the industry’s leading experts, who have a deep knowledge and understanding of the technology and how it is developing, can see the danger represented by military applications of artificial intelligence.

How this situation can actually be handled is extremely complicated because there is actually no ability for the general population of any country to ensure that their governments don’t develop military artificial intelligence.

According to the Guardian, Toby Walsh, professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, has suggested that the United Nations oversee a ban of these weapons, however a ban of this nature would only ensure that the countries in control of the UN and NATO would have exclusive access to weaponized AI. This is similar to the way the United Nations currently bans nuclear weapons while allowing larger NATO nations to continue developing them.

The solution to this problem will not be enacted by any of the governments or government-affiliated agencies that will benefit from the development of military AI, but a letter from over 1,000 of the industries leading experts is a start towards actually finding a real ground-up solution.

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This article (Stephen Hawking and 1,000 Experts Sign Letter Warning Of Weaponized Robots) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: BagoGames. Help us fix our typos:edits@theantimedia.org. By John Vibes

More info on the production of these killer robots now: They call them "LAWS"

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=33401

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