Muneeb Ahmed's Profile

Supposing that we cannot prevent these blueprints from eventually finding their way onto the internet (as Ratnika mentions above), is there a way that we can get the manufacturers of 3D Printers to pre-program their devices to make fully-formed guns? I guess, the makers of these devices could just easily print the parts in pieces and then self-assemble, but I imagine that may deter some people, and as we’ve seen with gun violence, small barriers to gun access significantly reduce fatal violence. So basically, I am wondering what small, incremental steps we can take – with or without groups like the NRA – to make access to 3D-printed guns more difficult.

Thank you for writing this, Shuyao!

I wonder, though, is cryptocurrenfy necessary for this system of bounties? Or, rather, can we accomplish the same thing by using digital USD? As an ordinary citizen who wants to do good for money, I am sometimes a little concerned about receiving payment in cryptocurrency. And since cryptocurrencies require resources to mine and accumulate, why not just use regular USD?

Thanks for addressing this topic.

I am a little concerned about the adverse impact that “safety” equipment can have. For example, with the use of gloves in boxing, the number of fatalities has sharply increased. Before, a human’s knuckle or wrist would break with enough impact upon a human skull. However, with the cushion of a glove, the risk to the head has increased significantly. My concern is that with ostensibly “safer” helmets, the NFL may make certain illegal helmet-to-helmet hits legal again because helmets can handle more impact. But because of this “safer” helmet, players may be more willing to take risks with their bodies and end up causing themselves even more harm.

Hey Dan, thanks for writing this!

I am concerned about the diffusion of blueprints for 3D-printed to non-military actors. If, say, a grenade launcher can be easily printed with the right blueprints and, assuming that grenades are easier to come by than grenade launchers, wouldn’t this make the possibility of non-state actors acquiring very lethal machinery much easily? What steps is the military taking to safeguard this knowledge and prevent its proliferation? If it is inevitable that non-state actors will be able to acquire the information (perhaps from rogue states), what can the military do in response to non-state actors who have easy access to advanced weaponry via 3D printing?

Thanks for writing this, Trey! I learned a lot.

My question after reading this is whether machine learning can do more than forecast when maintenance is needed. Can it, for example, toggle between renewable and non-renewable sources when the former are much more abundant because of favorable conditions (better wind conditions, higher levels of sunlight)? Perhaps my question is quite naive and electricity grids don’t actually work that way, but I am wondering if AI will take us into a world where it does more than flag things for maintenance but rather take action before humans can.

Hi! I am sorry. It appears my footnotes disappeared when I added my word count. Here they are!

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Great write-up, Casilda!

I wanted to ask – is there still a significant human element in all of this? Meaning, is the labeling portion heavily dependent on humans? I am hoping that maybe, eventually, we can move to a world where machine learning is detecting new types of fraud that humans would have never noticed in the first place. Additionally, I worried if we’re relying on humans to detect and label fraud, we’ll always be one step behind the fraudsters themselves.