How swarm intelligence could save us from the dangers of AI

Image Credit: diez artwork/Shutterstock

We’ve heard a lot of talk recently about the dangers of artificial intelligence. From Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates, to Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak, luminaries around the globe have been sounding the alarm, warning that we could lose control over this powerful technology — after all, AI is about creating systems that have minds of their own. A true AI could one day adopt goals and aspirations that harm us.

But what if we could enjoy the benefits of AI while ensuring that human values and sensibilities remain an integral part of the system?

This is where something called Artificial Swarm Intelligence comes in – a method for building intelligent systems that keeps humans in the loop, merging the power of computational algorithms with the wisdom, creativity, and intuition of real people. A number of companies around the world are already exploring swarms.

• There’s Enswarm, a UK startup that is using swarm technologies to assist with recruitment and employment decisions. 
• There’s Swarm.fund, a startup using swarming and crypto-currencies like Bitcoin as a new model for fundraising. 
• And the human swarming company I founded, Unanimous A.I., creates a unified intellect from any group of networked users.

This swarm intelligence technology may sound like science fiction, but it has its roots in nature.

It all goes back to the birds and the bees – fish and ants too. Across countless species, social groups have developed methods of amplifying their intelligence by working together in closed-loop systems. Known commonly as flocks, schools, colonies, and swarms, these natural systems enable groups to combine their insights and thereby outperform individual members when solving problems and making decisions. Scientists call this “Swarm Intelligence” and it supports the old adage that many minds are better than one.

But what about us humans?
Clearly, we lack the natural ability to form closed-loop swarms, but like many other skills we can’t do naturally, emerging technologies are filling a void. Leveraging our vast networking infrastructure, new software techniques are allowing online groups to form artificial swarms that can work in synchrony to answer questions, reach decisions, and make predictions, all while exhibiting the same types of intelligence amplifications as seen in nature. The approach is sometimes called “blended intelligence” because it combines the hardware and software technologies used by AI systems with populations of real people, creating human-machine systems that have the potential of outsmarting both humans and pure-software AIs alike.

It should be noted that “swarming” is different from traditional “crowdsourcing,” which generally uses votes, polls, or surveys to aggregate opinions. While such methods are valuable for characterizing populations, they don’t employ the real-time feedback loops used by artificial swarms to enable a unique intelligent system to emerge. It’s the difference between measuring what the average member of a group thinks versus allowing that group to think together and draw conclusions based upon their combined knowledge and intuition.

Outside of the companies I mentioned above, where else can such collective technologies be applied? One area that’s currently being explored is medical diagnosis, a process that requires deep factual knowledge along with the experiential wisdom of the practitioner. Can we merge the knowledge and wisdom of many doctors into a single emergent diagnosis that outperforms the diagnosis of a single practitioner? The answer appears to be yes. In a recent study conducted by Humboldt-University of Berlin and RAND Corporation, a computational collective of radiologists outperformed single practitioners when viewing mammograms, reducing false positives and false negatives. In a separate study conducted by John Carroll University and the Cleveland Clinic, a collective of 12 radiologists diagnosed skeletal abnormalities. As a computational collective, the radiologists produced a significantly higher rate of correct diagnosis than any single practitioner in the group. Of course, the potential of artificially merging many minds into a single unified intelligence extends beyond medical diagnosis to any field where we aim to exceed natural human abilities when making decisions, generating predictions, and solving problems.

Now, back to the original question of why Artificial Swarm Intelligence is a safer form of AI.
Although heavily reliant on hardware and software, swarming keeps human sensibilities and moralities as an integral part of the processes. As a result, this “human-in-the-loop” approach to AI combines the benefits of computational infrastructure and software efficiencies with the unique values that each person brings to the table:

• creativity, 
• empathy, 
• morality, and 
• justice. 

And because swarm-based intelligence is rooted in human input, the resulting intelligence is far more likely to be aligned with humanity – not just with our values and morals, but also with our goals and objectives.

How smart can an Artificial Swarm Intelligence get?
That’s still an open question, but with the potential to engage millions, even billions of people around the globe, each brimming with unique ideas and insights, swarm intelligence may be society’s best hope for staying one step ahead of the pure machine intelligences that emerge from busy AI labs around the world.

Louis Rosenberg is CEO of swarm intelligence company Unanimous A.I. He did his doctoral work at Stanford University in robotics, virtual reality, and human-computer interaction. He previously developed the first immersive augmented reality system as a researcher for the U.S. Air Force in the early 1990s and founded the VR company Immersion Corp and the 3D digitizer company Microscribe.

ORIGINAL: VentureBeat

LOUIS ROSENBERG, UNANIMOUS A.I. 

NOVEMBER 22, 2015

Going Bananas? The threat of Panama disease, an interview with prof. Ivan Buddenhagen

The serious threats facing the world’s favourite fruit

Learn how we can save the banana... And why that is so important. 

When was the last time you ate a banana? Have you ever considered what it might be like if the famous musical hit 'Yes, we have no bananas' was to become a reality?

Such a scenario is not as unlikely as it may seem as the future of the world’s favourite fruit is under serious threat. And not for the first time...

In the first half of the 20th century, our parents and grandparents ate a delicious banana called Gros Michel, or Big Mike in colloquial terms. But in the 1950s a deadly strain of Panama disease wiped out almost all banana plantations in Central and South America. Despite the best efforts of growers, this most flavourful of fruits became virtually extinct.

In the second half of the 1900s banana producers across the world switched to a different cultivar, the so-called the Cavendish. Although less tasty than Gros Michel, Cavendish was resistant to the type of Fusarium that was causing Panama disease.

As a result, following enormous investments in infrastructural changes required to accommodate the Cavendish’s different growing and ripening needs, the banana industry was saved.

But not for ever… in the 1990s a new strain of the Fusarium fungus appeared and began to spread. Originating in Taiwan, it soon reached other South East Asian countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines – and even northern Australia. Thousands of hectares of Cavendish have already been destroyed and many will follow if we are unable to stop Panama disease.

On the 18th of November we interviewed Prof. Ivan Buddenhagen about Panama disease.

More info about Panama disease is availlable on: www.panamadisease.org

ORIGINAL: PanamaDisease.org

What will happen when the internet of things becomes artificially intelligent?

From Stephen Hawking to Spike Jonze, the existential threat posed by the onset of the ‘conscious web’ is fuelling much debate – but should we be afraid?

Who’s afraid of artificial intelligence? Quite a few notable figures, it turns out. Photograph: Alamy

When Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all agree on something, it’s worth paying attention.

All three have warned of the potential dangers that artificial intelligence or AI can bring. The world’s foremost physicist, Hawking said that the full development of artificial intelligence (AI) could “spell the end of the human race”. Musk, the tech entrepreneur who brought us PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX described artificial intelligence as our “biggest existential threat” and said that playing around with AI was like “summoning the demon”. Gates, who knows a thing or two about tech, puts himself in the “concerned” camp when it comes to machines becoming too intelligent for us humans to control.

What are these wise souls afraid of? AI is broadly described as the ability of computer systems to ape or mimic human intelligent behavior. This could be anything from recognizing speech, to visual perception, making decisions and translating languages. Examples run from Deep Blue who beat chess champion Garry Kasparov to supercomputer Watson who outguessed the world’s best Jeopardy player. Fictionally, we have Her, Spike Jonze’s movie that depicts the protagonist, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falling in love with his operating system, seductively voiced by Scarlet Johansson. And coming soon, Chappie stars a stolen police robot who is reprogrammed to make conscious choices and to feel emotions.

An important component of AI, and a key element in the fears it engenders, is the ability of machines to take action on their own without human intervention. This could take the form of a computer reprogramming itself in the face of an obstacle or restriction. In other words, to think for itself and to take action accordingly.

Needless to say, there are those in the tech world who have a more sanguine view of AI and what it could bring. Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine, does not see the future inhabited by HAL’s – the homicidal computer on board the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kelly sees a more prosaic world that looks more like Amazon Web Services: a cheap, smart, utility which is also exceedingly boring simply because it will run in the background of our lives. He says AI will enliven inert objects in the way that electricity did over 100 years ago. “Everything that we formerly electrified, we will now cognitize.” And he sees the business plans of the next 10,000 startups as easy to predict: “Take X and add AI.”

While he acknowledges the concerns about artificial intelligence, Kelly writes: “As AI develops, we might have to engineer ways to prevent consciousness in them – our most premium AI services will be advertised as consciousness-free.” (my emphasis).

Running parallel to the extraordinary advances in the field of AI is the even bigger development of what is loosely called, the internet of things (IoT). This can be broadly described as the emergence of countless objects, animals and even people with uniquely identifiable, embedded devices that are wirelessly connected to the internet. These ‘nodes’ can send or receive information without the need for human intervention. There are estimates that there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020. Current examples of these smart devices include Nest thermostats, wifi-enabled washing machines and the increasingly connected cars with their built-in sensors that can avoid accidents and even park for you.

The US Federal Trade Commission is sufficiently concerned about the security and privacy implications of the Internet of Things, and has conducted a public workshop and released a report urging companies to adopt best practices and “bake in” procedures to minimise data collection and to ensure consumer trust in the new networked environment.

Tim O’Reilly, coiner of the phrase “Web 2.0” sees the internet of things as the most important online development yet. He thinks the name is misleading – that IoT is “really about human augmentation”. O’Reilly believes that we should “expect our devices to anticipate us in all sorts of ways”. He uses the “intelligent personal assistant”, Google Now, to make his point.

So what happens when these millions of embedded devices connect to artificially intelligent machines? What does AI + IoT = ? Will it mean the end of civilisation as we know it? Will our self-programming computers send out hostile orders to the chips we’ve added to our everyday objects? Or is this just another disruptive moment, similar to the harnessing of steam or the splitting of the atom? An important step in our own evolution as a species, but nothing to be too concerned about?

The answer may lie in some new thinking about consciousness. As a concept, as well as an experience, consciousness has proved remarkably hard to pin down. We all know that we have it (or at least we think we do), but scientists are unable to prove that we have it or, indeed, exactly what it is and how it arises.

Dictionaries describe consciousness as the state of being awake and aware of our own existence. It is an “internal knowledge” characterized by sensation, emotions and thought.

Just over 20 years ago, an obscure Australian philosopher named David Chalmers created controversy in philosophical circles by raising what became known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness. He asked how the grey matter inside our heads gave rise to the mysterious experience of being. What makes us different to, say, a very efficient robot, one with, perhaps, artificial intelligence? And are we humans the only ones with consciousness?

• Some scientists propose that consciousness is an illusion, a trick of the brain. 
• Still others believe we will never solve the consciousness riddle. 
• But a few neuroscientists think we may finally figure it out, provided we accept the remarkable idea that soon computers or the internet might one day become conscious.

In an extensive Guardian article, the author Oliver Burkeman wrote how Chalmers and others put forth a notion that all things in the universe might be (or potentially be) conscious, “providing the information it contains is sufficiently interconnected and organized.” So could an iPhone or a thermostat be conscious? And, if so, could we in the midst of a ‘Conscious Web’?

Back in the mid-1990s, the author Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg wrote an influential piece for Wired, A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain. In it she described the work of a little known Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Teilhard de Chardin, who 50 years earlier described a global sphere of thought, the “living unity of a single tissue” containing our collective thoughts, experiences and consciousness.

Teilhard called it the “nooshphere” (noo is Greek for mind). He saw it as the evolutionary step beyond our geosphere (physical world) and biosphere (biological world). The informational wiring of a being, whether it is made up of neurons or electronics, gives birth to consciousness. As the diversification of nervous connections increase, de Chardin argued, evolution is led towards greater consciousness. Or as John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead lyricist, cyber advocate and Teilhard de Chardin fan said: “With cyberspace, we are, in effect, hard-wiring the collective consciousness.”

So, perhaps we shouldn’t be so alarmed. Maybe we are on the cusp of a breakthrough not just in the field of artificial intelligence and the emerging internet of things, but also in our understanding of consciousness itself. If we can resolve the privacy, security and trust issues that both AI and the IoT present, we might make an evolutionary leap of historic proportions. And it’s just possible Teilhard’s remarkable vision of an interconnected “thinking layer” is what the web has been all along.

• Stephen Balkam is CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute in the US

ORIGINAL: The Guardian

Stephen Balkam

Friday 20 February 2015

James Cameron on Earth's Deepest Spot: Desolate, Lunar-Like

ORIGINAL: DeepSea Challenge

Deepest Solo Dive Makes History! (Updated)

ORIGINAL: Deepsea Challenge, Paul Allen
MARCH 25, 2012

The explorer-filmmaker emerges from his sub after returning from Challenger Deep.
Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

Foto: PaulGAllen Paul Allen. #Deepseachallenge surfacing

Foto PaulGAllen Paul Allen. #DeepSeaChallenge sub comes out of the water picture  

At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

National Geographic and Rolex congratulate James Cameron and the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE team on a successful and historic expedition to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.


With this achievement, Cameron becomes the first person to make a solo dive to the deepest place on Earth. The endeavor was one of scientific discovery in a new age of exploration, and its success will give us a better understanding of this least explored environment and the secrets and lessons it holds.

Breaking: James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive

Ker Than

for National Geographic News

Published 10:02 p.m. ET, March 25, 2012

After a faster-than-expected 70-minute ascent, James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub exploded up through the surface of the western Pacific minutes ago, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

Before surfacing about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Guam—where an expedition ship's crane plucked his sub from the sea—Cameron spent hours hovering over Challenger Deep's desert-like seafloor and gliding along its cliff walls, the whole time collecting samples and video.

Among the 2.5-story-tall DEEPSEA CHALLENGER sub's tools are a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a "slurp gun" for sucking up small sea creatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. (See pictures of Cameron's sub.)

Cameron—best known for creating fictional worlds on film (Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss)—is expected to announce his initial findings later today. After analysis, full results are to be published in a future edition of National Geographic magazine.

(Video: Cameron Dive Is an Exploration First.)

Science in Three Dimensions

Throughout the Mariana Trench dive, 3-D video cameras were kept whirring, and not just for the benefit of future audiences of planned documentaries.

"There is scientific value in getting stereo images because ... you can determine the scale and distance of objects from stereo pairs that you can't from 2-D images," Cameron told National Geographic News before the dive.

But "it's not just the video. The sub's lighting of deepwater scenes—mainly by an 8-foot (2.5-meter) tower of LEDs—is "so, so beautiful," said Doug Bartlett, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

"It's unlike anything that you'll have seen from other subs or other remotely operated vehicles," said Bartlett, chief scientist for the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

(Read more about DEEPSEA CHALLENGE science.)

Medical, Psychological Rigors

As the 57-year-old explorer emerged from the sub's coffin—tight 43-inch-wide (109-centimeter-wide) cockpit, a medical team stood at the ready.

But if recent test dives—including one to more than five miles (eight kilometers meters) down—are any indication, Cameron should be physically fine, despite having been unable to extend his arms and legs for hours, expedition physician Joe MacInnis told National Geographic News before the dive.

"Jim is going to be a little bit stiff and sore from the cramped position, but he's in really good shape for his age, so I don't expect any problems at all," said MacInnis, a long-time Cameron friend.

In addition, the sub's "pilot sphere" has a handlebar, which Cameron could use to pull himself occasionally up during the dive. "Usually, shifting position is all that's required to buy yourself another few hours," he said.

(Video: how sub sphere protects Cameron.)

Because Cameron had prepared extensively for the dive, he should be psychologically fine as well, said Walter Sipes, an aeronautics psychologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"He's got prior experience doing this, not just in the simulator but also training dives ... and he's an adventurer, so I really don't think they'll have any issues to worry about," said Sipes, who is not part of the expedition.

Still, if Cameron plans to conduct more dives—which the team has indicated he will—Sipes recommends he get plenty of rest in-between or risk mental fatigue.

"When you start to get fatigued, you start making mistakes," he added. "And since he's down there solo, he can't afford that. He's a [potential] single-point failure."

It should be at least a few weeks before any further DEEPSEA CHALLENGE dives, as the director's next breakneck mission will take him from the middle of the Pacific to London, where he's due at a premiere of his Titanic 3-D Wednesday.

(Animation: Cameron's Mariana Trench dive compressed into one minute.)

"A Turning Point"

By returning humans to the so-called hadal zone—the ocean's deepest level, below 20,000 feet (6,000 meters)—the Challenger Deep expedition may represent a renaissance in deep-sea exploration.

While remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, are much less expensive than manned subs, "the critical thing is to be able to take the human mind down into that environment," expedition member Patricia Fryer said, "to be able to turn your head and look around to see what the relationships are between organisms in a community and to see how they're behaving—to turn off all the lights and just sit there and watch and not frighten the animals, so that they behave normally.

"That is almost impossible to do with an ROV," said Fryer, a marine geologist at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics & Planetology.

Andy Bowen, project manager and principal developer of the Nereus, an ROV that explored Challenger Deep in 2009, said a manned mission also has the potential to inspire public imagination in a way a robot can't.

"It's difficult to anthropomorphize machines in a way that engages everyone's imagination—not in the same way that having boots on the ground, so to speak, can do," said Bowen, who's not an expedition member.

Biological oceanographer Lisa Levin, also at Scripps, said that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE program's potential for generating public interest in deep-ocean science is as important as any new species Cameron might have discovered.

"I consider Cameron to be doing for the trenches what Jacques Cousteau did for the ocean many decades ago," said Levin, who's part of the team but did not participate in the seagoing expedition.

At a time of fast-shrinking funds for undersea research, "what scientists need is the public support to be able to continue exploration and research of the deep ocean," Levin said.

(Video: Cameron Dive First Attempt in Over 50 Years.)

For his part, Cameron seems sure that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER will be exploring the depths for a long time to come. In fact, he's so confident in his star vehicle, he started mulling sequels even before today's trench dive.

Phase two might include adding a thin fiber-optic tether to the ship, which "would allow science observers at the surface to see the images in real time," said Cameron, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence.

"And phase three might be taking this vehicle and creating a second-generation vehicle."

DEEPSEA CHALLENGE, then, may be anything but a one-hit wonder. To expedition chief scientistBartlett, the Mariana Trench dive could "represent a turning point in how we approach ocean science.

"I absolutely think that what you're seeing is the start of a program, not just one grand expedition."

Rachael Jackson of National Geographic Channels International contributed reporting to this story.

.@JimCameron has surfaced! Congrats to him on his historic solo dive to the ocean's deepest point #deepseachallenge

ORIGINAL: DeepSea Challenge

.@JimCameron has surfaced! Congrats to him on his historic solo dive to the ocean's deepest point#deepseachallenge

#deepseachallenge sub started return to the surface after a successfull dive welcome back to sea level soon!

ORIGINAL: @PaulGAllen

(Paul Allen, was original founder of MS, it's involved in the DeepSea Challenge Project)

#deepseachallenge sub started return to the surface after a successfull dive welcome back to sea level soon! (Exploration time was about 3 hours)

#DeepseaChallenge Pressure at bottom is 16,285 Pounds per square inch at that depth. Design pressure was 16,500 ...Yikes/Amazing!

EXPEDITION RISKS AND DANGERS 

Original: DeepSea Challenge

“Worry is a good thing when you’re an explorer. It’s when you’re cavalier, when you take risk for granted, that’s when you’re gonna get bit.” —James Cameron

Exploration is inherently dangerous. The DEEPSEA CHALLENGE team is cognizant of the risk of traveling to the ocean’s deepest point and does everything possible to mitigate the many hazards. Under the leadership of James Cameron and Ron Allum, each and every member of the team is encouraged, even required, to be explicit about the risks that are simply part of their work. The expedition philosophy follows the thinking that the only way to protect against risk is by anticipating, understanding, and addressing it outright. There is a great deal to be gained if DEEPSEA CHALLENGE is successful, but all members of the expedition acknowledge that lives are at stake and that, as Cameron himself has written, “there are a lot of ways to die.”

Cameron outlines some of these ways, in his own words, below.

IMPLOSION

The obvious one. You’ve miscalculated the design of your sphere. As you approach the bottom, with barely a warning groan, the sphere buckles suddenly. Faster than you can scream, you’re smashed into jam.

PENETRATOR FAILURE

There’s a dead short someplace and one of the pins in your electrical penetrator—the device that feeds power and control signals through the sphere wall—melts, causing the penetrator to fail. The water jet erodes the interior of the penetrator, allowing seawater to blast inside, at 16,000 psi.

FREEZING

If you get stuck on the bottom your weights don’t drop, and it’s a race between your life support running out and freezing to death. But you’ve got 60 hours of scrubber and O2, so freezing wins. Because the water outside is just above 0°C … icewater.

FIRE

Electrical fires can break out among all of the sub’s gadgets, and with O2 pumping into the pilot sphere, fires can grow quickly. Although a fire extinguisher is stored in the sphere, it may not be enough to extinguish a sizable fire.

VIEWPORT FAILURE

You’re looking out the viewport when suddenly you see cracks developing. The cracks quickly web throughout the thick volume of the acrylic, and it starts to give way. Then BANG! The cork pops and the sea hammers in like a supersonic piston.

ADRIFT

Only one ascent weight drops instead of both. So you ascend close to the surface but not all the way. Over the next ten hours a two-knot midwater current takes you 20 miles away, and the surface crew has no idea where you are, because you’re not at the surface.

Three Unexpected Dangers of Deep-Ocean Exploration

The “behind the scenes” information posted on the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE website provides incredible insight into the types of challenges—and logistics—that go into planning and executing an expedition of this size and scope. There are surprises everywhere—things one might never have thought to consider on their own and the planning for which there are few, if any, precedents. The work of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE is an exercise for mystery- and puzzle-loving minds. Three expedition risks that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE team has anticipated and addressed that might take nondivers by surprise are listed below.

HYDROTHERMAL VENT-INDUCED MELTDOWN

As first reported in expedition blogger Dr. Joe MacInnis’s March 18 entry, several of the expedition’s members, including the legendary Captain Don Walsh, one of two people ever to have been to the Challenger Deep prior to this expedition, discussed the risks of “flying a research sub too close to a hydrothermal vent,” where they “casually mention[ed]” that the water temperature approached 700 degrees and would melt a sub’s viewport.

SEAFLOOR COMMUNICATIONS CABLE ENTANGLEMENT

Submarine communications cables are cables that traverse the seafloor between land-based stations to extend telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean. Were the sub to become entangled in these cables, it might prevent it from returning to the surface.

HYPOTHERMIA AND HYPERTHERMIA

The DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible is a state-of-the-art vehicle—but it is not equipped with a thermostat that can adjust internal temperatures for comfort. The temperature range for a dive borders on the extreme. As the National Geographic expedition website reports, “the temperature will drop from sauna-like at the surface to meat-locker cold at the bottom.” Cameron will dive wearing many layers but the risk of overheating or freezing is significant. In a personal communication to his team, Cameron described a recent experience with heatstroke-like symptoms as he waited inside the sub’s unventilated pilot sphere to be launched into the ocean:

“Hyperthermia early in the dive (and throughout shallow test dives) is a hazard in this vehicle, at least as much as hypothermia late in a deep dive. I found my mental performance slipping after two hours at 102 degrees/100% humidity [while piloting the sub for a test dive]. It doesn’t sound that hot but with zero evaporative cooling available in such a tiny airspace, I’m sure my core temp was going up to match air temp. I got sub internal temp back down to 97 degrees. But by then I was trashed, and had lost several pounds in water.”