 | This article may relate to a different subject or has undue weight on an aspect of the subject.(September 2022) |
A hellscape is a harsh environment, an unpleasant place, or a scene thought to resemble hell. [1] A depiction of hell in a work of art is called a hellscape. [2]
The earliest known use of the term in print was in 1894. [2]
Writers have sometimes described wartime environments as hellscapes, [3] and after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities were defined as such by its survivors. [4] Writers have also used hellscape to describe the scene of a natural disaster such as a drought, plague, flood, or wildfire. [5] [6] [7] [8] Projections of the consequences of global warming have been described by journalists as hellscapes. [9] [10] [11]
The usage of recreational drugs such as heroin has been described by its users as creating hellscapes. [12] [13]
In the tech press, journalists have defined Internet disinformation as a hellscape. [14] Some have speculated the replacing of human labor with intelligent robots could lead to a future hellscape, [15] as well as child sex dolls. [16]
Vox wrote that postmodern philosophers have predicted a post-truth hellscape. [17]
In October 2022, after purchasing Twitter, Elon Musk stated that it couldn't become "a free-for-all hellscape". [18]
The United States Department of Defense has a significant drone program called “Replicator” to counter China’s military mass and capabilities. This program aims to create many thousands of low-cost, highly autonomous drones for deployment by the United States Indo-Pacific Command in the Indo-Pacific theater by 2025. “Hellscape” refers not to the program itself but to the complex and intensely contested battlespace environment that these drones are intended to navigate and dominate. The strategic intent is to enable U.S. forces to quickly identify and engage up to 1,000 targets within 24 hours using a network of land, air, and sea drones. These drones are designed to enhance the U.S.‘s operational flexibility and deter potential Chinese military actions, particularly regarding Taiwan’s security against a Chinese invasion force. [19]
In movies, depictions of hellscapes are common.[ citation needed ]
Apocalypse Now depicts earthly hellscapes, during war. [20] Other notable examples in cinema include Blade Runner 2049, [21] Alien, [22] Mad Max: Fury Road , [23] as well as all of the Mad Max series.
Hieronymus Bosch's The Last Judgement depicts a religious hellscape. [24] Other examples are Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych , and Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Dull Gret . [25]
Dante Alighieri's Inferno is one of the best-known examples of a hellscape. The Great Gatsby depicts the "Valley of the Ashes" as a hellscape. [26]
A number of video games depict hellscapes, [27] [28] including Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice . [29]
Military robots are autonomous robots or remote-controlled mobile robots designed for military applications, from transport to search & rescue and attack.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American space technology company. Since its founding in 2001, the company has made great advancement in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicle, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology. By the late 2010s, SpaceX became the world's dominant space launch provider, rivaling the Chinese space program's launch cadance and eclipsed all of its competitors. SpaceX, NASA and United States Armed Forces have a symbiotic relationship, bounded together by governmental contracts.
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman and investor known for his key roles in the space company SpaceX and the automotive company Tesla, Inc. Other involvements include ownership of X Corp., the company that operates the social media platform X, and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. He is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world; as of August 2024 Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$247 billion.
Tesla, Inc. is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar shingles, and related products and services.
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most successful VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of development, SpaceX utilised the VTVL concept for its flagship Falcon 9 first stage, which has delivered over three hundred successful powered landings so far.
Mary Louise "Missy" Cummings is an American academic who is a professor at Duke University and director of Duke's Humans and Autonomy Laboratory. She was one of the United States Navy's first female fighter pilots. In November 2021, Dr. Cummings joined the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). She currently teaches at George Mason University.
Lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) are a type of autonomous military system that can independently search for and engage targets based on programmed constraints and descriptions. LAWs are also known as lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), autonomous weapon systems (AWS), robotic weapons or killer robots. LAWs may operate in the air, on land, on water, underwater, or in space. The autonomy of systems as of 2018 was restricted in the sense that a human gives the final command to attack—though there are exceptions with certain "defensive" systems.
Drone warfare is a form of warfare using robots. Robot types include: unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned surface vehicles, and ground based drones. The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Iraq, Italy, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland are known to have manufactured operational UCAVs as of 2019.
SpaceX Mars colonization program is a planned objective of the company SpaceX and particularly of its founder Elon Musk to colonize Mars. The main element of this ambition is the plan to establish a self-sustained large scale settlement and colony on Mars, claiming self-determination under direct democracy. The main motivation behind this is the belief that the colonization of Mars allows humanity to become multiplanetary and therefore secures the long-term survival of the human species in case of Earth being rid of human life.
SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd. or Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies Ltd. or DJI is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, backed by several state-owned entities. DJI manufactures commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for aerial photography and videography. It also designs and manufactures camera systems, gimbal stabilizers, propulsion systems, enterprise software, aerial agriculture equipment, and flight control systems.
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit organization which aims to steer transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from large-scale risks, with a focus on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI). FLI's work includes grantmaking, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, United States government, and European Union institutions.
An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is a modified ocean-going barge equipped with propulsion systems to maintain precise position and a large landing platform. SpaceX developed these vessels to recover the first stage of its launch vehicles. By recovering and reusing these boosters, SpaceX has significantly reduced the cost of space launch.
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a coalition of non-governmental organizations who seek to pre-emptively ban lethal autonomous weapons.
Existential risk from artificial intelligence refers to the idea that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could lead to human extinction or an irreversible global catastrophe.
Neuralink Corp. is an American neurotechnology company that has developed, as of 2024, implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). It was founded by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers. Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017. The company is based in Fremont, California with plans to build a three-story building with office and manufacturing space near Austin, Texas in Del Valle, located about 10 miles east of Tesla's headquarters and manufacturing plant that opened in 2022.
A military artificial intelligence arms race is an arms race between two or more states to develop and deploy lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). Since the mid-2010s, many analysts have noted the emergence of such an arms race between superpowers for better military AI, driven by increasing geopolitical and military tensions.
Hack Club is a global nonprofit network of high school computer hackers, makers and coders founded in 2014 by Zach Latta. It now includes more than 500 high school clubs and 36,000 students. It has been featured on the TODAY Show, and profiled in the Wall Street Journal and many other publications.
Elon Musk is the CEO or owner of multiple companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X Corp, and has expressed many views on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from politics to science.
Optimus, also known as Tesla Bot, is a general-purpose robotic humanoid under development by Tesla, Inc. It was announced at the company's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Day event on August 19, 2021, and a prototype was shown in 2022. CEO Elon Musk stated in 2022 that he thinks Optimus "has the potential to be more significant than [Tesla's] vehicle business over time." Media and expert opinions based on corporate showcases have been mixed.
In February 2022, two days after Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine requested American aerospace company SpaceX to activate their Starlink satellite internet service in the country to replace internet and communication networks degraded or destroyed during the war. Starlink has since been used by Ukrainian civilians, government and military. The satellite service has served for humanitarian purposes, as well as defense and attacks on Russian positions.
