Monthly Archives: March 2016

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Why Learning To Code Won’t Save Your Job | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

Although I certainly believe that any member of our highly digital society should be familiar with how these platforms work, universal code literacy won’t solve our employment crisis any more than the universal ability to read and write would result in a full-employment economy of book publishing.

It’s actually worse. A single computer program written by perhaps a dozen developers can wipe out hundreds of jobs. As the author and entrepreneur Andrew Keen has pointed out, digital companies employ 10 times fe

Source: Why Learning To Code Won’t Save Your Job | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

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A Typical Day in a Blockchain-Enabled World Circa 2030 | Blockchain Futures Lab

Although there is no question that governments and central authorities will continue to exist and play a meaningful role in the world’s future, much of the current work performed by these governments and other authorities is also needlessly repetitive and mundane.

Just as robots have helped the world reduce menial physical labor, so cryptocurrency technology now gives us the tools to automate the menial labor of bureaucracy. Optimistically, the entirety of humanity will benefit as a result.

Source: A Typical Day in a Blockchain-Enabled World Circa 2030 | Blockchain Futures Lab

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Your Data Footprint Is Affecting Your Life In Ways You Can’t Even Imagine

Predictions about you (and millions of other strangers) are starting to deeply shape your life. Your career, your love life, major decisions about your health and well-being, and even if you end up in jail, are now being governed in no small part by the digital bread crumbs you’ve left behind—many of which you don’t even know you’ve dropped in the first place.

Source: Your Data Footprint Is Affecting Your Life In Ways You Can’t Even Imagine

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AlphaGo’s victory means the world is about to change

“AI methods are progressing much faster than expected, (which) makes the question of the long-term outcome more urgent,” said AI expert Stuart Russell of the University of California’s Berkeley Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences department.

“In order to ensure that increasingly powerful AI systems remain completely under human control… there is a lot of work to do,” he continued.That means that the long held fantasy of a true form of general artificial intelligence is going to be upon humanity sooner than we thought.

Source: AlphaGo’s victory means the world is about to change

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We all think robots are going to steal other people’s jobs

A majority of Americans – 65 percent – now believe that robots will “definitely” or “probably” take over much of the work we humans do within 50 years – but less than 20 percent see this transformation happening to their current job.

Despite the fact that this is already happening, many more people are worried about being pushed out because of someone else undercutting them, according to a Pew survey of 2,000 people, rather than their role simply being automated out of existence.

Source: We all think robots are going to steal other people’s jobs

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Why You Want Your Drone to Have Emotions – IEEE Spectrum

Researchers from Stanford University, led by Dr. Jessica Cauchard, have established an “emotional model space” for drones, which consists of a set of eight emotional states (personalities) that have defining characteristics that can be easily recognized by human users, and that can be accurately represented through simple actions that the drone can perform. These personalities include: brave, dopey, sleepy, grumpy, happy, sad, scared, and shy. For example, a drone with a brave personality moves quickly and smoothly, and if you ask it to go backwards, it’ll instead turn around and go forwards. A dopey drone flies a little wobbly. A grumpy drone may require you to repeat commands, while a sad drone flies low to the ground.

Source: Why You Want Your Drone to Have Emotions – IEEE Spectrum

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Uncle Sam’s boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail • The Register

Currently, a significant factor holding back renewable energy sources like solar and wind is the fact that energy storage is often inefficient and expensive. When the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing, that energy source is cut off. With better energy storage, however, the economics of the entire industry would change.

Source: Uncle Sam’s boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail • The Register

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Deep learning helps robots perfect skills | KurzweilAI

Deep learning enables the robot to perceive its immediate environment, including the location and movement of its limbs. Reinforcement learning means improving  at a task by trial and error. A robot with these two skills could refine its performance based on real-time feedback.

Applications for such a skilled robot might range from helping humans with tedious housekeeping chores to assisting in highly detailed surgery. In fact, Abbeel says, “Robots might even be able to teach other robots.” Or humans?

Source: Deep learning helps robots perfect skills | KurzweilAI

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Rats vs. computers vs. rat cyborgs in maze navigation | KurzweilAI

What would happen if we combined synthetic and biological systems, creating an intelligent cyborg rat? How would it perform?

Researchers in China decided to find out by comparing the problem-solving abilities of rats, computers, and rat-computer “cyborgs,” as they reported in an open-access PLOS ONE paper.

Source: Rats vs. computers vs. rat cyborgs in maze navigation | KurzweilAI