A new report written by a former Pentagon official who helped establish United States policy on autonomous weapons argues that such weapons could be uncontrollable in real-world environments where they are subject to design failure as well as hacking, spoofing and manipulation by adversaries.
Category Archives: Technology
Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest, argues media theorist – Quartz
“Over the next ten years, I think we’ll see either a significant movement in that direction, or we’ll be in a bad place,” he says.
And what sort of “bad place” might we expect if Silicon Valley fails to change course?
“Basically everybody working for 16 to 20 hours a day for very little pay, doing repetitive tasks that for one reason or another, computers can’t do,” Rushkoff says. “And these will be the lucky people, because at least they’re employed.”
Source: Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest, argues media theorist – Quartz
Here’s How Electric Cars Will Cause the Next Oil Crisis
With all good technologies, there comes a time when buying the alternative no longer makes sense. Think smartphones in the past decade, color TVs in the 1970s, or even gasoline cars in the early 20th century. Predicting the timing of these shifts is difficult, but when it happens, the whole world changes.It’s looking like the 2020s will be the decade of the electric car.
Source: Here’s How Electric Cars Will Cause the Next Oil Crisis
A phony STEM shortage and the scandal of engineering visas — how American jobs get outsourced – LA Times
Evidence is ample that the very claim of a STEM shortage in the U.S. is phony. Salzman noted that “overall, our colleges and universities graduate twice the number of STEM graduates as find a job each year.” The mismatch is especially stark in the biomedical field. There, according to a 2014 paper by experts from UC San Francisco, Harvard and Princeton, “the training pipeline produces more scientists than relevant positions in academia, government, and the private sector are capable of absorbing.”
As a result, “a growing number of PhDs are in jobs that do not take advantage of the taxpayers’ investment in their lengthy education.” As we reported last year, the same high-tech corporations that poormouth their ability to find skilled workers simultaneously lay them off by the thousands.
High-tech firms in the U.S. cut nearly 80,000 employees last year, according to the job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That included 47,000 announced layoffs from Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Unisys and Microsoft. (The former CEO of the latter, Steve Ballmer, is also a co-chair of the Partnership for a New American Economy.)
The reality of the H-1B program is that it fails to serve as a conduit for the skilled and virtuous immigrant known for what Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., described as “the entrepreneurial spirit, the determination to make a go of it.”
Is zero-effort computer security a dream? – Help Net Security
In the ZEBRA system, every user is required to wear a Bluetooth-enabled bracelet, similar to a Fitbit, and the system knows who is wearing which bracelet. When the user logs into a device the first time, the system establishes a secure connection to the bracelet. While the user interacts with the device, the bracelet will send the measurements generated by the interactions over to the device. The device then uses a machine learning classifier to map those actions into a sequence of predicted interactions.
Source: Is zero-effort computer security a dream? – Help Net Security
Basic income may be needed to combat robot-induced unemployment, leading AI expert says | News | Lifestyle | The Independent
Dr Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University in Texas, believes that a basic income may be needed in the future as advances in automation and AI put human workers out of jobs.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Dr Vardi said: “Our current economic system requires people to either have wealth or to work to make a living, with the assumption that the economy creates jobs for all those who need them.”
“If this assumption breaks down – and progress in automation is likely to break it down, I believe – then we need to rethink the very basic structure of our economic system.”
Sorry, Terminator conspiracists: AI-equipped drones can now think for themselves | VentureBeat | Business | by Andrew Thomson, VentureRadar
Until recently, drone technology relied heavily on human controllers and acted as carriers for cameras and instruments which would then be monitored manually. But, in news that will strike fear into the heart of any Terminator movie conspiracists, experts are now merging drones with artificial intelligence (AI) systems with incredible results.
My firm recently carried out two technology scouting projects that had us assessing many of the players in this field. We found that drones fitted with AI technology are being used to disrupt a number of industries and undertaking a range of tasks with minimal human input.
First OS Contour Map For A Mars Region – With ExoMars 2018 Landing Ellipse In Oxia Planum Superimposed
The Ordnance Survey (national mapping agency for the UK) has just released their first map of a region on another planet. It’s a high resolution relief shaded contour map, and includes the area of Mars where ExoMars will land in 2018. Here is a close up view of it with the ESA landing ellipse in Oxia Planum superimposed.
Tissue printer creates lifelike human ear | Science | AAAS
When researchers implanted ITOP-generated bone, muscle, and cartilage into rats and mice, the printed materials developed blood supplies and internal structures resembling those of natural tissue. The researchers are currently working with the Food and Drug Administration to set up human trials, with the ultimate goal of creating replacement body parts for people who need them.
Source: Tissue printer creates lifelike human ear | Science | AAAS
Unanimous A.I. treats humans like bees to make decisions
Unanimous A.I.’s UNU platform works by assembling a group of people online, all logged into an interface where they can interact to answer a series of questions together. A researcher asks a question and a selection of potential answers are laid out in a circle onscreen.
Participants must then drag a ‘puck’ in the center of the circle towards their preferred answer. The twist is that everyone is dragging the same puck, so that a consensus on the ideal result is quickly reached.
Source: Unanimous A.I. treats humans like bees to make decisions