Advances in Artificial Intelligence Could Lead to Mass Unemployment Warn Experts Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Dr Stuart Armstrong from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford said that there was a risk that computers could take over human jobs “at a faster rate than new jobs could be generated.” “We have some studies looking at to which jobs are the most vulnerable and there are quite a lot of them in logistics, administration, insurance underwriting,” said Dr Armstrong. “Ultimately, huge swathe of jobs are potentially vulnerable to improved artificial intelligence.” Dr Murray Shanahan, a professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London, agreed that improvements in artificial intelligence were creating “short term issues that we all need to be talking about.” "It's very difficult to predict," said Dr Shanahan. Both academics did however praise Google for creating an ethics board to look at the “how to deploy artificial intelligence safely and reduce the risks” after its £400 million purchase of London-based start-up DeepMind.
Aid in reverse: How poor countries develop rich countries | /The Rules The idea of international development aid lies at the heart of a tremendously successful PR campaign. The narrative we have been sold claims that aid has been effective at reducing global poverty. Here I will argue that there are three problems with this narrative. First, poverty is not disappearing, despite what we have been told to believe. False accounting The narrative that poverty rates are declining and that extreme poverty will soon be eradicated has a tremendous amount of institutional backing; it is supported by the world’s most powerful governments and promoted through the United Nations Millennium Campaign. It was 1996, at a summit in Rome, when governments first pledged to use aid to halve the number of the world’s poor by 2015. After the UN General Assembly adopted MDG-1, the goal was diluted two more times. All of this raises questions about why world governments would be so eager to instil false confidence in a misleading poverty-reduction narrative.
Study indicates Robots could replace 80% of Jobs In a few decades, twenty or thirty years — or sooner – robots and their associated technology will be as ubiquitous as mobile phones are today, at least that is the prediction of Bill Gates; and we would be hard-pressed to find a roboticist, automation expert or economist who could present a strong case against this. The Robotics Revolution promises a host of benefits that are compelling (especially in health care) and imaginative, but it may also come at a significant price. The Pareto Principle of Prediction We find ourselves faced with an intractable paradox: On the one hand technology advances increase productivity and wellbeing, and on the other hand it often reinforces inequalities. In his study Elliot relies on advances in speech, reasoning capabilities and movement capabilities to illustrate how robots and technology can replace jobs. Elliot is not the first to claim that robotics and technology will have such a profound impact on employment or inequality. Thinking machines
Psychopaths in Power and the Imminent Collapse of Global Society (It's all your fault!) I can't really comment in any informed way on societies in the East, except to point to the Chinese slave workers who produce mountains of plastic crap for Western nations to use and then dump in the ground and oceans; the Middle East's role as a bombing target, 'terrorist' recruiting ground and civil war factory for Western warmongers, and South East Asia and Africa as a block of new 'nations' born out of the 'white man's burden' to civilize their people via brutal colonization and then grant them 'independence' in the form of never-ending debt to Western banks. In the West, on the other hand, where I live, I can say with confidence that our modern society, its political and social conventions, customs and morality, has passed its expiry date and is well and truly moribund. Leading the cast in this tragicomedy (heavy on the tragi) we find our psychopathic leaders and their media whores trying extra hard to convince us that everything is just fine. Consider that: Domestic drones. See?
Robotic-Farming Grows With the Ladybird My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER: Robots are going to steal your job, but that’s okay, because they’ll be liberating us away from boring, strenuous and monotonous labor and give us far more time in doing what we truly want to do. Agriculture will not be an exception, and is in fact moving fast in becoming a model of what the entire workforce will eventually transform into. In today’s age, we’ll be witnessing the coupling of the agricultural revolution with the industrial revolution – robotic farming. From drones to autonomous tractors, robotic farming is here to stay and (dare I say it?) Serious Wonder was able to briefly speak with Professor Salah Sukkarieh, the lead researcher in project Ladybird, to which he stated: “Ladybird is a completely new approach to agriculture robotics. The Ladybird is an omnidirectional, self-driving vehicle with three goals in mind: collect data, analyze data, and harvest. Like this: Like Loading...
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. The Clearest Trend in the American Workforce It’s been a while since I posted data on US employment trends, so here’s a chart created with FRED’s snazzy new graphing interface. It shows the employment rate (in other words, 100 – the standard unemployment rate) in blue, the employment-to-population ratio (the % of working-age people with work) in green, and the labor force participation rate (the percent of working-age people who have work or are actively looking for it) in red. This graph clearly shows a very steady up-then-down trajectory in the red line — of the labor force participation rate. It’s affected very little by recessions (the gray bars in the graph), and instead appears to be responding to deeper forces. The most obvious of these forces are the demographics of the American labor force. So is retirement the main reason that the red line is going down these days? I’m more persuaded by the lower figure. Also, disability claims started spiking right around the year 2000, and have almost doubled since then:
Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions - Derek Thompson In August, Science published a landmark study concluding that poverty, itself, hurts our ability to make decisions about school, finances, and life, imposing a mental burden similar to losing 13 IQ points. It was widely seen as a counter-argument to claims that poor people are "to blame" for bad decisions and a rebuke to policies that withhold money from the poorest families unless they behave in a certain way. After all, if being poor leads to bad decision-making (as opposed to the other way around), then giving cash should alleviate the cognitive burdens of poverty, all on its own. Sometimes, science doesn't stick without a proper anecdote, and "Why I Make Terrible Decisions," a comment published on Gawker's Kinja platform by a person in poverty, is a devastating illustration of the Science study. I've bolded what I found the most moving, insightful portions, but it's a moving and insightful testimony all the way through. I make a lot of poor financial decisions.
Welcome Can workers actually be beneficiaries of the digital economy? MIT Sloan Professor Zeynep Ton believes the answer is yes. And just as importantly, she says, businesses won’t lose out in the process. Much has been written and discussed about the economic inequalities created as a result of digital technologies. In this blog, for example, MIT Research Scientist, Andrew McAfee, cites significant economic data supporting the view that IT is responsible for tectonic changes in U.S. jobs and wages. In a recent presentation, Ton, Adjunct Associate Professor of Operations Management (pictured at left), went beyond defining the problems of job displacement, dissatisfaction and despair; she offered solutions. Tossing Out Conventional Wisdom Ton asserts that currently, one in four workers – especially in the service sector and retail—has a “bad job” where salaries are insufficient to support families, and work is rote, irregular and unsatisfying. Zara, Mercadona and QT Find Win-Win Formulas 1. 2. 3.
These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America