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Archive for the ‘economics’ category: Page 187

Feb 14, 2016

India’s finance minister isn’t afraid of robots

Posted by in categories: business, economics, employment, finance, robotics/AI

I agree; still a lot of work to be done in order for AI to have a huge impact around taking most of the jobs away. Besides, with new technology comes new careers.


India’s finance minister isn’t worried about jobs being lost in the country’s manufacturing sector despite warnings that industrial robots will dramatically reduce the need for factory workers in coming decades.

“I still have faith in human ingenuity, that even when jobs are lost in certain sectors … more jobs will be created because of that increased economic activity in other sectors,” Arun Jaitley told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday at the CNN Asia Business Forum in Mumbai.

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Feb 14, 2016

Robots may take over most human jobs by 2045: Expert

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, economics, employment, robotics/AI

I find this a bit of a stretch. Maybe some jobs; however, not all and there will be (like any new technology, etc.) new career fields created.


“Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50 per cent unemployment? Will those out of work be content to live a life of leisure?” Vardi noted.

“I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” he said.

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Feb 13, 2016

MindMaze: A Virtual Reality Device That Interfaces With Your Brain

Posted by in categories: economics, finance, neuroscience, virtual reality

MindMaze technology explores the potential of brain machine interfacing with virtual reality, and it just got a huge financial boost.

Switzerland-based VR company, MindMaze received a major investment from Hinduja Group, who has valued the company at over $1 billion. This is a ten-fold increase since its previous valuation in 2012 where it was pegged at $10 million.

In a recent report published by the Economic Times, the investment is only “less than a third” of the company and makes MindMaze one of two “unicorns” in the AR and VR industry. MindMaze now joins Magic Leap in this category, which was values at over $4 billion.

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Feb 12, 2016

Yes, robots will steal our jobs — but don’t worry, we’ll get new ones

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, economics, employment, ethics, neuroscience, robotics/AI, security

Again, I see too many gaps that will need to be address before AI can eliminate 70% of today’s jobs. Below, are the top 5 gaps that I have seen so far with AI in taking over many government, business, and corporate positions.

1) Emotion/ Empathy Gap — AI has not been designed with the sophistication to provide personable care such as you see with caregivers, medical specialists, etc.
2) Demographic Gap — until we have a more broader mix of the population engaged in AI’s design & development; AI will not meet the needs for critical mass adoption; only a subset of the population will find will connection in serving most of their needs.
3) Ehtics & Morale Code Gap — AI still cannot understand at a full cognitive level ethics & empathy to a degree that is required.
4) Trust and Compliance Gap — companies need to feel that their IP & privacy is protected; until this is corrected, AI will not be able to replace an entire back office and front office set of operations.
5) Security & Safety Gap — More safeguards are needed around AI to deal with hackers to ensure that information managed by AI is safe as well as ensure public saftey from any AI that becomes disruptive or hijacked to cause injury or worse to the public

Until these gaps are addressed; it will be very hard to eliminate many of today’s government, office/ business positions. The greater job loss will be in the lower skill areas like standard landscaping, some housekeeping, some less personable store clerk, some help desk/ call center operations, and some lite admin admin roles.

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Feb 12, 2016

Toyota’s weird, bright green Prius uses science to stay cooler in the sun

Posted by in categories: economics, particle physics, science, transportation

The Prius is an intentionally odd-looking car that gets odder with every generation; I’m pretty sure even ardent defenders of Toyota’s flagship hybrid could agree with me on that. So why not throw an equally odd paint color on top?

What you’re looking at here is the new Prius in “Thermo-Tect Lime Green,” which is more than your average upsettingly loud paint color. Toyota says that by removing the carbon black particles found in most paint and replacing them with titanium oxide, it has significantly increased the vehicle’s solar reflectivity — in other words, the car heats up less, which lessens the need for air conditioning, which in turn improves fuel economy. And fuel economy, of course, is what the Prius is all about.

White paint also does a good job of keeping the sun’s heat at bay, but Toyota actually says that its Thermo-Tect paint outperformed white in a two-hour summer test outdoors. Basically, this technology means that you might be able to get the color of your choice on your next car and still reduce your AC use. Granted, lime green may not be your first choice, but there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping Toyota from rolling it out to other colors as well.

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Feb 12, 2016

Universal Citizen Income: The Way Forward

Posted by in categories: business, economics, education

When governments value people they find creative ways of making people even more valuable in their local economies and communities. In turn, people return the compliment by contributing to the building of stronger local economies.

When governments do not value people they inadvertently create systems that stifle inventiveness and trap people in cycles of state dependency and long-term unemployment.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known informally as the G.I. Bill, is widely (across all political spectrums; around the world) considered one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed. It made provisions that effectively created ‘bonds’ to enable low-cost mortgages, low-interest business start-up loans, cash payments for educational return at all entry points, as well as one year of unemployment benefit for returning servicemen. Canada saw similar results for its programs of support for Second World War veterans. Few would argue that this investment in the human capital of service men and women in turn contributed enormously to the overall wealth of both nations to this day.

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Feb 12, 2016

Transhumanist Party leader Zoltan Istvan supports basic income

Posted by in categories: economics, geopolitics, transhumanism

Interview with Zoltan Istvan, US presidential candidate and leader of the Transhumanist Party. He supports basic income as part of his campaign platform.

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Feb 10, 2016

Singapore Makes Plans to 3D Print Public Housing

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, economics, habitats

In a world of economic scarcity, public housing has become essential for sheltering our species’ most vulnerable populations. Interestingly, the island city-state of Sinagpore having a unique approach to public housing, with 80% of the resident population living in government buildings and, more than that, the small nation implemented some housing practices that the United States has sometimes been too afraid to tackle when it comes to public housing: socioeconomically integrated public developments. Now, Singapore is moving beyond these important strategies to novel methods of construction, namely 3D printing.

sinagpore's public housing

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Feb 10, 2016

Davos 2016 — A World Without Work?

Posted by in categories: business, economics, health

A World Without Work. Just Play and Have Fun.


Christopher Pissarides defends a universal basic inome at Davos 2016.

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Feb 8, 2016

Emergent Chip Vastly Accelerates Deep Neural Networks

Posted by in categories: computing, economics, neuroscience, robotics/AI

Stanford University PhD candidate, Song Han, who works under advisor and networking pioneer, Dr. Bill Dally, responded in a most soft-spoken and thoughtful way to the question of whether the coupled software and hardware architecture he developed might change the world.

In fact, instead of answering the question directly, he pointed to the range of applications, both in the present and future, that will be driven by near real-time inference for complex deep neural networks—all a roundabout way of showing not just why what he is working toward is revolutionary, but why the missing pieces he is filling in have kept neural network-fed services at a relative constant.

There is one large barrier to that future Han considers imminent—one pushed by an existing range of neural network-driven applications powering all aspects of the consumer economy and, over time, the enterprise. And it’s less broadly technical than it is efficiency-driven. After all, considering the mode of service delivery of these applications, often lightweight, power-aware devices, how much computation can be effectively packed into the memory of such devices—and at what cost to battery life or overall power? Devices aside, these same concerns, at a grander level of scale, are even more pertinent at the datacenter where some bulk of the inference is handled.

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