Lifeboat Foundation

Despite strong support from the FAA, the airline industry, and aerospace companies, the U.S. Senate ceased funding the development of a supersonic airliner in 1971. Two years later, the FAA banned supersonic flight over land, a prohibition that remains to this day.

The Concorde went on to serve various destinations, including some in the United States, flying at supersonic speeds only over water. That continued until 2,003 when British Airways and Air France retired their fleets, together amounting to just 12 aircraft. (Fourteen production aircraft were manufactured, but one was scrapped in 1,994 and another crashed in 2000.)

While the Concorde successfully overcame the technical hurdles standing in the way of supersonic passenger service, it succumbed to economics: The cost of fuel and maintenance was especially high for these planes. A new generation of aeronautical engineers and entrepreneurs are, however, keen to once again take on the technical, environmental, and economic challenges.

For many years now, China has been the world’s factory. Even in 2,020 as other economies struggled with the effects of the pandemic, China’s manufacturing output was $3.854 trillion, up from the previous year, accounting for nearly a third of the global market.

But if you are still thinking of China’s factories as sweatshops, it’s probably time to change your perception. The Chinese economic recovery from its short-lived pandemic blip has been boosted by its world-beating adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). After overtaking the U.S. in 2,014 China now has a significant lead over the rest of the world in AI patent applications. In academia, China recently surpassed the U.S. in the number of both AI research publications and journal citations. Commercial applications are flourishing: a new wave of automation and AI infusion is crashing across a swath of sectors, combining software, hardware and robotics.

As a society, we have experienced three distinct industrial revolutions: steam power, electricity and information technology. I believe AI is the engine fueling the fourth industrial revolution globally, digitizing and automating everywhere. China is at the forefront in manifesting this unprecedented change.

Doubtful. But, i hope so, it will convince them to spend more money here to move AI research faster.

TOKYO — China is overtaking the U.S. in artificial intelligence research, setting off alarm bells on the other side of the Pacific as the world’s two largest economies jockey for AI supremacy.

In 2,020 China topped the U.S. for the first time in terms of the number of times an academic article on AI is cited by others, a measure of the quality of a study. Until recently, the U.S. had been far ahead of other countries in AI research.

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In other words, the mix of positives and negatives puts this potent new suite of technologies on a knife-edge. Do we have confidence that a handful of companies that have already lost public trust can take AI in the right direction? We should have ample reason for worry considering the business models driving their motivations. To advertising-driven companies like Google and Facebook, it’s clearly beneficial to elevate content that travels faster and draws more attention—and misinformation usually does —while micro-targeting that content by harvesting user data. Consumer product companies, such as Apple, will be motivated to prioritize AI applications that help differentiate and sell their most profitable products—hardly a way to maximize the beneficial impact of AI.

Yet another challenge is the prioritization of innovation resources. The shift online during the pandemic has led to outsized profits for these companies, and concentrated even more power in their hands. They can be expected to try to maintain that momentum by prioritizing those AI investments that are most aligned with their narrow commercial objectives while ignoring the myriad other possibilities. In addition, Big Tech operates in markets with economies of scale, so there is a tendency towards big bets that can waste tremendous resources. Who remembers IBM’s Watson initiative? It aspired to become the universal, go-to digital decision tool, especially in healthcare—and failed to live up to the hype, as did the trendy driverless car initiatives of Amazon and Google parent Alphabet. While failures, false starts, and pivots are a natural part of innovation, expensive big failures driven by a few enormously wealthy companies divert resources away from more diversified investments across a range of socially productive applications.

Continue reading “Big Tech’s Stranglehold on Artificial Intelligence Must Be Regulated” »

Quartz is a guide to the new global economy for people in business who are excited by change. We cover business, economics, markets, finance, technology, science, design, and fashion.

Accelerating norway towards a low-carbon economy — bjørn kjærand haugland, co-founder and CEO, skift.

Bjørn Haugland is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SKIFT Business Climate Leaders (https://www.skiftnorge.no/english), a Norwegian business-led climate initiative with a mission to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and support the government in delivering on its national climate commitments by 2030. The coalition hopes to demonstrate, to businesses and the government, the business potential that exists in the low-carbon economy and help drive the transition.

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The typical Australian will change careers five to seven times during their professional lifetime, by some estimates. And this is likely to increase as new technologies automate labor, production is moved abroad, and economic crises unfold.

Jobs disappearing is not a new phenomenon—have you seen an elevator operator recently? – but the pace of change is picking up, threatening to leave large numbers of workers unemployed and unemployable.

New technologies also create new jobs, but the skills they require do not always match the old jobs. Successfully moving between jobs requires making the most of your current skills and acquiring new ones, but these transitions can falter if the gap between old and new skills is too large.

Giant Golden Asteroid Could Make Everyone On Earth a Billionaire.
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Out there in space, right now above our heads, is a wealth of knowledge. And in this case, we mean that literally. Believe it or not, in our very solar system, there is an asteroid that is thought to be the remnants of a planet core. And that means that all those pricey metals that we have to dig for here on Earth, are exposed, and ripe for the taking. Estimates put this giant space faring gold mine at 10000 quadrillion dollars, and who knows, if we can get up there to explore it up close, we may find that it is worth even more. What would this do to our economy? Just how rich would this make everyone on earth if it was split evenly? Are there any missions planned to get up there? Oh, we got your answers right here. In today’s video we are getting scientific, while making sure to not skimp out on the riches, so we can give you the scoop on this nearby, giant, golden asteroid. If it piques your interest, you’re not alone. None other than Elon Musk has made comments about his thoughts on mining this bad boy, and considering SpaceX will be the company that supports NASA in this quest, you better believe it’s something we should all take seriously. It would bring all new meaning to the phrase, the rich only get richer. So sit back, relax, and get ready to countdown from ten, as we fire all the thrusters and blast off into the final frontier to give you the scoop on the absurd amount of gold floating around in our solar system.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Is Mining A Golden Asteroid Worth $700 Quintillion” »

Rising life expectancy and falling birth rates mean the world’s average person is getting older. It also means they will be working a lot longer. How people cope with this reality will be vital to the global economy, and perhaps an historic opportunity to rethink the future of work.

Presented by Intuit.

Continue reading “Why Retirement Will Soon Be a Thing of the Past” »