A Brighter Future for Electric Cars and the Planet
There is simply no credible way to address climate change without changing the way we get from here to there, meaning cars, trucks, planes and any other gas-guzzling forms of transportation. That is why it is so heartening to see electric cars, considered curios for the rich or eccentric or both not that long ago, now entering the mainstream.
A slew of recent announcements by researchers, auto companies and world leaders offer real promise. First up, a forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance said that electric cars would become cheaper than conventional cars without government subsidies between 2025 and 2030. At the same time, auto companies like Tesla, General Motors and Volvo are planning a slate of new models that they say will be not only more affordable but also more practical than earlier versions. And officials in such countries as France, India and Norway have set aggressive targets for putting these vehicles to use and phasing out emission-spewing gasoline and diesel cars.
Skeptics may see these announcements as wishful thinking. After all, just 1.1 percent of all cars sold globally in 2016 were electrics or plug-in hybrids. And many popular models still cost much more than comparable fossil-fuel cars.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opin ... d=45305309
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The death of the internal combustion engine
It had a good run. But the end is in sight for the machine that changed the world
Excerpt:
The shift from fuel and pistons to batteries and electric motors is unlikely to take that long. The first death rattles of the internal combustion engine are already reverberating around the world—and many of the consequences will be welcome.
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https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/54751/n
TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT
Together, technology and teachers can revamp schools
How the science of learning can get the best out of edtech
IN 1953 B.F. Skinner visited his daughter’s maths class. The Harvard psychologist found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. A few days later he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. By the mid-1960s similar gizmos were being flogged by door-to-door salesmen. Within a few years, though, enthusiasm for them had fizzled out.
Since then education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop, even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life. One reason is the conservatism of teachers and their unions. But another is that the brain-stretching potential of edtech has remained unproven.
Today, however, Skinner’s heirs are forcing the sceptics to think again (see article). Backed by billionaire techies such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, schools around the world are using new software to “personalise” learning. This could help hundreds of millions of children stuck in dismal classes—but only if edtech boosters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. To succeed, edtech must be at the service of teaching, not the other way around.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/48910/n
How the science of learning can get the best out of edtech
IN 1953 B.F. Skinner visited his daughter’s maths class. The Harvard psychologist found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. A few days later he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. By the mid-1960s similar gizmos were being flogged by door-to-door salesmen. Within a few years, though, enthusiasm for them had fizzled out.
Since then education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop, even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life. One reason is the conservatism of teachers and their unions. But another is that the brain-stretching potential of edtech has remained unproven.
Today, however, Skinner’s heirs are forcing the sceptics to think again (see article). Backed by billionaire techies such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, schools around the world are using new software to “personalise” learning. This could help hundreds of millions of children stuck in dismal classes—but only if edtech boosters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. To succeed, edtech must be at the service of teaching, not the other way around.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/48910/n
Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’?
Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say
Fears that embryo modification could allow parents to custom
order a baby with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s imagination or
Usain Bolt’s speed are closer to science fiction than science.
By PAM BELLUCKAUG. 4, 2017
Now that science is a big step closer to being able to fiddle with the genes of a human embryo, is it time to panic? Could embryo editing spiral out of control, allowing parents to custom-order a baby with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s imagination or Usain Bolt’s speed?
News that an international team of scientists in Oregon had successfully modified the DNA of human embryos has renewed apprehensions that babies will one day be “designed.” But there are good reasons to think that these fears are closer to science fiction than they are to science.
Here is what the researchers did: repair a single gene mutation on a single gene, a defect known to cause — by its lonesome — a serious, sometimes fatal, heart disease.
Here is what science is highly unlikely to be able to do: genetically predestine a child’s Ivy League acceptance letter, front-load a kid with Stephen Colbert’s one-liners, or bake Beyonce’s vocal range into a baby.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/scie ... dline&te=1
Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say
Fears that embryo modification could allow parents to custom
order a baby with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s imagination or
Usain Bolt’s speed are closer to science fiction than science.
By PAM BELLUCKAUG. 4, 2017
Now that science is a big step closer to being able to fiddle with the genes of a human embryo, is it time to panic? Could embryo editing spiral out of control, allowing parents to custom-order a baby with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s imagination or Usain Bolt’s speed?
News that an international team of scientists in Oregon had successfully modified the DNA of human embryos has renewed apprehensions that babies will one day be “designed.” But there are good reasons to think that these fears are closer to science fiction than they are to science.
Here is what the researchers did: repair a single gene mutation on a single gene, a defect known to cause — by its lonesome — a serious, sometimes fatal, heart disease.
Here is what science is highly unlikely to be able to do: genetically predestine a child’s Ivy League acceptance letter, front-load a kid with Stephen Colbert’s one-liners, or bake Beyonce’s vocal range into a baby.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/scie ... dline&te=1
Gene Editing Spurs Hope for Transplanting Pig Organs Into Humans
In a striking advance that helps open the door to organ transplants from animals, researchers have created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might cause disease in humans.
The experiments, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, may make it possible one day to transplant livers, hearts and other organs from pigs into humans, a hope that experts had all but given up.
If pig organs were shown to be safe and effective, “they could be a real game changer,” said Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer at the United Network for Organ Sharing, a private, nonprofit organization that manages the nation’s transplant system.
There were 33,600 organ transplants last year, and 116,800 patients on waiting lists, according to Dr. Klassen, who was not involved in the new study. “There’s a big gap between organ supply and organ demand,” he said.
Dr. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard who led the experiments, said the first pig-to-human transplants could occur within two years.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/heal ... 05309&_r=0
In a striking advance that helps open the door to organ transplants from animals, researchers have created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might cause disease in humans.
The experiments, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, may make it possible one day to transplant livers, hearts and other organs from pigs into humans, a hope that experts had all but given up.
If pig organs were shown to be safe and effective, “they could be a real game changer,” said Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer at the United Network for Organ Sharing, a private, nonprofit organization that manages the nation’s transplant system.
There were 33,600 organ transplants last year, and 116,800 patients on waiting lists, according to Dr. Klassen, who was not involved in the new study. “There’s a big gap between organ supply and organ demand,” he said.
Dr. George Church, a geneticist at Harvard who led the experiments, said the first pig-to-human transplants could occur within two years.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/heal ... 05309&_r=0
How A.I. Is Creating Building Blocks to Reshape Music and Art
Excerpt:
“It’s about creating new ways for people to communicate,” he said during a recent interview inside the small two-story building here that serves as headquarters for Google A.I. research.
The project is part of a growing effort to generate art through a set of A.I. techniques that have only recently come of age. Called deep neural networks, these complex mathematical systems allow machines to learn specific behavior by analyzing vast amounts of data. By looking for common patterns in millions of bicycle photos, for instance, a neural network can learn to recognize a bike. This is how Facebook identifies faces in online photos, how Android phones recognize commands spoken into phones, and how Microsoft Skype translates one language into another. But these complex systems can also create art. By analyzing a set of songs, for instance, they can learn to build similar sounds.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/arts ... d=45305309
Excerpt:
“It’s about creating new ways for people to communicate,” he said during a recent interview inside the small two-story building here that serves as headquarters for Google A.I. research.
The project is part of a growing effort to generate art through a set of A.I. techniques that have only recently come of age. Called deep neural networks, these complex mathematical systems allow machines to learn specific behavior by analyzing vast amounts of data. By looking for common patterns in millions of bicycle photos, for instance, a neural network can learn to recognize a bike. This is how Facebook identifies faces in online photos, how Android phones recognize commands spoken into phones, and how Microsoft Skype translates one language into another. But these complex systems can also create art. By analyzing a set of songs, for instance, they can learn to build similar sounds.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/arts ... d=45305309
Where the Wild Things Go
The remarkable travel itineraries of animals.
When I sat down with Iain Douglas-Hamilton at his home in Nairobi to learn how he went from deploying the first radio collars on elephants in 1968 to deploying the first GPS collars on them in 1995, he told me about an elephant named Parsitau. “We put a prototype on him and it lasted for all of 10 days, and we thought this was absolutely the cat’s whiskers.”
Recording four locations per day, those 40 GPS points were the first ever recorded on an animal in Africa. “It was so incredible,” Douglas-Hamilton recalled. “Here was a collar that would go across international borders, work by day, by night, inside forest, outside forest, up hills, down hills.” Plus, GPS was far more precise than radio or traditional Argos satellite tracking.
Today, the breakthroughs are still coming. Just a few years ago, Douglas-Hamilton’s research and conservation organization, Save The Elephants, partnered with Google to develop a way for GPS locations to feed directly into Google Earth. And they have since created their own real-time tracking app for phones and tablets in partnership with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his company, Vulcan.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/where- ... a-60760513
The remarkable travel itineraries of animals.
When I sat down with Iain Douglas-Hamilton at his home in Nairobi to learn how he went from deploying the first radio collars on elephants in 1968 to deploying the first GPS collars on them in 1995, he told me about an elephant named Parsitau. “We put a prototype on him and it lasted for all of 10 days, and we thought this was absolutely the cat’s whiskers.”
Recording four locations per day, those 40 GPS points were the first ever recorded on an animal in Africa. “It was so incredible,” Douglas-Hamilton recalled. “Here was a collar that would go across international borders, work by day, by night, inside forest, outside forest, up hills, down hills.” Plus, GPS was far more precise than radio or traditional Argos satellite tracking.
Today, the breakthroughs are still coming. Just a few years ago, Douglas-Hamilton’s research and conservation organization, Save The Elephants, partnered with Google to develop a way for GPS locations to feed directly into Google Earth. And they have since created their own real-time tracking app for phones and tablets in partnership with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his company, Vulcan.
More...
http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/where- ... a-60760513
Leather grown using biotechnology is about to hit the catwalk
Genetic engineering is used to make leather without animals
Excerpt:
These contrasting facts make leather manufacturing a tempting target for technological disruption. And tanned animal skins are indeed about to face a rival. The challenge comes not, as might be assumed, from a substitute made of synthetic polymer, but rather from something which is, in most respects, the same as natural leather. The difference is that, instead of coming from an animal’s back, this leather is grown, by the metre, in factories.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... na/58348/n
Genetic engineering is used to make leather without animals
Excerpt:
These contrasting facts make leather manufacturing a tempting target for technological disruption. And tanned animal skins are indeed about to face a rival. The challenge comes not, as might be assumed, from a substitute made of synthetic polymer, but rather from something which is, in most respects, the same as natural leather. The difference is that, instead of coming from an animal’s back, this leather is grown, by the metre, in factories.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... na/58348/n
How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence
The technology entrepreneur Elon Musk recently urged the nation’s governors to regulate artificial intelligence “before it’s too late.” Mr. Musk insists that artificial intelligence represents an “existential threat to humanity,” an alarmist view that confuses A.I. science with science fiction. Nevertheless, even A.I. researchers like me recognize that there are valid concerns about its impact on weapons, jobs and privacy. It’s natural to ask whether we should develop A.I. at all.
I believe the answer is yes. But shouldn’t we take steps to at least slow down progress on A.I., in the interest of caution? The problem is that if we do so, then nations like China will overtake us. The A.I. horse has left the barn, and our best bet is to attempt to steer it. A.I. should not be weaponized, and any A.I. must have an impregnable “off switch.” Beyond that, we should regulate the tangible impact of A.I. systems (for example, the safety of autonomous vehicles) rather than trying to define and rein in the amorphous and rapidly developing field of A.I.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/opin ... d=45305309
The technology entrepreneur Elon Musk recently urged the nation’s governors to regulate artificial intelligence “before it’s too late.” Mr. Musk insists that artificial intelligence represents an “existential threat to humanity,” an alarmist view that confuses A.I. science with science fiction. Nevertheless, even A.I. researchers like me recognize that there are valid concerns about its impact on weapons, jobs and privacy. It’s natural to ask whether we should develop A.I. at all.
I believe the answer is yes. But shouldn’t we take steps to at least slow down progress on A.I., in the interest of caution? The problem is that if we do so, then nations like China will overtake us. The A.I. horse has left the barn, and our best bet is to attempt to steer it. A.I. should not be weaponized, and any A.I. must have an impregnable “off switch.” Beyond that, we should regulate the tangible impact of A.I. systems (for example, the safety of autonomous vehicles) rather than trying to define and rein in the amorphous and rapidly developing field of A.I.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/opin ... d=45305309
Nowhere to hide
What machines can tell from your face
Life in the age of facial recognition
THE human face is a remarkable piece of work. The astonishing variety of facial features helps people recognise each other and is crucial to the formation of complex societies. So is the face’s ability to send emotional signals, whether through an involuntary blush or the artifice of a false smile. People spend much of their waking lives, in the office and the courtroom as well as the bar and the bedroom, reading faces, for signs of attraction, hostility, trust and deceit. They also spend plenty of time trying to dissimulate.
Technology is rapidly catching up with the human ability to read faces. In America facial recognition is used by churches to track worshippers’ attendance; in Britain, by retailers to spot past shoplifters. This year Welsh police used it to arrest a suspect outside a football game. In China it verifies the identities of ride-hailing drivers, permits tourists to enter attractions and lets people pay for things with a smile. Apple’s new iPhone is expected to use it to unlock the homescreen (see article).
Set against human skills, such applications might seem incremental. Some breakthroughs, such as flight or the internet, obviously transform human abilities; facial recognition seems merely to encode them. Although faces are peculiar to individuals, they are also public, so technology does not, at first sight, intrude on something that is private. And yet the ability to record, store and analyse images of faces cheaply, quickly and on a vast scale promises one day to bring about fundamental changes to notions of privacy, fairness and trust.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/62219/n
What machines can tell from your face
Life in the age of facial recognition
THE human face is a remarkable piece of work. The astonishing variety of facial features helps people recognise each other and is crucial to the formation of complex societies. So is the face’s ability to send emotional signals, whether through an involuntary blush or the artifice of a false smile. People spend much of their waking lives, in the office and the courtroom as well as the bar and the bedroom, reading faces, for signs of attraction, hostility, trust and deceit. They also spend plenty of time trying to dissimulate.
Technology is rapidly catching up with the human ability to read faces. In America facial recognition is used by churches to track worshippers’ attendance; in Britain, by retailers to spot past shoplifters. This year Welsh police used it to arrest a suspect outside a football game. In China it verifies the identities of ride-hailing drivers, permits tourists to enter attractions and lets people pay for things with a smile. Apple’s new iPhone is expected to use it to unlock the homescreen (see article).
Set against human skills, such applications might seem incremental. Some breakthroughs, such as flight or the internet, obviously transform human abilities; facial recognition seems merely to encode them. Although faces are peculiar to individuals, they are also public, so technology does not, at first sight, intrude on something that is private. And yet the ability to record, store and analyse images of faces cheaply, quickly and on a vast scale promises one day to bring about fundamental changes to notions of privacy, fairness and trust.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/62219/n
Closing in on cancer
Science will win the technical battle against cancer. But that is only half the fight
THE numbers are stark. Cancer claimed the lives of 8.8m people in 2015; only heart disease caused more deaths. Around 40% of Americans will be told they have cancer during their lifetimes. It is now a bigger killer of Africans than malaria. But the statistics do not begin to capture the fear inspired by cancer’s silent and implacable cellular mutiny. Only Alzheimer’s exerts a similar grip on the imagination.
Confronted with this sort of enemy, people understandably focus on the potential for scientific breakthroughs that will deliver a cure. Their hope is not misplaced. Cancer has become more and more survivable over recent decades owing to a host of advances, from genetic sequencing to targeted therapies. The five-year survival rate for leukemia in America has almost doubled, from 34% in the mid-1970s to 63% in 2006-12. America is home to about 15.5m cancer survivors, a number that will grow to 20m in the next ten years. Developing countries have made big gains, too: in parts of Central and South America, survival rates for prostate and breast cancer have jumped by as much as a fifth in only a decade.
From a purely technical perspective, it is reasonable to expect that science will one day turn most cancers into either chronic diseases or curable ones. But cancer is not fought only in the lab. It is also fought in doctors’ surgeries, in schools, in public-health systems and in government departments. The dispatches from these battlefields are much less encouraging.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/64068/n
Science will win the technical battle against cancer. But that is only half the fight
THE numbers are stark. Cancer claimed the lives of 8.8m people in 2015; only heart disease caused more deaths. Around 40% of Americans will be told they have cancer during their lifetimes. It is now a bigger killer of Africans than malaria. But the statistics do not begin to capture the fear inspired by cancer’s silent and implacable cellular mutiny. Only Alzheimer’s exerts a similar grip on the imagination.
Confronted with this sort of enemy, people understandably focus on the potential for scientific breakthroughs that will deliver a cure. Their hope is not misplaced. Cancer has become more and more survivable over recent decades owing to a host of advances, from genetic sequencing to targeted therapies. The five-year survival rate for leukemia in America has almost doubled, from 34% in the mid-1970s to 63% in 2006-12. America is home to about 15.5m cancer survivors, a number that will grow to 20m in the next ten years. Developing countries have made big gains, too: in parts of Central and South America, survival rates for prostate and breast cancer have jumped by as much as a fifth in only a decade.
From a purely technical perspective, it is reasonable to expect that science will one day turn most cancers into either chronic diseases or curable ones. But cancer is not fought only in the lab. It is also fought in doctors’ surgeries, in schools, in public-health systems and in government departments. The dispatches from these battlefields are much less encouraging.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/64068/n
If it’s broken, you can’t fix it
A “right to repair” movement tools up
From tractors to smartphones, mending things is getting ever harder
AS DEVICES go, smartphones and tractors are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And an owner of a chain of mobile-device repair shops and a farmer of corn and soyabeans do not usually have much in common. But Jason DeWater and Guy Mills are upset for the same reason. “Even we can no longer fix the home button of an iPhone,” says Mr DeWater, a former musician who has turned his hobby of tinkering into a business based in Omaha, Nebraska. “If we had a problem with our John Deere, we could fix it ourselves. No longer,” explains Mr Mills whose farm in Ansley, a three-hour drive to the west, spreads over nearly 4,000 acres.
Messrs DeWater and Mills have more and more company. It includes not just fellow repairmen and farmers, but owners of all kinds of gear, including washing machines, coffee makers and even toys. All are becoming exceedingly difficult to fix—which has given rise to a movement fighting for a “right to repair”. In America the movement has already managed to get relevant bills on the agenda of legislatures in a dozen states, including Nebraska. Across the Atlantic, the European Parliament recently passed a motion calling for regulation to force manufacturers to make their products more easily repairable.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/business ... na/68110/n
A “right to repair” movement tools up
From tractors to smartphones, mending things is getting ever harder
AS DEVICES go, smartphones and tractors are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. And an owner of a chain of mobile-device repair shops and a farmer of corn and soyabeans do not usually have much in common. But Jason DeWater and Guy Mills are upset for the same reason. “Even we can no longer fix the home button of an iPhone,” says Mr DeWater, a former musician who has turned his hobby of tinkering into a business based in Omaha, Nebraska. “If we had a problem with our John Deere, we could fix it ourselves. No longer,” explains Mr Mills whose farm in Ansley, a three-hour drive to the west, spreads over nearly 4,000 acres.
Messrs DeWater and Mills have more and more company. It includes not just fellow repairmen and farmers, but owners of all kinds of gear, including washing machines, coffee makers and even toys. All are becoming exceedingly difficult to fix—which has given rise to a movement fighting for a “right to repair”. In America the movement has already managed to get relevant bills on the agenda of legislatures in a dozen states, including Nebraska. Across the Atlantic, the European Parliament recently passed a motion calling for regulation to force manufacturers to make their products more easily repairable.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/business ... na/68110/n
The End of Privacy
We learned on Tuesday that three billion Yahoo email accounts were compromised in 2013. In early September, it was Equifax’s 143 million credit reports. Just a few months before that, we learned 198 million United States voter records were leaked online in June.
Given the constant stream of breaches, it can be hard to understand what’s happening to our privacy over time. Two dates — one recent and one long ago — help explain this: Dec. 15, 1890, and May 23, 2017, are the two most important days in the history of privacy. The first signifies its creation as a legal concept, and the latter, while largely overlooked at the time, symbolizes something close to its end.
On Dec. 15, 1890, the future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and the attorney Samuel Warren published an article in the Harvard Law Review, “The Right to Privacy,” which argued for the recognition of a new legal right to, in their words, “be let alone.” The article was spurred by a new technology called the instantaneous photograph, which made it possible for anyone walking down the street to find their image in the newspaper the next day.
That argument forms the basis for the way we approach our rights to privacy to this day. The proposed right to “be let alone” made a fundamental distinction between being observed, which can accompany any act made in public, versus being identified, a separate and more intrusive act. We consent to be observed constantly; we rarely consent to be identified.
Today, however, this distinction has eroded, thanks to the rapid advance of digital technologies and the accompanying rise of the field broadly called data science. What we have thought of as privacy is dying, if not already dead.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opin ... dline&te=1
We learned on Tuesday that three billion Yahoo email accounts were compromised in 2013. In early September, it was Equifax’s 143 million credit reports. Just a few months before that, we learned 198 million United States voter records were leaked online in June.
Given the constant stream of breaches, it can be hard to understand what’s happening to our privacy over time. Two dates — one recent and one long ago — help explain this: Dec. 15, 1890, and May 23, 2017, are the two most important days in the history of privacy. The first signifies its creation as a legal concept, and the latter, while largely overlooked at the time, symbolizes something close to its end.
On Dec. 15, 1890, the future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and the attorney Samuel Warren published an article in the Harvard Law Review, “The Right to Privacy,” which argued for the recognition of a new legal right to, in their words, “be let alone.” The article was spurred by a new technology called the instantaneous photograph, which made it possible for anyone walking down the street to find their image in the newspaper the next day.
That argument forms the basis for the way we approach our rights to privacy to this day. The proposed right to “be let alone” made a fundamental distinction between being observed, which can accompany any act made in public, versus being identified, a separate and more intrusive act. We consent to be observed constantly; we rarely consent to be identified.
Today, however, this distinction has eroded, thanks to the rapid advance of digital technologies and the accompanying rise of the field broadly called data science. What we have thought of as privacy is dying, if not already dead.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opin ... dline&te=1
Would You Like My Car to Make You Some Water?
Excerpt:
The drinking-water idea points to a wider change rippling through the global auto industry: As cars gain more computing power and adopt new technologies, engineers are finding ways to make cars do much more than take us from Point A to Point B.
These days, some cars can serve as Wi-Fi hot spots, backup power generators or remote controls for your home. In the future, they might also monitor your health; seat suppliers are tinkering with sensors that can monitor a driver’s heart rate and body temperature.
Karl Brauer, a senior director at Kelley Blue Book, the automotive research company, said cars were on a path that resembled the one taken by the iPhone.
“When the iPhone came out 10 years ago, you could make phone calls and text and access the internet, but no one knew how far it would go with apps,” he said. “Cars are going the same way. They are going to serve us in ways and are going to be able to do things that we haven’t even conceived of yet.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/auto ... d=71987722
Excerpt:
The drinking-water idea points to a wider change rippling through the global auto industry: As cars gain more computing power and adopt new technologies, engineers are finding ways to make cars do much more than take us from Point A to Point B.
These days, some cars can serve as Wi-Fi hot spots, backup power generators or remote controls for your home. In the future, they might also monitor your health; seat suppliers are tinkering with sensors that can monitor a driver’s heart rate and body temperature.
Karl Brauer, a senior director at Kelley Blue Book, the automotive research company, said cars were on a path that resembled the one taken by the iPhone.
“When the iPhone came out 10 years ago, you could make phone calls and text and access the internet, but no one knew how far it would go with apps,” he said. “Cars are going the same way. They are going to serve us in ways and are going to be able to do things that we haven’t even conceived of yet.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/auto ... d=71987722
Electric cars
It is now practical to refuel electric vehicles through thin air
Electromagnetic induction gets rid of cables
A WISE driver keeps an eye on the fuel gauge, to make timely stops at filling stations. For drivers of electric cars, though, those stations are few and far between. The infrastructure needed for refilling batteries has yet to be developed, and the technology which that infrastructure will use is still up for grabs. Most electric cars are fitted with plugs. But plugs and their associated cables and charging points bring problems. The cables are trip hazards. The charging points add to street clutter. And the copper wire involved is an invitation to thieves. Many engineers would therefore like to develop a second way of charging electric vehicles—one that is wireless and can thus be buried underground.
Electrical induction, the underlying principle behind wireless charging, was discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831, and is widely used in things such as electric motors and generators. Faraday observed that moving a conductor through a magnetic field induced a current in that conductor. Subsequent investigations showed that this also works if the conductor is stationary and the magnetic field is moving. Since electric currents generate magnetic fields, and if the current alternates so does the field, an alternating current creates a field that is continuously moving. This means that running such a current through a conductor will induce a similar current in another, nearby, conductor. That induced current can then be used for whatever purpose an engineer chooses.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... na/75994/n
It is now practical to refuel electric vehicles through thin air
Electromagnetic induction gets rid of cables
A WISE driver keeps an eye on the fuel gauge, to make timely stops at filling stations. For drivers of electric cars, though, those stations are few and far between. The infrastructure needed for refilling batteries has yet to be developed, and the technology which that infrastructure will use is still up for grabs. Most electric cars are fitted with plugs. But plugs and their associated cables and charging points bring problems. The cables are trip hazards. The charging points add to street clutter. And the copper wire involved is an invitation to thieves. Many engineers would therefore like to develop a second way of charging electric vehicles—one that is wireless and can thus be buried underground.
Electrical induction, the underlying principle behind wireless charging, was discovered by Michael Faraday in 1831, and is widely used in things such as electric motors and generators. Faraday observed that moving a conductor through a magnetic field induced a current in that conductor. Subsequent investigations showed that this also works if the conductor is stationary and the magnetic field is moving. Since electric currents generate magnetic fields, and if the current alternates so does the field, an alternating current creates a field that is continuously moving. This means that running such a current through a conductor will induce a similar current in another, nearby, conductor. That induced current can then be used for whatever purpose an engineer chooses.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... na/75994/n
Driverless Cars Made Me Nervous. Then I Tried One.
On my fourth day in a semi-driverless car, I finally felt comfortable enough to let it stop itself. Before then, I’d allowed the car — a Volvo S90 sedan — to steer around gentle turns, with my hands still on the wheel, and to adjust speed in traffic. By Day 4, I was ready to make a leap into the future.
With the car traveling 40 miles an hour on a busy road in the Washington suburbs, I pushed a button to activate the driverless mode and moved my foot away from the brake and accelerator. The car kept its speed. Soon, a traffic light in the distance turned red, and the cars in front of me slowed. For a split second, I prepared to slam on the brake.
There was no need. The cameras and computers in the Volvo recognized that other cars were slowing and smoothly began applying the brake. My car came to a stop behind the Ford ahead of me. I began laughing, even though no one else was in the car, as my anxiety turned to relief.
If you’re anything like most people, you’re familiar with this anxiety. Almost 80 percent of Americans fear traveling in a self-driving car, a recent poll found.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/opin ... drive.html
What Virtual Reality Can Teach a Driverless Car
SAN FRANCISCO — As the computers that operate driverless cars digest the rules of the road, some engineers think it might be nice if they can learn from mistakes made in virtual reality rather than on real streets.
Companies like Toyota, Uber and Waymo have discussed at length how they are testing autonomous vehicles on the streets of Mountain View, Calif., Phoenix and other cities. What is not as well known is that they are also testing vehicles inside computer simulations of these same cities. Virtual cars, equipped with the same software as the real thing, spend thousands of hours driving their digital worlds.
Think of it as a way of identifying flaws in the way the cars operate without endangering real people. If a car makes a mistake on a simulated drive, engineers can tweak its software accordingly, laying down new rules of behavior. On Monday, Waymo, the autonomous car company that spun out of Google, is expected to show off its simulator tests when it takes a group of reporters to its secretive testing center in California’s Central Valley.
Researchers are also developing methods that would allow cars to actually learn new behavior from these simulations, gathering skills more quickly than human engineers could ever lay them down with explicit software code. “Simulation is a tremendous thing,” said Gill Pratt, chief executive of the Toyota Research Institute, one of the artificial intelligence labs exploring this kind of virtual training for autonomous vehicles and other robotics.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/busi ... -cars.html
On my fourth day in a semi-driverless car, I finally felt comfortable enough to let it stop itself. Before then, I’d allowed the car — a Volvo S90 sedan — to steer around gentle turns, with my hands still on the wheel, and to adjust speed in traffic. By Day 4, I was ready to make a leap into the future.
With the car traveling 40 miles an hour on a busy road in the Washington suburbs, I pushed a button to activate the driverless mode and moved my foot away from the brake and accelerator. The car kept its speed. Soon, a traffic light in the distance turned red, and the cars in front of me slowed. For a split second, I prepared to slam on the brake.
There was no need. The cameras and computers in the Volvo recognized that other cars were slowing and smoothly began applying the brake. My car came to a stop behind the Ford ahead of me. I began laughing, even though no one else was in the car, as my anxiety turned to relief.
If you’re anything like most people, you’re familiar with this anxiety. Almost 80 percent of Americans fear traveling in a self-driving car, a recent poll found.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/opin ... drive.html
What Virtual Reality Can Teach a Driverless Car
SAN FRANCISCO — As the computers that operate driverless cars digest the rules of the road, some engineers think it might be nice if they can learn from mistakes made in virtual reality rather than on real streets.
Companies like Toyota, Uber and Waymo have discussed at length how they are testing autonomous vehicles on the streets of Mountain View, Calif., Phoenix and other cities. What is not as well known is that they are also testing vehicles inside computer simulations of these same cities. Virtual cars, equipped with the same software as the real thing, spend thousands of hours driving their digital worlds.
Think of it as a way of identifying flaws in the way the cars operate without endangering real people. If a car makes a mistake on a simulated drive, engineers can tweak its software accordingly, laying down new rules of behavior. On Monday, Waymo, the autonomous car company that spun out of Google, is expected to show off its simulator tests when it takes a group of reporters to its secretive testing center in California’s Central Valley.
Researchers are also developing methods that would allow cars to actually learn new behavior from these simulations, gathering skills more quickly than human engineers could ever lay them down with explicit software code. “Simulation is a tremendous thing,” said Gill Pratt, chief executive of the Toyota Research Institute, one of the artificial intelligence labs exploring this kind of virtual training for autonomous vehicles and other robotics.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/busi ... -cars.html
What Workplace Skills Will Get You To The Top In The Age Of AI?
People seem to be rather dichotomous in their thinking when it comes to predicting the specifics of an AI-driven future, especially when it comes to the world of work. It has been suggested that machines will either take everyone’s jobs and render humanity useless, or they will be catalysts for a world where humans are freed up to ponder issues that have plagued our society for decades. Super AI in the world of singularity has been hailed as the ultimate slayer of modern economic systems – the government can’t tax AI. The reality, of course, is probably somewhere in between.
What is certain, however, is that the fourth industrial revolution, just like the three movements before it, is ushering in change – and we have to do what we can to be prepared for that seismic shift, especially when it comes to how we plan on earning an income in the future.
More...
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/2017/11 ... -216274365
People seem to be rather dichotomous in their thinking when it comes to predicting the specifics of an AI-driven future, especially when it comes to the world of work. It has been suggested that machines will either take everyone’s jobs and render humanity useless, or they will be catalysts for a world where humans are freed up to ponder issues that have plagued our society for decades. Super AI in the world of singularity has been hailed as the ultimate slayer of modern economic systems – the government can’t tax AI. The reality, of course, is probably somewhere in between.
What is certain, however, is that the fourth industrial revolution, just like the three movements before it, is ushering in change – and we have to do what we can to be prepared for that seismic shift, especially when it comes to how we plan on earning an income in the future.
More...
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/2017/11 ... -216274365
How Evil Is Tech?
Not long ago, tech was the coolest industry. Everybody wanted to work at Google, Facebook and Apple. But over the past year the mood has shifted.
Some now believe tech is like the tobacco industry — corporations that make billions of dollars peddling a destructive addiction. Some believe it is like the N.F.L. — something millions of people love, but which everybody knows leaves a trail of human wreckage in its wake.
Surely the people in tech — who generally want to make the world a better place — don’t want to go down this road. It will be interesting to see if they can take the actions necessary to prevent their companies from becoming social pariahs.
There are three main critiques of big tech.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/opin ... -tech.html
Not long ago, tech was the coolest industry. Everybody wanted to work at Google, Facebook and Apple. But over the past year the mood has shifted.
Some now believe tech is like the tobacco industry — corporations that make billions of dollars peddling a destructive addiction. Some believe it is like the N.F.L. — something millions of people love, but which everybody knows leaves a trail of human wreckage in its wake.
Surely the people in tech — who generally want to make the world a better place — don’t want to go down this road. It will be interesting to see if they can take the actions necessary to prevent their companies from becoming social pariahs.
There are three main critiques of big tech.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/opin ... -tech.html
Where Birds and Planes Collide, a Winged Robot May Help
The bird, apparently a female falcon, wheels into view 100 feet over Edmonton International Airport, flapping her wings — hunting behavior. She pursues a flock of starlings, which scatter into the safety of the woods. The falcon is majestic, graceful and resolute.
She is also a machine — a battery, sensors, GPS, barometer and flight control computer stuffed into a falcon-shaped, hand-painted exterior. A human on the ground controls her wings.
The Robird patrols the skies around the airport, in Alberta, Canada. Her mission is to mimic falcon behavior in order to head off a serious threat to aviation: the bird strike, which happens when a bird or flock collides with an airplane. The Robird doesn’t actually catch any prey. Its job is to alert birds to the presence of a predator, herd them away from the airport, and teach them to prefer a less dangerous neighborhood.
Small birds do little damage to a plane, even if they are sucked into an engine (“ingested” is the aviation term). But a large bird, or sometimes a flock of small ones, can bend or break engine blades.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/opin ... dline&te=1
The bird, apparently a female falcon, wheels into view 100 feet over Edmonton International Airport, flapping her wings — hunting behavior. She pursues a flock of starlings, which scatter into the safety of the woods. The falcon is majestic, graceful and resolute.
She is also a machine — a battery, sensors, GPS, barometer and flight control computer stuffed into a falcon-shaped, hand-painted exterior. A human on the ground controls her wings.
The Robird patrols the skies around the airport, in Alberta, Canada. Her mission is to mimic falcon behavior in order to head off a serious threat to aviation: the bird strike, which happens when a bird or flock collides with an airplane. The Robird doesn’t actually catch any prey. Its job is to alert birds to the presence of a predator, herd them away from the airport, and teach them to prefer a less dangerous neighborhood.
Small birds do little damage to a plane, even if they are sucked into an engine (“ingested” is the aviation term). But a large bird, or sometimes a flock of small ones, can bend or break engine blades.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/opin ... dline&te=1
Inside China’s Big Tech Conference, New Ways to Track Citizens
WUZHEN, China — An artificial intelligence company touted a robot that could help doctors with diagnoses. A start-up displayed a drone designed to carry a single passenger 60 miles per hour.
And in a demonstration worthy of both wonder and worry, a Chinese facial recognition company showed how its technology could quickly identify and describe people.
If there were any doubts about China’s technological prowess, the presentations made this week at the country’s largest tech conference should put them to rest. The event, once a setting for local tech executives and leaders of impoverished states, this year attracted top American executives like Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Google, as well as executives of Chinese giants like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent.
Yet all the advancements exhibited at the event, the World Internet Conference, in the picturesque eastern Chinese city of Wuzhen, also offered reason for caution. The technology enabling a full techno-police state was on hand, giving a glimpse into how new advances in things like artificial intelligence and facial recognition can be used to track citizens — and how they have become widely accepted here.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/busi ... d=71987722
WUZHEN, China — An artificial intelligence company touted a robot that could help doctors with diagnoses. A start-up displayed a drone designed to carry a single passenger 60 miles per hour.
And in a demonstration worthy of both wonder and worry, a Chinese facial recognition company showed how its technology could quickly identify and describe people.
If there were any doubts about China’s technological prowess, the presentations made this week at the country’s largest tech conference should put them to rest. The event, once a setting for local tech executives and leaders of impoverished states, this year attracted top American executives like Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Google, as well as executives of Chinese giants like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent.
Yet all the advancements exhibited at the event, the World Internet Conference, in the picturesque eastern Chinese city of Wuzhen, also offered reason for caution. The technology enabling a full techno-police state was on hand, giving a glimpse into how new advances in things like artificial intelligence and facial recognition can be used to track citizens — and how they have become widely accepted here.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/busi ... d=71987722
The Robots Are Coming, and Sweden Is Fine
In a world full of anxiety about the potential job-destroying rise of automation,
Sweden is well placed to embrace technology while limiting human costs.
Excerpt:
In much of the world, people whose livelihoods depend on paychecks are increasingly anxious about a potential wave of unemployment threatened by automation. As the frightening tale goes, globalization forced people in wealthier lands like North America and Europe to compete directly with cheaper laborers in Asia and Latin America, sowing joblessness. Now, the robots are coming to finish off the humans.
But such talk has little currency in Sweden or its Scandinavian neighbors, where unions are powerful, government support is abundant, and trust between employers and employees runs deep. Here, robots are just another way to make companies more efficient. As employers prosper, workers have consistently gained a proportionate slice of the spoils — a stark contrast to the United States and Britain, where wages have stagnated even while corporate profits have soared.
“In Sweden, if you ask a union leader, ‘Are you afraid of new technology?’ they will answer, ‘No, I’m afraid of old technology,’” says the Swedish minister for employment and integration, Ylva Johansson. “The jobs disappear, and then we train people for new jobs. We won’t protect jobs. But we will protect workers.”
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/busi ... d=45305309
In a world full of anxiety about the potential job-destroying rise of automation,
Sweden is well placed to embrace technology while limiting human costs.
Excerpt:
In much of the world, people whose livelihoods depend on paychecks are increasingly anxious about a potential wave of unemployment threatened by automation. As the frightening tale goes, globalization forced people in wealthier lands like North America and Europe to compete directly with cheaper laborers in Asia and Latin America, sowing joblessness. Now, the robots are coming to finish off the humans.
But such talk has little currency in Sweden or its Scandinavian neighbors, where unions are powerful, government support is abundant, and trust between employers and employees runs deep. Here, robots are just another way to make companies more efficient. As employers prosper, workers have consistently gained a proportionate slice of the spoils — a stark contrast to the United States and Britain, where wages have stagnated even while corporate profits have soared.
“In Sweden, if you ask a union leader, ‘Are you afraid of new technology?’ they will answer, ‘No, I’m afraid of old technology,’” says the Swedish minister for employment and integration, Ylva Johansson. “The jobs disappear, and then we train people for new jobs. We won’t protect jobs. But we will protect workers.”
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/busi ... d=45305309
The Looming Digital Meltdown
For computer security professionals, 2018 started with a bang. A new class of security vulnerability — a variety of flaws that affect almost all major microprocessor chips, and that could enable hackers to steal information from personal computers as well as cloud computing services — was announced on Wednesday. The news prompted a rush of fixes, ruining the holiday vacations of system administrators worldwide.
For an ordinary computer user, there is not much to panic about right now. Just keep your software updated so you receive the fixes. And consider installing an ad-blocker like uBlock Origin to protect against ads that carry malware that could exploit these vulnerabilities. That is about all you can do.
However, as a citizen of a world in which digital technology is increasingly integrated into all objects — not just phones but also cars, baby monitors and so on — it is past time to panic.
We have built the digital world too rapidly. It was constructed layer upon layer, and many of the early layers were never meant to guard so many valuable things: our personal correspondence, our finances, the very infrastructure of our lives. Design shortcuts and other techniques for optimization — in particular, sacrificing security for speed or memory space — may have made sense when computers played a relatively small role in our lives. But those early layers are now emerging as enormous liabilities. The vulnerabilities announced last week have been around for decades, perhaps lurking unnoticed by anyone or perhaps long exploited.
Almost all modern microprocessors employ tricks to squeeze more performance out of a computer program. A common trick involves having the microprocessor predict what the program is about to do and start doing it before it has been asked to do it — say, fetching data from memory. In a way, modern microprocessors act like attentive butlers, pouring that second glass of wine before you knew you were going to ask for it.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opin ... d=45305309
For computer security professionals, 2018 started with a bang. A new class of security vulnerability — a variety of flaws that affect almost all major microprocessor chips, and that could enable hackers to steal information from personal computers as well as cloud computing services — was announced on Wednesday. The news prompted a rush of fixes, ruining the holiday vacations of system administrators worldwide.
For an ordinary computer user, there is not much to panic about right now. Just keep your software updated so you receive the fixes. And consider installing an ad-blocker like uBlock Origin to protect against ads that carry malware that could exploit these vulnerabilities. That is about all you can do.
However, as a citizen of a world in which digital technology is increasingly integrated into all objects — not just phones but also cars, baby monitors and so on — it is past time to panic.
We have built the digital world too rapidly. It was constructed layer upon layer, and many of the early layers were never meant to guard so many valuable things: our personal correspondence, our finances, the very infrastructure of our lives. Design shortcuts and other techniques for optimization — in particular, sacrificing security for speed or memory space — may have made sense when computers played a relatively small role in our lives. But those early layers are now emerging as enormous liabilities. The vulnerabilities announced last week have been around for decades, perhaps lurking unnoticed by anyone or perhaps long exploited.
Almost all modern microprocessors employ tricks to squeeze more performance out of a computer program. A common trick involves having the microprocessor predict what the program is about to do and start doing it before it has been asked to do it — say, fetching data from memory. In a way, modern microprocessors act like attentive butlers, pouring that second glass of wine before you knew you were going to ask for it.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opin ... d=45305309
Is art-connoisseur yet another job threatened by technology?
For the time being, science and specialists work best in tandem
High-tech methods for authenticating art played a central role in the re-attribution of “Salvator Mundi” to Leonardo da Vinci, resulting in the painting’s record-breaking auction price of $450m. This shows how important science has become to art history and to the market. But art historians will not be replaced yet. The limitations of new techniques mean that the future belongs to a partnership between technology and connoisseur
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/prosper ... lydispatch
For the time being, science and specialists work best in tandem
High-tech methods for authenticating art played a central role in the re-attribution of “Salvator Mundi” to Leonardo da Vinci, resulting in the painting’s record-breaking auction price of $450m. This shows how important science has become to art history and to the market. But art historians will not be replaced yet. The limitations of new techniques mean that the future belongs to a partnership between technology and connoisseur
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/prosper ... lydispatch
While You Were Sleeping
Donald Trump poses a huge dilemma for commentators: to ignore his daily outrages is to normalize his behavior, but to constantly write about them is to stop learning. Like others, I struggle to get this balance right, which is why I pause today to point out some incredible technological changes happening while Trump has kept us focused on him — changes that will pose as big an adaptation challenge to American workers as transitioning from farms to factories once did.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/opin ... dline&te=1
Donald Trump poses a huge dilemma for commentators: to ignore his daily outrages is to normalize his behavior, but to constantly write about them is to stop learning. Like others, I struggle to get this balance right, which is why I pause today to point out some incredible technological changes happening while Trump has kept us focused on him — changes that will pose as big an adaptation challenge to American workers as transitioning from farms to factories once did.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/opin ... dline&te=1
Artificial Intelligence’s ‘Black Box’ Is Nothing to Fear
Extract:
Perhaps the real source of critics’ concerns isn’t that we can’t “see” A.I.’s reasoning but that as A.I. gets more powerful, the human mind becomes the limiting factor. It’s that in the future, we’ll need A.I. to understand A.I. In health care as well as in other fields, this means we will soon see the creation of a category of human professionals who don’t have to make the moment-to-moment decisions themselves but instead manage a team of A.I. workers — just like commercial airplane pilots who engage autopilots to land in poor weather conditions. Doctors will no longer “drive” the primary diagnosis; instead, they’ll ensure that the diagnosis is relevant and meaningful for a patient and oversee when and how to offer more clarification and more narrative explanation. The doctor’s office of the future will very likely include computer assistants, on both the doctor’s side and the patient’s side, as well as data inputs that come from far beyond the office walls.
When that happens, it will become clear that the so-called black box of artificial intelligence is more of a feature, not a bug — because it’s more possible to capture and explain what’s going on there than it is in the human mind. None of this dismisses or ignores the need for oversight of A.I. It’s just that instead of worrying about the black box, we should focus on the opportunity and therefore better address a future where A.I. not only augments human intelligence and intuition but also perhaps even sheds light on and redefines what it means to be human in the first place.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opin ... dline&te=1
Extract:
Perhaps the real source of critics’ concerns isn’t that we can’t “see” A.I.’s reasoning but that as A.I. gets more powerful, the human mind becomes the limiting factor. It’s that in the future, we’ll need A.I. to understand A.I. In health care as well as in other fields, this means we will soon see the creation of a category of human professionals who don’t have to make the moment-to-moment decisions themselves but instead manage a team of A.I. workers — just like commercial airplane pilots who engage autopilots to land in poor weather conditions. Doctors will no longer “drive” the primary diagnosis; instead, they’ll ensure that the diagnosis is relevant and meaningful for a patient and oversee when and how to offer more clarification and more narrative explanation. The doctor’s office of the future will very likely include computer assistants, on both the doctor’s side and the patient’s side, as well as data inputs that come from far beyond the office walls.
When that happens, it will become clear that the so-called black box of artificial intelligence is more of a feature, not a bug — because it’s more possible to capture and explain what’s going on there than it is in the human mind. None of this dismisses or ignores the need for oversight of A.I. It’s just that instead of worrying about the black box, we should focus on the opportunity and therefore better address a future where A.I. not only augments human intelligence and intuition but also perhaps even sheds light on and redefines what it means to be human in the first place.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opin ... dline&te=1
Welcome to the Post-Text Future
I’ll make this short: The thing you’re doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.
We’re taking stock of the internet right now, with writers who cover the digital world cataloging some of the most consequential currents shaping it. If you probe those currents and look ahead to the coming year online, one truth becomes clear. The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ernet.html
I’ll make this short: The thing you’re doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.
We’re taking stock of the internet right now, with writers who cover the digital world cataloging some of the most consequential currents shaping it. If you probe those currents and look ahead to the coming year online, one truth becomes clear. The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... ernet.html
America’s Real Digital Divide
A group of former Facebook and Google employees last week began a campaign to change the tech companies they had a hand in creating. The initiative, called Truth About Tech, aims to push these companies to make their products less addictive for children — and it’s a good start.
But there’s more to the problem. If you think middle-class children are being harmed by too much screen time, just consider how much greater the damage is to minority and disadvantaged kids, who spend much more time in front of screens.
According to a 2011 study by researchers at Northwestern University, minority children watch 50 percent more TV than their white peers, and they use computers for up to one and a half hours longer each day. White children spend eight hours and 36 minutes looking at a screen every day, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, while black and Hispanic children spend 13 hours.
While some parents in more dangerous neighborhoods understandably think that screen time is safer than playing outside, the deleterious effects of too much screen time are abundantly clear. Screen time has a negative effect on children’s ability to understand nonverbal emotional cues; it is linked to higher rates of mental illness, including depression; and it heightens the risk for obesity.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/11/opin ... dline&te=1
A group of former Facebook and Google employees last week began a campaign to change the tech companies they had a hand in creating. The initiative, called Truth About Tech, aims to push these companies to make their products less addictive for children — and it’s a good start.
But there’s more to the problem. If you think middle-class children are being harmed by too much screen time, just consider how much greater the damage is to minority and disadvantaged kids, who spend much more time in front of screens.
According to a 2011 study by researchers at Northwestern University, minority children watch 50 percent more TV than their white peers, and they use computers for up to one and a half hours longer each day. White children spend eight hours and 36 minutes looking at a screen every day, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, while black and Hispanic children spend 13 hours.
While some parents in more dangerous neighborhoods understandably think that screen time is safer than playing outside, the deleterious effects of too much screen time are abundantly clear. Screen time has a negative effect on children’s ability to understand nonverbal emotional cues; it is linked to higher rates of mental illness, including depression; and it heightens the risk for obesity.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/11/opin ... dline&te=1
Self-driving cars offer huge benefits—but have a dark side
Policymakers must apply the lessons of the horseless carriage to the driverless car
A NEW kind of vehicle is taking to the roads, and people are not sure what to make of it. Is it safe? How will it get along with other road users? Will it really shake up the way we travel? These questions are being asked today about autonomous vehicles (AVs). Exactly the same questions were posed when the first motor cars rumbled onto the roads. By granting drivers unprecedented freedom, automobiles changed the world. They also led to unforeseen harm, from strip malls and urban sprawl to road rage and climate change. Now AVs are poised to rewrite the rules of transport—and there is a danger that the same mistake will be made all over again.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... a/102487/n
*****
Self-driving cars need plenty of eyes on the road
Cameras, radar and even humans help to keep autonomous vehicles safe
AUTONOMOUS cars perceive the world through a combination of sensors including cameras, radar and LIDAR—a radar-like technique that uses invisible pulses of light to create a high-resolution 3D map of the surrounding area. The three complement each other. Cameras are cheap and can see street signs and road markings, but cannot measure distance; radar can measure distance and velocity, but cannot see in fine detail; LIDAR provides fine detail but is expensive and gets confused by snow. Most people working on autonomous vehicles believe a combination of sensors is needed to ensure safety and reliability.
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphic ... lydispatch
******
Why driverless cars will mostly be shared, not owned
The total number of vehicles on the roads could have halved by 2050
WHEN will you be able to buy a driverless car that will work anywhere? This commonly asked question contains three assumptions: that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will resemble cars; that people will buy them; and that they will be capable of working on all roads in all conditions. All three of those assumptions may be wrong. Although today’s experimental vehicles are modified versions of ordinary cars, with steering wheels that eerily turn by themselves, future AVs will have no steering wheel or pedals and will come in all sorts of shapes and sizes; pods capable of carrying six or eight people may prove to be the most efficient design. Rather than work everywhere, these pods will initially operate within geographically limited and well-mapped urban areas. And they will be shared “robotaxis”, summoned when needed using a ride-hailing app. The first self-driving vehicle you ride in will be shared, not owned, for a combination of technological and economic reasons.
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/economi ... lydispatch
Policymakers must apply the lessons of the horseless carriage to the driverless car
A NEW kind of vehicle is taking to the roads, and people are not sure what to make of it. Is it safe? How will it get along with other road users? Will it really shake up the way we travel? These questions are being asked today about autonomous vehicles (AVs). Exactly the same questions were posed when the first motor cars rumbled onto the roads. By granting drivers unprecedented freedom, automobiles changed the world. They also led to unforeseen harm, from strip malls and urban sprawl to road rage and climate change. Now AVs are poised to rewrite the rules of transport—and there is a danger that the same mistake will be made all over again.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... a/102487/n
*****
Self-driving cars need plenty of eyes on the road
Cameras, radar and even humans help to keep autonomous vehicles safe
AUTONOMOUS cars perceive the world through a combination of sensors including cameras, radar and LIDAR—a radar-like technique that uses invisible pulses of light to create a high-resolution 3D map of the surrounding area. The three complement each other. Cameras are cheap and can see street signs and road markings, but cannot measure distance; radar can measure distance and velocity, but cannot see in fine detail; LIDAR provides fine detail but is expensive and gets confused by snow. Most people working on autonomous vehicles believe a combination of sensors is needed to ensure safety and reliability.
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphic ... lydispatch
******
Why driverless cars will mostly be shared, not owned
The total number of vehicles on the roads could have halved by 2050
WHEN will you be able to buy a driverless car that will work anywhere? This commonly asked question contains three assumptions: that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will resemble cars; that people will buy them; and that they will be capable of working on all roads in all conditions. All three of those assumptions may be wrong. Although today’s experimental vehicles are modified versions of ordinary cars, with steering wheels that eerily turn by themselves, future AVs will have no steering wheel or pedals and will come in all sorts of shapes and sizes; pods capable of carrying six or eight people may prove to be the most efficient design. Rather than work everywhere, these pods will initially operate within geographically limited and well-mapped urban areas. And they will be shared “robotaxis”, summoned when needed using a ride-hailing app. The first self-driving vehicle you ride in will be shared, not owned, for a combination of technological and economic reasons.
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/economi ... lydispatch
Free as a bird
Passenger drones are a better kind of flying car
Could the dream of soaring above the traffic come true?
TRAVELLERS have long envied the birds. In 1842 William Henson, a British lacemaker, somewhat optimistically filed a patent for an “aerial steam carriage”. It took another 60 years and the arrival of the internal combustion engine before Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first practical aeroplane. In the 1920s Henry Ford began tinkering with the idea of making cars fly. “You may smile,” he said. “But it will come.” In 1970 his company considered marketing the Aerocar, one of the few flying-car designs that managed to gain an airworthiness certificate.
Yet flying cars have never taken off. That is not because they are impossible to build, but because they are, fundamentally, a compromise, neither good on the road nor graceful in the sky. They are also inconvenient. Most designs require a runway to take off and land, and a pilot’s licence to operate. But that is changing. Developments in electric power, batteries and autonomous-flight systems have led to a boom in sales of small drone aircraft. Several entrepreneurs have had the idea of scaling up such machines to the point that people can fit inside them. The ultimate goal is a pilotless passenger drone that can either be parked outside your house like an ordinary car, or even summoned with a smartphone app, like a taxi.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... rm=2018038
Passenger drones are a better kind of flying car
Could the dream of soaring above the traffic come true?
TRAVELLERS have long envied the birds. In 1842 William Henson, a British lacemaker, somewhat optimistically filed a patent for an “aerial steam carriage”. It took another 60 years and the arrival of the internal combustion engine before Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first practical aeroplane. In the 1920s Henry Ford began tinkering with the idea of making cars fly. “You may smile,” he said. “But it will come.” In 1970 his company considered marketing the Aerocar, one of the few flying-car designs that managed to gain an airworthiness certificate.
Yet flying cars have never taken off. That is not because they are impossible to build, but because they are, fundamentally, a compromise, neither good on the road nor graceful in the sky. They are also inconvenient. Most designs require a runway to take off and land, and a pilot’s licence to operate. But that is changing. Developments in electric power, batteries and autonomous-flight systems have led to a boom in sales of small drone aircraft. Several entrepreneurs have had the idea of scaling up such machines to the point that people can fit inside them. The ultimate goal is a pilotless passenger drone that can either be parked outside your house like an ordinary car, or even summoned with a smartphone app, like a taxi.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/science- ... rm=2018038
How to Make A.I. That’s Good for People
For a field that was not well known outside of academia a decade ago, artificial intelligence has grown dizzyingly fast. Tech companies from Silicon Valley to Beijing are betting everything on it, venture capitalists are pouring billions into research and development, and start-ups are being created on what seems like a daily basis. If our era is the next Industrial Revolution, as many claim, A.I. is surely one of its driving forces.
It is an especially exciting time for a researcher like me. When I was a graduate student in computer science in the early 2000s, computers were barely able to detect sharp edges in photographs, let alone recognize something as loosely defined as a human face. But thanks to the growth of big data, advances in algorithms like neural networks and an abundance of powerful computer hardware, something momentous has occurred: A.I. has gone from an academic niche to the leading differentiator in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, health care, transportation and retail.
I worry, however, that enthusiasm for A.I. is preventing us from reckoning with its looming effects on society. Despite its name, there is nothing “artificial” about this technology — it is made by humans, intended to behave like humans and affects humans. So if we want it to play a positive role in tomorrow’s world, it must be guided by human concerns.
I call this approach “human-centered A.I.” It consists of three goals that can help responsibly guide the development of intelligent machines.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/opin ... dline&te=1
For a field that was not well known outside of academia a decade ago, artificial intelligence has grown dizzyingly fast. Tech companies from Silicon Valley to Beijing are betting everything on it, venture capitalists are pouring billions into research and development, and start-ups are being created on what seems like a daily basis. If our era is the next Industrial Revolution, as many claim, A.I. is surely one of its driving forces.
It is an especially exciting time for a researcher like me. When I was a graduate student in computer science in the early 2000s, computers were barely able to detect sharp edges in photographs, let alone recognize something as loosely defined as a human face. But thanks to the growth of big data, advances in algorithms like neural networks and an abundance of powerful computer hardware, something momentous has occurred: A.I. has gone from an academic niche to the leading differentiator in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, health care, transportation and retail.
I worry, however, that enthusiasm for A.I. is preventing us from reckoning with its looming effects on society. Despite its name, there is nothing “artificial” about this technology — it is made by humans, intended to behave like humans and affects humans. So if we want it to play a positive role in tomorrow’s world, it must be guided by human concerns.
I call this approach “human-centered A.I.” It consists of three goals that can help responsibly guide the development of intelligent machines.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/opin ... dline&te=1
Google Researchers Are Learning How Machines Learn
SAN FRANCISCO — Machines are starting to learn tasks on their own. They are identifying faces, recognizing spoken words, reading medical scans and even carrying on their own conversations.
All this is done through so-called neural networks, which are complex computer algorithms that learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. But these neural networks create a problem that scientists are trying to solve: It is not always easy to tell how the machines arrive at their conclusions.
On Tuesday, a team at Google took a small step toward addressing this issue with the unveiling of new research that offers the rough outlines of technology that shows how the machines are arriving at their decisions.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/tech ... dline&te=1
SAN FRANCISCO — Machines are starting to learn tasks on their own. They are identifying faces, recognizing spoken words, reading medical scans and even carrying on their own conversations.
All this is done through so-called neural networks, which are complex computer algorithms that learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. But these neural networks create a problem that scientists are trying to solve: It is not always easy to tell how the machines arrive at their conclusions.
On Tuesday, a team at Google took a small step toward addressing this issue with the unveiling of new research that offers the rough outlines of technology that shows how the machines are arriving at their decisions.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/tech ... dline&te=1