Lifeboat Foundation

President Obama announced a new initiative this week to connect 20 million more Americans to broadband by 2020, further promoting the White House’s agenda to reclassify high speed Internet as a public utility, like water or electricity.

The digital initiative, named ConnectALL, is intended “for folks looking for jobs or workers hoping to learn new skills,” wrote Obama in a Facebook post, acknowledging that in today’s economy, “the Internet isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.”

Interesting.

Giving everyone a “basic income” is the latest trendy idea sweeping Silicon Valley. It’s a terrible solution to a real problem.

UK’s biggest threat to their own economy is cybercrimes.

By Jacob Bojesson

The Canadian province of Ontario will join several European countries in testing Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) in the near future.

UBI is a a monthly allowance given to all citizens regardless of their socioeconomic status. Ontario’s regional government will release its designs for a pilot program in 2016.

Continue reading “Canada To Test Universal Basic Income For Citizens” »

High-resolution satellite imagery can be used to monitor the flow of goods and commodities to measure global economic indicators. Our imagery can help economists, supply chain managers, hedge fund traders, and logistics operators identify operational inefficiencies and anticipate supply chain bottlenecks from above.

Here’s an example of our imagery in action, depicting supply chain changes in the Port of Long Beach, the second-busiest container port in the United States. The time lapse imagery shows dynamic fluctuations in features including shipping containers, cars and ships.

Not good. Could this be one of the many reasons why so many are leaving SV and going to places like NY, Austin, Boston, etc.?

People are angry at Silicon Valley. In recent years, protestors have slashed the tires of buses hired to transport Google employees. They’ve occupied Airbnb’s headquarters and participated in worldwide demonstrations against Uber.

These tech titans stand accused of destroying industries and livelihoods, sucking up wealth for themselves while failing to distribute any wider benefits to the rest of us. And they’re guilty, according to media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, author of the forthcoming book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth became the Enemy of Prosperity. He argues that unless Silicon Valley’s fundamental model changes, we’re heading for mass social unrest.

Continue reading “Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest, argues media theorist” »

Following two big acquisitions by US tech companies of AI startups based in academia, the capital is emerging as a hub for young scientist-entrepreneurs.

Researchers from the University of Alexandria have developed a cheaper, simpler and potentially cleaner way to turn seawater into drinking water than conventional methods.

This could have a huge impact on rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa, where access to clean water is a pressing issue if social stability and economic development is to improve.

Right now, desalinating seawater is the only viable way to provide water to growing populations, and large desalination plants are now a fact of life in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries.

A realistic article on AI — especially around AI being manipulated by others for their own gain which I have also identified as the real risks with AI.

Artificial intelligence (AI), once the seeming red-headed stepchild of the scientific community, has come a long way in the past two decades. Most of us have reconciled with the fact that we can’t live without our smartphones and Siri, and AI’s seemingly omnipotent nature has infiltrated the nearest and farthest corners of our lives, from robo-advisors on Wall Street and crime-spotting security cameras, to big data analysis by Google’s BigQuery and Watson’s entry into diagnostics in the medical field.

In many unforeseen ways, AI is helping to improve and make our lives more efficient, though the reverse degeneration of human economic and cultural structures is also a potential reality. The Future of Life Institute’s tagline sums it up in succinct fashion: “Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before…or to self-destruct.” Humans are the creators, but will we always have control of our revolutionary inventions?

To much of the general public, AI is AI is AI, but this is only part truth. Today, there are two primary strands of AI development — ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). ANI is often termed “weak AI” and is “the expert” of the pair, using its intelligence to perform specific functions. Most of the technology with which we surround ourselves (including Siri) falls into the ANI bucket. AGI is the next generation of ANI, and it’s the type of AI behind dreams of building a machine that achieves human levels of consciousness.

Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Risk — 12 Researchers Weigh in on the Danger’s of Smarter Machines” »