Google’s plans to dominate AI; globalisation and local communities; we will continue to benefit from Moore’s Law for years to come; resisting money mono-cultures; the trouble with Facebook’s Internet.org and more.

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Dept of the near future

🌍 How globalization fuels terrorism and fundamentalism: the case study of Muslim-Buddhist violence in the Ladakh. Agree or disagree, eyeopening. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

💸 “There is a bit of delusion in Silicon Valley that they are not like the other rich because their technology is ‘making the world a better place’”. On Silicon Valley’s philanthropy. GOOD READ

🌟Resist and thrive, Yancey Strickler, CEO of Kickstarter, on what happens in a culture driven to make more and more money, and what to do about it. EXCELLENT

👴🏼 Moore’s Law at 50: the bright prospects for the exponential economy. (Longish report by the right-wing American Enterprise Institute).

🙊How to protect your privacy. EXPERT advice from Edward Snowden.

♻️ The internet’s original sin was advertising. Time to ditch it.

👺 Facebook’s Internet.org is evil argues renowned Indian venture capitalist, Mahesh Murthy Excellent read

Dept of deep learning

In last week’s EV, we discussed the competition between Facebook and Google in artificial intelligence. This week, Google released, into open-source, TensorFlow, a new framework for research and engineering in deep-learning. The buzz about TensorFlow was pretty intense given how specialist a tool this is. (It is for research scientists developing novel learning applications, not for front-of-line deployment in ordinary businesses.)

🌟 This is an excellent in-depth analysis of Google’s plans for artificial intelligence, how the build it and where it is applied in the product line. (Recommended for generalist readers too.)

EV reader, Beau Cronin, on TensorFlow: “this very much smells like today’s framework”

Deep-learning is rapidly diffusing into mainstream businesses. Here is an interesting product manager’s view of how Yelp uses the technology for image recognition.

Indeed, look at the quality of this video, auto-created by the free Google Photos app. How many humans could edit this well?

New machine vision algorithm can find hidden emotions in human facial expressions.

Dept of climate change

With COP-21 in a shell-shocked Paris next month, I thought it would be helpful to overview some climate change and energy stuff..

☀️ A brief history of human energy use. ABSOLUTELY SUPERB thanks @mrperrett

🔥G20 countries spend $452bn a year propping up oil firms. The subsidy level is four-times that provided to renewables.

Carbon dioxide will never be below 400 parts-per-million. Welcome to the (brave) new world

How NASA tracks CO2 (nice visualisation)

The Kariba dam,  the world’s largest, is empty, widening the power crisis in my lieu de naissance, Zambia, ever wider.

Short morsels for dinner parties

😃How to design distributed government platforms. (Short and sweet)

Robots threaten 15m jobs in the UK alone says the Bank of England’s chief economist.

The secretive network of scouts used to find the best Silicon Valley deals. WSJ on Sequoia Capital’s hidden programme. (WSJ paywall)

Ooops, we did it again. John Reed, former chairman of Citigroup, “we were wrong about universal banking”. (FT paywall)

A neural network teaches itself to use language

What driverless cars teach us about our cities: on the hidden features of cities that these vehicles expose.

Marc Andreessen sold 73% of his Facebook stock, netting $163m. Either Facebook is on a high or he’s planning a massive Christmas gift binge.

The boom in corporate VC. (I’ve looked at this question for several years, the main issue is whether this is a cyclical shift or a secular one.)

Dubai orders 20 jetpacks for its firefighters (who are presumably feeling left out because its Police force has a Bugatti Veyron.)

Police officer pulls over Google driverless car. (And the official note from Mountain View Police.)

Antibiotics mess up our gut microbiome for a year. (Our microbiota is really fascinating, looking to dig into it in the coming weeks.)

What you are up to

_This  section for relevant articles written by EV readers; or events you are involved in. _

Ken Pucker, former COO of Timberland, the shoe company widely lauded for its environmental leadership, on how difficult it is for corporations to effect a sustainability mandate even with the best of intentions.

Gideon Lichfield of Quartz on the struggle to name the ‘new economy’

Nikita Johnson of Re:Work is hosting a dinner on investing in deep learning. I am chairing, and fellow subscriber Rodolfo Rosini is one of the speakers. (Dec 1).

John Henderson is hosting the next London.AI meetup on Dec 6th.

End note

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