[RESEND] 🤖 Robot armies; tackling Facebook's fakes; scorching Arctic; the idea of progress; AI silicon architectures; Teslas, bikes and post-truth cat++ #88
[RESEND] I have corrected the broken URL on the Mark Blyth essay. Apologies for the error.
Who will control our robot armies? Facebook’s fake news. Scorching temperatures. The end of neoliberalism. Black Mirror vs real life. Silicon architectures for artificial intelligence. Predicting criminality. Beating Newton’s third law. Post-truth cats. Enough brain fodder?
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Dept of the near future
🗝 The idea of progress is a recent notion and has always had opponents. Great essay by Joel Mokyr, one of the foremost academics on the subject. h/t @johnhagel
🔥🌏 The Arctic is a full 36 degrees above normal. 2016 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record. AY CARUMBA
🤖 Who will command our robot armies? BLISTERING from Maciej Ceglowolski
🗞 Fake news on Facebook: how it out-performs real news. **MUST READ. **Also read this excellent filter bubble experiment which had US conservatives and liberals swap feeds for a few weeks and this detailed NPR investigation. Having denied responsibility for months, Mark Zuckerberg explains what Facebook is doing to tackle this problem. Jeff Jarvis has launched a collaborative initiative to tackle fake news.
🔮 Mark Blyth in Foreign Affairs: “The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It’s also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun.” **THOUGHT-PROVOKING **(registration required.)
📺 Is our world going fully Black Mirror? The dystopian TV series seems eerily grounded in our present reality. FASCINATING
😀 Episode 2 of the Exponential View podcast is available. An informal, wide-ranging conversation with Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review. MELLIFLUOUS
Dept of pay-it-forward
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Dept of artificial intelligence
EV reader, Joshua Gans, writes in Harvard Business Review on the economics of machine intelligence. Prediction will become free, the value of judgement will increase.
💰 GraphCore, a UK-based silicon firm, recently raised $30m for its new silicon architectures designed to dramatically improve machine learning processing way beyond GPUs. **GREAT READ. **Chip architectures optimised by AI will become more common. From next year, Intel’s Xeon chips will incorporate technology from Nervana Systems designed to speed up deep-learning.
Elsewhere
Chinese research: AI can predict criminality based on facial features alone.
Really nice feature on EV subscriber and UK AI entrepreneur, William Tunstall-Pedoe, who sold Evi to Amazon.
Exponential Salon: The Future of Longevity
🌟 Our last event of the year is a dinner salon on the Future of Longevity.
Our lead interlocutor is Dr Shamil Chandaria, Shamil is a philosopher, having had a successful career in finance, artificial intelligence, med-tech and technology. It’ll be a superb discussion on how we might live longer lives and how we’ll need to lead those longer lives well.
The event will be participatory and include dinner and drinks. In keeping with the topic, we’re serving a luxury vegetarian feast.
December 5th, 1800 in Bethnal Green, London. Will be awesome to see you.
Please apply for a ticket as soon as possible.
Short morsels to appear smart at dinner parties
🚀 Peer-reviewed paper on the electromagnetic drive. It appears to work and defies Newton’s Third Law.
German wind generation pushes electricity prices negative
Bike lanes are the best way to improve public health
Another software update pushes the Tesla Model S into record territory
🦄 The genetic Sputnik moment: Chinese scientists test CRISPR in a human for the first time.
🎮 Online overtakes TV as top kid’s pastime in the UK
If growth in the gig economy slowing down? JP MorganChase thinks so.
Transcranial direct stimulation can make you better at multi-tasking (See also, tcds as a treatment for depression.)
Dementia is the leading cause of death in the UK
🐈 Welcome to the post-truth era. (Joke)
End note
Hey, where’s all the technology? A few people asked me why the balance of stories has been tilted towards economics, the political economy and the nature of the state. These are the most interesting questions about the near future being discussed right now and so appropriate material for Exponential View.
In putting together this week’sissue, I noticed a commonality of stories demonstrating China’s increasing advances in many of key areas: artificial intelligence, gene editing, global trade & climate change. Have a scan back at the stories and you’ll see the pattern.
風向轉變時,有人築牆,有人造風車?
