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PBS NewsHour on Man vs. Machine: Will Human Workers Become Obsolete?

by Socrates
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Part of his series on Making Sen$e of financial news, Paul Solman has been showcasing the future of technology from a recent conference run by a California think tank — things such as 3-D printing of prosthetic legs and iPhone heart tests. But the conference also resurfaced an age-old question about the future of human workers. Transcript: JEFFREY BROWN: And now, more on the challenges of creating enough new jobs in an ever more automated and high-tech economy. NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman has the story. It’s part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news. NARRATOR: American labor, management and capital. PAUL SOLMAN: Our favorite economics cartoon is a piece of free market propaganda from decades ago that envisioned a sort of cornucopia machine of the future, manned by the happy and lucky American worker, given the name King [...]

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An Atheist Who Wears a Cross and a Verb! What About You?!

by Socrates
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The issue of religion is one of the more common questions that I ask most of my guests on Singularity 1 on 1. But this is hardly the most important thing during any conversation. Still, if we are talking about the future of humanity, it may be relevant to know a little more about the person’s past and present religiosity. In this way when we move on to topics such as cosmology, metaphysics, ethics or epistemology, we are more mindful of our own implicit presumptions. The danger in the above approach is that one might embrace the label a bit too tightly and thereby ruin the potential for a genuine conversation and exchange of ideas. Thus we must also be aware of all the religious, intellectual, political or other such shortcuts we are using. While they can be useful in the short term, in the longer term they omit so [...]

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Douglas Rushkoff: Our On-Line Interactions Occur on Platforms Whose Function Is To Exploit Them

by Socrates
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Douglas Rushkoff is one of my favorite social ctitics on media, technology, culture and money. In this interview with Motherboard TV Rushkoff talks about technology, social media, the zombie apocalypse and the occupy movement. My favorite quote from Rushkoff’s interview: “Our interactions on line occur on platforms whose function, whose purpose is not to promote our social interaction, but to exploit our social interaction. So you have the average kid using Facebook believes that he is the customer of Facebook and that Facebook is there to help him make friends. And it’s not. The corporation is paying Facebook for Johny’s social graph. To reduce human interraction to that which is marketable to Facebook’s customers. Now, you are inhabiting a comercial environement that was constructed by people and companies in order to promote certain behaviors and attitudes from you. We have an entire way of life that is predicated on a faulty [...]

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IBM Marks 15 Years Since Deep Blue Defeated Garry Kasparov

by Socrates
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May 11, 2012 marks the 15-year anniversary since IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov. In the video below IBM Research scientist Dr. Murray Campbell, one of the original developers, talks about the challenges and breakthroughs of building Deep Blue. Designed as a “brute force” high-power parallel processing super-computer, Deep Blue could analyze 200 million chess positions per second. It defeated Kasparov 3.5-2.5 after losing 4-2 the previous year. After the game Deep Blue was used to develop drug treatments, analyze risk and conduct data mining. It also paved the way for the next generation of its replacements –  Blue Gene and Watson.   Related articles David Ferrucci on Singularity 1 on 1: Pursue the Big Challenges Elementary, my dear, Watson: Who is Smarter than Human? They Were There: Errol Morris’ Centennial Documentary About [...]

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How To Survive A Robot Uprising (aka Robopocalypse)

by Socrates
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Forget the zombie apocalypse – the real threat is an imminent Robopocalypse, a robot uprising! That’s why Epipheo interviewed Daniel H. Wilson - to find out exactly how to survive a robot uprising. Daniel is the world’s foremost authority on the subject and NY Times bestselling author of the book Robopocalypse. Related articles The Technological Singularity Goes Mainstream (Again) Funny Or Serious: Are We Giving Robots Too Much Power? The Perils of Voice Recognition Technology Ray Kurzweil at the Daily Show with John Stewart

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Michio Kaku on the Collapse of Moore’s Law

by Socrates
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Moore’s Law has been around since 1965 when Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore described it in a paper. Since that day, the law has been in full effect, and the number of transistors placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has roughly doubled every two years. It’s also a commonly held belief that chip performance doubles every 18 months. But Moore’s Law won’t be true forever, and in the video below theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explains how it will collapse. And Kaku argues that the collapse isn’t going to happen in some distant future but within the next decade. The problem is one of finding a replacement for silicon coupled with the exponential nature of Moore’s Law. Quite simply, computing power cannot go on doubling every two years indefinitely. The other issue is we are about to reach the limits of [...]

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The Debate of the Ages: This House Wants to Defeat Ageing Entirely

by Socrates
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This house wants to defeat ageing entirely was a fantastic public debate held last Wednesday (April 25th, 2012) at Oxford University. The two interlocutors were Dr. Aubrey de Grey and Prof. Colin Blakemore, who is a high-profile neuroscientist and science communicator as well as the ex-head of the Medical Research Council, UK’s largest funding body for biomedical research. This house wants to defeat ageing entirely addressed both the feasibility and the desirability of bringing aging under comprehensive medical control. Moreover, one can claim it was quite a watershed event, since it was the first time that a bona fide grandee of the British biomedical establishment has risen to the challenge of describing publicly, in a forum where he can be challenged, why intervention against aging is not in fact medicine’s most pressing priority. Now, I am not a scientist or a medical expert so I [...]

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Peter Diamandis on Which Way Next?

by Socrates
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  This April 11, Singularity University‘s Live Webcast series, Which Way Next?, featured Dr. Peter H Diamandis, co-founder and chairman of Singularity U, in discussion with Salim Ismail about his new best-selling book, Abundance — The Future Is Better Than you Think. Diamandis presented the case that the world is getting better at an accelerating rate through the convergence of four powerful forces: the exponential advancement of technology, DIY (Do It Yourself) innovators, Techno-philanthropists, and the Rising Billion, which, acting together, will create abundance in the areas of clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier global health care, and ubiquitous energy — helping to solve humanity’s biggest challenges. Peter co-authored Abundance with award-winning technology writer Steven Kotler, bringing together decades of data and extensive interviews with hundreds of innovators and entrepreneurs, including Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, [...]

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