2018 – Page 9 – Impact Lab

Employment, Human Behavior, Legal Issues

How Millennials are reshaping the practice of law

December 4, 2018

Smart, hard-working but forward-thinking Millennials are changing the culture of law.

Headlines are filled with the impact Millennials are having on the status quo. Said to be changing the way of the workplace, they are typically characterized as less “pushy” than previous generations while holding stronger convictions.

Millennials are now set to define a new generation of business leadership, moving through their 30s and assuming senior positions. The legal industry – known for its aversion to change and tendency to cling to tradition (after all, lawyers were among the first to move from Word Perfect to Word) — is not exempt from this leadership transformation. This should be unsurprising where Millennials practicing aw now outnumber Baby Boomers and Gen Xers – accounting for 43 percent of attorneys. A recent survey by Cushman & Wakefield found that, by 2025, more than 50 percent of practicing attorneys in the U.S. will be Millennials. Boomers and Gen Xers are retiring and with them is going the traditional, strictly hierarchical law firm structure.

Continue reading… “How Millennials are reshaping the practice of law”

Big Problems, City Planning, Economy, Housing, Latest Trend

The homeless crisis is getting worse in America’s richest cities

December 1, 2018

A toxic combination of slow wage growth and skyrocketing rents has put housing out of reach for a greater number of people.

Daniel Olguin, 28, works on his computer in the front of his van, while his wife, Mary, 26, checks on their almost-2-year-old child in the back. The couple, who have a band called Carpoolparty, have traveled around the U.S. since 2017, playing gigs with their electronic pop music whenever they can. Daniel, who was recently diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, says his parents kicked the couple out on Christmas Day a few years ago, but they have since reconciled. The two musicians have been in Los Angeles for about five months, and use the quiet and safety of the Safe Parking L.A. lot in the Koreatown section of the city to work on their music and sleep. According to a 2018 count done by Los Angeles County, there are more than 15,700 people living in 9,100 vehicles every night. These vehicle dwellers represent over 25 percent of the homeless population in L.A. County.

Continue reading… “The homeless crisis is getting worse in America’s richest cities”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Futurist, Tom Frey

Turning to AI to save endangered languages

December 5, 2018

Group of Yugambeh Aboriginal warriors dance.

As languages are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, speakers of endangered languages are turning to technology in a race against time to pass on their unique languages and cultures to the next generation.

The United Nations has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages in an effort to promote awareness of the plight of languages that are in danger of disappearing. “Through language, people preserve their community’s history, customs and traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking, meaning and expression. They also use it to construct their future. Language is pivotal in the areas of human rights protection, good governance, peace building, reconciliation, and sustainable development”: all core aspects of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Thanks to the benefits of artificial intelligence for language documentation and learning, AI is becoming more important than ever in the fight to save endangered languages.

Continue reading… “Turning to AI to save endangered languages”

Engineering, New Viewpoints, Space Flight, SpaceX

Is Colonizing Mars the most important project in human history?

December 3, 2018

The Red Planet is a freezing, faraway, uninhabitable desert. But protecting the human species from the end of life on Earth could save trillions of lives.

The Earth and Mars are a bit like fraternal twins that slowly grew apart. Four billion years ago, both planets were warm, sheathed by protective atmospheres, and carved with rivers and pools of liquid water. But today, Mars is an irradiated desert enveloped by a thick miasma of carbon dioxide, while its twin is a sensationally fertile orb and, for all we know, the universe’s cosmic jackpot of life.

These divergent stories make scientists immensely curious: Can we discover evidence of a fecund past in the Martian ground? We’re closer than ever to finding out. Ellen Stofan, the former chief scientist of nasa and current head of the National Air and Space Museum, has predicted that we will find evidence of past life on Mars in as little as a decade.

Continue reading… “Is Colonizing Mars the most important project in human history?”

Advertising, Amazon.com, Business, Shopping

Impulse-Buying: How technology is making it easier than ever to spend money

December 1, 2018

As household debt rises, so too are online innovations that aim to turn your wants and needs into stuff with minimal interruption. So how can we bring mindfulness back to buyer psychology?

This year, Slide 101 of Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report has a simple message: “Making Ends Meet = Difficult.” The bad news continues on the next slide, which states that household debt is at its highest level ever, and it’s rising. People are saving less (3 percent of personal income versus 12 percent 50 years ago) and the debt-to-income ratio is going up (to 22 percent from 15 percent over the same time frame). Many culprits are responsible for this shift, and we can thank technology for making it easier than ever to spend money. Innovations like one-click checkout, browser credit-card storage, and Amazon Dash buttons are swiftly eliminating the roadblocks that stand in the way of people purchasing things. And while these innovations are certainly creating a future when one’s wants and needs can turn into stuff without interruption, it’s also altering how people think about spending and saving (or rather, failing to save) money.

Continue reading… “Impulse-Buying: How technology is making it easier than ever to spend money”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News

In a major breakthrough, Google unveils an AI that learns on its own

December 2, 2018

Surpassing The Masters

We’ve written before about how Google is one of the most prominent tech companies leading the way when it comes to the development of artificial intelligence. As each month passes, its AI division, DeepMind, continues to reveal increasingly advanced AI capabilities, especially when it comes to AlphaGo.

This particular AI is most well-known for mastering the ancient Chinese game of Go…and subsequently defeating 18-time world champion Lee Se-dol, which happened just last year.

Since then, DeepMind has started adding imagination to its AI, and they also used gaming to teach the AI how to better manage tasks. AlphaGo even went on to defeat another top go player, Ke Jie, once again showing off its (potentially) unlimited potential to learn.

Continue reading… “In a major breakthrough, Google unveils an AI that learns on its own”

Advertising, Latest Trend, Machine Learning, Microsoft, military drones, Science & Technology News

Microsoft’s CTO lays out the 2 tech trends he believes will change the world: ‘People haven’t wrapped their heads around this yet’

December 1, 2018

Microsoft’s chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, sees two big things coming down the pipeline in the tech industry, he told Business Insider.

The first is an explosion of cheap, powerful silicon processors coming in the next five to eight years, leading to every device, everywhere, getting a microprocessor capable of running advanced artificial intelligence.
The second, related trend Scott sees is the increased importance of reinforcement learning, the style of machine learning that helps power Google DeepMind’s famous game-playing software bots.
Combined, the explosions of software and hardware will give developers everywhere the tools they need to easily solve computing problems once thought impossible in a way that’s cheap and efficient enough for every car, toy, and appliance manufacturer to take advantage.
A big part of Microsoft’s role in this is making it easier for developers to take advantage of these trends in their own software, Scott said Continue reading… “Microsoft’s CTO lays out the 2 tech trends he believes will change the world: ‘People haven’t wrapped their heads around this yet’”

Artificial Intelligence, Google, Internet, Science & Technology News

Google just launched new AI-powered algorithms

December 1, 2018

Search engine now returns answers instead of just links.

Training The Network

Today, if you ask the Google search engine on your desktop a question like “How big is the Milky Way,” you’ll no longer just get a list of links where you could find the answer — you’ll get the answer: “100,000 light years.”

While this question/answer tech may seem simple enough, it’s actually a complex development rooted in Google’s powerful deep neural networks. These networks are a form of artificial intelligence that aims to mimic how human brains work, relating together bits of information to comprehend data and predict patterns.

Continue reading… “Google just launched new AI-powered algorithms”

Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Latest Trend, Legal Issues, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News

This AI outperformed 20 corporate lawyers at legal work

December 1, 2018

Technology is revolutionizing the work we do and how we do it. Increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are taking over menial and repetitive tasks, leaving humans to concentrate on work that requires critical thinking.

But as machines become better at imitating human intelligence, they’re beginning to do more and more thinking for us.

Continue reading… “This AI outperformed 20 corporate lawyers at legal work”

App, Breakthrough Thinking, Education, Latest Trend

Gamification: The key to making cyber learning addictive

November 29, 2018

How many times have you endured a dry-as-dust PowerPoint presentation or clicked through a tired e-learning course only to realize, despite hours of ‘teaching,’ you remember virtually nothing? It’s easy to blame yourself when this happens; you may feel guilty or even harbor doubts about your ability to retain knowledge. Don’t. There’s a good chance that the material simply wasn’t practical, engaging or relevant enough – flaws magnified when you are spoken at, instead of with, in a stale classroom environment.

I am not suggesting school-style learning should be outlawed, as it certainly has its merits. But some subjects, particularly those with a large technical element, demand a more innovative approach. Without doubt, cybersecurity falls into this category – something I first observed while delivering GCHQ’s Cyber Summer School. It was evident that people enjoyed completing practical exercises requiring analytical thinking and problem solving. It was also clear that when people had fun, they learned more.

Continue reading… “Gamification: The key to making cyber learning addictive”

Advertising, Analysis, Entertainment

Here’s how much it costs to advertise in TV’s biggest shows

November 30, 2018

The cost of a commercial in some of the biggest shows on TV is getting lower.

Out of the 66 returning series on the big four broadcast networks and The CW, 41 saw the cost for a 30-second ad decrease in the 2018-19 season, according to Ad Age’s annual pricing survey of media agencies. Only 12 returning shows received a price hike, and another 13 remained relatively steady compared with last year.

And TV’s biggest property—the NFL—might have hit a ceiling in commercial prices, at least for now.

After two years of price hikes for a 30-second commercial in NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” those increases have stalled this season. Advertisers are paying $665,677 on average for a 30-second spot in the broadcast, about $30,000 less than the $699,602 advertisers paid last year.

Still, “Sunday Night Football” remains by far the most expensive TV show for advertisers (excluding Fox’s late-national NFL games on Sunday afternoons, which are not technically in prime time and average over $700,000 a pop).

Continue reading… “Here’s how much it costs to advertise in TV’s biggest shows”

Analysis, Big Problems, Health & Fitness

Air pollution cuts two years off global average lifespan, says study

November 29, 2018

A woman wearing a mask walks along a street in smog-hit Beijing. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

Air pollution cuts the average lifespan of people around the globe by almost two years, analysis shows, making it the single greatest threat to human health.

The research looked at the particulate pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles and industry. It found that in many parts of the worst-affected nations – India and China – lifespans were being shortened by six years.

The work combined research on the reduced lifespans caused by long-term exposure to particulates with very detailed pollution maps. The impact of toxic air is greater than that of cigarette smoking or HIV/Aids.

Continue reading… “Air pollution cuts two years off global average lifespan, says study”