2019 – Page 69 – Impact Lab

Children, Healthcare, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

This 61-year-old woman just gave birth to her own granddaughter

April 8, 2019

Matthew Eledge and Elliot Dougherty of Omaha, Nebraska, needed a surrogate to carry their baby. They never expected she would turn out to be Matthew’s mother.

When Matthew Eledge and his husband, Elliot Dougherty, told Matthew’s mother, Cecile, that they were planning to start their family, Cecile thought fondly of her own parental journey. She’d loved being pregnant decades earlier with her three now-grown children.

“If you want me to be the gestational carrier,” she told Matthew, “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Matthew, 32, and Elliot, 29, appreciated the gesture, but, they thought, let’s be real — it’s not like that would ever happen. A postmenopausal 61-year-old couldn’t possibly be equipped to carry and give birth to a baby. Right?

Continue reading… “This 61-year-old woman just gave birth to her own granddaughter”

Big Data, Big Problems, Corporate Manipulation, Science & Technology News

How Tech is creating data “cravability,” to make us digitally obese

April 8, 2019

Are you taking in too much information every day? If so, be on the lookout for this potentially dangerous new condition.

Obesity and dramatic overweight are a huge global problem, costing an estimated $450 billion per year in the U.S. alone, where more than two-thirds of people are overweight and an estimated 35.7% are considered obese. But that’s just physical obesity. The exact same processes that companies use to trick us into wanting to eat and eat are also being used to get us to spend more and more time online.

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Artificial Intelligence, Biotech, quantum computing, Report, Science & Technology News

Top 10 technology trends transforming Humanity beyond cyberspace, Geospace and Space

April 6, 2019

Human interest in exploring the unknowns has always been universal and enduring. While, over the years, the nature of exploration has changed fundamentally, humans have always been keen to explore the unknown and discover new worlds: be it beyond our geographical boundaries, new trade routes, lands, or opportunities in cyberspace, geospace, and space (CGS). In pursuit of unknowns, it is our imagination, ideas, innovations, and inventions that are helping us push the boundaries of our exploration limits beyond CGS. It is the never-ending human drive that pushes us further to discover new worlds. Imagination has always been an indicator of human intelligence, and each new idea and innovation is helping us push the boundaries of human exploration further. Technology, which gives us the foundation on which we can define and design the human ecosystem beyond cyberspace, geospace, and space, is pushing these boundaries. Where would it take us in the coming years?

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Automation, facebook, Google, Science & Technology News, Social Media

The automatic weapons of social media

April 6, 2019

It’s time for the platforms to admit their response is flawed, and work together to protect our civil discourse.

This is not an easy essay to write, because I have believed that technology companies are a force for good for more than 30 years. And for the past ten years, I’ve been an unabashed optimist when it comes to the impact of social platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and even Facebook. I want to believe they create more good than bad in our world. But recently I’ve lost that faith.

What’s changed my mind is the recalcitrant posture of these companies in the face of overwhelming evidence that their platforms are being intentionally manipulated to undermine our democracy. This is an existential crisis, both for civil society and for the health of the businesses being manipulated. But to date the response from the platforms is the equivalent of politicians’ “hopes and prayers” after a school shooting: Soothing murmurs, evasion of truly hard conversations, and a refusal to acknowledge the core problem: Their automated business models.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Report, Science & Technology News

What are the values that drive decision making by AI?

April 6, 2019

A screen shows a demonstration of SenseTime Group Ltd’s SenseVideo pedestrian and vehicle recognition system in Beijing, China, on Friday 15 June 2018.

Moral technology

Self-driving cars don’t drink and medical AIs are never overtired. Given our obvious flaws, what can humans still do best?

A five-year-old boy is helping his grandmother cook by cutting out biscuits from the dough she’s made, and he’s doing it rather badly. He instructs the family robot to take over and, even though the robot’s never done this before, it quickly learns what to do, and cuts out the biscuits perfectly. The grandmother is rather disappointed, remembering fondly the lopsided biscuits, complete with grubby fingerprints, that her son had charmingly baked for her at that age. Her grandson continues to use the robot for such tasks, and will grow up with pretty poor manual dexterity.

When the boy’s parents come home, he says: ‘Look, I’ve made these biscuits for you.’ One parent says: ‘Oh how lovely, may I have one?’ The other thinks silently: ‘No you didn’t make these yourself, you little cheat.’

Artificial intelligence (AI) might have the potential to change how we approach tasks, and what we value. If we are using AI to do our thinking for us, employing AI might atrophy our thinking skills.

Continue reading… “What are the values that drive decision making by AI?”

AI, Automation, Employment, Science & Technology News

4 sobering predictions about the future of jobs in an automated world

April 6, 2019

Artificial intelligence and automation will create more jobs than they replace, according to a new report entitled “The Future of Jobs” from the World Economic Forum (WEF). But the transition will likely be tough for some workers, the group warns.

“Our analysis finds that increased demand for new roles will offset the decreasing demand for others,” according to the report. “However, these net gains are not a foregone conclusion. They entail difficult transitions for millions of workers and the need for proactive investment in developing a new surge of agile learners and skilled talent globally.”

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cutting edge, Entertainment, Science & Technology News, sports

This esports franchise is getting a $50 million arena alongside Philadelphia’s NBA, NFL, and MLB teams

April 7, 2019

Philadelphia Fusion Arena

Comcast Spector and The Cordish Companies plan to build a $50 million arena for the Philadelphia Fusion, an esports team in the Overwatch League.

The Fusion Arena will be located in the center of the Philadelphia Sports Complex, adjacent to the city’s NBA, NFL, and MLB venues.

The venue will span 60,000 square feet and seat 3,500 guests in the main arena; the Philadelphia Fusion training facility, broadcast studio and team offices will be housed in the arena as well.

An esports team will soon have their very own $50 million arena in the heart of the Philadelphia Sports Complex, based on a proposal announced today by Comcast Spectacor and The Cordish Companies. Comcast wants to build the arena to house the Philadelphia Fusion, the team they built to compete in the Overwatch League.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, DaVinci Institute, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Tom Frey

Chicago Mayor believes Crypto adoption is “inevitable”

April 7, 2019

Cryptocurrency received an endorsement from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel when he stated that wide-scale crypto adoption is “inevitable” at a FinTech meeting in his city earlier this week.

The chief of staff for former US President Barack Obama said that while he is no expert in crypto technology, he believes digital assets could help financially unstable countries with their economic recovery.

The politician thinks that “an alternative way of currency dealing with the debt markets is going to happen” at some point in the future.

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Analysis, City Planning, Science & Technology News, Transportation

The Next Player in the ‘Smart City’ Game: WeWork – CityLab

April 5, 2019

We believe in data: WeWork’s algorithmically optimized site locations and décor reflect the company’s trust in numbers.

WeWork Wants to Build the ‘Future of Cities.’ What Does That Mean?

The co-working startup is hatching plans to deploy data to reimagine urban problems. In the past, it has profiled neighborhoods based on class indicators.

The We Company, the all-encompassing life-services platform formerly known as WeWork, is entering the booming business commonly known as “smart cities.” Di-Ann Eisnor, the former Google executive who helped grow Waze into a traffic-data juggernaut with 90 million monthly users, will lead the recently rebranded We Company’s efforts to build data-driven products and partnerships with cities and community groups, aimed at tackling barriers to jobs, housing, education, and other problems related to urbanization.

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Education, Higher Education, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

A movement to prepare students for the future of work

April 5, 2019

Details: Breaking with traditional schooling, these new models emphasize capabilities over knowledge — with extra weight on interpersonal skills that appear likely to become ever more valuable.

In high schools across the U.S., a quiet movement is underway to better prepare students for a hazy new future of work in which graduates will vie for fast-changing jobs being transformed by increasingly capable machines.

The big picture: No one really knows what future jobs will look like or the skills that will be necessary to carry them out. But researchers and companies alike widely believe that, as a start, interpersonal and management skills will differentiate humans from machines.

High schoolers are often being taught skills that will soon be handed over to machines, and they’re missing out on more valuable ones.

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Amazon.com, Employment, Science & Technology News

Amazon is hiring 3,000 work-from-home employees with full benefits

April 5, 2019

The online retailer is looking for remote employees for customer service positions.

The company is looking for remote workers around the country.

Amazon continues to be a source of both great deals and work-from-home jobs in 2019. The online retailer is currently hiring 3,000 new remote employees across 18 states for customer service positions.

The customer service associate job pays $15 an hour and is a part-time role with an expected 20-to-29-hour workweek. However, overtime pay is available and employees will be eligible for healthcare benefits after 90 days of employment. To qualify, you can’t live within 50 miles of an Amazon customer service location and you must live in one of the following states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin or Wyoming.

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Science & Technology News, top 10, Tourism, Transportation, Travel

This airport has just been named Best in the World for the seventh year in a row

April 4, 2019

Courtesy Singapore Changi Airport

And it’s set to open the world’s largest indoor waterfall in just a few weeks.

It’s not very often that travelers actually look forward to arriving early to an airport for its amenities, but Singapore’s Changi Airport—with its rooftop swimming pool, 24-hour movie theater, and butterfly garden—has become that place.

So it’s no surprise that for a record-breaking seventh time in a row the global aviation hub has been crowned the world’s best airport in Skytrax’s annual 2019 World’s Best Airport Awards, revealed at the Passenger Terminal Expo 2019 in London on Wednesday.

Continue reading… “This airport has just been named Best in the World for the seventh year in a row”