Big Problems – Page 16

This one shocking factor can make you 4600 percent more likely to become an addict

June 12, 2018

It was discovered quite by accident – in part of a study of a totally different subject.

One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives, and not being able to. As I got older, I understood why. We had addiction in my family. And as I watched some of my other close relatives become addicts, I asked myself several questions, but one in particular seemed haunting and insistent: why does addiction so often run in families? Why does it seem to pass from mother to daughter, from father to son, as though it were some dark genetic twist?

Continue reading… “This one shocking factor can make you 4600 percent more likely to become an addict”

Analysis, Big Problems, Human Behavior

The world is running out of Japanese people

June 7, 2018

Japan is shrinking. Fast.

The health ministry recently announced that only 946,060 babies were born in Japan in 2017, the fewest births since official statistics began in 1899. At the same time, 1,340,433 Japanese people died last year. This means that the non-immigrant population declined by nearly 400,000 people.

It’s an astonishing shift. The Japanese population grew steadily throughout the 20th century, from around 44 million in 1900 to 128 million in 2000. The gains were primarily due to increased life expectancy, but also buoyed by families that typically had at least two children. But beginning in the late 1970s, birth rates crashed. While the average Japanese woman had 2.1 kids in the 1970s, today, they only have about 1.4—far lower than in comparably wealthy countries like the US and Sweden.

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AI, Amazon.com, App, Automation, Big Problems

Yes, Alexa is recording mundane details of your life, and it’s creepy as hell

May 29, 2018

I’m not kicking our smart speaker out of the house just yet, but the consequences of having it in my family’s life are becoming clear.

Since last year I’ve had a smart speaker in my living room—an Echo Dot. My family uses it mostly to ask Amazon’s digital assistant, Alexa, to play music. But after I saw a report that an Alexa-enabled speaker owned by a family in Portland, Oregon, had recorded a conversation and sent it to a contact, I started wondering: what is it picking up on at my house when we’re not talking to it directly?

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Automation, Big Problems, Business, City Planning, Employment, Science & Technology News

The coming jobs apocalypse

May 27, 2018

Congress and the Trump administration have yet to create a coherent policy response to a widely forecast social and economic tsunami resulting from automation, including the potential for decades of flat wages and joblessness. But cities and regions are starting to act on their own.

What’s happening: In Indianapolis, about 338,000 people are at high risk of automation taking their jobs, according to a new report. In Phoenix, the number is 650,000. In both cases, that’s 35% of the workforce. In northeastern Ohio, about 40,000 workers are at high risk.

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AI, Big Problems, Business, Employment, Future

Will tech and AI take your job, or help you do it better?

May 21, 2018

We all know what happens when industrial revolutions come to town, right? Higher productivity as machines take over, coupled with job losses for the people whose jobs are now being done faster, more efficiently, and cheaper by machines.

At least, that’s one way of looking at it. But, as the following video from the WSJ makes clear, there’s another interpretation available for what will happen to the global workforce in light of the tidal wave of changes coming related to tech and AI.

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Big Problems, Ecological Products, Great New Product, Inventions

Record-breaking paper water purifier operates at near 100% efficiency

May 19, 2018

Researchers at the University at Buffalo have created a highly efficient device that uses sunlight and black carbon-dipped paper to clean water. The paper is placed in a triangular arrangement, which enables it to vaporize and absorb water with nearly 100 percent efficiency. The simple, inexpensive technology could be deployed in regions where clean drinking water is chronically unavailable or areas that have been acutely affected by natural disasters.

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Big Problems, Economy, Higher Education, Money Talk

This generation has a huge and growing student debt burden. It’s not who you think

May 5, 2018

A recent analysis of American debt revealed a startling shift: Borrowers between the ages of 45 and 74 now owe more money in education-related debt, on average, than do younger college graduates.

People under age 35 with student debt owe $32,900 on average, according to data from the Fed’s 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. That debt number is higher for every other 10-year age bracket up to age 75: It peaks at $37,000 for 45- to 54-year-olds, but even 65- to 74-year-old borrowers owe an average $35,400.

Continue reading… “This generation has a huge and growing student debt burden. It’s not who you think”

Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Corporate Manipulation, Internet

The era of fake video begins

May 5, 2018

The digital manipulation of video may make the current era of “fake news” seem quaint.

In a dank corner of the internet, it is possible to find actresses from Game of Thrones or Harry Potter engaged in all manner of sex acts. Or at least to the world the carnal figures look like those actresses, and the faces in the videos are indeed their own. Everything south of the neck, however, belongs to different women. An artificial intelligence has almost seamlessly stitched the familiar visages into pornographic scenes, one face swapped for another. The genre is one of the cruelest, most invasive forms of identity theft invented in the internet era. At the core of the cruelty is the acuity of the technology: A casual observer can’t easily detect the hoax.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Futurist, Hot Issues, Machine Learning

Five myths about artificial intelligence

May 4, 2018

Artificial intelligence is the future. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are all making big bets on AI. (Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.) Congress has held hearings and even formed a bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Caucus. From health care to transportation to national security, AI has the potential to improve lives. But it comes with fears about economic disruption and a brewing “AI arms race .” Like any transformational change, it’s complicated. Perhaps the biggest AI myth is that we can be confident about its future effects. Here are five others.

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AI, Amazon.com, Artificial Intelligence, Big Problems, Google, Hot Issues

Google exec issues warning over future of AI

May 4, 2018

Google co-founder Sergey Brin sent the message in a letter to Alphabet shareholders (Source: Getty)

One of Google’s top execs and president of Alphabet Sergey Brin has raised concerns about the AI revolution in a letter to Alphabet’s shareholders.

In his annual letter sent to shareholders of Google umbrella organisation Alphabet yesterday, Brin said that “new questions and responsibilities” had been raised about the potential of AI.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Business

42 percent of startups fail for this one simple reason (It’s not what you think)

May 2, 2018

Close to half of the over 100 startups analyzed made this mistake — and never recovered.

CBI Insights recently analyzed 101 startup post-mortems (reports they wrote after they failed). The researchers extracted the top reasons startups fail, including things like a pivot going wrong; legal challenges; disharmony within the team or with investors; poor marketing; and of course the one frequently cited: running out of cash money.

But the number one reason was none of those.

It was far simpler: the startup didn’t solve a big enough problem.

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Big Problems, Future, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The next great workplace challenge: 100-year careers

April 30, 2018

Scientists expect people to live routinely to 100 in the coming decades, and as long as 150. Which also suggests a much longer working life lasting well into the 70s, 80s, and even 100, according to researchers with Pearson and Oxford University.

Quick take: Thinkers of various types are absorbed in navigating the age of automation and flat wages, but their challenge will be complicated by something few have considered — a much-extended bulge of older workers.

Continue reading… “The next great workplace challenge: 100-year careers”