Our Fear of Artificial Intelligence
A true AI might ruin the world—but that assumes it’s possible at all.
By Paul Ford
Years ago I had coffee with a friend who ran a startup. He had just turned 40. His father was ill, his back was sore, and he found himself overwhelmed by life. “Don’t laugh at me,” he said, “but I was counting on the singularity.” Continue reading… “The fear of artificial intelligence”
Degrees don’t matter anymore, skills do
By Miles Kimball, Professor, University of Michigan
If I were to make a nomination for the most destructive belief in our culture, it would be the belief that some people are born smart and others are born dumb. This belief is not only badly off target as a shorthand description of reality, it is the source of many social pathologies and lost opportunities. Continue reading… “More important, degrees or skills?”
Imagine a world where a department store knows from your buying habits that you’re pregnant even before your family does or mosquito-sized robots fly around stealing samples of your DNA. Continue reading… “Harvard professors: Privacy is dead and it’s never coming back”
If the fundamental premise of President Obama’s new initiative to make community college free is to open up career and life opportunities for the nation’s young — especially those from underprivileged backgrounds — then the federal government should also be thinking of ways to cover the tuition costs of individuals attending coding boot camps. Instead of paying for a two-year community college program, the government could instead get more bang for less buck by paying for a 12-week program. That’s something that the nation’s first coding president should understand.
Why VR tech serves as an ideal alternative to TV and how monetization opportunities abound
The growth of virtual reality is guaranteed to have a transformational influence on the live entertainment industry. Offering a distinctive experience far beyond attending a concert, show or sports game, virtual reality technology provides a standout option to live entertainment enthusiasts everywhere. Below are three examples of how virtual reality will alter how we view, enjoy and engage in live entertainment.
Continue reading… “How VR will revolutionize entertainment”
90 year old grandmother tries Oculus Rift
Nearly 50 million people worldwide suffer from dementia. It is a devastating disease that leaves individuals as shells of their former selves. For the millions of family members of those affected by the disease, one of the hardest things in dealing with the disease is empathizing with the victims. What the patients are going through simply is not within our own personal realms of experience, and it makes it hard to relate and help them cope with their disorder. With Alzheimer’s Disease International projecting the number of sufferers to nearly double within the next 15 years, it is clear there is a need to help caregivers and families empathize better with these victims. That is exactly what Opaque Multimedia is hoping to accomplish with the Virtual Dementia Experience.
Continue reading… “How Virtual Reality can Help with Curing Alzheimers Disease”
The use of surveillance software by abusive spouses to monitor the phones and computers of their partners secretly has reached “epidemic proportions” and police are ill-equipped to tackle it, domestic violence campaigners have warned.
Continue reading… “Abusive Spouses are Using Spyware to Track their Victims”
San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes flat—that was the dream of the Hyperloop.
Back in 2013, Elon Musk introduced the world to this dream with a 60-page white paper. The paper caused a stir. The idea—a levitating, solar-power, supersonic train—was both pure geek porn and a transportation revolution in the making. It definitely captured people’s imagination.
Continue reading… “How Elon Musk’s Hyperloop will Change Transportation”
What will intelligent machines mean for society and the economy in 30, 50 or even 100 years from now?
That’s the question that Stanford University scientists are hoping to take on with a new project, the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100).
Continue reading… “Stanford to Research the effects of Artificial Intelligence”
It’s been a fast-paced year for 3D printing, with more capital, more companies, and more big ideas than ever. Behind the scenes, we’ve witnessed no fewer than 50 new ventures raising money in the 3D printing sector. That doesn’t include more than 40 crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter alone.
Continue reading… “The Big Trends in 3-D Printing”
In the tech industry, we celebrate raising money as a victory second only to that of a successful exit.
And while I recognize that venture capital is often an unavoidable requirement for growing a business, most entrepreneurs, and the tech community at large — who often seem to push people into raising VC — would be better served viewing it as a necessary evil as opposed to an absolute win.
Continue reading… “Trading in your Soul for Venture Capital”
Three seismic shifts, in housing, transportation and employment, deserve blame for the fall of the American city.
Suburbs and highways, it seems, are always at the center of the conversation. The decentralization of jobs isn’t as easy to see; it has no well-worn symbol, like the green fields of subdivisions or the canyons of urban expressways. Perhaps job sprawl flies under the radar for just that reason: Skyscrapers, our most visible icons of employment, have continued to sprout even in otherwise dead downtowns like Hartford and Little Rock.
But that’s not where the jobs are anymore.
Continue reading… “Millennials and the Potential Fall of American Cities”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.