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Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, so the struggle between liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism is set to define the twenty-first.


The debate over the effects of artificial intelligence has been dominated by two themes. One is the fear of a singularity, an event in which an AI exceeds human intelligence and escapes human control, with possibly disastrous consequences. The other is the worry that a new industrial revolution will allow machines to disrupt and replace humans in every—or almost every—area of society, from transport to the military to healthcare.

There is also a third way in which AI promises to reshape the world. By allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more closely than ever before, AI will offer authoritarian countries a plausible alternative to liberal democracy, the first since the end of the Cold War. That will spark renewed international competition between social systems.

For decades, most political theorists have believed that liberal democracy offers the only path to sustained economic success. Either governments could repress their people and remain poor or liberate them and reap the economic benefits. Some repressive countries managed to grow their economies for a time, but in the long run authoritarianism always meant stagnation. AI promises to upend that dichotomy. It offers a plausible way for big, economically advanced countries to make their citizens rich while maintaining control over them.

We are immensely proud to continue a long tradition of aeronautical expertise that helps maintain security and defend nations as well as bringing significant economic, technological and skills benefits. The UK Government has launched its Combat Air Strategy at the 2018 Farnborough International Air Show with the aim of delivering the next generation of combat air capability by 2035.

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But even though money is necessary, it’s not sufficient to provide human beings a sense of satisfaction, Obama cautioned. As more and more tasks and services become automated with the rise of artificial intelligence, “that’s going to make the job of giving everybody work that is meaningful tougher, and we’re going to have to be more imaginative, and the pace of change is going to require us to do more fundamental re-imagining of our social and political arrangements, to protect the economic security and the dignity that comes with a job.”


The former president says “we’re going to have to consider new ways of thinking” as technology threatens current labor markets.

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Watersheds channel water from streams to oceans, and more than $450 billion in food, manufactured goods and other economic factors depend on them, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Watersheds also are crucial to the health of surrounding ecosystems and communities. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri have found that climatic changes and urban development, when working in tandem, could have profound effects on watersheds by midcentury.

“In some cases, the effects of urban development and climatic changes on hydrologic conditions can be intensified when both stressors are considered,” said Michael Sunde, a researcher in MU’s School of Natural Resources. “In spring, for example, we found that both factors could increase runoff, which, in turn, can send more pollutants into streams, increase erosion and cause more serious flooding.”

Sunde (pronounced “Soond”) and his colleagues used several models, including land cover change, hydrologic and climate model projections to identify potential changes in a Missouri watershed for the mid-21st century. Individually, increased urbanization and climate change were shown to have different impacts on the watershed. Researchers found that urban development is likely to increase runoff and limit the amount of water absorbed into the ground as groundwater. Evaporation of water from soil and other surfaces and consumptive water use by plants is also expected to decrease due to urbanization. Conversely, projected temperature increases and changing precipitation patterns would cause decreases to runoff and increased evaporation and plant transpiration. However, climate impacts were shown to vary widely, depending on the season and direction of precipitation changes projected by climate models.

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Don’t tell the Hatton Garden gang: scientists just unearthed an eye-watering hoard of diamonds, so valuable it would completely destroy the world’s economy.

The scientists reckon there’s a quadrillion tonnes of diamond buried in the ‘cratonic roots’ in continents.

There’s just one, tiny, catch: the treasure trove is buried 100 miles down, deeper than any drill has ever penetrated, according to MIT researchers.

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What we need to do, to prevent global wealth inequality and advanced technology from adding up to produce global catastrophe, is increase equitability of opportunity. We need to enable everyone in the world to have the opportunity to really play the modern global economic-social game.


AI scientist BEN GOERTZEL believes that advanced technologies will change the world and transform our species in the process — unless tragedy strikes. Here’s how we ought to save the world if it does …

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My debate on #BasicIncome at the FreedomFest against Dr. Barbara Kolm, director at the Austrian Economic Center (debate moderated by syndicated columnist and scholar Veronique de Rugy) got a write-up in Nevada Current (article by journalist Jeniffer Solis). https://www.nevadacurrent.com/…/universal-basic-income-tou…/ #FFest18


Earlier this month, the Vdara Hotel & Spa added two relay robots that deliver snacks, sundries and spa products directly to guest suites. While charmingly decorated as a Golden Retriever and Dalmatian dog with Vdara-themed collars, the new robots — named Fetch and Jett — may be a sign of what’s next for Las Vegas.

In 20 years, about 65 percent of the city’s jobs could be automated, according to a study by the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis. That projection may be an outlier – the Organization for Economic for Cooperation and Development, for instance, projects only 10 percent of U.S. jobs are vulnerable to automation.

Still, the highest areas of employment in Las Vegas are in low-skilled service positions like office and administrative support, retail sales, food preparation and serving related occupations — repetitive and routine tasks ripe for automation.

Two weeks ago Abacus examined the extent to which China lags behind the world’s advanced economies in technological innovation, and looked at Beijing’s aim of closing the gap and taking the lead in key emerging technologies.


Some techniques Beijing will use are similar to past episodes of industrial planning. Others are newer, reflecting China’s recently acquired economic strength and confidence.

By Tom Holland

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“DATA SLAVERY.” Jennifer Lyn Morone, an American artist, thinks this is the state in which most people now live. To get free online services, she laments, they hand over intimate information to technology firms. “Personal data are much more valuable than you think,” she says. To highlight this sorry state of affairs, Ms Morone has resorted to what she calls “extreme capitalism”: she registered herself as a company in Delaware in an effort to exploit her personal data for financial gain. She created dossiers containing different subsets of data, which she displayed in a London gallery in 2016 and offered for sale, starting at £100 ($135). The entire collection, including her health data and social-security number, can be had for £7,000.

Only a few buyers have taken her up on this offer and she finds “the whole thing really absurd”. Yet if the job of the artist is to anticipate the Zeitgeist, Ms Morone was dead on: this year the world has discovered that something is rotten in the data economy. Since it emerged in March that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, had acquired data on 87m Facebook users in underhand ways, voices calling for a rethink of the handling of online personal data have only grown louder. Even Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, recently called for a price to be put on personal data, asking researchers to come up with solutions.

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