Lifeboat Foundation

What will be interesting most about block chaining is when more countries drop their own traditional currency models & move to block chaining like one of the countries in Africa announced 2 weeks ago. I do know that many 2nd & 3rd world countries are finding electronic currency more appealing due to the Central Bank’s policies; however, what will be the impacts at the end of the day felt across the world as more and more 2nd & 3rd world markets switch their models. Immediately, we see risks with central banks; the question is where else (WBO, WTO, US, etc)

Many countries have experimented with price fixing and central planning over the last century. Right now, Venezuela’s government is fixing the prices of many products. This has resulted in widespread shortages of goods which we, as the lucky inhabitants of semi-free economies, take for granted.

Price fixing has failed in every area of the economy in which it has been tried. But while few serious economists would suggest that we have a team of bureaucrats set the price of rubber, wheat or coffee, we do have one sphere of the economy which is still centrally planned – our monetary system. This will fail just like all central planning fails. We are now moving into a dangerous new phase of price fixing by central banks. Having failed to stimulate economies with years of zero per cent interest rates, they are now discussing the prospect of negative interest rates (and some have even introduced them), the reductio ad absurdum of modern monetary economics.

Continue reading “How blockchain will save us from the perils of central bank price fixing” »

Although this article highlights the lack of awareness by some CEOs and board members on all things around Cyber Security; I do see a larger gap and risk. I do believe if a fully funded and dedicated joint task force effort among Silicon Valley, US Government, and Wall Street are not in place tackling this jointly to help the country and economy to diffuse this situation within the next 14 to 18 months that AI could fail in its delivery due to public’s concerns around trust and security.

Therefore, tech spent millions if not billions on new AI technology that businesses and consumers see no value in due to risks.

Some board executives still need help from a search engine to explain cyber security issues, warns report.

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See even Space gets it — the importance of great Cyber Security is needed now.

The disruption of capabilities that space assets provide would have immediate, far-reaching and devastating economic, political, and geostrategic consequences. Over the past two decades, space vulnerabilities have grown dramatically in a manner commensurate with terrestrial dependency on space-based capabilities and enablers. This is true for both civilian and military activities. Purposeful interference with space systems could rather easily trigger a retaliatory spiral of actions that could compromise a safe and secure operating environment in space. Accordingly, having available a range of measures to prevent or preempt an incident, or even full-up conflict, is of rapidly growing importance to an increasing number of countries.

The interruption of space services through a cyber attack could involve large, and possibly very complex, knock-on effects. As the space and cyberspace domains are linked operationally—space cannot exist without cyber and cyber, in some cases, without space—and they permeate all other warfighting domains (i.e. land, air, and sea), cyber-related vulnerabilities of space assets are a major concern. Global effects would be virtually instantaneous.

Continue reading “Governance challenges at the intersection of space and cyber security” »

I agree; still a lot of work to be done in order for AI to have a huge impact around taking most of the jobs away. Besides, with new technology comes new careers.

India’s finance minister isn’t worried about jobs being lost in the country’s manufacturing sector despite warnings that industrial robots will dramatically reduce the need for factory workers in coming decades.

“I still have faith in human ingenuity, that even when jobs are lost in certain sectors … more jobs will be created because of that increased economic activity in other sectors,” Arun Jaitley told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday at the CNN Asia Business Forum in Mumbai.

Continue reading “India’s finance minister isn’t afraid of robots” »

I find this a bit of a stretch. Maybe some jobs; however, not all and there will be (like any new technology, etc.) new career fields created.

“Can the global economy adapt to greater than 50 per cent unemployment? Will those out of work be content to live a life of leisure?” Vardi noted.

“I believe that society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?” he said.

Continue reading “Robots may take over most human jobs by 2045: Expert” »

MindMaze technology explores the potential of brain machine interfacing with virtual reality, and it just got a huge financial boost.

Switzerland-based VR company, MindMaze received a major investment from Hinduja Group, who has valued the company at over $1 billion. This is a ten-fold increase since its previous valuation in 2012 where it was pegged at $10 million.

In a recent report published by the Economic Times, the investment is only “less than a third” of the company and makes MindMaze one of two “unicorns” in the AR and VR industry. MindMaze now joins Magic Leap in this category, which was values at over $4 billion.

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Again, I see too many gaps that will need to be address before AI can eliminate 70% of today’s jobs. Below, are the top 5 gaps that I have seen so far with AI in taking over many government, business, and corporate positions.

1) Emotion/ Empathy Gap — AI has not been designed with the sophistication to provide personable care such as you see with caregivers, medical specialists, etc.
2) Demographic Gap — until we have a more broader mix of the population engaged in AI’s design & development; AI will not meet the needs for critical mass adoption; only a subset of the population will find will connection in serving most of their needs.
3) Ehtics & Morale Code Gap — AI still cannot understand at a full cognitive level ethics & empathy to a degree that is required.
4) Trust and Compliance Gap — companies need to feel that their IP & privacy is protected; until this is corrected, AI will not be able to replace an entire back office and front office set of operations.
5) Security & Safety Gap — More safeguards are needed around AI to deal with hackers to ensure that information managed by AI is safe as well as ensure public saftey from any AI that becomes disruptive or hijacked to cause injury or worse to the public

Until these gaps are addressed; it will be very hard to eliminate many of today’s government, office/ business positions. The greater job loss will be in the lower skill areas like standard landscaping, some housekeeping, some less personable store clerk, some help desk/ call center operations, and some lite admin admin roles.

Continue reading “Yes, robots will steal our jobs — but don’t worry, we’ll get new ones” »

The Prius is an intentionally odd-looking car that gets odder with every generation; I’m pretty sure even ardent defenders of Toyota’s flagship hybrid could agree with me on that. So why not throw an equally odd paint color on top?

What you’re looking at here is the new Prius in “Thermo-Tect Lime Green,” which is more than your average upsettingly loud paint color. Toyota says that by removing the carbon black particles found in most paint and replacing them with titanium oxide, it has significantly increased the vehicle’s solar reflectivity — in other words, the car heats up less, which lessens the need for air conditioning, which in turn improves fuel economy. And fuel economy, of course, is what the Prius is all about.

White paint also does a good job of keeping the sun’s heat at bay, but Toyota actually says that its Thermo-Tect paint outperformed white in a two-hour summer test outdoors. Basically, this technology means that you might be able to get the color of your choice on your next car and still reduce your AC use. Granted, lime green may not be your first choice, but there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping Toyota from rolling it out to other colors as well.

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When governments value people they find creative ways of making people even more valuable in their local economies and communities. In turn, people return the compliment by contributing to the building of stronger local economies.

When governments do not value people they inadvertently create systems that stifle inventiveness and trap people in cycles of state dependency and long-term unemployment.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known informally as the G.I. Bill, is widely (across all political spectrums; around the world) considered one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed. It made provisions that effectively created ‘bonds’ to enable low-cost mortgages, low-interest business start-up loans, cash payments for educational return at all entry points, as well as one year of unemployment benefit for returning servicemen. Canada saw similar results for its programs of support for Second World War veterans. Few would argue that this investment in the human capital of service men and women in turn contributed enormously to the overall wealth of both nations to this day.

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