Category: economics – Page 79
An international study involving researchers from CNRS and CEA as well as the company Kayrros reveals hundreds of major methane leaks linked to the global exploitation of oil and gas. Scientists show that their mitigation would lead to climatic and economic benefits amounting to billions of dollars for the main hydrocarbon producing countries. This work is published on February 4, 2022 in the journal Science.
Original press release published on CEA.
A major contributor to climate change, methane (CH 4) has a warming potential over 100 years approximately 30 times greater than that of CO 2. A quarter of anthropogenic emissions of this greenhouse gas come from the global exploitation of coal, oil and natural gas, of which CH4 is the main component. In 2018, a study had already exposed, based on the case of the United States, the vast underestimation in official inventories of emissions related to the extraction and distribution of oil and gas. A discrepancy which could be explained by sporadic undeclared releases of large quantities of methane by operators in the sector.
In collaboration with a team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, MIT experts have begun designing and testing technical research through which further examination of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) can be performed in the U.S.
The effort, known as Project Hamilton, is in an exploratory phase, and the research is not intended as a pilot or for public deployment. Instead, the researchers have explored two different approaches that could be used to process transactions, and thus could indicate the technical feasibility of a potential CBDC model. In a process involving significant design flexibility, the MIT group tested factors such as the volume and speed of transactions, and the resilience of the systems in general, among other requirements for a viable digital currency.
“The core of what we built is a high-speed transaction processor for a centralized digital currency, to demonstrate the throughput, latency, and resilience of a system that could support a payment economy at the scale of the United States,” says Neha Narula, director of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, who led the effort with the Boston Fed. “It is important to note that this project is not a comment on whether or not the U.S. should issue a CBDC—but work like this is vital to help determine the answer to that question. This project serves as a platform for creating and comparing more viable designs, and provides a place to experiment and collaborate on more advanced digital currency functionality.”
NASA said it hoped to create a “robust, American-led commercial economy in low-Earth orbit”.
NASA says the ISS will operate until 2030 before the agency hands over to commercial companies.
It is the latest major economy to announce its own virtual currency, as China trials the digital yuan.
Ford Motor Co. is working with Israeli startup Electreon to construct a mile-long road near Detroit’s Michigan Central Terminal that will charge electric vehicles as they travel on it. The pilot program will deploy an inductive in-road charging system in partnership with the Michigan Department of Transportation, the Michigan Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. “As we aim to lead the future of mobility and electrification by boosting electric vehicle production and lowering consumer costs, a wireless in-road charging system is the next piece to the puzzle for sustainability,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. Also supporting the project, which is expected to be operational in 2023, are Next Energy and the Jacobs Engineering Group. Ford purchased the long-abandoned train station and is converting it to be the hub of what it calls its “mobility innovation district,” where software developers and others will focus on making electrified and autonomous transportation more practical.
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Yanis Varoufakis also discussed “pay-to-earn” and the blockchain’s long-term consequences.
Former Greek Finance Minister and one-time in-house economist at Valve, Yanis Varoufakis, gave a long and freewheeling interview to the website, the Crypto Syllabus, focusing on the blockchain, its potential and disappointments, and where it sits in the larger context of politics, surveillance, and economics.
Of particular note to PC Gamer readers is his description of his time with Valve. Varoufakis had access to Valve’s data on Steam’s nascent player-to-player marketplace in the early 2010s, which he used to advise the company and his own economics research. Describing Valve’s initial pitch to him, Varoufakis said:
In part because the technologies have not yet been widely adopted, previous analyses have had to rely either on case studies or subjective assessments by experts to determine which occupations might be susceptible to a takeover by AI algorithms. What’s more, most research has concentrated on an undifferentiated array of “automation” technologies including robotics, software, and AI all at once. The result has been a lot of discussion—but not a lot of clarity—about AI, with prognostications that range from the utopian to the apocalyptic.
Given that, the analysis presented here demonstrates a new way to identify the kinds of tasks and occupations likely to be affected by AI’s machine learning capabilities, rather than automation’s robotics and software impacts on the economy. By employing a novel technique developed by Stanford University Ph.D. candidate Michael Webb, the new report establishes job exposure levels by analyzing the overlap between AI-related patents and job descriptions. In this way, the following paper homes in on the impacts of AI specifically and does it by studying empirical statistical associations as opposed to expert forecasting.
“The main goal is to build a smart new city, a new city that is competitive at the global level, to build a new locomotive for the transformation… toward an Indonesia based on innovation and technology based on a green economy.”
Environmental groups not on board However, not all are on board with Widodo’s new plans. Environmental groups worry that the new city may disturb the orangutans, leopards, and other wildlife that already live there. There is also the fact that the new development would cost a whopping $34 billion, a price much too high to pay during an already costly pandemic.
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Pretty soon it won’t just be Indonesia’s Navy submarine that will have disappeared. Its capital city Jakarta is also sinking quickly.
Indonesia is looking to replace its capital city because it is very polluted, congested, susceptible to earthquakes, and quickly sinking, according to the Associated Press. The country now aims to build a more sustainable, cleaner, and resilient capital city.
A smart new city
The new foundation of the artificial intelligence (AI) economy is flexible, remote work. Thanks to advances in technology that enable remote work at an unimaginable scale, organizations developing AI can now collaborate with people from almost anywhere, including previously inaccessible areas. People across the globe can now contribute to building AI in meaningful ways, particularly through data preparation and annotation work. This has led to the emergence of a new and growing freelance category — focused on AI training data annotation and collection.
While many AI economy participants join searching for additional income, a good portion of data annotators join the AI economy because they are seeking challenging opportunities. Whatever their reason, contributors benefit positively from the new opportunities flexible work affords. Geography is no longer an impediment to skill development or participation in projects that they’re enthusiastic about.
Organizations building AI are embracing remote contracting arrangements in order to access the contributions of people around the world. These contributors may not necessarily live in technology hubs, nor have had the opportunity to participate in AI before the arrival of these remote options. In fact, professional options in their locale may be limited as a whole. Appen recently released their Impact Pulse survey of the crowd and found that 40% of contributors rely on the work from home model due to barriers of accessing traditional work. Thirty-two percent were living below the global poverty line before starting with Appen, and of those, 53% have been lifted above due to their work in the AI Economy.