Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,249

Artificial intelligence has the potential to create trillions of dollars of value across the economy—if business leaders work to understand what AI can and cannot do.

In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui and MGI chairman and director James Manyika speak with McKinsey Publishing’s David Schwartz about the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.

David Schwartz: Hello, and welcome to the McKinsey Podcast. I’m David Schwartz with McKinsey Publishing. Today, we’re going to be journeying to the frontiers of artificial intelligence. We’ll touch on what AI’s impact could be across multiple industries and functions. We’ll also explore limitations that, at least for now, stand in the way.

Read more

https://www.wired.com/…/biology-will-be-the-next-great-comp…

In some ways, Synthego looks like any other Silicon Valley startup. Inside its beige business park facilities, a five-minute drive from Facebook HQ, rows of nondescript black server racks whir and blink and vent. But inside the metal shelving, the company isn’t pushing around ones and zeros to keep the internet running. It’s making molecules to rewrite the code of life.

Crispr, the powerful gene-editing tool, is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including human cells. So many people want to use it—from academic researchers to agtech companies to biopharma firms—that new companies are popping up to staunch the demand. Companies like Synthego, which is using a combination of software engineering and hardware automation to become the Amazon of genome engineering. And Inscripta, which wants to be the Apple. And Twist Bioscience, which could be the Intel.

All these analogies to the computing industry are more than just wordplay. Crispr is making biology more programmable than ever before. And the biotech execs staking their claims in Crispr’s backend systems have read their Silicon Valley history. They’re betting biology will be the next great computing platform, DNA will be the code that runs it, and Crispr will be the programming language.

Read more

Japan’s labor force do not mind robots in factories because they’re seen as a source of help, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Taro Aso said in a panel discussion at the Asian Development Bank’s annual gathering in Manila.

Unlike many of their Western counterparts, Japanese workers aren’t afraid of robots stealing their jobs, a top-ranking official from the country said Friday.

Read more

Pilots programs are underway in Canada and rural Kenya. India — with a population of more than 1.3 billion residents — is considering establishing a universal basic income as well. Finland’s trial with a universal basic income, in which payments were given to 2,000 unemployed people, will come to an end this year.

Longtime basic income advocates say we’re closer than ever to adopting the program, as fears of automation mount.

Read more