A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.
Insurance firm Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance is making 34 employees redundant and replacing them with IBM’s Watson Explorer AI.
“I’m a political theory researcher at Sciences Po, and this talk draws on modern political theories of liberalism, the latest transhumanist literature, and ancient Greek theories of the good life.”
The Transhumanist Paradox.
Deciding between technological utopias in a liberal state.
How does a pluralist society – a society built to accommodate our irreconcilable differences – make a choice about the technological future of mankind? How can a liberal state dedicated to upholding individual liberty interfere in technological progress, and why should it?
Do we really want to leave our technological futures in the hands of the major AI researchers – Google, Facebook, and the US Defense Department?
In Brief
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 285 million people are visually impaired, with 39 million living with blindness and the other 246 million having low vision.
In a world of modern technological advancements, visual impairment has been the subject of much medical research. Perhaps the most notable among these are those that use artificial intelligence (AI), specifically through machine learning. Google’s DeepMind has been working with the UK’s National Health Service to do ophthalmology research.
Transparent, self-healing, conducting artificial muscle could power robots of the future…
December 23, 2016: Researchers create a self-healing, transparent, highly stretchable material that can be electrically activated and used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots.
In Brief
Foxconn Electronics, the Taiwanese manufacturing company behind some of the biggest electronic brands’ devices, including Apple’s iPhone, has announced that it will ramp up automation processes at its Chinese factories. The goal is to eventually achieve full automation.
In an article published in Digitimes, General Manager Dai Jia-peng of Foxconn’s Automation Technology Development Committee explains that the process will unfold in three phases.
After 15 years of development, an Israeli tech firm is optimistic it will finally get its 1,500 kilogramme (1.5 tonne) passenger carrying drone off the ground and into the market by 2020.
The Cormorant, billed as a flying car, is capable of transporting 500 kilogrammes (around half a tonne) of weight and travelling at 185 kilometres per hour. It completed its first automated solo flight over terrain in November. Its total price is estimated at $14 million.
Developers Urban Aeronautics believe the dark green drone, which uses internal rotors rather than helicopter propellers, could evacuate people from hostile environments and/or allow military forces safe access.