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Bill Fulkerson

Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views

anatomyof.ai

AI amazon

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18
     
    "With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
Steve Bosserman

Universal Basic Assets: A Smarter Fix Than Universal Basic Income? | Fast Forward | OZY - 0 views

www.ozy.com/...90019

universal basic assets uba income disparity

shared by Steve Bosserman on 01 Dec 18 - No Cached
  • For 40 years, Robert E. Friedman and his Washington-based nonprofit Prosperity Now have helped millions of people from economically vulnerable communities gain financial security and stability. Income disparity, however, has only grown across the United States. Now, the 69-year-old Friedman is arguing for a macroeconomic fix — and it doesn’t involve the government just doling out cash. Instead, he advocates giving everyone assets like savings, education and homeownership, instituting a system of universal basic assets (UBA). And Friedman isn’t alone.
  • As cities and countries across the world experiment with the currently in-vogue idea of universal basic income (UBI), a small but growing number of scholars, nonprofits and researchers are beginning to argue for an alternative framework for prosperity. At its heart, they’re pushing for a 21st-century version of the age-old proverb that it’s better to teach a man how to fish than to simply give him fish. Just four years ago, UBA as a modern concept was unknown. Today, it’s emerging as a challenger to UBI as a means to the same goal: less income disparity and greater opportunities for all.
  • It’s an idea that has appeal on both sides of the political aisle. Liberals are drawn to UBA’s “provide for everyone” ethos, while libertarians see it as a reason to cut the “safety net” of government subsidies like welfare and unemployment, says Friedman. The bipartisan appeal comes from the notion that asset-building gives people more options, says C. Eugene Steuerle, former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for Tax Analysis under President Ronald Reagan and co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. ”UBA is a middle-of-the-road policy,” he says. “It’s an ideal compromise between left and right because it promotes mobility and opportunity, and less dependence on government.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • At the Institute for the Future, Gorbis is convinced that assets are a critical determinant of an individual’s resources, especially with the rise of the gig economy where many don’t have access to benefits like health insurance and retirement savings. “When you look at data, a lot of inequality is deeper than income — it’s also about debt,” she says, adding, “for poor people, housing is the main asset.” That’s why Gorbis suggests UBA should start with access to housing, but also include access to public resources like transit. If you can take public transit, you don’t need to own a car, she says. When basic assets were first discussed, the crowning jewel was land — upon which the Homestead Act was based. Then, all eyes turned to jobs as the ultimate means of security. Today, Gorbis says, we should begin to look at data. Access to data — the internet, online education and resources — significantly affects socioeconomic status.
Steve Bosserman

The Fight Over Municipal Internet - 0 views

psmag.com/municipal-internet-cec000ef7fb

cities internet access localization

shared by Steve Bosserman on 20 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Cities must take some initiative. It’s worked before, with Chattanooga somewhat famously figuring out how to implement its own gigabit Internet using taxpayer funds.
Steve Bosserman

Changing the Narrative - Acumen: Ideas - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...ne-in-three-of-us-2183db994787

sanitation toilets

shared by Steve Bosserman on 16 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 16 Apr 16
     
    There are 2.5 billion people on earth without access to a toilet. That is one in three of us. When we hear the statistic, it can sound so big as to be overwhelming. Or at least impossible to solve. We'd prefer not to think about what it means. We throw up our hands. We look away.
Bill Fulkerson

Globalization and the End of the Labor Aristocracy, Part 1 | naked capitalism - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...-labor-aristocracy-part-1.html

labor capitalism globalization

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 07 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 07 Apr 17
     
    "Twenty-first century imperialism has changed its form. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, it was explicitly related to colonial control; in the second half of the 20th century it relied on a combination of geopolitical and economic control deriving also from the clear dominance of the United States as the global hegemon and leader of the capitalist world dealing with the potential threat from the Communist world. It now relies more and more on an international legal and regulatory architecture-fortified by various multilateral and bilateral agreements-to establish the power of capital over labor. This has involved a "grand bargain," no less potent for being implicit, between different segments of capital. Capitalist firms in the developing world gained some market access (typically intermediated by multinational capital) and, in return, large capital in highly developed countries got much greater protection and monopoly power, through tighter enforcement of intellectual property rights and greater investment protections."
Steve Bosserman

The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...al-divide-screens-schools.html

technology education digital divide mobile devices classroom

shared by Steve Bosserman on 29 Oct 18 - No Cached
  • It wasn’t long ago that the worry was that rich students would have access to the internet earlier, gaining tech skills and creating a digital divide. Schools ask students to do homework online, while only about two-thirds of people in the U.S. have broadband internet service. But now, as Silicon Valley’s parents increasingly panic over the impact screens have on their children and move toward screen-free lifestyles, worries over a new digital divide are rising. It could happen that the children of poorer and middle-class parents will be raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley’s elite will be going back to wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction.
Bill Fulkerson

It's not all Pepes and trollfaces - memes can be a force for good - The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...d-behavioral-science-nazi-pepe

memes

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 30 Aug 18 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 30 Aug 18
     
    "How the 'emotional contagion' of memes makes them the internet's moral conscience By Allie Volpe Aug 27, 2018, 11:30am EDT Illustration by Alex Castro & Keegan Larwin SHARE Newly single, Jason Donahoe was perusing Tinder for the first time since it started integrating users' Instagram feeds. Suddenly, he had an idea: follow the Instagram accounts of some of the women he'd been interested in but didn't match with on the dating service. A few days later, he considered taking it a step further and direct messaging one of the women on Instagram. After all, the new interface of the dating app seemed to encourage users to explore other areas of potential matches' online lives, so why not take the initiative to reach out? Before he had a chance, however, he came across the profile of another woman whose Tinder photo spread featured a meme with Parks and Recreation character Jean-Ralphio Saperstein (Ben Schwartz) leaning into the face of Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) with the caption: hey I saw you on Tinder but we didn't match so I found your Instagram you're so beautiful you don't need to wear all that makeup ahah I bet you get a lot of creepy dm's but I'm not like all those other guys message me back beautiful btw what's your snap "I was like, 'Oh shit, wow,'" Donahoe says. Seeing his potential jerk move laid out so plainly as a neatly generalized joke, he saw it in a new light. "I knew a) to be aware of that, and b) to cut that shit out … It prompted self-reflection on my part." THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MEMES STRIKE A CULTURAL CHORD AND CAN GUIDE AND EVEN INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR Donahoe says memes have resonated with him particularly when they depict a "worse, extreme version" of himself. For Donahoe, the most successful memes are more than just jokes. They "strike a societal, cultural chord" and can be a potent cocktail for self-reflection as tools that can guide and even influence behavior. In the months leading up to the 2016 US
Steve Bosserman

The Boundary Between Our Bodies and Our Tech - Pacific Standard - 0 views

psmag.com/...etween-our-bodies-and-our-tech

identity self boundaries brain-machine interface

shared by Steve Bosserman on 28 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • At the beginning of his recent book, The Internet of Us, Lynch uses a thought experiment to illustrate how thin this boundary is. Imagine a device that could implant the functions of a smartphone directly into your brain so that your thoughts could control these functions. It would be a remarkable extension of the brain's abilities, but also, in a sense, it wouldn't be all that different from our current lives, in which the varied and almost limitless connective powers of the smartphone are with us nearly 100 percent of the time, even if they aren't—yet—a physiological part of us.
  • The debate over what it means for us to be so connected all the time is still in its infancy, and there are wildly differing perspectives on what it could mean for us as a species. One result of these collapsing borders, however, is less ambiguous, and it's becoming a common subject of activism and advocacy among the technologically minded. While many of us think of the smartphone as a portal for accessing the outside world, the reciprocity of the device, as well as the larger pattern of our behavior online, means the portal goes the other way as well: It's a means for others to access us.
  • "This is where the fundamental democracy deficit comes from: You have this incredibly concentrated private power with zero transparency or democratic oversight or accountability, and then they have this unprecedented wealth of data about their users to work with," Weigel says. "We've allowed these private companies to take over a lot of functions that we have historically thought of as public functions or social goods, like letting Google be the world's library. Democracy and the very concept of social goods—that tradition is so eroded in the United States that people were ready to let these private companies assume control."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Lynch, the University of Connecticut philosophy professor, also believes that one of our best hopes comes from the bottom up, in the form of actually educating people about the products that they spend so much time using. We should know and be aware of how these companies work, how they track our behavior, and how they make recommendations to us based on our behavior and that of others. Essentially, we need to understand the fundamental difference between our behavior IRL and in the digital sphere—a difference that, despite the erosion of boundaries, still stands."Whether we know it or not, the connections that we make on the Internet are being used to cultivate an identity for us—an identity that is then sold to us afterward," Lynch says. "Google tells you what questions to ask, and then it gives you the answers to those questions."
Steve Bosserman

Community-Based 'Bright Spots' Offer Hope Against Climate Change - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/...against_climate_change_2016101

anthropocene climate change community-based

shared by Steve Bosserman on 20 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 20 Oct 16
     
    Illustrates a way that community members can access the means to meet their basic needs which keeps them from destroying their local environment, emigrating and overburdening another area, or revolting against the prevailing social system and power structure.
Steve Bosserman

Are You Creditworthy? The Algorithm Will Decide. - 0 views

undark.org/...redit-scoring-machine-learning

algorithms discrimination bias credit scoring

shared by Steve Bosserman on 12 May 18 - No Cached
  • The decisions made by algorithmic credit scoring applications are not only said to be more accurate in predicting risk than traditional scoring methods; its champions argue they are also fairer because the algorithm is unswayed by the racial, gender, and socioeconomic biases that have skewed access to credit in the past.
  • Algorithmic credit scores might seem futuristic, but these practices do have roots in credit scoring practices of yore. Early credit agencies, for example, hired human reporters to dig into their customers’ credit histories. The reports were largely compiled from local gossip and colored by the speculations of the predominantly white, male middle class reporters. Remarks about race and class, asides about housekeeping, and speculations about sexual orientation all abounded.
  • By 1935, whole neighborhoods in the U.S. were classified according to their credit characteristics. A map from that year of Greater Atlanta comes color-coded in shades of blue (desirable), yellow (definitely declining) and red (hazardous). The legend recalls a time when an individual’s chances of receiving a mortgage were shaped by their geographic status.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • These systems are fast becoming the norm. The Chinese Government is now close to launching its own algorithmic “Social Credit System” for its 1.4 billion citizens, a metric that uses online data to rate trustworthiness. As these systems become pervasive, and scores come to stand for individual worth, determining access to finance, services, and basic freedoms, the stakes of one bad decision are that much higher. This is to say nothing of the legitimacy of using such algorithmic proxies in the first place. While it might seem obvious to call for greater transparency in these systems, with machine learning and massive datasets it’s extremely difficult to locate bias. Even if we could peer inside the black box, we probably wouldn’t find a clause in the code instructing the system to discriminate against the poor, or people of color, or even people who play too many video games. More important than understanding how these scores get calculated is giving users meaningful opportunities to dispute and contest adverse decisions that are made about them by the algorithm.
Steve Bosserman

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Proceedings of a Workshop-in Brief - 0 views

www.nap.edu/...eedings-of-a-workshop-in-brief

industrial revolution change framework

shared by Steve Bosserman on 07 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 07 Mar 17
     
    The Forum's perspective on present and future technological and societal changes is captured in their 'Principled Framework for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.' Philbeck explained the four principles that characterize the Fourth Industrial Revolution. * Think systems, not technologies. Individual technologies are interesting, but it is their systemic impact that matters. Emerging technologies challenge our societal values and norms, sometimes for good, but sometimes also in negative ways; the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have civilization-changing impact-on species, on the planet, on geopolitics, and on the global economy. Philbeck suggested that wealth creation and aggregation supported by this phase of technological innovation may challenge societal commitments to accessibility, inclusivity, and fairness and create the need for relentless worker re-education. As Philbeck stated, "The costs for greater productivity are often externalized to stakeholders who are not involved in a particular technology's development." * Empowering, not determining. The Forum urges an approach to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that honors existing social principles. "We need to take a stance toward technology and technological systems that empowers society and acts counter to fatalistic and deterministic views, so that society and its agency is not nullified," said Philbeck. "Technologies are not forces; we have the ability to shape them and decide on how they are applied." * Future by design, and not by default. Seeking a future by design requires active governance. There are many types of governance-by individuals, by governments, by civic society, and by companies. Philbeck argued that failure to pay attention to critical governance questions in consideration of the Fourth Industrial Revolution means societies are likely to allow undemocratic, random, and potentially malicious forces to shape the future of technological systems and th
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