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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

What Will Work Look Like in 2030? - 0 views

www.strategy-business.com/...at-Will-Work-Look-Like-in-2030

technology economics employment adaptation strategy

shared by Steve Bosserman on 26 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Megatrends such as digitization, the rise of automation, and shifting demographics are disrupting the way we work, and the way companies relate to workers.
  • We at PwC have spent some time envisioning four alternative future worlds of work, each named with a color. These admittedly extreme examples of how work could look in 2030 are shaped by the ways people and organizations respond to the forces of collectivism and individualism, on one axis, and integration and fragmentation on the other. These scenarios can help organizations think through possibilities and how they will prepare to meet them. One prospect is that the world could move away from big company capitalism as technology enables small businesses and niche marketers to become more powerful. Or collectivism could take priority, as societies and companies work together through a sense of shared responsibility. Will “me first” prevail, or will societies come together for the greater good? Will digital technology mark the end for large companies, or will it enable large companies to slash their internal and external costs and become more powerful?
Steve Bosserman

20 Slack Apps You'll Love - 0 views

medium.com/...-apps-you-ll-love-a295ef2c0f9c

slack productivity apps

shared by Steve Bosserman on 16 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 16 Apr 16
     
    Slack is taking the business world by storm. More and more companies are using this communication tool-and it's becoming an increasingly robust platform due to all of the integrations being built on top of it. Now, you can do pretty much everything in Slack-from tracking how your customers use your app, to keeping tabs on company finances at a glance, to getting a daily digest of top news from around the web. Here are 20 of the Product Hunt community's most-loved Slack integrations. Trust us-once you give some of these a try, you'll wonder how you ever made it through the day without them.
Steve Bosserman

New houses in Puerto Rico designed to survive future storms - 0 views

www.fastcompany.com/...rto-rico-survive-future-storms

affordable housing off the grid puerto rico

shared by Steve Bosserman on 28 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • The design is “based on what we know is affordable housing in Puerto Rico for a single family,” says Hector Ralat, an architect based in the firm’s Puerto Rican office. “But the focus was to alter the DNA of that knowledge and to put in the essential components that someone would need to sustain living conditions for at least two weeks, which is the recommended time here for someone to receive aid after a disaster.” The houses will likely cost around $120,000, a number that lets homeowners access favorable interest rates on mortgages. The units can be stacked on top of each other; in Villalba, most of the community will be three stories high (the solar will serve the whole building).
  • “We just know our product is better than stick-built construction in these types of dangerous environments,” says Paul Galvin, chairman and CEO of SG Blocks, the parent company of SG Residential. “Heavy-gauge steel structures are just designed to a high tolerance for the effects of climate change.” The houses, most of which will have two bedrooms, will start at $90,000 to $130,000. It might be possible to build cheaper houses, Galvin says, but the company is “trying to deliver product that is quality-driven, in that it’s going to be built once and it’s not going to be destroyed every storm.” The company is also working with a bank to create a mortgage that is similar in monthly cost to a car payment. The design can incorporate solar panels.
  • HiveCube, another modular housing company, is also using shipping containers, and has targeted a much lower cost–the houses start at $39,000 for a two-bedroom home. “We believe that your safety should not be a matter of income, but a given when you are planning to buy a home for your family,” says María Velasco, cofounder of HiveCube. The homes are designed to be fully off the grid, with solar power and batteries, a rainwater collection system, and a gray and black water treatment system that uses plants and bacteria to treat wastewater instead of septic tanks.
Steve Bosserman

The wealth of our collective data should belong to all of us | Chris Hughes - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ook-google-data-tax-regulation

data mining

shared by Steve Bosserman on 28 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Nearly every moment of our lives, we’re producing data about ourselves that companies profit from. Our smartwatches know when we wake up, Alexa listens to our private conversations, our phones track where we go, Google knows what we email and search, Facebook knows what we share with friends, and our loyalty cards remember what we buy. We share all this data about ourselves because we like the services these companies provide, and business leaders tell us we must to make it possible for those services to be cheap or free.
  • We should not only expect that these companies better protect our data – we should also ensure that everyone creating it shares in the economic value it generates. One person’s data is worth little, but the collection of lots of people’s data is what fuels the insights that companies use to make more money or networks, like Facebook, that marketers are so attracted to. Data isn’t the “new oil”, as some have claimed: it isn’t a non-renewable natural resource that comes from a piece of earth that a lucky property owner controls. We have all pitched in to create a new commonwealth of information about ourselves that is bigger than any single participant, and we should all benefit from it.
  • The value of our data has a lot in common with the value of our labor: a single individual worker, outside of the rarest professions, can be replaced by another with similar skills. But when workers organize to withhold their labor, they have much more power to ensure employers more fairly value it. Just as one worker is an island but organized workers are a force to be reckoned with, the users of digital platforms should organize not only for better protection of our data, but for a new contract that ensures everyone shares in the historic profits we make possible.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • A data dividend would be a powerful way to rebalance the American economy, which currently makes it possible for a very small number of people to get rich while everyone else struggles to make ends meet.
  • A data dividend on its own would not be enough to stem growing income inequality, but it would create a universal benefit that would guarantee people benefit from the collective wealth our economy is creating more than they do today. If paired with fairer wages, more progressive taxation, and stricter enforcement of monopoly and monopsony power, it could help us turn the corner and create a country where we take care of one another and ensure that everyone has basic economic security.
Steve Bosserman

Modeling the global economic impact of AI | McKinsey - 0 views

www.mckinsey.com/...act-of-ai-on-the-world-economy

artificial intelligence global economy

shared by Steve Bosserman on 01 Dec 18 - No Cached
  • The role of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and techniques in business and the global economy is a hot topic. This is not surprising given that AI might usher in radical—arguably unprecedented—changes in the way people live and work. The AI revolution is not in its infancy, but most of its economic impact is yet to come.
  • New research from the McKinsey Global Institute attempts to simulate the impact of AI on the world economy. First, it builds on an understanding of the behavior of companies and the dynamics of various sectors to develop a bottom-up view of how to adopt and absorb AI technologies. Second, it takes into account the likely disruptions that countries, companies, and workers are likely to experience as they transition to AI. There will very probably be costs during this transition period, and they need to be factored into any estimate. The analysis examines how economic gains and losses are likely to be distributed among firms, employees, and countries and how this distribution could potentially hamper the capture of AI benefits. Third, the research examines the dynamics of AI for a wide range of countries—clustered into groups with similar characteristics—with the aim of giving a more global view.
  • The analysis should be seen as a guide to the potential economic impact of AI based on the best knowledge available at this stage. Among the major findings are the following: There is large potential for AI to contribute to global economic activity A key challenge is that adoption of AI could widen gaps among countries, companies, and workers
Steve Bosserman

We Need an FDA For Algorithms: UK mathematician Hannah Fry on the promise and danger of... - 0 views

nautil.us/...we-need-an-fda-for-algorithms

ethics algorithms

shared by Steve Bosserman on 08 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • Right now other people are making lots of money on our data. So much money. I think the one that stands out for me is a company called Palantir, founded by Peter Thiel in 2003. It’s actually one of Silicon Valley’s biggest success stories, and is worth more than Twitter. Most people have never heard of it because it’s all operating completely behind the scenes. This company and companies like it have databases that contain every possible thing you can ever imagine, on you, and who you are, and what you’re interested in. It’s got things like your declared sexuality as well as your true sexuality, things like whether you’ve had a miscarriage, whether you’ve had an abortion. Your feelings on guns, whether you’ve used drugs, like, all of these things are being packaged up, inferred, and sold on for huge profit.
  • Do we need to develop a brand-new intuition about how to interact with algorithms? It’s not on us to change that as the users. It’s on the people who are designing the algorithms to make their algorithms to fit into existing human intuition.
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

Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform - 0 views

www.wired.com/...-next-great-computing-platform

crispr dna genetics biology

shared by Steve Bosserman on 06 May 18 - No Cached
  • 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
  • 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.
  • “Being able to do that in a parallel way is the novel part,” says Paul Dabrowski, who estimates that Synthego cuts down the time it takes for a scientists to perform gene edits from several months to just one.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • his company’s first move was to release a different gene-editing enzyme called MAD7—you can think of it like a Crispr/Cas9 knockoff, but legal—free for R&D uses. Inscripta will charge a single-digit royalty, far below market standards, to use MAD7 in manufacturing products or therapeutics.
  • We’re trying to get more people into the game now, by democratizing access to this family of enzymes,” he says. It’s a page from the Steve Jobs playbook; get them hooked on the MADzyme platform, down the line sell them personal hardware.
Steve Bosserman

There is no difference between computer art and human art | Aeon Ideas - 0 views

aeon.co/...computer-art-it-s-all-just-art

artificial intelligence computer art man versus machine

shared by Steve Bosserman on 20 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • In industry, there is blunt-force algorithmic tension – ‘Efficiency, capitalism, commerce!’ versus ‘Robots are stealing our jobs!’ But for algorithmic art, the tension is subtler. Only 4 per cent of the work done in the United States economy requires ‘creativity at a median human level’, according to the consulting firm McKinsey and Company. So for computer art – which tries explicitly to zoom into this small piece of that vocational pie – it’s a question not of efficiency or equity, but of trust. Art requires emotional and phrenic investments, with the promised return of a shared slice of the human experience. When we view computer art, the pestering, creepy worry is: who’s on the other end of the line? Is it human? We might, then, worry that it’s not art at all.
  • But the honest-to-God truth, at the end of all of this, is that this whole notion is in some way a put-on: a distinction without a difference. ‘Computer art’ doesn’t really exist in an any more provocative sense than ‘paint art’ or ‘piano art’ does. The algorithmic software was written by a human, after all, using theories thought up by a human, using a computer built by a human, using specs written by a human, using materials gathered by a human, at a company staffed by humans, using tools built by a human, and so on. Computer art is human art – a subset rather than a distinction. It’s safe to release the tension.
Steve Bosserman

Global trade should be remade from the bottom up - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...09-11e5-99cb-83242733f755.html

global_trade

shared by Steve Bosserman on 16 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Steve Bosserman on 16 Apr 16
     
    "The core of the revolt against global integration, though, is not ignorance. It is a sense, not wholly unwarranted, that it is a project carried out by elites for elites with little consideration for the interests of ordinary people - who see the globalisation agenda as being set by big companies playing off one country against another. They read the revelations in the Panama Papers and conclude that globalisation offers a fortunate few the opportunities to avoid taxes and regulations that are not available to the rest. And they see the disintegration that accompanies global integration, as communities suffer when big employers lose to foreign competitors."
Bill Fulkerson

An ex-military contractor working for Google X collapsed on the job, and his coworkers ... - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com.au/ee-collapsed-on-the-job-2017-3

culture job work

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 04 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 04 Apr 17
     
    "From the testers' point of view, they had loads of experience with sophisticated aircraft. They wanted clear rules, better safety protocols, and reasonable work expectations from the Project Wing managers. At the same time, some members of the flight-testing crew felt like their expertise on how to accomplish their mission was being dismissed, people told us. In contrast, some of the team's managers felt as if the crew's skills with combat aeroplanes and military drones made them somewhat overqualified and their ideas overkill for the task at hand, according to a person close to the company. It was a disconnect between two groups with very different mentalities about how to get things done."
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