Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types:
Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).
Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).
Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse). This is sometimes referred to as 'backfire'.
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Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views
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"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
"A Modified Ponzi Scheme": 78% Of Tesla Operating Cash Flow Has Come From Customer Depo... - 0 views
Irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa are consistently falling short of their promises - 0 views
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Large-scale irrigation infrastructure projects are back on the development agenda in sub-Saharan Africa after a near 30-year hiatus, despite projects having had disappointing results, with social and environmental side effects outweighing benefits. Such projects are planned in response to water scarcity pressures and are seen as a solution to intensify agricultural production, support rural economic development and enhance resilience to climate change.
Detecting Regions At Risk for Spreading COVID-19 Using Existing Cellular Wireless Netwo... - 0 views
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Goal: The purpose of this article is to introduce a new strategy to identify areas with high human density and mobility, which are at risk for spreading COVID-19. Crowded regions with actively moving people (called at-risk regions) are susceptible to spreading the disease, especially if they contain asymptomatic infected people together with healthy people. Methods: Our scheme identifies at-risk regions using existing cellular network functionalities-handover and cell (re)selection-used to maintain seamless coverage for mobile end-user equipment (UE). The frequency of handover and cell (re)selection events is highly reflective of the density of mobile people in the area because virtually everyone carries UEs. Results: These measurements, which are accumulated over very many UEs, allow us to identify the at-risk regions without compromising the privacy and anonymity of individuals. Conclusions: The inferred at-risk regions can then be subjected to further monitoring and risk mitigation.
Unintended consequences - Wikipedia - 0 views
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Robert K. Merton listed five possible causes of unanticipated consequences in 1936:[13] Ignorance, making it impossible to anticipate everything, thereby leading to incomplete analysis Errors in analysis of the problem or following habits that worked in the past but may not apply to the current situation Immediate interests overriding long-term interests Basic values which may require or prohibit certain actions even if the long-term result might be unfavorable (these long-term consequences may eventually cause changes in basic values) Self-defeating prophecy, or, the fear of some consequence which drives people to find solutions before the problem occurs, thus the non-occurrence of the problem is not anticipated
The meaning of life in a world without work | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views
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The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms. Consequently, by 2050 a new class of people might emerge – the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable.
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The same technology that renders humans useless might also make it feasible to feed and support the unemployable masses through some scheme of universal basic income. The real problem will then be to keep the masses occupied and content. People must engage in purposeful activities, or they go crazy. So what will the useless class do all day?
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In any case, the end of work will not necessarily mean the end of meaning, because meaning is generated by imagining rather than by working. Work is essential for meaning only according to some ideologies and lifestyles. Eighteenth-century English country squires, present-day ultra-orthodox Jews, and children in all cultures and eras have found a lot of interest and meaning in life even without working. People in 2050 will probably be able to play deeper games and to construct more complex virtual worlds than in any previous time in history.
Will the Sharing Economy End Capitalism as We Know It? | POV | OZY - 0 views
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With even nursing at risk of becoming an on-call gig-working Uber-like profession, the model could bring about the end of employment and become the main way of organizing labor in the new economy, thinks Sundararajan. But problems arise when casual side hustles turn into full-time gigs. We have “painstakingly” built a system of worker protections, minimum wages, regulations and pension schemes that “transformed full-time employment from something that was pretty reprehensible 100 years ago to something that looks pretty good in many countries today,” says Sundararajan. How will a crowd-based economy look after its workers?
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