Making public transport free drops the friction to the point that a lot more people use it. It’s not without its controversy, though.
(Inspired by the Estonian city mentioned in the article, I put free trams in my fictional capital of New Koslinmouth in my most recently completed novel.)
Originally shared by Amanda Park
Different perspective than most of North America
Originally shared by Chris Veerabadran
The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting
“Day and night he wrote visas. He issued as many visas in a day as would normally be issued in a month. His wife, Yukiko, massaged his hands at night, aching from the constant effort. When Japan finally closed down the embassy in September 1940, he took the stationary with him and continued to write visas that had no legal standing but worked because of the seal of the government and his name. At least 6,000 visas were issued for people to travel through Japan to other destinations, and in many cases entire families traveled on a single visa. It has been estimated that over 40,000 people are alive today because of this one man.”
The answer, apparently, is science fiction.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Leading Transformation in a World of Uncertainty
So it turns out the problems of AI are the problems of technology in general. Specification (making sure it does the job you want); robustness (the ability to cope with unexpected conditions); and the ability to monitor its performance and understand what it’s doing.
These are hard problems, even for a system designed from the ground up by humans, let alone one that has partly built itself.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
DeepMind’s New Research Plan to Make Sure AI Is Safe
While a lot of doubt has been cast on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (that we can only think about things we have words for) in detail, it does seem to hold to a certain extent. For example, people who don’t have words for numbers have only an approximate grasp on quantities, even small quantities.
Originally shared by Andy Brokaw
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/languages-without-numbers
I have a story idea cooking about completely automated supply chains, where you can decide you want a whatever and say (in effect) “Accio whatever!” and it gets delivered to your hand in short order, without another human having touched it or even known about it.
Still looking for the storytelling angle, but I need to get on with it before real life overtakes me.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
This Robotic Warehouse Fills Orders in Five Minutes, and Fits in City Centers
It’s a Peter Diamandis article, so it’s unflaggingly techno-optimist and a bit libertarian. But he does explore some interesting initiatives going on around the world (even if the Chinese ones are a lot more disturbing to me than they are to him).
I’ve used the idea of a central, trusted ledger that facilitates automatic taxes in my latest (not-yet-published) novel, Capital Crimes.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Could Tech Make Government As We Know It Irrelevant?
Not yet ready for prime time.
Originally shared by HACKADAY
A robot made my hamburger
The future is upon us and the robots will soon take over. Automated cars will put Uber drivers and cabbies alike out of work. Low-wage workers, like the people working behind the counter at McDonalds, will be replaced by burger-flipping robots. The entire…
http://hackaday.com/2018/10/11/i-ate-a-robot-hamburger-before-the-restaurant-went-out-of-business/
There’s an excellent story in the anthology Futuristica Volume 1 about a police bot that’s been trained on historical data and shoots an innocent young black man.
Originally shared by Gina Drayer
Surprise! An AI feed a past bias (intentional or otherwise) turns out to be biased.
“Because AI systems learn to make decisions by looking at historical data they often perpetuate existing biases. In this case, that bias was the male-dominated working environment of the tech world. According to Reuters, Amazon’s program penalized applicants who attended all-women’s colleges, as well as any resumes that contained the word “women’s” (as might appear in the phrase “women’s chess club”).”
Originally shared by Katherine Phelps
So pleased this person made the effort to understand.