It was the year that technology — and the people who create it — seemingly could do no right, and did much that was wrong. As one of my sources put it in a… Read full Article
In the most watched TED talk of all time, educationalist Sir Ken Robinson FRSA claims that “schools kill creativity”, arguing that “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it”. Read full Article
Artificial intelligence is everywhere but it is considered in a wholly ahistorical way. To understand the impact AI will have on our lives, it is vital to appreciate the context in which the field was established. Read full Article
The concept of a guaranteed income is not new. In 1795, a group of magistrates in the English village of Speenhamland devised a plan to alleviate rural inequality caused by rising grain prices.1 Poor men and their families received wage supplements to cope with the inflated costs of living. Read full Article
Today the internet is a quagmire of captial-c Content, made navigable by retweets, likes, and favorites; everything posted can be quantified by its corresponding reactions. Read full Article
All kinds of institutions today run on data, and that means endless staff hours spent inputting, processing, and communicating. The work needs to get done, so someone has to spend that time pecking away at a keyboard, right? Read full Article
Before giving machines a sense of morality, humans have to first define morality in a way computers can process. A difficult but not impossible task. Read full Article
This story is part of What Happens Next, our complete guide to understanding the future. Read more predictions about the Future of Work. In March 2016, AlphaGo’s deep learning algorithms ruthlessly dethroned mankind’s best Go player. Read full Article
On giant screens in the European parliament building in Brussels last week, the face of Mark Zuckerberg looked down on the world’s data protection and privacy commissioners assembled there for their annual conference. Read full Article
New tools from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics aim to help technology companies embed ethical considerations into their workflow and promote the development of ethical products and services. SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. Read full Article
Life extension – using science to slow or halt human aging so that people live far longer than they do naturally – may one day be possible. Big business is taking this possibility seriously. Read full Article
Natalie is exhausted. The deputy director of a large county human services agency, she’s been wrestling all week with staff turnover and media coverage about long wait times for services. Read full Article
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” This truism—by the media-scholar John Culkin about the work of Marshall McLuhan—is more potent than ever in the age of data and algorithms. The technology is having a profound effect on how people live and think. Read full Article
According to Nathan Mondragon, finding the right employee is all about looking at the little things. Tens of thousands of little things, as it turns out. Read full Article
Dehumanization or an act thereof can describe a behavior or process that undermines individuality of and in others. Behaviorally, dehumanization describes a disposition towards others that debases the others’ individuality as either an “individual” species or an “individual” object, e.g. Read full Article
RoboCop is real — at least, in the Middle East. Dubai Police are deploying a robot policeman, and the life-sized patrolman is straight out of the uncanny valley. Read full Article
The chairman and chief executive officer of Sinovation Ventures says America’s technology industry can’t afford to underestimate the artificial intelligence companies he’s funding in China. Read full Article
The late physicist and author Prof Stephen Hawking has caused controversy by suggesting a new race of superhumans could develop from wealthy people choosing to edit their and their children’s DNA. Read full Article
France is working hard to avoid becoming a digital colony of the US or China. Last month, both the French National Assembly and the French Army Ministry declared that their digital devices would stop using Google as their default search engines. Read full Article
