Not since Marx identified Manchester’s manufacturing plants as blueprints for the new capitalist society have our political economy’s fundamentals faced a more profound transformation. As structural crises beset capitalism, a new mode of production is emerging: commons-based peer production. Read full Article
The Terminator was written to frighten us; WALL-E was written to make us cry. Robots can’t do the terrifying or heartbreaking things we see in movies, but still the question lingers: What if they could? Read full Article
Blackstone cofounder Stephen Schwarzman is no stranger to big gestures. In 2013, he gave $100 million to start Schwarzman Scholars, a Rhodes-like scholarship that partners with Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Read full Article
This post from Marc Rubinstein (which was shortlisted for this month’s Post of the Month vote) on the lessons from the tragic crash of Air France Flight 447 ten years ago gathered together a number of interesting concepts. Read full Article
Mainstream economics has largely failed to keep up with the rapid pace of digital transformation, and it is struggling to find practical ways to address the growing power of dominant tech companies. Read full Article
I’m against knowledge. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as keen on the facts as the next person. I’m no friend of fake news. I want truth rather than falsity. It is specifically knowledge I’m against, not true belief. Knowledge asks more of us than true belief, and it isn’t worth it. Read full Article
Don’t break up the big tech companies, says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a professor of internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute. Make them share. Read full Article
Four tech juggernauts—Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook—are suddenly the target of new scrutiny by the US government. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Congress have all begun to investigate whether these companies have too much power. Read full Article
According to an analysis by the New York Times, CEO compensation grew at double the pace of ordinary workers’ wages in 2018. Topping the list: Tesla’s Elon Musk, with a $2.3 billion package, which is 40,668 times more than what the company’s median worker earns in a year. Read full Article
Not a week goes by without some new report, book, or commentary sounding the alarm about technological unemployment and the “future of work. Read full Article
There is no denying that improvements in technology allow machines to perform tasks that were once performed best by humans. This is at the heart of the technological displacement we see throughout the economy. Read full Article
Police departments across the nation are generating leads and making arrests by feeding celebrity photos, CGI renderings, and manipulated images into facial recognition software. Read full Article
Meaningful collaboration between people and machines must not subvert human creativity, feeling and questioning over speed, profit and efficiency When I think about the future of human-machine interactions, two entwined anxieties come to mind. Read full Article
Zavain Dar is a Partner at Lux Capital. He invests in companies that are using machine learning and AI to augment or replace physical-world functions including biology, language, manufacturing and analysis. Read full Article
A robotic surgical device has learned to autonomously navigate inside a beating heart. Using only a small camera for vision, it successfully travelled to the correct location in the hearts of pigs for surgeons to then complete the operation. Read full Article
Industry has mobilized to shape the science, morality and laws of artificial intelligence. On 10 May, letters of intent are due to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) for a new funding programme for projects on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence, in collaboration with Amazon. Read full Article
Google’s decision to bring DeepMind Health, the medical unit of the AI-powered company it acquired four years ago, closer to the mothership may leave 1. Read full Article
CRISPR therapies are entering the mainstream. The first U.S. trial of CRISPR in humans has begun, NPR reported Tuesday. Two patients are currently being treated as part of a University of Pennsylvania study. Read full Article
