“There is good reason for optimism about progress on reducing inequity,” he writes. He published the essay from Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum is taking place this week.
Gates points out that since the turn of the century, “Maternal deaths have almost halved; child mortality and malaria deaths have halved; extreme poverty has more than halved.” Plus, thanks to the Global Fund, a project supported by the Gates Foundation, 17 million lives have been saved from malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis.
Progress like that is encouraging him to believe that in a mere 14-ish more years, poverty can be wiped out. That’s the cornerstone of the Global Goals plan, which was been signed by the United Nations’ 193 countries agreed in September.
There is enough wealth for all of us. What if we decided that every human being has a right to income security? How could a basic income change our lives? Could this relieve our society from the stress and anger that comes with the rising inequality?
Featuring: Guy Standing (economist, UK), Phillippe Van Parijs (philosopher, co-founder European Basic Income Network, BE) Enno Schmidt (Co-initiator of the Swiss Citizen’s Initiative on Basic Income, CH) Daniel Hani (Co-initiator of the Swiss Citizen’s Initiative on Basic Income, CH) Roland Duchatelet (entrepreneur, BE) Francine Mestrum (researcher on social development, BE) Dirk De Wachter (psychotherapist, BE) Sarah Van Lieferinge (Pirate Party, BE) Claudia & Dirk Haarman (Researchers Basic Income Grant project Namibia, NA) Bischop Kameeta (current Minister of poverty aleviation, NA) Ismael Daoud, Pierre & Axelle Catelin (calculated a possible basic income, BE) …
Ok, my one world currency comsipracy friends; here is a story for you.
Cash could become history within a decade, thanks to new financial instruments, including virtual currencies, some of the world’s leading bankers said during the World Economic Forum on Wednesday (20 January).
The impact of technology, the overarching theme of this year’s meeting, will be very significant.
The evolution would be so significant that John Cryan, co-CEO of Deutsche Bank AG, predicted that, in ten years’ time, “probably” we would not see cash anymore. It is “terribly inefficient”, he added.
When AI and particularly a Quantum AI society takes hold; we may see another huge shift in the balance of economic power again. For the past 20+ years, we have seen the trade and economic power shift to emerging markets across Asia. What type of a shift may we see when AI and particularly Robots on Quantum are in place? Could we see a complete reversal of markets and growth shift away from Asia back to Europe and the US/ Canada? Or, even no shift at all, etc.? Key questions that we need to be ready to address especially as more sophisticated AI is introduced over the next 3 to 5 years.
DAVOS: Invoking the famous Star Wars series, top industrialist Anand Mahindra today said technology is like the Force and everything depends on how we use it, as business leaders from across the world began debating here the challenges and benefits from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Speaking here at the first official session of the World Economic Forum’s five-day annual meet, which started last night, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said the world cannot afford another digital divide and the key question was how to ensure that the fourth industrial revolution leads to digital dividends.
Participating at a session on the ‘Transformation of Tomorrow’ alongside Mahindra, Nadella said, “We cannot afford another digital divide. Key question is about how the benefits from the fourth industrial revolution will be spread.
Interesting perspective of the world and globalization.
It is my belief that we are heading toward a blend of Islandization and Commonization. World transformation is powered first and foremost by the mega-driver of technology, which in turn is central to both of these worlds. The most significant change in the past seven years of world history is that we have entered into a period of sustained technological progress. I fully expect in coming years further breakthroughs in areas including alternative energy, biotechnology and artificial intelligence that dramatically change our economies and our societies.
Unfortunately, I am less sure that technological change will be positive. The exploitation by violent extremists of social media is a case in point of the double-edge that new technologies can bring. This is an extremely disruptive and dislocating time for individuals, organizations and governments alike. The net gain of technology will almost certainly be positive, but there will be winners and losers, and losers will not necessarily go quietly. Nor will the winners necessarily perceive objective gain as actual gain. And some new technologies, such as the gene-editing powers of CRISPR, point to a highly uncertain future.
In our days together in Davos, I will focus my conversations on this new age of exploration in a post-globalization world. As the next global order takes hold, organizational foresight and agility will be critical in determining winners and losers in the new global operating environment.
2 weeks ago, I posted a big announcement was coming; well we have officially received it. Now, the question is “WILL YOU BE READY?” Within less than 4 years (2020) Quantum will be available. Everyone needs to be planning and getting budgets and resources in place for this massive transformation that is coming within 4 years. It will be expensive, time consuming, and a lot of prep work around business and it needs to be assessed, planned, and position to onboard quickly to quantum because other countries (including hackers) are going to be on quantum as well meaning more powerful network and platforms to attack older systems. https://lnkd.in/baSZrBY
Quantum computing will change lives, society and the economy and a working system is expected to be developed by 2020 according to a leading figure in the world of quantum computing, who will talk tomorrow Jan. 21, 2016 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
Professor O’Brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics at the University of Bristol and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University, is part of a European Research Council (ERC) Ideas Lab delegation who have been invited to talk at the annual meeting to industrial and political leaders of the world, including Prime Minister David Cameron. The session will discuss the future of computing and how new fields of computer sciences are paving the way for the next digital revolution.
Quantum computing has the capability to unlock answers to some of humanity’s most pressing questions that are presently unsolvable with current computing technologies. In 2014, the UK government invested over £270 million in the development of quantum technologies, ensuring that the UK becomes the epicentre of a technology revolution and Professor O’Brien has been leading the development of quantum computing using light in its quantum state — the photon — as the key ingredient.
MPs in the British Parliament are being asked to consider the question of introducing a universal basic income paid unconditionally to all citizens.
An Early Day Motion on the policy, tabled by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, calls on the Government to commission research into the idea’s effects and examine its feasibility to replace the UK’s existing social security system.
The motion, which raises the profile of the idea but is very unlikely to be adopted into law, says the policy “has the potential to offer genuine social security to all while boosting entrepreneurialism”.
Ask the average passerby on the street to describe artificial intelligence and you’re apt to get answers like C-3PO and Apple’s Siri. But for those who follow AI developments on a regular basis and swim just below the surface of the broad field , the idea that the foreseeable AI future might be driven more by Big Data rather than big discoveries is probably not a huge surprise. In a recent interview with Data Scientist and Entrepreneur Eyal Amir, we discussed how companies are using AI to connect the dots between data and innovation.
Image credit: Startup Leadership Program Chicago
According to Amir, the ability to make connections between big data together has quietly become a strong force in a number of industries. In advertising for example, companies can now tease apart data to discern the basics of who you are, what you’re doing, and where you’re going, and tailor ads to you based on that information.
“What we need to understand is that, most of the time, the data is not actually available out there in the way we think that it is. So, for example I don’t know if a user is a man or woman. I don’t know what amounts of money she’s making every year. I don’t know where she’s working,” said Eyal. “There are a bunch of pieces of data out there, but they are all suggestive. (But) we can connect the dots and say, ‘she’s likely working in banking based on her contacts and friends.’ It’s big machines that are crunching this.”
Amir used the example of image recognition to illustrate how AI is connecting the dots to make inferences and facilitate commerce. Many computer programs can now detect the image of a man on a horse in a photograph. Yet many of them miss the fact that, rather than an actual man on a horse, the image is actually a statue of a man on a horse. This lack of precision in analysis of broad data is part of what’s keep autonomous cars on the curb until the use of AI in commerce advances.
“You can connect the dots enough that you can create new applications, such as knowing where there is a parking spot available in the street. It doesn’t make financial sense to put sensors everywhere, so making those connections between a bunch of data sources leads to precise enough information that people are actually able to use,” Amir said. “Think about, ‘How long is the line at my coffee place down the street right now?’ or ‘Does this store have the shirt that I’m looking for?’ The information is not out there, but most companies don’t have a lot of incentive to put it out there for third parties. But there will be the ability to…infer a lot of that information.”
This greater ability to connect information and deliver more precise information through applications will come when everybody chooses to pool their information, said Eyal. While he expects a fair bit of resistance to that concept, Amir predicts that there will ultimately be enough players working together to infer and share information; this approach may provide more benefits on an aggregate level, as compared to an individual company that might not have the same incentives to share.
As more data is collected and analyzed, another trend that Eyal sees on the horizon is more autonomy being given to computers. Far from the dire predictions of runaway computers ruling the world, he sees a ‘supervised’ autonomy in which computers have the ability to perform tasks using knowledge that is out-of-reach for humans. Of course, this means developing a sense trust and allowing the computer to make more choices for us.
“The same way that we would let our TiVo record things that are of interest to us, it would still record what we want, but maybe it would record some extras. The same goes with (re-stocking) my groceries every week,” he said. “There is this trend of ‘Internet of Things,’ which brings together information about the contents of your refrigerator, for example. Then your favorite grocery store would deliver what you need without you having to spend an extra hour (shopping) every week.”
On the other hand, Amir does have some potential concerns about the future of artificial intelligence, comparable to what’s been voiced by Elon Musk and others. Yet he emphasizes that it’s not just the technology we should be concerned about.
“At the end, this will be AI controlled by market forces. I think the real risk is not the technology, but the combination of technology and market forces. That, together, poses some threats,” Amir said. “I don’t think that the computers themselves, in the foreseeable future, will terminate us because they want to. But they may terminate us because the hackers wanted to.”
I’m standing on the corner of 15th Street and Third Avenue in New York City, and I’m freezing. But my iPhone is on fire. After connecting to one of LinkNYC’s gigabit wireless hotspots, the futuristic payphone replacements that went live for beta testing this morning, I’m seeing download speeds of 280 Mbps and upload speeds of 317 Mbps (based on Speedtest’s benchmark). To put it in perspective, that’s around ten times the speed of the average American home internet connection (which now sits at 31 Mbps). And to top it all off, LinkNYC doesn’t cost you a thing.
We love meat. We love cheese. And for thousands of years we have relied on animals to make them. Impossible Foods has found a better way. We use plants to make the best meats and cheeses you’ll ever eat.
