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- AI has exacerbated racial bias in housing. Could it help eliminate it instead?In General AI·December 8, 2021"Technology has in some cases exacerbated America’s systemic racial bias. Algorithmically based facial recognition, predictive policing, and sentencing and bail decisions, for example, have been shown to consistently produce worse results for Black people. " Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/20/1009452/ai-has-exacerbated-racial-bias-in-housing-could-it-help-eliminate-it-instead/ #RacialBias #AIBias #ArtificialIntelligenceBias002
- Why I Spend Over $100 Per Month on Furniture RentalIn Smart Spaces·December 8, 2021"In the last 10 years, I've lived in Chicago, New York City, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, hopping from one apartment to the next in each of these four cities. Hunting for cheap, stylish furniture started as a fun adventure, but over the years, it's become such a nuisance. Over the years, I finessed the Ikea shopping system. I no longer wander aimlessly through the showrooms filled with chaotic families. Instead, I scour its app for pieces on sale, then hit the Click & Collect option so that I don't actually have to go inside and end up buying random things I don't really need." Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/why-i-rent-furniture-2021-11 #RentingInsteadtOfBuy #Renting #RentingFurniture007
- German Circus Uses Holograms Instead of Live AnimalsIn Lifestyles and the Environment·December 8, 2021"In 2019, Circus Roncalli out of Germany stopped using wild animals in its shows. They were just the latest of many troupes to make that decision. Even the now-defunct Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus began to phase elephants out of its own performances starting in 2015. But thanks to modern technology, you can still create an amazing spectacle even without mistreating innocent creatures. And ever since they bid their live animal performers farewell, Circus Roncalli has been delighting audiences with a far less cruel recreation. Their shows feature massive animal holograms." Source: https://nerdist.com/article/german-circus-hologram-animals/ #Circus #VirtualAnimals #VirtualCircus #HolographicAnimals003
- Scientists have taught spinach to send emails and it could warn us about climate changeIn Lifestyles and the Environment·December 7, 2021"It may sound like something out of a futuristic science fiction film, but scientists have managed to engineer spinach plants which are capable of sending emails. Through nanotechnology, engineers at MIT in the US have transformed spinach into sensors capable of detecting explosive materials. These plants are then able to wirelessly relay this information back to the scientists." Source: https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/02/01/scientists-have-taught-spinach-to-send-emails-and-it-could-warn-us-about-climate-change #NanoTubes #Spinach #SpinachSendEmails004
- Swedish startup Jetson Aero launched their e-VTOL Jetson One.In Lifestyles and the Environment·May 9, 2022Swedish startup Jetson Aero launched their e-VTOL Jetson One. It costs $92,000 and has already generated so much interest that the entire run of 12 for 2022 is sold out and production is ramping up for 2023. Source: https://www.jetsonaero.com/ #NewMobility #Drones #ElectricMobility007
- 3D printing for medical toolsIn The Future of Health·December 8, 2021"The COVID-crisis has suddenly raised expectations towards health services. One way to accomplish these is to simply print the tools we need – in 3D, of course. Thus, they print three-dimensional elements for medical tools and spare parts for respiratory machines.A Hungarian firm contributed to all this by producing a special 3D printing raw material that blocks the life of bacteria and fungi on its surface, preventing them from multiplying – just like disinfectants" Source: https://www.blog.szta.hu/3d-nyomtatassal-az-egeszsegugyi-vedekezesert/ #3DPrint #3DScan003
- U.S. prisons mull AI to analyze inmate phone callsIn Criminal & Lawful Activities ·December 8, 2021"WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Thomson Reuters Foundation) -For people like Heather Bollin, a 43-year-old woman in Texas engaged to a man who is currently incarcerated, constant surveillance is a fact of life: the three daily phone calls they have together are subject to monitoring by prison officials. “We are never able to communicate without being under surveillance,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview, asking that the prison her fiance is in remain anonymous because she fears retaliation." Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tech-prison-idUSKBN2FA0OO #CallAnalysis #RacialBias #Bias #AIBias #ArtificialIntelligenceBias005
- NFT museum positioned as largest digital art display in the metaverseIn Lifestyles and the Environment·December 8, 2021"Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are on the rise, bringing to light the latest innovation in the digital collectible market. Along with this new asset class comes several artists, including Mike Winkelmann, a man better known as Beeple. Before NFTs were created, Mike was far from a well-known artist. Now, after selling a work of his art for $69 million, he has become one of the most valuable living artists today. The thing is, Mike is just one of these artists who has taken advantage of this new chapter in art history, and he’s far from the last." Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/nft-museum-positioned-as-largest-digital-art-display-in-the-metaverse #NFT #DigitalArt #NonfungibleToken007
- What if we live long, in a world of “old” people in good shape and without diseases?In Transhumanist Revolutions·June 16, 2022How overcrowded will the earth/ the EU be? Who will decide when it is time “to go” or “to switch off”?007
- The future of punishmentIn Criminal & Lawful Activities ·September 23, 2022While I am fascinated by the Finnish system for traffic fines that considers the severity of the offense as well as the ability of the offender to pay, I received the following in a newsletter by Florence Gaub (visit https://www.futurate.institute to subscribe to the newsletter). I hope Florence will not mind me posting it here: The future of jail time More than 11 million people in the world are currently serving time in prison, which has become the standard form of punishment with the end of public flogging and the decline of the death penalty. The problem is, it is a flawed concept. In the best case, it should have a deterrent effect, i.e. knowing that one will end up in jail should stop a person from committing a crime. In reality, this applies - if at all - only to crimes that carry low or medium-term sentences. The worse a crime, such as murder, the less jail time will deter it. In the worst case, prison is supposed to prevent future crime as criminals are off the street, but here, too, research paints a different picture: serving jail time actually increases the probability of committing crimes in the future: depending on country, relapse rates are consistently between 30 and 50% in the three years following time in prison. (Relapse rates for sex offenders and terrorists are generally on the lower end with 2 - 20%) The reason for that is perhaps less a genetic predisposition for crime, and more that prison makes reintegration into society very hard. Halden Prison in Norway has set out to make this its objective rather than punishment per se. Its focus on mentoring and role models seems to work as it has a relapse rate of 25% after 5 years. While crime prevention is a whole-of--government task, preventing convicts from relapsing works better with probation sentences than jail time. In more than half countries of the world (53%), prison populations are below 150 per 100,000 - in Europe, this number has dropped to 73 in the last ten years, being the world region with the lowest number. But in many other parts of the world, prison populations are growing. In the United States, over 2 million people are incarcerated (629 per 100,000), with Rwanda (580 per 100,000), Turkmenistan (576), El Salvador (564) and Cuba (510) not far behind. In southern African countries, this stands at 248, in central America, at 278. So while prison time is not doing a good job at being an effective punishment, is unlikely to disappear. Precrime = pre-punishment Will we ever be able to apprehend criminals before they commit their acts? The 1956 Philip K. **** novella Minority Report imagined exactly that: its Precrime police department arrests individuals before the act. While we might not have the mutants that saw these acts coming in the book, we do have surveillance technology and Big Data analysis, which has led some to declaring that the book is already a reality. Since 2019 the number of surveillance cameras has grown by 30% worldwide – now a billion surveillance cameras are in use. One AI algorithm, for instance, claims to predict crimes one week in advance with 90% accuracy in eight American cities - but it does not say who will commit these crimes, only where they are likely to occur. This way, police presence can be increased in these locations well ahead of time – in what is called predictive policing. We are therefore not yet at Minority Report levels, but China is moving into exactly this direction. Its elaborate surveillance system - it has 372 cameras per 1,000 people, compared to London's 13.35 - strives to eradicate threats before they can happen, by alerting police to the movements of people of interest. The effectiveness of this system is hard to gauge: Chinese statistics suggest there is essentially no crime in the country. The future of the death penalty Until the 18th century, most criminals did not serve time in jail, simply because it was not considered a way of effectively preventing or punishing crime. Instead, convicts were either physically punished - often in public - or executed. Both forms of punishment are on their way out: the last floggings in the United States were carried out in the state of Delaware in 1952, and Saudi Arabia, one of the last to use it, ruled it out in 2020. Meanwhile, the death penalty is slowly in decline, too: 142 countries have either banned or suspended it. While Europe led the way - France's last execution occurred in 1977 -, all of Latin America and 4-in-5 African countries have banned it, too. (The outlier is Belarus, the only European country to still carrying out executions.) But this does not mean that it does not have its supporters. When European states began to abolish it, most citizens were still in favour. In the United Kingdom, 75% of the population were in favour in 1983 - today, it stands at 53%. In the United States, 60% of adults support the death penalty, 45% favour it in France, 35% in Germany, 31% in Italy and 28% in Spain. The highest levels are in Japan with 80% in in favour. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Vietnam and Iraq together make up the vast majority of global executions - in all of these states, social support for the measure is still strong.00171
- Apocalypse now? Britain’s race against time to fight off multiple ‘Black Swan’ eventsIn Global Commons·December 8, 2021"With UK disruptions, not just of gas and CO2, but of labour and fuel for supermarkets and factories, experts call for Risk Register review" Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/apocalypse-now-britains-race-against-time-fight-multiple-black/ #NationalResilience006
- Rise of the racist robots – how AI is learning all our worst impulsesIn General AI·March 14, 2022"In May last year, a stunning report claimed that a computer program used by a US court for risk assessment was biased against black prisoners. The program, Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (Compas), was much more prone to mistakenly label black defendants as likely to reoffend – wrongly flagging them at almost twice the rate as white people (45% to 24%), according to the investigative journalism organisation ProPublica." Source:https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/aug/08/rise-of-the-racist-robots-how-ai-is-learning-all-our-worst-impulses #AIRacist #AIEthics #Ethics009
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