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In December, I converted my one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco into a "smart home." I thought the house would take care of me but instead... Building electric cars and reusable rockets is easy. Building flying cars, or a hyperloop system is hard. Whatever, it always takes longer than you think. It just does. For every phish, there is at least one "phool." We each line up for the phishes that best match our own flawed estimate of our supposedly rational choices, and the phishermen efficiently learn to cast their lures where they can catch their self-selected prey. The disconnect between how we make decisions and how machines make them, and the fact that machines are making more and more decisions for us, has birthed a new push for transparency and a field of research called explainable A.I., or X.A.I. There is nothing like a success story to obscure the real nature of success. How can we make a human artificial intelligence? Something that is not a machine, but rather a cyber culture that we can all live in as humans, with a human feel to it. We are beginning to understand that tech companies don't have our best interests at heart. Did they ever? John Giannandrea, who leads AI at Google, is worried about intelligent systems learning human prejudices. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence have captured the public imagination and are profoundly shaping social, economic, and political spheres. Through an interrogation of the histories, perceptions, and practices that shape these technologies, we problematize the myths that animate the supposed "magic" of these systems. It's disrespectful to people, it's lazy thinking, and it undermines the effectiveness of change efforts While the blockchain originally sought a foothold in financial services, and digital currencies attracted early attention from investors, now interest in using the technology in the public sector is growing. Buried in the scenario of a takeover of superhuman artificial intelligence are five assumptions which, when examined closely, are not based on any evidence. This idea hence is more akin to a religious belief, a myth, than can be debunked by five counter-assumptions. Sustained innovation success is not the result of artful intuition or heroic vision but of a deliberate search using key information signals. Much of the A.I. hubbub is generated by reporters who’ve never trained a neural network and startups hoping to be acquihired for engineering talent despite not solving any real business problems. No wonder there are so many misconceptions about what A.I. can and cannot do. Are algorithms neutral and objective or rather opinions formalized in code? Actually, they update bureaucracy’s long-standing strategy for evasion. The time has come to rethink the role of business in our world and its overall contribution to our society. We need to re-frame business in the context of beauty. Within a few year we'll be able to build a Neural Network-based AI (an NNAI) that incrementally learns to become at least as smart as a little animal. Many executives ask me what artificial intelligence can do. They want to know how it will disrupt their industry and how they can use it to reinvent their own companies. Any company that makes or uses software has a wide-open opportunity to dramatically change the way we engage. Hardware, on the other hand, often closes more doors than it opens. Agile is a vast global movement that is transforming the world of work thanks to three laws that, when combined together, provide an explosive increment in value. Today we are embarked on a great project to make computers a part of everyday life. But the real world is a stubborn place. It is complex in ways that resist abstraction and modeling. We won the battle for Linux, but we're losing the battle for freedom. The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology that’s on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely. But product designers play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention. Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer. There is a piece that the Times, along with the rest of the corporate world, is still missing: the Ecosystem Mindset. Today, aging, decreased poverty and automation are, at first glance, positive trends — and they are — but they are also starting to create problems that we haven’t even begun to think seriously about. Most organizations today fall into the same trap: they look at isolated metrics, but fail to see the whole system. They optimize each part of the business separately, and fail to consider how they interact. Companies are identical to biological species in an important respect: Both are what’s known as complex adaptive systems. Therefore, the principles that confer robustness in these systems, whether natural or manmade, are directly applicable to business. If you’re young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course you’d be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable. Deep learning is the buzzword of the moment inside tech circles and as the public plugs into what this breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) means for the future of technology, a number of common misconceptions have emerged. But what if the problem is not just Uber the company, or its business practices? You hear a lot about sectors of the economy. Energy. Health. Transportation. Fine. But what those breakdowns of the economy miss are the deeper structural factors that drive economic vitality. There is a trend in Silicon Valley to focus only on solving the problems of the rich, whereas entrepreneurs in the rest of the world tend to focus more on the problems of ordinary people - and maybe it is that second sort of innovation that will prove the better long term bet. The future of work is already here, but why these wonderful firms have not succeeded in persuading others to follow their example? If we continue to assume that some people are born intelligent, while most are not, and continue to see intelligence as a fixed, personal possession, the options for large-scale systemic changes will be few. The discussion around companies like Uber and Airbnb is too narrow. The issue isn’t just employment, but a huge economic shift led by software and connectedness. Advances in theory and computer hardware have allowed neural networks to become a core part of online services... Personalization algorithms influence what you’ve chosen yesterday, what you choose today and what you’ll be choosing tomorrow. Simultaneously, there seems to be something wrong with personalization.... Andrew Ng, chief scientist at China’s search giant Baidu, outlines what he thinks is within reach—and what isn’t—for machine intelligence. What is a "knowledge economy"? Safe to say we do not yet understand it very well... Could an internet-connected thing — a smart fridge, a thermostat or a home-help robot — become a millionaire? This is not as ridiculous a question as it may seem. Two driving forces of globalization and digitization are challenging every organization whether it is public or private. This past weekend, during a trip to San Francisco, Jaron Lanier stopped by to talk to me for an Edge feature. He had something on his mind: news reports about comments by Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, two of the most highly respected and distinguished members of the science and technology communiity, on the dangers of AI. He then talked, uninterrupted, for an hour. Sandwiched between quarks, Higgs, strings, and dark matter, the implications of scaling phenomena later expanded beyond biology, ecology, and biomedicine to embrace human socioeconomic systems such as cities and companies – even extending to the challenge of global sustainability. Ownership will become a three-legged stool: who physically owns a thing; who legally owns it; …and who has the ultimate power to command it. Who, in short, has root. Since 1960 the U.S. economy has moved from largely financing the exploitation of natural resources to making the most of talent. The future will not be like the past. The future will be built by those who will take risks and action to invent the world they want. You are not late. This is the best time in the whole history of the world to invent something. The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture. The most fascinating phenomenon in the start-up world is called the pivot. Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. This is a digital world, so none of this is etched in stone. But from what I’ve seen so far, these things seem to be true. It’s never been easier to build a product, raise money, and start a company. But there’s a catch... It is just our thinking that is in the way of bringing down the walls. Silicon Valley is always selling the next category, the new frontier, the thing you’ll need tomorrow but can’t even imagine wanting today. Unlike any other industry, tech relies on not merely trust but faith that a leap into the unknown will be rewarded. That’s why the recent arrogance of Silicon Valley honchos has not just been poisonous -- but deluded. Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science, Marc Andreessen writes in Another View. The field of strategy has changed significantly over the last 10 – 15 years. But the tools and practices in most firms around the world hasn’t changed at the same pace. We’re at a crisis point now with embedded systems, which includes the Internet of Things. These computers are riddled with insecurities -- and there’s no good way to patch them. It’s not unlike what happened in the mid-1990s with PCs, only now the devices are connected to the Internet and the industries producing them are even less capable of fixing the problem than the PC and software industries were. Driverless cars, robo-ships and delivery drones are likely to become commonplace in the decades to come. One labour market expert argues that a 'second machine age' will test our ability to spread the rewards fairly Isaac Asimov visiting the World's Fair of 2014 from a 50 years perspective. The dolphin in the tuna net is us -- our industry, our work, and the social fabric of our community. Competition between CaaS platforms will enable smarter and more helpful products, from our phones to our homes. Barack Obama promised to use technology to make Americans believe in government. The failure of healthcare.gov may do the opposite. The U.S. try hard to believe in the internet’s liberating power. Therefore the N.S.A. scandal is forgotten and a new movie is already playing. I regularly get emails from young people, usually those with an interest in programming, who are trying to make decisions about school and/or their professional futures. This post is for those young people. Wearable computer glasses will let you record everything you see. But good luck finding someone to talk to. But if you’re not thrilled or you’re not nervous, if you think you’re still being shielded by some sort of barricade... then you’re in trouble. Big trouble. Most big companies can’t respond to new digital business models fast enough. Managing in complex adaptive systems means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability (good or best practices). Silicon Valley isn’t on a bubble, it’s in a bubble. It is easier than ever to measure and monitor people and machines, but the technology of Big Data is not without its shortcomings. What will the key changes be in business and design during 2013, and what should you do about it? Here are five predictions from the design firm Fjord. Once considered science fiction, the ability to do 3D printing – to produce objects on demand at relatively low cost – has become a reality. The hand-held diagnostic devices seen on “Star Trek” are inspiring a host of medical add-ons for smartphones. I sat with Noam Chomsky on an April afternoon; I wanted to better understand Chomsky's critique of artificial intelligence and why it may be headed in the wrong direction. I also wanted to explore the implications of this critique for other branches of science, such neuroscience and systems biology... Many entrepreneurs foresee vast profits in mining data from online activity and mobile devices. One Wharton business school professor strongly disagrees. Social media in particular has inexorably changed the world, driving openness and fear – but it is not beyond our control. Today’s capitalism is all about crowds. In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time... Many of us in business have heard the popular aphorism, "People are your greatest asset." Some of us may even believe it. But is this sentiment reflected in our corporate cultures and the way our leaders lead? For the most part, no — and there's a reason for that. I have a somewhat unique perspective on the matter, since I worked under the Google+ project umbrella for a good 6-8 months after Wave was canceled and know many of the engineers and product designers involved in this drama. The public’s experience is that we have amazing clinicians and technologies but little consistent sense that they come together to provide an actual system of care, from start to finish, for people. We train, hire, and pay doctors to be cowboys. But it’s pit crews people need. Three staff members at PARC, aka Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, have published a feisty response to Malcolm Gladwell's May 16 New Yorker article, “Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Truth about Innovation.” Americans are frustrated with the world and pessimistic about the future... At the same time that our economic engines are faltering, something else is happening. There is a huge chasm between being an Entrepreneur and being a business owner?.. An Entrepreneur is someone who has an uncanny desire to create the future. IT security in 2020 will be less about protecting you from traditional bad guys, and more about protecting corporate business models from you... Our goal is nothing short of world domination... Watching the recent product retraction of Google Wave convinced me that Google is fully infected with the same protracted, end-stage wasting disease that has consumed Microsoft for years: cash cow disease. The digital age is facing its first existential crisis: the impossibility of erasing your posted past and moving on. We may be at the dawn of a data and research renaissance... In spite of all the answers the internet has given us, its full potential to transform our lives remains the great unknown. Here are the nine key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age – and where it's taking us. The nation and its cities are in desperate need of new ideas. But how do we get closer to a more shareable future? One promising route is the Open Data movement... Understanding the true root of innovation behind the superficial 2.0 marketing cliche is the secret to today’s software innovation... Businesses, governments and society are only starting to tap its vast potential Open source is very good at breaking up old monopolies, but what happens when open-source projects monopolize markets? The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. Of all the Augmented Reality apps we've seen so far, Layar is the most exciting because it's a platform... Evidence suggests that crowdsourcing succeeds when it’s designed for specific tasks — and when the incentives attract the most effective collaborators. Google is to launch a new operating system, in its most direct challenge yet to the dominance of Microsoft. These open-source browsers, dev tools, mobile apps and more promise that 'Oooh, cool!' sense of discovery. Statelessness, server failure, new databases, and fast-changing platforms will challenge developers President Obama’s economic recovery plan pours money into old-fashioned public works projects like roads and bridges, but it also has some ambitious 21st century twists. A person who works with total focus has an enormous advantage over a workaholic who's "multi-tasking" all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption. The forecasts suggest that the technology industry is about to enter a slump that will rival or possibly exceed the dot-com bust of 2001. Google is tracking the ebb and flow of Web queries like “flu symptoms” in an effort to identify outbreaks. Web-based programs like Google's Gmail will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time, according to the free software campaigner CIOs and system architects find themselves stymied as they try to sledgehammer complex SOAs into their enterprises... The lesson is that more often than not, simpler is better. We all cherish our privacy. Then we go and divulge everything about ourselves on Facebook, sprinkle our Social Security number like pixie dust across the Web and happily load up on tracking devices like GPS navigators and cellphones. .. Web 2.0 offers a direct, more trusted line of communications than anything that came before it. Apple succeeds by going against Silicon Valley wisdom, ignoring business best practices, bucking the "don't be evil" ideals Google has tried to uphold. Wired.com's Leander Kahney, author of the new book "Inside Steve's Brain" and the Cult of Mac blog, explores why for Steve Jobs, the regular rules do not apply. A VoIP (Voice Over IP) phone system is composed of phones, gateways, routers, application servers and other devices that all plug into a local network. As part of the installation process, these devices all have to find each other, and that can be complicated. To simplify the process, we used a technology called Bonjour. Last year, Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone began to break down the logjam in technological innovation for the way humans interact with computers. The technology giants Google and Microsoft are entering the growing market of electronic medical record-keeping just as the government is accelerating its own efforts to apply information technology to healthcare. Hooked together in a single cluster, the PS3 consoles provide the same amount of computing power as a 400-node supercomputer. King Gillette's 1895 disposable blades made good freebies to help sell other products. Companies use his business model today to create demand for their goods: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games. Now, the underlying technologies that power the web are making "freeconomics" a full-fledged economy. True power requires modesty and empathy, not force and coercion, argues Dacher Keltner. But what people want from leaders—social intelligence—is what is damaged by the experience of power. Google will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people in a test of a health service that is likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader. CEO Jonathan Schwartz outlines his company's vision for supplying existing and future Web 2.0 companies with the open source tools they'll need. The race is on: A consortium of 32 companies has joined a classic battle for primacy with their demonstration of mobile phones to compete with devices that will run Google Inc.'s fledgling Android operating system. Microsoft says part of its reason for attempting to buy Yahoo is to expand its developer community. Nokia said Monday that it was paying 844 million Norwegian kroner for Trolltech, a Norwegian software company whose products are used to create applications that work on different operating systems. Google yesterday laid out its plan for philanthropy and announced $25 million in grants aimed at addressing climate change as well as poverty and health issues in developing countries. World Wide Web Consortium's SPARQL query technology has just been published; Semantic Web could impact Google, Internet ad models, analyst says. Pharmaceutical types think so With a surfeit of the old and a shortage of the young, Japan is on course for a population collapse unlike any in human history. There are fairly common mistakes to avoid when implementing an SOA project, and best practices are starting to emerge based on successful, enterprise-wide deployments. While there are dozens of emerging technologies that have the potential to disrupt current standards, five that have significant opportunity to lead to major implications for enterprises in the coming year are: virtualization, the role of Apple and managing cross-platform shops, managed data centers, video over IP networks, and presence-aware applications. For the last few years, innovation has been a big topic in conversation about business management... but despite all the conversation, there is little consensus on what innovation is and how to get it... Want a coffee with your iPhone? Feel like going to the doctor is a waste of time? With a little preparation, your next doctor’s visit can be a lot more productive. One-Laptop-Per-Child's XO has inspired a new class of low-cost laptop and highlighted the need for computing resources in developing nations. These much-ballyhooed products, sites, and services, it turned out, left much to be desired. The protocol used in Flash and Flex will now be open for all to use in building their Rich Internet Applications. If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it. Generic competition, a dearth of new drugs and a more safety-conscious posture by the Food and Drug Administration are among factors that have led to the announcements of at least 35,000 industry layoffs during the last year, industry analysts said. Has all wit and cleverness already dried up in the naming of Web sites, less than 15 years after the Internet was opened to the public? Sean Lane's purchase was supposed to be a surprise for his wife. Then it appeared as a news headline -- "Sean Lane bought 14k White Gold 1/5 ct Diamond Eternity Flower Ring from overstock.com" -- last week on the social networking Web site Facebook. The ability to compose arbitrary Services in environments of long-running transactions requires a certain measure of loose coupling... Some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques may seem very futuristic, but they are reality. And in fact, they are extremely impressive. The relentlessly rising cost of health care is the worst long-term fiscal crisis facing the nation. It demands a solution, but finding one will not be easy or palatable. “We started with this notion of wanting to move our communication with our consumers from telling them about us to having a dialogue with them,” said Michael Simon, vice president and general manager at the Pepperidge Farm snacks division in Norwalk, Conn. Google's Android open-development platform for mobile devices could simplify and reduce the cost of developing mobile applications MySpace and Bebo, two of the world’s largest social networking sites, on Thursday joined a Google-led alliance that is promoting a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks. Former Linux Journal editor Nicholas Petreley argues that the open-source operating system will break through big time on the client side, especially if pre-installs increase and the KDE graphical environment is adopted. Babajob seeks to bring the social-networking revolution popularized by Facebook and MySpace to people who do not even have computers — the world’s poor. There have been times when Boston, Austin, the North Carolina Research Triangle, Seattle and even Washington have had visions of becoming the "new Silicon Valley." Those places continue to incubate new companies. But none has been able to create and sustain as many large tech companies as you find here. An inventive way of improving password security for handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberry and Smartphone has been developed at Newcastle University. A year-old online forum where 30,000 doctors swap medical observations has lined up a partnership with Pfizer Inc. _ an alliance that runs counter to the site's founding ideal to give doctors a place to communicate without the pharmaceutical industry listening in. Responding to criticism from the non-English- speaking world, the U.S. firm that oversees the Internet will test domains in foreign characters. The best thing that governments can do to encourage innovation is get out of the way. Green IT, unified communications, virtualization, mashups among most important, Gartner says... Microsoft is starting its long-anticipated drive into the consumer health care market by offering free personal health records on the Web... Women Drive Online Health Traffic, but Use Varies There's something interesting happening right now. Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper. Sites with spirit of Web 2.0 encouraging people to share thoughts on illnesses, doctors Most patients in the United States receive care in physician practices with one or two providers, yet only four percent of these practices have electronic health records... Experience is a hard but very effective teacher. One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to children in the developing world, has considerable momentum... Technology and society: Is the outbreak of cancer videos, bulimia blogs and other forms of “user generated” medical information a healthy trend? Is AI on the rise again? Don Tapscott, the author of an eye-opening new book called Wikinomics, says that we have barely begun to imagine how the internet will change the way we live and work. He tells Oliver Burkeman how everything from gold mining to motorcycle manufacturing is being transformed - and why huge companies as we know them may simply cease to exist. Several companies are creating online systems to let ordinary people create useful computer applications by combining different information sources. The world's internet superpower faces testing times. Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it. Gartner says CIOs should re-name the IT dept by the end of 2008... New Web applications are bringing the world closer to the Web as operating system. If you want to get your hands on an open source version of some of Google's core technologies, maybe you should ask Yahoo. Yesterday, we analyzed a sample of a new Trojan, called Infostealer.Monstres, which was attempting to access the online recruitment Web site, Monster.com. It was also uploading data to a remote server. When we accessed this remote server, we found over 1.6 million entries with personal information belonging to several hundred thousand people. ... dialysis patients can receive the VeriMed implantable microchip and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their medical history will be available in an emergency – regardless of their ability to communicate ... In politics, every serious candidate for the White House has a health care plan. So too in business, where the two leading candidates for Web supremacy, Google and Microsoft, are working up their plans to improve the nation’s health care. Worried about that niggling pain in your arm? Concerned about those persistent headaches? If you've searched online for information about medical woes you're not alone. The healthcare industry is in denial about the technology it needs to employ to achieve reform... The result is Enterprise 2.0, where productivity is increased, solutions are more flexible and the user is empowered. Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania is learning that to contain costs is to pluck dollars from someone’s pocket. The high-performance computer system is intended to increase the speed and accuracy of decision making in fields as diverse as security surveillance and Wall Street trading. Given Google's overwhelming popularity, chances are that most consumers are going to put their privacy on the line. A new study presents stark evidence that high medical payments do not buy high-quality patient care. Electronic medical record systems are no guarantee that diabetes patients will get better care, a new study finds. The story of the college dropout who became the world’s richest man still has the power to inspire us. It affirms our deeply engrained view that rejecting the received wisdom (do my own thing!) is a path to creativity and wealth. Doctors, patients adapt as the Internet intervenes in health care. Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off. What if medical care came with a 90-day warranty? When we stare out of the window on to the web, what we see is a sordid cauldron of voyeurism and exhibitionism - instead of web 2.0, we might just as easily call it Cyburbia. It also suggests that the period computer scientists have described as «the end of architecture» - in which the industry appeared to have run out of ideas for gaining more processor power and chose instead to use free space on silicon chips to place multiple processors, or cores - may also now be giving way to a more creative era. RevolutionHealth.com wants to be a giant, mom-friendly health-care brand. Gambling on an untested cancer drug is unlikely to do anyone any good A group of large technology companies, universities and professional associations are creating a new organization to support and promote research into ways that technology can increase productivity and innovation in the economy’s service sector. Venture capital firms are considering contests that offer competing engineers and entrepreneurs multimillion-dollar prize purses if they come up with innovative technologies in various industries. When it comes to great ideas, location is crucial. And Silicon Valley remains the place to be. New word processors are emerging. On the web, and shaped by it. Xerox Corporation Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) still exists. It's natural-language technology may craft tomorrows research engines. |
