AI and Automation Will Replace Most Human Workers Because They Don’t Have to Be Perfect—Just Better Than You

Date: 21-11-2018
Source: NewsWeek BY ELLEN RUPPEL SHELL

Sawyer the Robot will work for the equivalent of $4 per day. And he’s never in a bad mood. Can you compete with that?

Ellen Ruppel Shell is the author of The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change, from which this piece was adapted.

Route 9 skims by Boston and cuts clear across Massachusetts to Pittsfield, a city of roughly 50,000, the largest in Berkshire County. Well east of Pittsfield, Route 9 becomes Worcester Road, named for a city that in earlier times was the nation’s largest manufacturer of wire—barbed wire, electrical wire, telephone wire and the wire used in the making of undergarments by the Royal Worcester Corset Co., once the largest employer of women in the United States. Older Worcester residents can still recall the factory bells pealing to signal the start and end of the workday. Now, the bells are silent, and the wire and corset factories have been replaced with three of the nation’s largest employers: Walmart, Target and Home Depot. If this sounds familiar, it should. It has been nearly two decades since retail overtook manufacturing as the nation’s most important job creator, employing roughly one of every 10 American workers—more people than in health care and construction combined. That’s a lot of jobs.

Is Trump The Worst President In History ?

Date: 02-04-2018
Source: NewsWeek

Robert Reich is the chancellor’s professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, and Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. He has written 14 books, including the best-sellers Aftershock, The Work of Nations and Beyond Outrage and, most recently, Saving Capitalism. He is also a founding editor of  The American Prospect  magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-creator of the award-winning documentary  Inequality for All.  His latest documentary, „Saving Capitalism,“ is streaming on Netflix. Reich’s new book, „The Common Good,“ is available now

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America has had its share of crooks (Warren G. Harding, Richard Nixon), bigots (Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan), and incompetents (Andrew Johnson, George W. Bush). But never before Donald Trump have we had a president who combined all these nefarious qualities.

America’s great good fortune was to begin with the opposite—a superb moral leader. By June of 1775, when congress appointed George Washington to command the nation’s army, he had already “become a moral rallying post,” as his biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, described him. He was,“the embodiment of the purpose, the patience, and the determination necessary for the triumph of the revolutionary cause.”

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: HALF OF AMERICANS THINK GOVERNMENT SHOULD PAY WORKERS WHO LOSE OUT TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Date: 01-03-2018
Source: NewsWeek

As robots become more sophisticated and replace humans in the workforce, Americans are split over whether those who lose their jobs to artificial intelligence should receive a minimum income.

The hypothetical universal basic income (UBI) would have the federal government give every adult below a certain income threshold an annual allowance of money.

The survey of more than 3,000 U.S. adults showed that almost three-quarters predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to a loss of more jobs than it creates.

Nevertheless, some 48 percent of people support, and 52 percent oppose, the rollout of a UBI to safeguard workers who lose their jobs because of advances in AI, according to a new poll for Northeastern University by Gallup. Those over 66 were least likely to support the UBI, compared with 46 percent of millennials.

WHEN WILL I DIE? AI CAN NOW PREDICT TIME OF DEATH IN DISTURBING ADVANCE FOR HEALTH CARE

Date: 21-01-2018
Source: Newsweek

It may be morbid, but pinpointing when you’ll die would make life easier as you could begin preparing and tying up loose ends. Scientists at Stanford University have used Artificial Intelligence to predict patient whether someone will die within three months to a year, to help doctors better recommend palliative care.

The goal, according to the researchers, is not to replicate a creepy tale straight out of  a science fiction show, but to help improve lives. As the study authors write in their paper, prior research has shown that 80 percent of Americans would like to spend their last days in the comfort of their own homes. Only 20 percent do, partly because physicians do not offer an accurate prognosis and patients often end up receiving advanced treatments.

“All too often, advanced illness turns to a medical crisis, and patients end up in the ICU. There, events can attain a momentum of their own, resulting in increasingly aggressive interventions that do not serve patients and their families well,” study co-author and research scientist Ken Jung wrote to Newsweek in an email.

HOW CHINA IS USING QUANTUM PHYSICS TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD AND STOP HACKERS

Date: 31-10-2017
Source: NewsWeek

The Nazis knew secret communication was the key to world domination. Their prize technology was the electromechanical Enigma machine, an encryption device that allowed German tank divisions, embassies and even submarines to send scrambled radio messages to the Reich during World War II. They believed their system was unbreakable. It was—until a young British mathematician named Alan Turing realized that the signal could be unscrambled if he could create a machine to systematically try thousands of key combinations that would eventually hit upon an intelligible message.

The result was the world’s first computer. Britain’s ability to read Germany’s secret codes was a crucial factor in the Allies’ victory.

Now, thanks to a technology called quantum encryption, the dream of perfectly secure communication is real. It could help free the world from online fraud and identity theft, hacking attacks and electronic eavesdropping. It could also enable terrorists and criminals to communicate with absolute secrecy—and governments to hide their secrets without anyone ever finding out. In a world of unbreakable encryption, all human electronic communication could become entirely private—with mind-boggling consequences, both good and bad, for cybersecurity.

President Trump Has the Work Ethic of a Bored, Lazy Child

By Alexander Nazaryan On 7/19/17 at 7:30 AM, Newsweek

Liberals used to grouse about President George W. Bush’s less-than-rigorous work schedule: the long work-outs, the frequent brush-clearing forays at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He went to bed at 9. What kind of statesman goes to bed at such a grade-school hour?

Those were the days.

On the eve of his presidential inauguration, Donald J. Trump told an audience, “I promise you that I will work so hard.” He’d spent both the primary campaign and the general election comparing his work ethic to that of his opponents, including “low energy” Jeb Bush and stamina-deficient Hillary Clinton.

“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump said in the political prehistory that was the summer of 2015. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.”

TRUMP’S APPROVAL RATINGS AFTER SIX MONTHS ARE THE WORST OF ANY PRESIDENT

Date: 17-07-2017
Source: NewsWeek

Trump Says He And Putin ‘Get Along Very, Very Well’

Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a historic new low in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, with almost half of Americans believing the country to be weaker since he took office.

According to the poll, just 36 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance as president, down six points from Trump’s 100 days approval rating—which was itself the lowest for any president in polling history at that point.

The only other president whose approval ratings were as poor six months into his tenure was Gerald Ford, whose approval ratings stood at 39 percent in February 1975.

The poll also found that 48 percent of the country thinks America is weaker since Trump took power in January, with only 27 percent believing it to be stronger.

Trump boasted of his deal-making abilities on the campaign trail, but majorities also did not back Trump in negotiations with foreign leaders—in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump met face-to-face for the first time at a recent G20 summit in Germany.

Of those polled, 66 percent said they did not trust the president to effectively represent U.S. interests in negotiations with foreign leaders, with two-thirds also saying they didn’t trust him to do so with Putin.

TRUMPISM IS AN AFFRONT TO WESTERN SOCIETY, NOT ITS SAVIOR

Date: 11-07-2017
Source: NewsWeek

President Trump is right: the West is facing an existential threat. He said so in a speech in Warsaw last Thursday, declaring that the “fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” The president wondered if “we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it.”

Trump’s speech was written by Stephen Miller, a top White House aide known to traffic in overheated nationalism. Trump’s remarks accordingly singled out the West’s primary enemy: “radical Islamic terrorism,” a verbal construction that holds almost shamanistic powers for the right.

We shouldn’t downplay the threat posed by the Islamic State militant group and its affiliates. Nor should we exaggerate it. The fanatics motivated by a warped interpretation of the Koran will do their best to kill innocents, but so will fanatics who have nothing to do with Islam, mass murderers who take their cue from The Turner Diaries, the Old Testament or the whispers of private demons. More than 8,000 Americans have been killed by guns in 2017. Does that make the gun lobby an enemy of the West?

EMMANUEL MACRON RIVALS TRUMP’S ‚AMERICA FIRST‘ WITH PLAN TO MAKE EUROPE GREAT AGAIN

Date: 16-06-2017
Source: Newsweek

French President Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump don’t have many obvious parallels, although they both enjoy a handshake more than is strictly necessary.

But while Macron’s platform is avowedly liberal both economically and socially, his plans for European trade have a distinctly protectionist flavor. You might even say he wants to “make Europe great again” and “put Europe first.” Or something.

More than a third of French voters backed the hard-right, Euroskeptic protectionism of Marine Le Pen in the recent election. Elsewhere in Europe, parties who want to close borders and stop globalization have surged in recent years. Macron is seeking a pro-European response to this movement, or, as he put it in his presidential manifesto, a Europe that “concentrates on major challenges and dares to defend its interests and values in the world.”

CLIMATE PACT PULLOUT REVEALS TRUMP’S TRUE BASE

Date: 02-06-2017
Source: Newsweek

Donald Trump Announces Withdrawal From Paris Climate Accord: ‚We’re Getting Out‘

They came from Exxon Mobil, Apple, Unilever. Titans of industry. They begged. They pleaded. They cajoled and threatened: Elon Musk said he would quit advising the Donald Trump. As late as Wednesday night, Ivanka and Jared’s friends were still laying out a Hail Mary pass scenario in which the president would stay in the Paris climate pact at the last minute and give all the persuasion credit to the first son-in-law, thereby perhaps placating the investigatory hounds from hell on the young man’s trail.

In the end, the titan’s pleas, Ivanka and Jared’s social future in Manhattan and the future of the planet mattered far, far less than Trump’s base. His real base. Not the coal miners or oil drilling roughnecks or even the evangelicals, who think if the world is melting, well, God Will Sort It Out.

Casual Trump watchers still believe that he’s pulling out of the climate pact because he shares with those low-information groups the notion that climate science is a Chinese hoax—and/or that he doesn’t really believe that but is cannily playing to the blue-collar, black-fingernailed coal mining and resource-extractor roughneck community that supposedly helped put him in office.