Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Los Angeles Times Software Automatically Published Earthquake Story
March 18th, 2014Via: BBC: The Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper to publish a story about an earthquake on Monday – thanks to a robot writer. Journalist and programmer Ken Schwencke created an algorithm that automatically generates a short article when an earthquake occurs. Mr Schwencke told Slate magazine that it took around three minutes for […]
Bill Gates on Automation Eliminating Jobs: “Labor Demand for Lots of Skill Sets Will be Substantially Lower”
March 15th, 2014Via: Business Insider: Big changes are coming to the labour market that people and governments aren’t prepared for, Bill Gates believes. Speaking at Washington, D.C., economic think tank The American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Gates said than within 20 years, a lot of jobs will go away, replaced by software automation (“bots” in tech slang, […]
Drones Will Cause an Upheaval of Society Like we Haven’t Seen in 700 Years
March 13th, 2014Via: Quartz: The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is also a change to which almost no one is paying attention. I’m talking about the coming obsolescence of the gun-wielding human infantryman as a […]
Fleet of Drones to Patrol Australia’s Borders
March 12th, 2014Via: New Zealand Herald: Australia has announced plans for a fleet of giant high-tech unmanned drones to help patrol the nation’s borders, monitoring energy infrastructure and attempts to enter the country illegally. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Triton Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which can remain airborne for 33 hours, would be based in the southern […]
Watch a Stun Gun Drone Tase an Intern
March 12th, 2014Via: Popular Science: ) Research Credit: alvinroast
Commercial Drone Operations in U.S. Airspace Are Legal, Rules Federal Judge
March 7th, 2014Via: Drone Hire: The long stand-off between commercial drone operators and the FAA has just taken an extraordinary twist: A federal judge has rejected the FAA’s ban as unenforceable, ruling that commercial use of drones in the United States is unequivocally legal.
College Grads Taking Low-Wage Jobs Displace Less Educated
March 7th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: Jeanina Jenkins, a 20-year-old high-school graduate from St. Louis, is stuck in a $7.82-an-hour part-time job at McDonald’s Corp. that she calls a “last resort” because nobody would offer her anything better. Stephen O’Malley, 26, a West Virginia University graduate, wants to put his history degree to use teaching high school. What he’s […]
Facebook Drones to Battle Google Balloons in the War of Airborne Internet
March 5th, 2014Via: Wired: The race for the airborne internet is on. According to multiple reports, Facebook is in talks to buy a drone maker whose solar-powered aircraft could operate as high-altitude wireless hot spots, circling in the stratosphere for years without refueling. That may seem far-fetched, but it’s not entirely surprising in the context of today’s […]
Rapid Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Job Losses
March 4th, 2014Via: Financial Times: The impact of IT and automation on the world of work – and dire warnings about the job destruction they might cause – are as old as the technology itself. But the convergence of a number of tech trends has made the threat more immediate. As a result, 47 per cent of […]
Dismantling Fukushima Will Require Robotic Technology That Has Not Been Invented Yet
March 2nd, 2014Via: IEEE: “At Fukushima you have wrecked infrastructure, three melted cores, and you have some core on the floor, ex-vessel,” Barrett says. Nothing like Fukushima, he declares, has ever happened before.
