Listen very closely. Did you pick it? Google AI and engineering teams have announced Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real world” tasks over the phone. Google says: The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural…
Tag Archives Future of work
The Australian National University [Crawford School of Public Policy - ANU College of Asia & the Pacific] staged a seminar on Monday 19th March 2018 to present work in progress on the design, distributional effects and fiscal cost of a basic income (BI) scheme building on the proposals for a guaranteed minimum income for Australia by the Henderson Poverty Inquiry in 1976. A…
Per dollar spent, computers have increased in power by a BILLION times in the last thirty years. In about 20 years, a $1000 dollars will buy a computer about a million times more powerful than one today, and in 25 years a BILLION times more powerful than one today. -Ray Kurzweil Links Nick Bostrom 2008 The Futurist - Timing the…
I think that there’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation. I’m not sure what else one would do?
Leanna Garfield writing in BI this week outlines how the the New Zealand-based robotics company, Scott Technology Limited is developing fully-automated meat processing bots, which can extract different cuts from lamb, pig, and beef carcasses. Many meatpacking companies believe using this type of technology (rather than human workers) will make processing more efficient. Garfield points out: The world’s largest meat production company, JBS, is already investing in it. As NPR reported, the Brazil-based corporation bought a controlling…
Certainly a growing and contentious policy debate on the role and purpose of autonomous robots in the "workplace". The potential of existential challenges to what we understand the "middle-class" to be [ in the context of a 20th Century definition of a "labour-force], coupled with genuine and profound advances in autonomous and now artificial intelligence, gives one a moment [at…
The implications of "auto" or "hands-free" operation of vehicles is profound. The legal and ethical questions are well beyond the current "legislative curve". The implications for the future of work and the next level of automation are significant. Below is an extensive 16 minute test drive of the new Autopilot software version 7 from Tesla. Consider the irony [in the…
Early last month W I R E D magazine published a piece called: The Creepy Collective Behavior of Boston Dynamics’ New Robot Dog Author NEEL V. PATEL notes the "creepy" part: around the 1:20 mark, when a pair of Spots begin trekking up a hill. Spot Number One starts repeatedly colliding into Spot Number Two—and neither loses balance. After a few seconds and…