“In an age of anxiety, the words sound so reassuring: predictive policing. The first half promises an awareness of events that have not yet occurred. The second half clarifies that the future in question will be one of safety and security. Together, they perfectly match the current obsession with big data and the mathematical prediction of human actions.”

Should we trust predictive policing software to cut crime? – Sidney Perkowitz | Aeon Essays
https://aeon.co/essays/should-we-trust-predictive-policing-software-to-cut-crime
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“Consider for example the extent to which we have already abdicated the sovereignty of being human. Have you noticed, for example, your immediate distrust of a hotel or restaurant that is not listed or recommended online? Have you checked someone’s profile on LinkedIn before you responded to a meeting request? Have your powers of mental computation (okay, never excellent, let’s admit) actually vegetated and languished alongside online calculators? Has your sense of direction deepened or weakened as a result of Sat Nav, Google Maps and Waze? Could it be that we are actually getting dumber as robots are getting smarter? Are we gradually turning into Eloi from HG Wells’ Time Machine, privileged but effete masters who have lost the muscle to work and dynamic to decide for themselves?”

Should We Care That We Treat Technology as a Slave?
https://www.alleywatch.com/2016/10/i-am-not-a-robot/
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“If the technology is to go forward, how should it proceed?

It matters how a technology is researched and how it enters the world. For example, The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the United States recently issued a landmark report that takes a precautionary approach to the use of gene drives. Gene drives are technologies, which in combination with CRISPR Cas9 gene editing, can exponentially increase the prevalence of specific genetic elements in a whole population of certain kinds of wild plants or animals. Right now, for example, gene drives are being considered as a way of controlling, or even eradicating, mosquitoes that are disease vectors for human illnesses, like malaria and Zika. The National Academies’ report encourages the development of gene drive technology, but calls for carefully paced research, first in laboratory settings and small field studies, before engineered organisms are released into the wild.”

The 4 big ethical questions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/how-can-we-enjoy-the-benefits-of-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-while-minimizing-its-risks/
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“The point is, we need today’s big thinkers thinking big. Think like you did when you were watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Inspector Gadget. Think like the kids I meet every year at the White House Science Fair. We started this event in 2010 with a ­simple premise: We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair. Since then, I’ve met young people who are tackling everything from destroying cancer cells to using algae to produce clean energy to distributing vaccines to remote areas of the world—all before most of them can even vote.”

Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-guest-edits-wired-essay/
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“t turns out that humans can form emotional bonds with a “social technology,” as these systems are called, without true artificial intelligence. People are good at anthropomorphizing objects, and this tendency can be enhanced by the right auditory and visual cues.

Last week Toyota Motor announced a robot child designed to appeal to the growing ranks of the childless in Japan. Hasbro has created a line of pet robots designed for the elderly.

Some studies suggest these kinds of robots can yield benefits similar to owning actual pets.

None of this surprises Heather Knight, a researcher of “social robotics” at Stanford University. “Sociability is the interface between people,” says Dr. Knight.

The point of a truly social interface is that it is the same as no interface at all. No screens, no pointing devices, no unfamiliar conventions. Conversation, with all its quirks and “inessential” chitchat, is simply how humans interact with each other. Soon, it will be how we interact with machines as well.”

Your Next Friend Could Be a Robot
https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-next-friend-could-be-a-robot-1476034599
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“This problem has a name: the paradox of automation. It applies in a wide variety of contexts, from the operators of nuclear power stations to the crew of cruise ships, from the simple fact that we can no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all stored in our mobile phones, to the way we now struggle with mental arithmetic because we are surrounded by electronic calculators. The better the automatic systems, the more out-of-practice human operators will be, and the more extreme the situations they will have to face.”

Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster | Tim Harford
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster
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