We survived spreadsheets, and well survive AI WSJ

Treating prediction as an input into an economic process makes it much easier to map AIs impact. History and economics show that when an input such as energy, communication or calculation becomes cheaper, we find many more uses for it. Some jobs become superfluous, but others more valuable, and brand new ones spring into existence. Why should AI be different? . . .

AI has already made some skills obsolete. Google Translate is faster, cheaper and often as good as a human interpreter. Some AI programs can outperform human radiologists at identifying malignant tumors.

Yet as AI gets cheaper, so its potential applications will grow. Just as better weather forecasting makes us more willing to go out without an umbrella, Mr. Manzi says, AI emboldens companies to test more products, strategies and hunches: Theories become lightweight and disposable. They need people who know how to use it, and how to act on the results.

Mr. Manzi should know. He co-founded a company, Applied Predictive Technologies, to test companies strategies using AI, and sold it to Mastercard Inc . for $600 million in 2015. Its still hiring.

When will AI be better than humans at everything? Singularity Hub

Despite Crisprs gene-editing success, superbabies arent imminent Wired

Legal robots deployed in China to help decide thousands of cases The Telegraph

Do fewer immigrants mean more jobs? Economists say no NYT

WASHINGTON When the federal government banned the use of farmworkers from Mexico in 1964, Californias tomato growers did not enlist Americans to harvest the fragile crop. They replaced the lost workers with tomato-picking machines. . . .Economists say the tomato story and a host of related evidence show that there is no clear connection between less immigration and more jobs for Americans. Rather, the prevailing view among economists is that immigration increases economic growth, improving the lives of the immigrants and the lives of the people who are already here. . . .

George J. Borjas, the Harvard immigration economist whose work is the only evidence that the administration has cited as justifying its proposals, said in an interview on Wednesday that there was no economic justification for reducing skilled immigration.

That is a political decision, he said. That is not an economic decision.

Short answers to hard questions about the opioid crisis NYT

The real reason there are so few conservatives on campus Damon Linker

Have smart phones destroyed an entire generation? The Atlantic

The advent of the smartphone and its cousin the tablet was followed quickly by hand-wringing about the deleterious effects of screen time. But the impact of these devices has not been fully appreciated, and goes far beyond the usual concerns about curtailed attention spans. The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health. These changes have affected young people in every corner of the nation and in every type of household. The trends appear among teens poor and rich; of every ethnic background; in cities, suburbs, and small towns. Where there are cell towers, there are teens living their lives on their smartphone.

To those of us who fondly recall a more analog adolescence, this may seem foreign and troubling. The aim of generational study, however, is not to succumb to nostalgia for the way things used to be; its to understand how they are now. Some generational changes are positive, some are negative, and many are both. More comfortable in their bedrooms than in a car or at a party, todays teens are physically safer than teens have ever been. Theyre markedly less likely to get into a car accident and, having less of a taste for alcohol than their predecessors, are less susceptible to drinkings attendant ills.

Psychologically, however, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. Its not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.

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Links for August 4, 2017: Why we'll survive artificial intelligence, how smart phones are ruining an entire ... - American Enterprise Institute