Category Archives: Technology

By Arhaan Gupta-Rastogi

"Bad workers always blame their tools." I remember the first time I heard this proverb, because it immediately made me think of the debates currently raging around digital technology.

In a recent article published in the MIT Technology Review, for example, we're told that "Screen time might be physically changing kids' brains," and that these changes are not good. The point seems to be that exposure to tech is bad for our brains, and the blame for this damage lies squarely with the tech itself. But what is our responsibility? Are we right to blame our tools?

The question of whether technology is bad or good largely misses the point. As with all tools, context matters. If I use a bicycle to ride to school, this is good. If I use a bicycle to ride into a pedestrian, this is bad. Is any of this the bike's fault?

The same can be said about drugs. If a doctor prescribes a painkiller and it's taken according to the doctor's instructions, then there's no problem. However, if someone buys that same painkiller on the street or takes too much of it, then there can be serious problems. A life-saving medical device in the hands of someone not trained to use it is, by the same logic, a weapon.

It may seem that arguing for the moral neutrality of technology is a pointless exercise. I get this, but it also has important consequences for how we live in the world. By blaming tech, we essentially evade our own responsibility to act ethically and appropriately in the world. The morality of technology, whether by this we mean simple devices like pencils or complex ones like AI, resides with us. How we use technology is who we are. As we work and live in the world, pointing at the evils of technology allows us to feel blameless, even as we do serious (and often unstudied) damage to ourselves and the world around us. It's not us, it's our tools!

What's to be done? The clearest option is probably education. We can have sessions and even classes in school that deal with the moral and neurological impact of digital technology, but we can also invest in humanities courses that help us to think critically and make tough decisions when the correct answer isn't clear. Many kids use fake birth dates to get Apple IDs and Google accounts before they're 13. Is this OK? Probably not, but why is it not OK? There's no rulebook for this, and context matters.

In the end, technology is neither bad nor good. It is for us to decide how to use the tools we create and take responsibility for our use. It is worth remembering that in regulating technology, we're really regulating ourselves.

Menlo Park resident Arhaan Gupta-Rastogi is a seventh grader at a local school.

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Guest opinion: Is there such a thing as bad technology? - The Almanac Online

History of technology, the development over time of systematic techniques for making and doing things. The term technology, a combination of the Greek techn, art, craft, with logos, word, speech, meant in Greece a discourse on the arts, both fine and applied. When it first appeared in English in the 17th century, it was used to mean a discussion of the applied arts only, and gradually these arts themselves came to be the object of the designation. By the early 20th century, the term embraced a growing range of means, processes, and ideas in addition to tools and machines. By mid-century, technology was defined by such phrases as the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment. Even such broad definitions have been criticized by observers who point out the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between scientific inquiry and technological activity.

A highly compressed account of the history of technology such as this one must adopt a rigorous methodological pattern if it is to do justice to the subject without grossly distorting it one way or another. The plan followed in the present article is primarily chronological, tracing the development of technology through phases that succeed each other in time. Obviously, the division between phases is to a large extent arbitrary. One factor in the weighting has been the enormous acceleration of Western technological development in recent centuries; Eastern technology is considered in this article in the main only as it relates to the development of modern technology.

Within each chronological phase a standard method has been adopted for surveying the technological experience and innovations. This begins with a brief review of the general social conditions of the period under discussion, and then goes on to consider the dominant materials and sources of power of the period, and their application to food production, manufacturing industry, building construction, transport and communications, military technology, and medical technology. In a final section the sociocultural consequences of technological change in the period are examined. This framework is modified according to the particular requirements of every period discussions of new materials, for instance, occupy a substantial place in the accounts of earlier phases when new metals were being introduced but are comparatively unimportant in descriptions of some of the later phasesbut the general pattern is retained throughout. One key factor that does not fit easily into this pattern is that of the development of tools. It has seemed most convenient to relate these to the study of materials, rather than to any particular application, but it has not been possible to be completely consistent in this treatment. Further discussion of specific areas of technological development is provided in a variety of other articles: for example, seeelectronics; exploration; information processing.

Essentially, techniques are methods of creating new tools and products of tools, and the capacity for constructing such artifacts is a determining characteristic of humanlike species. Other species make artifacts: bees build elaborate hives to deposit their honey, birds make nests, and beavers build dams. But these attributes are the result of patterns of instinctive behaviour and cannot be varied to suit rapidly changing circumstances. Humanity, in contrast with other species, does not possess highly developed instinctive reactions but does have the capacity to think systematically and creatively about techniques. Humans can thus innovate and consciously modify the environment in a way no other species has achieved. An ape may on occasion use a stick to beat bananas from a tree, but a man can fashion the stick into a cutting tool and remove a whole bunch of bananas. Somewhere in the transition between the two, the hominid, the first manlike species, emerges. By virtue of his nature as a toolmaker, man is therefore a technologist from the beginning, and the history of technology encompasses the whole evolution of humankind.

In using rational faculties to devise techniques and modify the environment, humankind has attacked problems other than those of survival and the production of wealth with which the term technology is usually associated today. The technique of language, for example, involves the manipulation of sounds and symbols in a meaningful way, and similarly the techniques of artistic and ritual creativity represent other aspects of the technological incentive. This article does not deal with these cultural and religious techniques, but it is valuable to establish their relationship at the outset because the history of technology reveals a profound interaction between the incentives and opportunities of technological innovation on the one hand and the sociocultural conditions of the human group within which they occur on the other.

An awareness of this interaction is important in surveying the development of technology through successive civilizations. To simplify the relationship as much as possible, there are three points at which there must be some social involvement in technological innovation: social need, social resources, and a sympathetic social ethos. In default of any of these factors it is unlikely that a technological innovation will be widely adopted or be successful.

The sense of social need must be strongly felt, or people will not be prepared to devote resources to a technological innovation. The thing needed may be a more efficient cutting tool, a more powerful lifting device, a laboursaving machine, or a means of utilizing new fuels or a new source of energy. Or, because military needs have always provided a stimulus to technological innovation, it may take the form of a requirement for better weapons. In modern societies, needs have been generated by advertising. Whatever the source of social need, it is essential that enough people be conscious of it to provide a market for an artifact or commodity that can meet the need.

Social resources are similarly an indispensable prerequisite to a successful innovation. Many inventions have foundered because the social resources vital for their realizationthe capital, materials, and skilled personnelwere not available. The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci are full of ideas for helicopters, submarines, and airplanes, but few of these reached even the model stage because resources of one sort or another were lacking. The resource of capital involves the existence of surplus productivity and an organization capable of directing the available wealth into channels in which the inventor can use it. The resource of materials involves the availability of appropriate metallurgical, ceramic, plastic, or textile substances that can perform whatever functions a new invention requires of them. The resource of skilled personnel implies the presence of technicians capable of constructing new artifacts and devising novel processes. A society, in short, has to be well primed with suitable resources in order to sustain technological innovation.

A sympathetic social ethos implies an environment receptive to new ideas, one in which the dominant social groups are prepared to consider innovation seriously. Such receptivity may be limited to specific fields of innovationfor example, improvements in weapons or in navigational techniquesor it may take the form of a more generalized attitude of inquiry, as was the case among the industrial middle classes in Britain during the 18th century, who were willing to cultivate new ideas and inventors, the breeders of such ideas. Whatever the psychological basis of inventive genius, there can be no doubt that the existence of socially important groups willing to encourage inventors and to use their ideas has been a crucial factor in the history of technology.

Social conditions are thus of the utmost importance in the development of new techniques, some of which will be considered below in more detail. It is worthwhile, however, to register another explanatory note. This concerns the rationality of technology. It has already been observed that technology involves the application of reason to techniques, and in the 20th century it came to be regarded as almost axiomatic that technology is a rational activity stemming from the traditions of modern science. Nevertheless, it should be observed that technology, in the sense in which the term is being used here, is much older than science, and also that techniques have tended to ossify over centuries of practice or to become diverted into such para-rational exercises as alchemy. Some techniques became so complex, often depending upon processes of chemical change that were not understood even when they were widely practiced, that technology sometimes became itself a mystery or cult into which an apprentice had to be initiated like a priest into holy orders, and in which it was more important to copy an ancient formula than to innovate. The modern philosophy of progress cannot be read back into the history of technology; for most of its long existence technology has been virtually stagnant, mysterious, and even irrational. It is not fanciful to see some lingering fragments of this powerful technological tradition in the modern world, and there is more than an element of irrationality in the contemporary dilemma of a highly technological society contemplating the likelihood that it will use its sophisticated techniques in order to accomplish its own destruction. It is thus necessary to beware of overfacile identification of technology with the progressive forces in contemporary civilization.

On the other hand it is impossible to deny that there is a progressive element in technology, as it is clear from the most elementary survey that the acquisition of techniques is a cumulative matter, in which each generation inherits a stock of techniques on which it can build if it chooses and if social conditions permit. Over a long period of time the history of technology inevitably highlights the moments of innovation that show this cumulative quality as some societies advance, stage by stage, from comparatively primitive to more sophisticated techniques. But although this development has occurred and is still going on, it is not intrinsic to the nature of technology that such a process of accumulation should occur, and it has certainly not been an inevitable development. The fact that many societies have remained stagnant for long periods of time, even at quite developed stages of technological evolution, and that some have actually regressed and lost the accumulated techniques passed on to them, demonstrates the ambiguous nature of technology and the critical importance of its relationship with other social factors.

Another aspect of the cumulative character of technology that will require further investigation is the manner of transmission of technological innovations. This is an elusive problem, and it is necessary to accept the phenomenon of simultaneous or parallel invention in cases in which there is insufficient evidence to show the transmission of ideas in one direction or another. The mechanics of their transmission have been enormously improved in recent centuries by the printing press and other means of communication and also by the increased facility with which travelers visit the sources of innovation and carry ideas back to their own homes. Traditionally, however, the major mode of transmission has been the movement of artifacts and craftsmen. Trade in artifacts has ensured their widespread distribution and encouraged imitation. Even more important, the migration of craftsmenwhether the itinerant metalworkers of early civilizations or the German rocket engineers whose expert knowledge was acquired by both the Soviet Union and the United States after World War IIhas promoted the spread of new technologies.

The evidence for such processes of technological transmission is a reminder that the material for the study of the history of technology comes from a variety of sources. Much of it relies, like any historical examination, on documentary matter, although this is sparse for the early civilizations because of the general lack of interest in technology on the part of scribes and chroniclers. For these societies, therefore, and for the many millennia of earlier unrecorded history in which slow but substantial technological advances were made, it is necessary to rely heavily upon archaeological evidence. Even in connection with the recent past, the historical understanding of the processes of rapid industrialization can be made deeper and more vivid by the study of industrial archaeology. Much valuable material of this nature has been accumulated in museums, and even more remains in the place of its use for the observation of the field worker. The historian of technology must be prepared to use all these sources, and to call upon the skills of the archaeologist, the engineer, the architect, and other specialists as appropriate.

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history of technology | Summary & Facts | Britannica

WEST FARGO - The Greater North Dakota Chamber, in partnership with the Technology Council of North Dakota, will sponsor a workforce discussion at the upcoming CEO roundtable, "Technology Impacts," March 11 at Midco, 50 22nd St. E.The event will feature a discussion focused on ensuring a skilled workforce is available and prepared to not only utilize, but also develop, the technology of the future. Workforce panelists will provide information on existing and upcoming programs whose goals are to train, develop and upskill workers to meet the ongoing needs.

Greg Tehven, executive director of Emerging Prairie, will provide insight from the current efforts of the Emerging Digital Academy and Grand Farm. Joining Tehven will be Melana Howe, corporate liaison for Lake Region State College.

Other presentations will include a panel on connectivity and industry discussions from representatives from finance/banking, agriculture and health care.

For more information or to register, visit ndchamber.com

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GNDC roundtable to discuss technology and workforce challenges - INFORUM

There are already enough concerns in life out there to keep people with anxiety up at night. The coronavirus is a perfect example its spreading across the globe and scaring the bejesus out of everyone.

As if the coronavirus wasnt bad enough on its own, criminals are now using public fears of catching the virus to rip people off. Tap or click here to find out how to avoid being tricked by coronavirus scams.

Think things cant get any worse? Well, youre wrong. This new tech could really be a game-changer for scammers.

Weve discussed deepfake videos before. Facial mapping, artificial intelligence and deep machine learning are used to create ultra-realistic fake videos of people doing and saying things they havent actually said or done.

These deepfakes can be used to blackmail people and creepers have been caught creating deepfake videos and posting them on popular porn sites to extort victims into paying in exchange for removing them. Tap or click here for details on this shady extortion scam.

Now, a new twist on deepfake technology is emerging and it could lead to all kinds of problems.

You may also like: Find out whos calling you from an unknown or blocked number

Were talking about AI-enabled voice cloning technology, and it could become the next big thing in security scams.

Pindrop, a company that focuses on voice fraud, is warning that voice cloning technology is becoming a huge threat. Criminals are cloning peoples voices and using them to commit scams.

During a recent presentation, Pindrops CEO said, Were starting to see deepfake audios emerge as a way to target particular speakers, especially if youre the CEO of a company and you have a lot of YouTube content out there. What these fraudsters are starting to do is use that to start synthesizing your audio.

Deepfake audio is being used in conjunction with familiar Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks.

The FBI describes BECs as a sophisticated scam that targets businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments.

Basically, a BEC scammer attempts to trick employees into sending money transfers or handing out sensitive information by impersonating executive email accounts. These attacks are initiated either by social engineering tricks, email spoofing or malware, targeting employees from companies across the U.S.

You may also like: 7 signs your device is infected with a virus or keylogger

You can probably see where this is heading.

Yep, with the help of voice cloning, BEC attacks become much more convincing. In theory, scammers can use a companys CEOs voice to convince employees to send money. Of course, the CEO didnt really order the transfer, but unsuspecting employees wont know that.

The only good news is the technology is in the early stages and rarely seen in scams. But how long will that last? Cybercriminals always use the most sophisticated tools at their disposal, and once voice cloning becomes more mainstream you can bet theyll use it.

Voicemails and phone calls might need to become a thing of the past if these scams become rampant. Face-to-face could end up being the only secure way to conduct business

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Voice cloning could be the technology scammers have been waiting for - Komando

The latest trends in kitchen appliances aim to transform the heart of the home into a well-appointed command center, where everything is easily controlled by a touch of a button or the sound of your voice. The newest crop of home enhancements are straight up out of the Jetsons. Except, instead of Rosie the robot maid rolling around to lend a helping hand, built-in artificial intelligence and smart technology is putting you in the drivers seat. Heres a look a 2020s most ground-breaking appliances.

Food brings people together, can a refrigerator do the same? Samsungs first-ever side-by-side Family Hub aims to do just that. Engineered to connect, its Family Board is a digital bulletin board where everyone can easily stick notes, photos or videos they want to share on display,and that is just the beginning.

In January, Samsung unveiled its latest innovations at the 2020 Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in Las Vegas. The annual convention, in conjunction with the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA), showcases the latest in premiere industry products, trends and technologies.

Samsungs new lineup of slide-in ranges that make cooking more convenient. (Photo courtesy of Samsung Electronics)

It was there, that Samsung debuted the newest version of the Family Hub refrigerator.The latest model is designed not only to streamline communication, but maximize time in the kitchen. The View Inside feature, which allows users to peak inside the fridge anywhere, anytime, makes grocery shopping that much more organized. Plus, with the SmartThings app, Family Hub becomes the remote control for your smart home, letting you instantly connect, monitor and control all of your smart appliances.

Its technology is not limited to syncing with smart devices. Each model has a redesigned interior to fit more groceries. Plus, those groceries will stay fresher for longer because of its all-around cooling technology and multiple vents to keep food evenly cooled and fresh.

Its not just smart, it looks good, too. Its modern form and premium built-in look, characterized by elegant flat doors, minimal dispenser and recessed handles, blend seamlessly with existing kitchen appliances and cabinetry. Another bonus: it comes with a fingerprint-resistant finish thats easy to keep clean.

The Samsung Family Hub for 2020 will enable families to more easily share lifes important moments with one another and control more of the connected devices within their smart home. (Photos courtesy of Samsung Electronics)

During KBIS, Samsung also unveiled a new lineup of slide-in ranges that make cooking more convenient. Certain models of the slide-in ranges can be controlled with voice assistants, allowing you to bring out your full potential as a home chef.

Make the most of prep time by instructing the range to preheat the oven while youre mixing ingredients for a meal. It will even begin to learn your cooking preferences. For example, if you frequently set your oven to a certain temperature to bake your familys favorite cookies, it will suggest that temperature first when you preheat your oven.

The new ranges also come with air frying capabilities and can remotely monitor and adjust cooking times or temperatures from your smartphone, even when youre in the family room instead of the kitchen.

The original GE Kitchen Hub, introduced last year, offered just about everything a tech savvy home chef could wish for in a smart appliance. Designed as hood range with a built-in smart display, the Kitchen Hub boasts cameras that could view, record and share your cooktop, recipe apps and more. The latest model, dubbed the GE Next Gen Kitchen Hub, takes it a step further with the addition of a built-in microwave and an additional third camera inside the oven thats integrated into an artificial intelligence computer.

GEs next gen Kitchen Hub allows the user a full-service kitchen experience. (Photos courtesy of GE Appliances)

Featuring a sizable and chic 27-inch smart touch screen and ventilation combo, the new Kitchen Hub can still easily fit in the space above the range. The Next Gens AI technology helps home chefs select recipes based on available ingredients detected by a camera, assists in detection of doneness of food items, raises or lowers oven temperature and notes any missing ingredients. The third in-oven camera, allows users to view their meals as it cooks.

The tablet-meets-microwave can also help minimize food waste. According to GE, American families waste 20 percent of the food they buy, equating to roughly $800 per year in waste. The AI powered computer vision helps people use the ingredients they have on hand to quickly create meal options. With features such as a built-in Google Assistant, owners can also create grocery lists and plan meals.

The Next Gen also offers multi-angle live video chats and connectivity to other smart home devices, like temperature control, lighting systems and cameras. If that wasnt enough, you can also stream Netflix and Spotify from the display.

The next gen Kitchen Hub will be available in late 2020. AI powered computer vision cooking technology, accessible for all GE appliances with cameras, will also be available in late 2020.

In todays smart homes, even the faucet is engineered to amaze. Winner of the 2020 KBIS Smart Home Technology award, The U by Moen Smart Faucets intuitive voice-activation technology is designed to streamline the most mundane kitchen tasks.

The U by Moen Smart Faucet offers convenience, precision and intuitive voice-activation technology. (Photos courtesy of Moen)

Its voice control allows users to start and stop water flow, as well as perform specific tasks on command through digital voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. For example, with just a few words, the faucet provides the perfect amount and temperature of water for preparing a baby bottle or fills a pot with exactly four quarts of hot water while you chop veggies for dinner. No more multitasking blunders, here.

Users are able to control the U by Moen Smart Faucet in multiple ways in addition to voice control. A Wave Sensor positioned at the front of the faucet turns water on or off with a simple hand movement while the handle on the side of the faucet offers manual operation, letting users adjust flow and temperature.

While its not uncommon for smart home appliances to have a modern aesthetic, the U by Moen is available in a range of finishes to suit consumers varying styles and budgets. Whether homeowners are designing a modern masterpiece or prefer to take a more traditional route, Moen has an option.

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The Latest Innovations In Kitchen Appliances And Smart Technology - Long Island Weekly News

By Janet Pang

As tens of thousands of corporate lawyers and civil servants work from home while the Covid-19 epidemic hits Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Judiciary is a rare branch of government which has not exploited technological advances, with a significant backlog of cases and applications piling up.

File photo: Tom Grundy/HKFP.

Barristers and solicitors have been sitting around wondering when they will have to go to court and which case they should prepare for, whilst anxiously waiting for announcements by the Judiciary. Without compromising the rule of law, access to justice or fairness, the legal sector particularly the Judiciary should think further about their arrangements for combating the coronavirus.

The need for the Judiciarys own epidemic plan and strategy

Many have called for the Judiciary to provide greater transparency in their policies, decisions and details regarding the recent closure of courts. What were the factors and criteria to be considered in imposing court closure? Was the Judiciary influenced by the Administrations decision to impose work from home measures, or the rapid rise of the number of confirmed coronavirus cases? We do not know.

The Bar Association and the Law Society have both expressed concern about the delay in announcement and openness of the court arrangements. With the newest lengthy announcement made by the Judiciary on possible court resumption starting from March 2, it is still not very clear what the arrangements will be.

Perhaps the underlying issue of insufficient transparency stems from the lack of guidelines and strategies for epidemic emergency planning by the Judiciary. In contrast, some US courts came up with contingency plans for court operation during epidemics a decade ago, after the SARS and avian flu outbreaks.

Photo: Wikicommons.

In balancing the likely restriction of public access during a pandemic with the need for open justice, the epidemic preparedness plan would consider employing technology such as televised court proceedings, public access to computerised information systems, and simultaneous court transcription to provide participants and the public with access to court proceedings.

Although not seen in the Hong Kong context yet, the court should also be prepared for cases related to habeas corpus and quarantine orders during a time of epidemic. The court must also have basic ideas as to the conditions warranting court closure instead of simply following the practice of the administration, especially as the administrations decision to resume daily office operation may be motivated by political considerations.

It is crucial for the Judiciary to come up with its own plans and guidelines to ensure perception of independence. A proper policy in place will also provide greater certainty to court operations during times of stress, as the practices in the past few weeks have undermined certainty of the legal system, an important pillar of the rule of law.

E-filing and limited services

One of the most troubling issues is that numerous court applications cannot be filed when the Registry is closed. Many lawyers have missed the opportunities to make important applications for their clients, such as applying for default judgment when the other side does not respond to a legal suit.

Photo: GovHK.

Some of them may also risk missing a deadline for filing applications, as the Court Registry has been closed for almost a month. Why did the Judiciary not opt to provide limited service of its Registry to ensure minimal and necessary operation of the justice system?

A makeshift measure could be that the Court Registry is to open with limited service. Lawyers and applicants can still file their applications or take out summons by depositing physical copies of documents at the Court Registry. They can email the court the same.

This ad hoc measure would not violate the existing rules which require physical filing with the Registry but judicial staffers and judges can make reference to the electronic copies so as to reduce the risk of spreading disease through physical contact. There is perhaps no perfect solution during a time of epidemic but the courts need to think further and come up with more flexible ways to deal with the situation.

Hong Kongs long-term competitor, Singapore, implemented an e-filing system as early as the early 2000s, whilst Hong Kong only began thinking of such in 2003. The use of technology by the Hong Kong Judiciary is lagging tremendously.

As the Court Proceedings (Electronic Technology) Bill is on its way, the judiciary and the legal profession must take every opportunity to ensure that they can take the advantage of technological advances in accordance with principles of the rule of law when the bill is dealt with at the legislature.

Dealing with backlogs

It is expected that the courts will be swarmed with the backlog of applications and cases accumulated during court closure. It is understood the courts will adopt a staggered approach when they reopen, so that cases first taken out will be first dealt with. Yet, we do not know how long closure will last.

File photo: Holmes Chan/HKFP.

We could also expect long queues outside the courts on the first few days after reopening, when legal clerks rush to lodge application documents. This would ironically defeat the purpose of court closure, to control the flow of people. The Judiciary must devise proper arrangements to deal with the expected influx of people making court applications, such as arranging time slots for filing etc.

So far, it has expressed its intention to arrange for court registries be opened in batches but the details arent released yet. Our previous suggestion that the court should consider providing limited service during closure to prevent a future influx would solve this problem.

It may be unfortunate that the Hong Kong Judiciary has faced an unprecedented workload due to the anti-Extradition Bill protests, followed by the coronavirus outbreak.

Yet, some of the consequences were avoidable. The forced closure of the courts during Covid-19 has revealed how archaic the existing legal system is, creating numerous hurdles where court operations could benefit from technology. The Judiciary should take this opportunity to consider long-term changes that would improve the administration of justice and minimise disruption to court operation in epidemics.

Janet Pang is a solicitor in Hong Kong and a member of Civic Party.

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Coronavirus closes Hong Kong courts, and reveals their neglect of technology - Hong Kong Free Press

Technology is useless unless it fits into smart business strategy. Here are the top four books to ... [+] help.

Technological innovation is nothing unless businesses know how to apply it to drive customer satisfaction and profitability. Here are the books to help you understand how to use big data, create useful artificial intelligence and make the right technology acquisitions for your business.

Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

Artificial intelligence is a popular but little understood topic among many business executives. While scare mongering about machines taking over the world makes for good headlines, the kind of AI actually impacting business and jobs today is very different. Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani write about weak AI, which is what they call a computer system which can make decisions and perform tasks previously handled by people.

Weak AI is already enabling companies to have massive scale at lower cost. They give the example of Ant Financial, which serves more than 10 times as many customers as the largest U.S. banks with less than one tenth of the employees.

To put AI at the core of the business, the authors say you need to build an AI factory. The AI factory consists of four elements: a data pipeline, algorithms to crunch the data, an experimentation platform to test the algorithms and the technological infrastructure to connect the data and algorithms to internal and external users.

This book is a comprehensive guide to how artificial intelligence is built and can be easily understood by non-technical professionals. As AI and big data become ever more central to business success, this book is essential reading.

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado Perez

Data is the fuel for any AI system, but if the way that data is being analyzed and collected is biased in the first place, the AI system will just make bias scalable. Caroline Criado Perezs book shows the (sometimes fatal) consequences of where homogenous teams have embedded bias into product and algorithm design.

Perez writes that when Apple launched its AI, Siri, the system could find prostitutes and Viagra suppliers, but if you told Siri that you had been raped, she replied, I dont know what you mean by raped. These basic errors should be caught before a product is released with much fanfare.

Perezs book also highlights that much of the general population data that we have is collected about men, whether that is data about behavior or health. This can be particularly problematic for investors, who need comprehensive data to make smart investment decisions. Perez writes given the male domination of VCs, data gaps are perhaps particularly problematic when it comes to tech aimed at women.

Technology can spread our ideas faster and cheaper, whether they are good or bad. To avoid embedding bias into your product and algorithms, read Invisible Women.

Go Tech or Go Extinct: How Acquiring Tech Disruptors is the Key to Survival and Growth for Established Companies, by Paul Cuatrecasas

Acquiring startups is a popular way for established companies to gain talent or new technologies. However, while many of those deals appear to be useful at the start, they often lose value at integration. According to various sources, including the Harvard Business Review, the failure rate for mergers and acquisitions sits between 70% and 90%.

Paul Cuatrecasas, an investment banker who advises technology companies, has written a guide on how traditional businesses can identify the acquisitions right for them and successfully integrate them. Cuatrecasas says for traditional incumbents, technology is either a virus or a vitamin. The ultimate lever is a double-edged sword you can use it to kill your competition, or it can be used to kill you.

His book outlines twelve steps that traditional companies can use to work out what acquisitions they need to make, how to search for qualified startups, how to engage with them, close the deal and then welcome them, their technologies and culture into the larger business.

This is a useful book for larger companies to understand the acquisition process, and for startups whose aim it is to get acquired.

Out-innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley, by Alexandre Lazarow

Venture capitalist Alexandre Lazarow has written a counter-argument to the Silicon Valley startup model of fast growth at all costs. Lazarow writes about companies which begin their lives at what he calls the frontier markets without economic stability or supportive startup ecosystems.

This does not only apply to emerging markets, but also to regions within economically developed markets such as the U.S., but without strong startup ecosystems, such as Detroit or Columbus. He writes that even frontier regions in developed countries often lack indispensable resources such as angel investors, incubators, venture capitalists, an experienced employee pool, cultural support for risk and failure, interested acquirers, and public markets.

The companies that launch in frontier markets and scale successfully tend to have different business models and challenges than those in Silicon Valley. Where Silicon Valley strives to breed unicorns, [companies valued at over $1 billion], the frontier raises camels organizations that can capitalize on opportunity but also can survive in a drought.

This book is useful for investors, who want to look for success beyond the Silicon Valley model, and traditional companies interested in startup acquisitions.

What books on business innovation and technology strategy do you recommend? Tweet your suggestions to @sophiamatveeva

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Top Books To Inform Your Technology And Innovation Strategy - Forbes

BUFFALO, N.Y. Right now, we're at the cusp of a transportation revolution.

That's according to an organization called Congress for the New Urbanism.

Experts say there will be a widespread introduction of new transportation technology that could change the way cities operate.

If and when that happens, City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown wants to be ready.

"Our goal as a city is for this to be a community-driven process where we all work together in envisioning the kind of future that we want for our community," the mayor said.

On Saturday, representatives from organizations such as Congress for the New Urbanism and Stantec gathered in Buffalo to share recommendations for the city, in an effort to find solutions to an important question:

"What does Buffalo, a mid-size city, do to respond to this new wave of transportation technology?" said Brendan Mehaffy, the Executive Director of the City of Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning.

The event on Saturday came on the heels of a week-long workshop on the topic, looking into how Buffalo could adapt its existing streets, public spaces and buildings to accommodate things such as e-scooters and self-driving cars.

"There were national experts that came to Buffalo from across the country that looked at our unique transportation issues, mobility issues in Buffalo and gave us some ideas to consider for our future," Brown said.

Added Mehaffy: "One of the things that was shown was an autonomous vehicle shuttle. That is something that's already being tested at the University of Buffalo and that's something that we would like to test on city streets in the City of Buffalo. We recognize we need to designate probably a corridor for that, and we need to make sure that it's designed in such a way to support that technology."

He added, "That same corridor would also support a lot of the micro-mobility solutions that are out there right now with e-scooters."

Another concept brought up was possibly expanding on some of the technology resources that are already in use.

"The mayor has had great success with Buffalo Roamand our parking apps, and expanding those apps at this point it time, not just for parking but also for mass transit so people know exactly when a bus is coming," Mehaffy said.

Mehaffy explained this is a part of a larger discussion about growing Buffalo's economy in a very intentional way.

"This isn't just a conversation about transportation, but then also how we build the city around these new forms of transportation," he said.

Brown added, "We want the needs of the City of Buffalo ,and what's happening in the City of Buffalo, to help shape that national conversation."

Mayor Brown said the full report on the findings will be available in April.

Experts explained changes wouldn't be done overnight, but they do have an aggressive timeline to potentially get the ball rolling.

"In the next year, we'd like to work with the New York State legislature and others to get the permission to do this autonomous vehicle testing zone in the City of Buffalo, this mobility innovation zone in the City of Buffalo," Mehaffy said.

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Technology experts look into future of transportation in Buffalo - WGRZ.com

One of the seminal texts for anyone interested in technology and society is Melvin Kranzbergs Six Laws of Technology, the first of which says that technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. By this, Kranzberg meant that technologys interaction with society is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.

The saloon-bar version of this is that technology is both good and bad; it all depends on how its used a tactic that tech evangelists regularly deploy as a way of stopping the conversation. So a better way of using Kranzbergs law is to ask a simple Latin question: Cui bono? who benefits from any proposed or hyped technology? And, by implication, who loses?

With any general-purpose technology which is what the internet has become the answer is going to be complicated: various groups, societies, sectors, maybe even continents win and lose, so in the end the question comes down to: who benefits most? For the internet as a whole, its too early to say. But when we focus on a particular digital technology, then things become a bit clearer.

A case in point is the technology known as machine learning, a manifestation of artificial intelligence that is the tech obsession de nos jours. Its really a combination of algorithms that are trained on big data, ie huge datasets. In principle, anyone with the computational skills to use freely available software tools such as TensorFlow could do machine learning. But in practice they cant because they dont have access to the massive data needed to train their algorithms.

This means the outfits where most of the leading machine-learning research is being done are a small number of tech giants especially Google, Facebook and Amazon which have accumulated colossal silos of behavioural data over the last two decades. Since they have come to dominate the technology, the Kranzberg question who benefits? is easy to answer: they do. Machine learning now drives everything in those businesses personalisation of services, recommendations, precisely targeted advertising, behavioural prediction For them, AI (by which they mostly mean machine learning) is everywhere. And it is making them the most profitable enterprises in the history of capitalism.

As a consequence, a powerful technology with great potential for good is at the moment deployed mainly for privatised gain. In the process, it has been characterised by unregulated premature deployment, algorithmic bias, reinforcing inequality, undermining democratic processes and boosting covert surveillance to toxic levels. That it doesnt have to be like this was vividly demonstrated last week with a report in the leading biological journal Cell of an extraordinary project, which harnessed machine learning in the public (as compared to the private) interest. The researchers used the technology to tackle the problem of bacterial resistance to conventional antibiotics a problem that is rising dramatically worldwide, with predictions that, without a solution, resistant infections could kill 10 million people a year by 2050.

The team of MIT and Harvard researchers built a neural network (an algorithm inspired by the brains architecture) and trained it to spot molecules that inhibit the growth of the Escherichia coli bacterium using a dataset of 2,335 molecules for which the antibacterial activity was known including a library of 300 existing approved antibiotics and 800 natural products from plant, animal and microbial sources. They then asked the network to predict which would be effective against E coli but looked different from conventional antibiotics. This produced a hundred candidates for physical testing and led to one (which they named halicin after the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) that was active against a wide spectrum of pathogens notably including two that are totally resistant to current antibiotics and are therefore a looming nightmare for hospitals worldwide.

There are a number of other examples of machine learning for public good rather than private gain. One thinks, for example, of the collaboration between Google DeepMind and Moorfields eye hospital. But this new example is the most spectacular to date because it goes beyond augmenting human screening capabilities to aiding the process of discovery. So while the main beneficiaries of machine learning for, say, a toxic technology like facial recognition are mostly authoritarian political regimes and a range of untrustworthy or unsavoury private companies, the beneficiaries of the technology as an aid to scientific discovery could be humanity as a species. The technology, in other words, is both good and bad. Kranzbergs first law rules OK.

Every cloud Zeynep Tufekci has written a perceptive essay for the Atlantic about how the coronavirus revealed authoritarianisms fatal flaw.

EU ideas explained Politico writers Laura Kayali, Melissa Heikkil and Janosch Delcker have delivered a shrewd analysis of the underlying strategy behind recent policy documents from the EU dealing with the digital future.

On the nature of loss Jill Lepore has written a knockout piece for the New Yorker under the heading The lingering of loss, on friendship, grief and remembrance. One of the best things Ive read in years.

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How artificial intelligence outsmarted the superbugs - The Guardian

Rochester Institute of Technology recently received new electronics assembly equipment for its Center for Electronics and Manufacturing Assembly (CEMA). The university installed a DEK NeoHorizen printing machine, used by electronics manufacturers to precisely place transistors onto electronic circuit boards.

The equipment will be used for teaching, faculty research and corporate R&D through an expanded partnership between RIT and ASM Assembly Systems. As part of the partnership, the two organizations are advancing production processes and operations to meet the demands of the evolving manufacturing industry. Research by CEMA and ASM, the international electronics manufacturing organization, is underway into advancing this critical step in assembling the mechanical components of devices such as smart phones.

ASM is interested in is the adoption of very small components in advanced products. These devices have incredibly small transistors (resistors and capacitors) that are hard to see with the naked eye, therefore it requires advanced equipment to be able to assemble with them, said Martin Anselm, director of CEMA. This print machine is one used in industry today, and it allows for more control and for more advanced products to be manufactured.

Anselm, who is also a faculty-researcher in RITs College of Engineering Technology, has been working with the company on projects relating to the increase in miniaturized components being added to circuit boards and the need for greater battery storage capacity.

One way cell phones increase their battery life is to make more space for the battery. The more we can put electronics into a smaller factor, the more internal volume we have for the battery. The smaller we make the circuit board, the more capability the product has, he said, referring to the dense space between the circuitry.

CEMA was established at RIT in 1995 and provides workforce training, development, prototype testing and research for the electronics manufacturing and packaging industry. Its corporate partners represent companies locally and nationally.

In 2017, RIT expanded its long-time collaboration with ASM, increasing CEMAs capabilities in electronic manufacturing.The new equipment, valued at nearly $250,000, will further RITs overall contributions to AIM Photonics, specifically in the area of next-generation electronics devices and packaging, positioning both organizations to contribute to the growing industry.

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New surface mount technology equipment added to RIT's Center for Electronics Manufacturing and Assembly - RIT University News Services