Category Archives: Technology

LINCOLN TUNNEL Autonomous self-driving technology is moving ahead at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The agency approved a contract and project to design and test some autonomous components.

The technology on buses would hopefully allow buses to travel closer together, speed up travel, increase tunnel capacity and avoid crashes.

Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton called this a first step and emphasized the fact that drivers will continue to operate buses.

The board authorized the project and will spend $4.3 million. Another $500,000 will be used to install sensors.

Two vendors will design and test systems that would allow buses to travel closer together along the 2.5 mile XBL. The exclusive bus lane runs from the NJ Turnpike and Route 3 to the tunnel during the weekday morning rush.

From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays. 1,850 buses travel through the tunnel.

The Port Authority is working with NJ Transit and the state.

Six buses would be outfitted with the technology and would first be tested on a closed course. That phase is expected to be occur in 2020.

Later tests would include travel along the XBL and through the tunnel to the bus terminal.

See original here:

New Jersey Self-driving technology will be tested on some NJ buses Greg Mocker 7:31 - WPIX 11 New York

Pop quiz for parents of schoolchildren: What comes to mind when you hear technology in the classroom?

A) Why give even more screen time to a kid who barely speaks to us because shes glued to TikTok?

B) My child came home excited because he earned lots of tokens to feed the fuzzy monsters on his math program. Is that a lesson or a game?

C) How did my third grader manage to find images from an underwear catalog with his iPad? (Cmon, it cant be just my kid.)

There is no right or wrong answer. But the concerns parents have about the near-ubiquitous presence of school-issued technology are spilling off the pages (and screens) of news reports across the country.

Some parents worry that the youngest students brains are being overstimulated; others say technology isnt helping children learn. Still others worry about cyberbullying and access to inappropriate content. There are privacy concerns about the apps schools install to monitor these threats because its often unclear what data is collected and where it goes. If none of this is on your list, the access that Silicon Valley now has to public education should give us all pause.

Nearly all public schools in the U.S. have at least basic internet access and more districts are investing in personal devices. Chromebooks are the market leader, shipping nearly 60% of school-based devices in 2018, according to the consulting firm Futuresource. A report from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit in San Francisco that serves as a watchdog on technology and media use by children, found that that 82% of K-12 public school teachers have either one-to-one access or shared computers for their students.

It can feel daunting and parents are right to question their schools if they arent satisfied with classroom technology use. But Im pleased with how my children use computers at school and wanted to know: What does it look like when schools are doing a good job with technology?

It starts with some ground rules. Digital citizenship lessons are a common approach. They teach children how to smartly search for information online, limit screen time, keep personal information private, respect others and avoid or report cyberbullying. It works best when schools start from an early age and hold students accountable by taking away devices when they violate the rules. Just like we parents are told to do at home.

I was glad when my fifth-grade twins had to sign a contract stating that watching YouTube on their school laptops is a violation that could get them taken away. YouTube is notoriously hard to keep from childrens curious eyes, even with school-mandated filtering and the websites not meant for kids under 13 mantra. In a landmark case, the government recently fined YouTube $170 million for violating COPPA, the federal childrens privacy protection law, and the site now requires creators to designate whether their content is made for kids.

Kelly Mendoza, senior director of education programs for Common Sense Media, said the group continues to pressure YouTube and other platforms to, among other things, raise up educational content and stop the use of manipulative design. But as aware as we are of its flaws, we also love us a good video tutorial. Video streaming services like YouTube are the most commonly used type of classroom digital tool, even though software that lets students create or collaborate provides much greater educational value.

Experienced educators will tell you that if lessons are engaging enough, students wont turn to distractions like YouTube. Im not sure I buy that, but Im listening. Michael Nagler, the superintendent of Mineola Public Schools on Long Island, N.Y., said if you are using technology appropriately, you wont have a problem with kids doing other things. Nagler, whose district has been consistently recognized as digitally innovative, said lots of schools dont spend time upfront designing curriculum before introducing technology. Its not a panacea, he said, but it can be a tool to engage kids in content that, most of the time, they dont want to learn.

Educators and experts point to other traits shared by schools that are successful with so-called ed tech. They put teaching first, offer ongoing educator training and choose software that fosters creating and collaborating. They talk to teachers before investing in technology and value clear communication between administration and teachers and between schools and parents.

Schools need to communicate clearly to parents and keep them in the fold about what their technology goals are and how they are safeguarding children, said Mendoza. Is it tech for techs sake or does it have value that a non-tech learning activity couldnt?

Not all screen time is created equal, said Joseph South, chief learning officer for the International Society for Technology in Education, the professional group for technology educators. No kindergartner should be left alone on an iPad, and technology shouldnt replace playtime for young learners. But, he said, Ive watched kindergarten students in a Los Angeles school district create a script about tigers, make a storyboard and then draw pictures for each scene. An exercise like that keeps them super engaged, he said. Sometimes we imagine a worst-case scenario in young children using technology, he said, Id like us to imagine a best-case scenario.

Carving out time for personal screens during the school day in small increments is fine, but should never take the place of teachers, said Susan Landry, a developmental psychologist and founder of the Childrens Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. For children in preschool or kindergarten, Landry recommended 15 or 20 minutes a day at most.

Technology isnt good at teaching the language, conversational and social skills that should be the focus of early education because of how the brain develops, said Landry, whose group uses research to improve learning. Particularly in a school serving a high proportion of low-income children, where there are challenges to parents sitting down with children and reading and talking, she said, face time with teachers and peers is crucial.

She said technology can be good for learning things like shapes, math facts and letter recognition or sounds. In general, she said, computer learning becomes more effective and less harmful when you get into about third grade. At that point, it can be a great tool if children are engaged and working with others. I dont think you can beat that for quality learning experiences, Landry said.

But how can schools choose high-quality programs, when evidence of what works is mostly anecdotal? Scientific research on programs and practices in education, collected on the governments What Works Clearinghouse, contains few examples of technology-based programs, Landry said. Mostly, its up to districts and teachers to figure out. There are websites that can help. The International Society for Technology in Education maintains a members-only database called Edtech Advisor that is like a Yelp for teachers, while Common Sense Media reviews ed tech tools on its website, and teachers can leave reviews too. Common Sense also tracks each products data privacy policy, a big concern of parents and schools, who must follow federal and state privacy laws.

Nagler, the superintendent, has a tech committee made up of teachers. The most successful apps are the ones teachers have embraced and used first, he said. Nationwide, though, teachers dont always feel confident about ed tech. Mendoza said only 4 out of 10 teachers polled in the groups recent classroom census felt very prepared to use their ed tech tools and a third of them arent using the products their districts are purchasing that they thought would be great for learning. There is much work still to be done, she said, on professional development. Typically, the state can have the initiatives, she said, but its up to districts to provide adequate and ongoing PD.

Kasey Bell, a Dallas area digital learning coach and former middle school teacher, said she encounters reluctance from some teachers to integrate technology in lessons. They already have so many things they have to do and be, said Bell, who works with schools around the country and hosts a weekly podcast called Shake Up Learning. Even when schools have the budget and create training positions, teachers still have to accept what you are selling, she said. They feel so much pressure to prepare students for state tests, she said, and technology skills arent tested, so its not a priority unless administration makes it one. She likes to show teachers how technology can foster the critical thinking that will help students on tests.

For training at the school or district level, South recommends an ed tech coach, someone who can use technology effectively and teach it to students. These positions could be full-or part-time, he said, and sometimes this expertise comes with a title like technology specialist, but all types of educators can fill this role, even principals.

We dont think about how much teachers are risking when they say, Tomorrows lesson will succeed or fail based on how I use this tech, South said. An ed tech coach can provide the kind of over the shoulder support that makes a big difference in teachers confidence level, he said. Parents concerned about devices could start by saying: I would love to understand how the school supports my childs teacher in the best use of ed tech.

Because technology in the classroom is still relatively new, college-level teacher training programs havent caught up. Its a huge gap in the system, South said. Most colleges offer at most a three-credit course, he said. Towson University, University of Michigan and Ball State in Indiana are three examples of colleges that integrate technology use into their teacher programs.

He said something else intriguing: two years ago, Texas became one of the first states to sign a law that every new teacher has to pass an assessment showing that they have mastered the ISTE educator standards. Its probably too soon to have an effect at the classroom level, but this could be a model for other states.

What model should we parents in technology-soaked school districts look to? Naglers school district has woven computational thinking and customized learning into the entire K-12 curriculum for 3,000 students at five schools. Every child in the district, where students are mostly white, with Hispanics the largest minority group at 29.4%, has an iPad. The middle school has won awards for its student-directed learning, including a STEM competition that involved collaborating with the Long Island Rail Road to minimize the impact on the community during an expansion project. (I found it thrilling to watch this video of how students attacked the issue.)

Nagler said his district bases what it does with technology on giving students a choice for how they do the work in combination with what they have to do. Were realistic, he said. State and society mandate things and were going to do those things, but were going to build in vehicles for kids and teachers to have choice. We want the kids to have fun.

Vicki Vila is a freelance editor and writer in Charlotte, N.C. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Excerpt from:

What does it take for teachers to make smart use of technology in classrooms? - The Dallas Morning News

The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes by David Robson

Published in August of 2019.

Reading The Intelligence Trap shook my world. Or, as my college-going kids might say, "I'm shook."

Here is the problem. There is a non-trivial probability that the things that I believe most strongly about higher education are, in reality, wrong.

The Intelligence Trap is all about how smart people make dumb mistakes. There is at least some evidence that academics are smart people.

Unfortunately, smart academics may be highly vulnerable to succumbing to biases and blind spots. Our entire IHE community might be made up of highly intelligent, but irredeemably wrongheaded, higher ed insiders.

Why might academics be susceptible to the intelligence trap? Robson explores how the relationship between wisdom and intelligence is, at best, tenuous.

Someone with a high IQ might be more likely to develop a worldview that is as skewed by misinformation, or self-interest, than individuals who test at the IQ mean.

Those with high measured intelligence, however, may disproportionately excel at coming up with arguments and evidence to support their blinkered views.

One of the biases that Robson discusses, and which academics may be especially susceptible, includes that of earned dogmatism. Anyone with a PhD is at particular risk for this bias, in which we believe that our credentials give us the right to claim expertise across a range of subjects.

The challenge of escaping the intelligence trap is that academia rewards many of the biases that Robson identities.

In the marketplace of ideas, impact is correlated with certitude. And yet, certainty is the enemy of wisdom.

As someone who has built his career in online education, I am highly incentivized to argue for the benefits of low-residency and online learning. (Motivated reasoning).

I am certainthat online programs can be a catalyst to build institutional capacity in learning science and instructional design.

I'm also fully convincedthat all but a very few face-to-face master's programs will disappear, and that the future of professional education is mostly low-residency and online.

Further, I have no doubtthat we are on the cusp of a bifurcation of graduate professional education. Soon, the vast majority of all master's degrees will be conferred through scaled online platforms that enable lower price points (~$25K). Only highly selective schools with global brands will be able to charge premium tuition (>$100K). And that the undifferentiated middle of the master's degree market ($26K-$99K) will implode.

Added to myhighly confidentassertions about online learning, I also think that the funnel into graduate education at an inflection point. I'm surethat we will be moving university recruiting dollars away from Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook Ads - and towards investing in non-degree scaled online programs that channel participants into applicants for graduate degree programs.

Reading The Intelligence Trap has persuaded me that it would be wiser to be less sure of my beliefs.

Robson quotes Ben Franklin's famous words from the Constitutional Convention of 1787:

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.

What Robson advocates for is that we embrace the new discipline of evidence-based wisdom and that we approach the work of formulating our beliefs with openness and humility.

Do you think our IHE community can be less certain of the rightness of our beliefs?

Might we model, in our opinion pieces and comments on IHE, the benefits of doubt and hesitation?

What other books about the cognitive traps that academics are susceptible to do you recommend?

What are you reading?

More:

Academics and 'The Intelligence Trap' | Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed

The entire written works of mankind in all languages from the beginning of recorded history is around 50 petabytes. One petabyte is about 20 million four drawer filing cabinets filled with text. Google processes about 20 petabytes per day so in three days they would have processed everything we have written ever. Meanwhile, data centres now annually consume as much energy as Sweden. By 2025 theyll consume a fifth of all of Earths power.

For some, this is a revolution being able to store and recall information at the touch of a button. For others, it is 1984 with Big Brother being able to record and recall your every move. But just what can we expect from technology in the future be it within our working life or leisure time?

We are now in the fourth industrial revolution.Technologies will revolutionise, empower, turbo-charge life as we know it. From changing economies to helping cure illnesses, technology can already allow us to translate in real time while on business calls to turn on our heating remotely on our way home from work.

A new race of superhumans is coming with Alphabet owned, DeepMind having already shown us how these superhumans can outwit not only humans, but other lesser tech with AlphaZero, an Artificial Intelligence project set against Stockfish, a Japanese chess program. Not only did it beat the program, it showed an unnerving amount of human intuition about how it played. As the New York Times commented: intuitively and beautifully, with a romantic, attacking style. It played gambits.

Closer to home, organisations across the globe are using VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), MR (mixed reality), XR (mixed reality environment) and VR/360 to create experiential customer/user experiences.

The value of the AR industry for video games is $11.6bn. However, it is also valued at $5.1bn in healthcare, $4.7bn in engineering and $7m in education far from the entertainment tech it once was it is now a power being utilised for the greater good. 5G has the potential to revolutionise allowing super high definition content to be delivered to mobile devices while super realistic AR and VR immersive experiences will transform our experience of education, news and entertainment.

So, if robots are now able to think quicker and sharper than us and predict our nuances, whats next and how can it be used from an organisational point of view? Artificial intelligence can already predict your personality simply by tracking your eyes. Findings show that peoples eye movements reveal whether they are sociable, conscientious or curious, with the algorithm software reliably recognising four of the big five personality traits neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

As Yuval Noah Harrari in Homo Deus comments, Soon, books will be able to read you while you read them. If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it can know what made you laugh, what made you sad and what made you angry.

This means that job interviews can be undertaken with the blink of an eye (literally) as one scan of a computer could tell potential employers if the interviewee has the relevant traits for the job. Criminal psychologists can read those under scrutiny faster and help solve crimes quicker with biometric sensors pointing towards dishonesty and those lacking in empathy.

Knowledge is power. And technology can create this knowledge. From using biometrics and health statistics from your Fitbit and phone it can show your health predispositions, levels of fitness and wellbeing and personality traits and tendencies from sleep patterns and exercise and nutritional information.

However, it can also go one step further, your DNA and biometrics such as the speed of your heartbeat can indicate whether you have just had an increase in activity so that could mean physical, sexual or other types of excitement, your sugar levels can indicate lifestyle choices and harmful habits.

This could mean office politics are a thing of the past as HR managers could build teams based on DNA proven personalities as well as skill sets. And promotions could be scientific allowing those with more leadership personalities to be placed in leadership positions quicker and those with more subservient traits being part of a team.

With the development of neural lace, an ultra-thin mesh that can be implanted in the skull to monitor brain function, and eventually nano-technology we will be able to plug our own brains directly into the cloud allowing software to manage mundane high volume data processing and freeing our brains to think more creatively with significantly more power perhaps to the 1000x. Which as Singularity Hubs Raya Bidshahri points out raises the question, with all this enhancement, what does I feel like anymore?

From an organisational point of view, it could mean information and data we store such as recall and memory from meetings and research could automatically be downloaded freeing up more of our brain power to problem solve and allow us to think more creatively and smarter than our human form has ever allowed before.

So, what does this advancement of tech mean for the business of the future? Who really knows? However, what is sure is that whatever your business sector, size or region you should ensure you are at the very least aware of the latest advancements and always be ready to embrace them into your business, work with agencies that have an eye on the insights to the future, because sooner, exponentially sooner, the future will be now.

Whether you believe technology is the creator or all things good or all things evil, there is no doubt it will change our landscape forever. From our formative steps into the digital world to the leaps and bounds of the future, the force will be with you.

Interested in hearing leading global brands discuss subjects like this in person?

Find out more aboutDigital Marketing World Forum (#DMWF) Europe, London, North America, and Singapore.

Follow this link:

From AR to AI: The emerging technologies marketers can explore to enable and disrupt - Marketing Tech

Work toward renewing Canadas inflation-targeting framework and understanding the impact of digital technology highlight a packed agenda for the Bank of Canada in 2020, Governor Stephen S. Poloz said today.

In a speech to the Empire Club, Governor Poloz outlined what Canadas central bank is doing given the major forces that will continue to affect the global economy over the next few years. We can see the broad forces of low interest rates, rising debt and technological change working in combination to stress households, companies and governments, the Governor said. The impact of these forces will keep the Bank of Canada busy in 2020 and beyond.

Against this backdrop, the Bank of Canada will work next year toward a recommendation for the 2021 renewal of its inflation-targeting framework, Governor Poloz said, including an open, public consultation process. As an accountable, public institution, we are eager to hear your views, the Governor noted.

The Bank will also keep pursuing the goal of embedding financial stability linkages in its monetary policy framework. This is particularly important given the long-term outlook for low global interest rates and rising indebtedness, Governor Poloz said. As well, the Bank is scoping out work on a next-generation economic model to replace its current structural projection model.

Understanding the economic and financial impact of digitalization is also crucial. While new technologies should ultimately lead to stronger economic and productivity growth, so far, we have not seen signs of higher productivity in the economic data, the Governor said. As was the case with previous technological breakthroughs, it is possible that economic statistics are not fully capturing these developments. The Bank will also focus on the impact of technology on payments and money, Governor Poloz added.

The Governor concluded by expressing confidence in Canadas ability to face current challenges. One should never underestimate the ability of Canadians to face and overcome challenges, using the same tools they always havehard work and ingenuity.

Original post:

Inflation-target renewal, impact of technology highlight Bank of Canada's 2020 work plan, Governor Poloz says - Bank of Canada

Executive Summary

Coaches have always sought to help their clients improve. Moving forward, strategically applying technology alongside their own judgement, warmth, and integrity will be an increasingly important way for them to do so. The authors describe four key areas where technology can transform the act and the impact of coaching: 1) Technology can help monitor progress towards goals against a clear baseline. 2) It can build a richer picture of what the client is saying (and not saying). 3) It can develop options based on scenarios, simulations, and extrapolations. 4) It can use nudges to encourage and reinforce target behaviors.

Years ago, executive coaching was stigmatized as remedial help for underperformers. More recently, its transformed into an elite, high-cost activity, often reserved for the highest-status executives. But in both cases whether helping the worst or the best performers executive coaching has been inherently small scale, due to its bespoke, one-on-one nature. Organizations have increasingly embraced the idea of internal leaders providing more coaching to their direct reports.

Now, technology is now making it possible for far greater numbers of employees to benefit from outside executive coaching at scale. At a basic level, platforms are making it easier to find and select a coach, to do long-distance coaching via video conferencing or potentially evenholoportation in the future and to manage the administration involved.

Additionally, some coaching tech has enabled coaching conversations without the involvement of a human at a much lower cost. Bots, such as Pocket Confidant and People Squared, allow people to ask questions, work on simulation challenges, and practice their skills in competitive games. Technology and AI permit this to happen anytime and anywhere. Some companies, such as Axa and IBM, are encouraging their adoption to provide large-scale access to coaching.

But perhaps the biggest impact of technology will come from how it enables individual executive coaches (or leaders who act as coaches) to better connect with and serve their clients. This will help to supplement their powers of recall, observation, interpretation, visualization, and encouragement. There are four key areas where technology can transform the act and the impact of coaching. In many cases, the tech solutions have emerged from applications in other contexts, such as sports coaching and customer research.

Of course there are perils to avoid. Too much technology could impede the efficacy and experience of coaching. Coachees could become overly dependent on the answers provided by a bot. Coaches and coachees may hold back, editing what they say for fear of how the app will use their information. The coach may feel overloaded with information, which could result in inertia or confusion.

But in many instances (think humans and chess), weve seen that the mix of human and machine insight is superior to either alone. It may even become harder to coach without technology as its application increases. Coachees will expect it over time, not least because AI and analytics are playing more prominent roles in their lives, from Netflix recommendations to AI-enhanced customer service. Indeed, there are some scenarios in which people prefer the judgement of algorithms to that of humans for example, when they are given advice in response to a question.

Coaches have always sought to help their clients improve. Moving forward, strategically applying technology alongside their own judgment, warmth, and integrity will be an increasingly important way for them to do so.

See the rest here:

How Technology Is Transforming Executive Coaching - Harvard Business Review

These billion-dollar internet companies are nothing without the people harnessing new tools to do genuinely novel, fun, outrageous or informative things.Yes, these tools of human expression are also hijacked for horror and greed, but every day I see a brilliant moment of distilled human storytelling on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter or some other app. It might come from a 100-year-old news organisation or a kid in France, but either way I feel something: joy, outrage, or an understanding of a world I never knew.

Im confident this will keep happening, whatever new ways of communication catch on in the future.

Im grateful for fear: every business is terrified of being mowed over by technological change, and wow, is it good for you and me. Companies have to try harder than ever to keep people happy. Does anyone lament the days when cable companies could count on getting paid by 95% of US households, no matter how garbage their products were?

Customers of retail stores, car-rental services, airlines, banks and (yes) news organisations are better off with companies that are no longer insulated by monopoly economics and relatively hard to reach with complaints. Theres nothing like being scared of death to bring out the best in companies.

Im grateful for the watchdogs and the whistle-blowers: the horribles of technology are real. Thats why we need academics and researchers who systematically study how misinformation spreads online or root out how our personal privacy is undermined. We need the people working in technology who take the risk of speaking up when they believe something is wrong.

We need journalists self-serving alert shedding light on the glorious and grim in technology. And even though they get a lot of justified heat, we need regulators and lawmakers to help protect people from the downsides of technology changes. All of us might get it wrong sometimes, but Im grateful that there are watchful eyes keeping the powerful accountable.

After today, Ill go back to being grumpy about everything. I promise.

Ovide is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. She was previously a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg

See the original post:

Let us give thanks for the good technology - Business Day

Greg M. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God. Described as a godfather to the [humanist] movement by The New York Times Magazine in recognition of his efforts to build inclusive, inspiring, and ethical communities for the nonreligious and allies, Greg was also named one of the top faith and moral leaders in the United States by Faithful Internet, a project of the United Church of Christ and the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.

In June, TechCrunch Ethicist in Residence Greg M. Epstein attended EmTech Next, a conference organized by the MIT Technology Review. The conference, which took place at MITs famous Media Lab, examined how AI and robotics are changing the future of work.

Gregs essay, Will the Future of Work Be Ethical? reflects on his experiences at the conference, which produced what he calls a religious crisis, despite the fact that I am not just a confirmed atheist but a professional one as well. In it, Greg explores themes of inequality, inclusion and what it means to work in technology ethically, within a capitalist system and market economy.

Accompanying the story for Extra Crunch are a series of in-depth interviews Greg conducted around the conference, with scholars, journalists, founders and attendees.

Below he speaks to two key organizers: Gideon Lichfield, the editor in chief of the MIT Technology Review, and Karen Hao, its artificial intelligence reporter. Lichfield led the creative process of choosing speakers and framing panels and discussions at the EmTech Next conference, and both Lichfield and Hao spoke and moderated key discussions.

Gideon Lichfield is the editor in chief at MIT Technology Review. Image via MIT Technology Review

Greg Epstein: I want to first understand how you see your job what impact are you really looking to have?

Gideon Lichfield: I frame this as an aspiration. Most of the tech journalism, most of the tech media industry that exists, is born in some way of the era just before the dot-com boom. When there was a lot of optimism about technology. And so I saw its role as being to talk about everything that technology makes possible. Sometimes in a very negative sense. More often in a positive sense. You know, all the wonderful ways in which tech will change our lives. So there was a lot of cheerleading in those days.

In more recent years, there has been a lot of backlash, a lot of fear, a lot of dystopia, a lot of all of the ways in which tech is threatening us. The way Ive formulated the mission for Tech Review would be to say, technology is a human activity. Its not good or bad inherently. Its what we make of it.

The way that we get technology that has fewer toxic effects and more beneficial ones is for the people who build it, use it, and regulate it to make well informed decisions about it, and for them to understand each other better. And I said the role of a tech publication like Tech Review, one that is under a university like MIT, probably uniquely among tech publications, were positioned to make that our job. To try to influence those people by informing them better and instigating conversations among them. And thats part of the reason we do events like this. So that ultimately better decisions get taken and technology has more beneficial effects. So thats like the high level aspiration. How do we measure that day to day? Thats an ongoing question. But thats the goal.

Yeah, I mean, I would imagine you measure it qualitatively. In the sense that What I see when I look at a conference like this is, I see an editorial vision, right? I mean that Im imagining that you and your staff have a lot of sort of editorial meetings where you set, you know, what are the key themes that we really need to explore. What do we need to inform people about, right?

Yes.

What do you want people to take away from this conference then?

A lot of the people in the audience work at medium and large companies. And theyre thinking aboutwhat effect does automation and AI going to have in their companies? How should it affect their workplace culture? How should it affect their high end decisions? How should it affect their technology investments? And I think the goal for me is, or for us is, that they come away from this conference with a rounded picture of the different factors that can play a role.

There are no clear answers. But they ought to be able to think in an informed and in a nuanced way. If were talking about automating some processes, or contracting out more of what we do to a gig work style platform, or different ways we might train people on our workforce or help them adapt to new job opportunities, or if were thinking about laying people off versus retraining them. All of the different implications that that has, and all the decisions you can take around that, we want them to think about that in a useful way so that they can take those decisions well.

Youre already speaking, as you said, to a lot of the people who are winning, and who are here getting themselves more educated and therefore more likely to just continue to win. How do you weigh where to push them to fundamentally change the way they do things, versus getting them to incrementally change?

Thats an interesting question. I dont know that we can push people to fundamentally change. Were not a labor movement. What we can do is put people from labor movements in front of them and have those people speak to them and say, Hey, this is the consequences that the decisions youre taking are having on the people we represent. Part of the difficulty with this conversation has been that it has been taking place, up till now, mainly among the people who understand the technology and its consequences. Which with was the people building it and then a small group of scholars studying it. Over the last two or three years Ive gone to conferences like ours and other peoples, where issues of technology ethics are being discussed. Initially it really was only the tech people and the business people who were there. And now youre starting to see more representation. From labor, from community organizations, from minority groups. But its taken a while, I think, for the understanding of those issues to percolate and then people in those organizations to take on the cause and say, yeah, this is something we have to care about.

In some ways this is a tech ethics conference. If you labeled it as such, would that dramatically affect the attendance? Would you get fewer of the actual business people to come to a tech ethics conference rather than a conference thats about tech but that happened to take on ethical issues?

Yeah, because I think they would say its not for them.

Right.

Business people want to know, what are the risks to me? What are the opportunities for me? What are the things I need to think about to stay ahead of the game? The case we can make is [about the] ethical considerations are part of that calculus. You have to think about what are the risks going to be to you of, you know, getting rid of all your workforce and relying on contract workers. What does that do to those workers and how does that play back in terms of a risk to you?

Yes, youve got Mary Gray, Charles Isbell, and others here with serious ethical messages.

What about the idea of giving back versus taking less? There was an L.A. Times op ed recently, by Joseph Menn, about how its time for tech to give back. It talked about how 20% of Harvard Law grads go into public service after their graduation but if you look at engineering graduates, the percentage is smaller than that. But even going beyond that perspective, Anand Giridharadas, popular author and critic of contemporary capitalism, might say that while we like to talk about giving back, what is really important is for big tech to take less. In other words: pay more taxes. Break up their companies so theyre not monopolies. To maybe pay taxes on robots, that sort of thing. Whats your perspective?

I dont have a view on either of those things. I think the interesting question is really, what can motivate tech companies, what can motivate anybody whos winning a lot in this economy, to either give back or take less? Its about what causes people who are benefiting from the current situation to feel they need to also ensure other people are benefiting.

Maybe one way to talk about this is to raise a question Ive seen you raise: what the hell is tech ethics anyway? I would say there isnt a tech ethics. Not in the philosophy sense your background is from. There is a movement. There is a set of questions around it, around what should technology companies responsibility be? And theres a movement to try to answer those questions.

A bunch of the technologies that have emerged in the last couple of decades were thought of as being good, as being beneficial. Mainly because they were thought of as being democratizing. And there was this very nave Western viewpoint that said if we put technology and power in the hands of the people they will necessarily do wise and good things with it. And that will benefit everybody.

And these technologies, including the web, social media, smart phones, you could include digital cameras, you could include consumer genetic testing, all things that put a lot more power in the hands of the people, have turned out to be capable of having toxic effects as well.

That took everybody by surprise. And the reason that has raised a conversation around tech ethics is that it also happens that a lot of those technologies are ones in which the nature of the technology favors the emergence of a dominant player. Because of network effects or because they require lots of data. And so the conversation has been, what is the responsibility of that dominant player to design the technology in such a way that it has fewer of these harmful effects? And that again is partly because the forces that in the past might have constrained those effects, or imposed rules, are not moving fast enough. Its the tech makers who understand this stuff. Policy makers, and civil society have been slower to catch up to what the effects are. Theyre starting to now.

This is what you are seeing now in the election campaign: a lot of the leading candidates have platforms that are about the use of technology and about breaking up big tech. That would have been unthinkable a year or two ago.

So the discussion about tech ethics is essentially saying these companies grew too fast, too quickly. What is their responsibility to slow themselves down before everybody else catches up?

Another piece that interests me is how sometimes the giving back, the generosity of big tech companies or tech billionaires, or whatever it is, can end up being a smokescreen. A way to ultimately persuade people not to regulate. Not to take their own power back as a people. Is there a level of tech generosity that is actually harmful in that sense?

I suppose. It depends on the context. If all thats happening is corporate social responsibility drives that involve dropping money into different places, but there isnt any consideration of the consequences of the technology itself those companies are building and their other actions, then sure, its a problem. But its also hard to say giving billions of dollars to a particular cause is bad, unless what is happening is that then the government is shirking its responsibility to fund those causes because its coming out of the private sector. I can certainly see the U.S. being particularly susceptible to this dynamic, where government sheds responsibility. But I dont think were necessarily there yet.

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Will the future of work be ethical? Perspectives from MIT Technology Review - TechCrunch

Fridges that tweet, byzantine apps to park your car, in-built obsolescence. Technology is supposed to make life easier. Why does it so often do the opposite, asks the comedian and bestselling author

The Sunday Times,December 1 2019, 12:01am

In a few weeks time it will be 2020, the absurdly futuristic date that has somehow crept up on us. But, unless scientists get a real chivvy on, the future looks both baffling and remarkably underwhelming. Where are my holidays on the moon and food capsules? Im pretty sure that when I was playing with my Duplo, I wasnt fantasising about a world where we had wi-fi kettles and an app that tells me I havent stood up enough today.

Sure, its not all bad. People live longer, once-fatal illnesses are now either eradicated or survivable and The Jeremy Kyle Show has been cancelled; but I do wonder whether the march of technology is really leading us onwards, or just making life needlessly complicated and

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Adam Kay: the technology making life more complicated and driving us crazy - The Times

Do you ever get so frustrated with your smartphone that you want to chuck it out the window, but realize how disconnected you would be to the rest of the world without it? Believe it or not, there are still non-digital ways to get by. This is the subject of Swipeless in Seattle: How to Live Without a Smartphone, which takes place at Galvanize on Dec. 5. The presentation will cover how to navigate without GPS and how to communicate with colleagues and friends offline.

While some may be trying to cut down on their technology dependence, others are embracing it. Filmmakers, visual artists, performers, and musicians are taking a look at the emerging technologies that can affect their art. Futures: Trends in Science and Technology and Their Implications for Art and Performance will feature talks about topics including machine learning, computational photography and virtual reality. The event takes place at the Northwest Film Forum on Dec. 8.

TheGeekWire Gala is coming up on Thursday, Dec. 5, in downtown Seattle at Showbox at the Market. Known as the citys geekiest holiday party, the Gala brings together more than 800 geeks to celebrate the season in style with tasty treats, festive cocktails, and great music in the heart of Seattle. There will also be a chance to win round-trip tickets to anywhere Alaska Airlines flies given to the Ugly Sweater contest winner. Tickets are available here.

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GeekWire Calendar Picks: How to live without a smartphone; new technologies in art; and more - GeekWire