World Leaders at Davos Call for Global Rules on Tech
By: Keith Bradsher and Katrin Bennhold January 28, 2019 Several world leaders urged global technology regulation at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that his country, which will chair this year’s Group of 20 nations, will move to advance an international data governance system as an expansion […]
Amazon puts delivery robots on streets – with a human in tow
By: Alex Hern January 24, 2019 Amazon’s drone delivery service may be missing in action but the company has not given up on its dream of robots delivering parcels. It is launching Amazon Scout, a service employing six squat six-wheeled delivery robots, across Snohomish County, Washington, just north of its Seattle HQ. “These devices were […]
‘AI’ to hit hardest in U.S. heartland and among less-skilled: study
By: Reuters January 24,2019 The Midwestern states hit hardest by job automation in recent decades, places that were pivotal to U.S. President Donald Trump’s election, will be under the most pressure again as advances in artificial intelligence reshape the workplace, according to a new study by Brookings Institution researchers. The spread of computer-driven technology into […]
70,000 retail jobs lost in 2018, says trade body BRC
By: Sebastian McCarthy January 24, 2019 Panic over further troubles on the high street has been underlined this morning, with new figures showing that some 70,000 retail jobs were lost last year. A retail employment monitor out today from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has found that the total number of jobs was down 2.2 […]
Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How machines are affecting people and places
By: Brookings January 24, 2019 At first, technologists issued dystopian alarms about the power of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to destroy jobs. Then came a correction, with a wave of reassurances. Now, the discourse appears to be arriving at a more complicated understanding, suggesting that automation will bring neither apocalypse nor utopia, but instead […]
Young Voters Keep Moving To The Left On Social Issues, Republicans Included
By: Conspiracy Inquirer January 23, 2019 As a self-described political conservative, Reagan Larson might seem to be a natural fit for the Republican Party. The 19-year-old college student from South Dakota grew up in a Catholic household that objected to same-sex marriage, and she remains firmly opposed to abortion. But in many ways, that is where […]
The new elite’s phoney crusade to save the world – without changing anything
By: The Guardian January 22, 2019 A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken. The same could be said of others around the world. And now many of the people who broke the progress machine are trying to sell […]
This is the digital future we need
By: Jim Smith, Lynn St. Amour 18 Jan 2019 Today almost half of the world’s population are connected to the Internet, fifty years since it was invented and thirty since the creation of the World Wide Web. Regardless of whether we see this as a success story or terribly slow progress, the questions are: […]
World’s Biggest Investor Tells C.E.O.s Purpose Is the ‘Animating Force’ for Profits
By: New York Times January 17, 2019 Larry Fink, the investment manager who oversees nearly $6 trillion at BlackRock, set off a yearlong conversation among business leaders and policymakers last January when he wrote a letter to chief executives declaring that companies needed to do more than make profits. Mr. Fink wrote that it was […]