This week’s issue looks into the most recent developments of crypto technologies and artificial intelligence.
DEPT OF THE NEAR FUTURE
Lower cross-border trade in industrial machinery, automotive and consumer products may take the lead in supressing world trade given that these sectors are front runner industries in 3D printing and have a significant share in cross-border trade.
Think of tokenized ecosystems as public utilities. A shared infrastructure for file storage and for databases and so on. So far it’s only been for internet infrastructure, like e-gold for bits. But it could also be
about atoms, there’s nothing stopping us from tokenizing hyperloop for Europe, crowdfunding a hyperloop for Europe or crowdfunding asteroid mining.
Moreover, the technologists and the technoutopianists always refer to either chess or Go when painting their pretty picture of the
future because those are two instances where everyone can agree on what success looks like: there is a clear winner and a clear loser. But that clarity of purpose and model of success gets a lot trickier on a planet that is quickly losing its supply of clean water and burning too much fossil fuel.
What will future generations, looking back on our age, see as its monstrosities? […] one of them, I believe, will be the mass incarceration of animals, to enable us to eat their flesh […] The shift will occur with the advent of cheap
artificial meat.
One has to wonder how many of those Swastika-carrying young men we recently saw on the streets of America spend their nights at home being inflamed and provoked by some enterprising boys in the Balkans. I wonder if you can trace a line from a boy buying new trainers in Kosovo from the profits of his fake-news business to a white supremacist punching a protestor on the other side of the world.
DEPT OF CRYPTO
a public database based on this technology that is literally money, that has managed to survive being successfully hacked for several years, is nothing short of miraculous.
And yet, why might citizens hold virtual currencies rather than physical dollars, euros, or sterling? Because it may one day be easier and safer than obtaining paper bills, especially in remote regions. And because virtual currencies could actually become more stable.
Timothy B. Lee argues that
cryptocurrency market will find long-term stability by going through the speculative bubble phase. With new wealth inciting further investments and relatively easy way in, we’re seeing the dotcom bubble all over. Not surprisingly, recent
research shows that most ICOs fail. Between July and September of this year failure counts for 59%:
Also, the level of capital raised from a failed token distribution is rapidly declining, from a median of $4mm in July 2017 to $2mm in September 2017 and 21 (43% of the total) raised $1mm or less from their efforts.
DEPT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
If people don’t have access to their data, they can’t correct errors about that data. This isn’t about bias — simply facts. Third party data brokers not providing access to data means a lot of awesome AI tech either can’t be built or will be built on data not representing factual aspects of the people it’s trying to help. This is the big (data) elephant in the room regarding AI, since so much of the tech is built on human data. But humans need to be provided with access and agency over their data so there can be symmetry regarding how people are tracked with tools that allow them to project their own “terms and conditions” to the digital and soon- to-be-here virtual arenas.
DeepMind
created Ethics & Society research group to investigate AI bias, aligning technology with ethical values, and researching economic impact of automation featuring at least one
Exponential View reader :)
One major industry theme is the that AI will force a growth in processing to the edge of the network, shifting the balance from core cloud-based computing. One player, Efinix
as announced programmable edge chips that are less complex to construct, run on half the power and are ¼ the size of comparable FPGAs. Xilinx, company that invented the FPGA, is one of the major investors.
Full issue is available here, and you’ll find all the past 133 issues right here.