Tag Archives: education

#433301 ‘Happiness Tech’ Is On the Rise. Is ...

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Android

We often get so fixated on technological progress that we forget it’s merely one component of the entirety of human progress. Technological advancement does not necessarily correlate with increases in human mental well-being.

While cleaner energy, access to education, and higher employment rates can improve quality of life, they do not guarantee happiness and inner peace. Amid what appears to be an increasing abundance of resources and ongoing human progress, we are experiencing a mental health epidemic, with high anxiety and depression rates. This is especially true in the developed world, where we have access to luxuries our ancestors couldn’t even dream of—all the world’s information contained in a device we hold in the palm of our hands, for example.

But as you may have realized through your own experience, technology can make us feel worse instead of better. Social media can become a tool for comparison and a source of debilitating status anxiety. Increased access to goods and services, along with the rise of consumerism, can lead people to choose “stuff” over true sources of meaning and get trapped in a hedonistic treadmill of materialism. Tools like artificial intelligence and big data could lead to violation of our privacy and autonomy. The digital world can take us away from the beauty of the present moment.

Understanding Happiness
How we use technology can significantly impact our happiness. In this context, “happiness” refers to a general sense of well-being, gratitude, and inner peace. Even with such a simple definition, it is a state of mind many people will admit they lack.

Eastern philosophies have told us for thousands of years that the problem of human suffering begins with our thoughts and perceptions of the circumstances we are in, as opposed to beginning with the circumstances themselves. As Derren Brown brilliantly points out in Happy: Why More or Less Everything Is Absolutely Fine, “The problem with the modern conception of happiness is that it is seen as some kind of commodity. There is this fantasy that simply by believing in yourself and setting goals you can have anything. But that simply isn’t how life works. The ancients had a much better view of it. They offered an approach of not trying to control things you can’t control, and of lessening your desires and your expectations so you achieve a harmony between what you desire and what you have.”

A core part of feeling more happy is about re-wiring our minds to adjust our expectations, exercise gratitude, escape negative narratives, and live in the present moment.

But can technology help us do that?

Applications for Mental Well-Being
Many doers are asking themselves how they can leverage digital tools to contribute to human happiness.

Meditation and mindfulness are examples of practices we can use to escape the often overwhelming burden of our thoughts and ground our minds into the present. They have become increasingly democratized with the rise of meditation mobile apps, such as Headspace, Gaia, and Calm, that allow millions of people globally to use their phones to learn from experts at a very low cost.

These companies have also partnered with hospitals, airlines, athletic teams, and others that could benefit from increased access to mindfulness and meditation. The popularity of these apps continues to rise as more people recognize their necessity. The combination of mass technology and ancient wisdom is one that can lead to a transformation of the collective consciousness.

Sometimes merely reflecting on the sources of joy in our lives and practicing gratitude can contribute to better well-being. Apps such as Happier encourage users to reflect upon and share pleasant everyday moments in their daily lives. Such exercises are based on the understanding that being happy is a “skill” one can build though practice and through scientifically-proven activities, such as writing down a nice thought and sharing your positivity with the world. Many other tools such as Track Your Happiness and Happstr allow users to track their happiness, which often serves as a valuable source of data to researchers.

There is also a growing body of knowledge that tells us we can achieve happiness by helping others. This “helper’s high” is a result of our brains producing endorphins after having a positive impact on the lives of others. In many shapes and forms, technology has made it easier now more than ever to help other people no matter where they are located. From charitable donations to the rise of social impact organizations, there is an abundance of projects that leverage technology to positively impact individual lives. Platforms like GoVolunteer connect nonprofits with individuals from a variety of skill sets who are looking to gift their abilities to those in need. Kiva allows for fundraising loans that can change lives. These are just a handful of examples of a much wider positive paradigm shift.

The Future of Technology for Well-Being
There is no denying that increasingly powerful and immersive technology can be used to better or worsen the human condition. Today’s leaders will not only have to focus on their ability to use technology to solve a problem or generate greater revenue; they will have to ask themselves if their tech solutions are beneficial or detrimental to human well-being. They will also have to remember that more powerful technology does not always translate to happier users. It is also crucial that future generations be equipped with the values required to use increasingly powerful tools responsibly and ethically.

In the Education 2030 report, the Millennium Project envisions a world wherein portable intelligent devices combined with integrated systems for lifelong learning contribute to better well-being. In this vision, “continuous evaluation of individual learning processes designed to prevent people from growing unstable and/or becoming mentally ill, along with programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate, could bring about a more beautiful, loving world.”

There is exciting potential for technology to be leveraged to contribute to human happiness at a massive scale. Yet, technology shouldn’t consume every aspect of our lives, since a life worth living is often about balance. Sometimes, even if just for a few moments, what would make us feel happier is we disconnected from technology to begin with.

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Posted in Human Robots

#433284 Tech Can Sustainably Feed Developing ...

Posted on September 9, 2018 by Android

In the next 30 years, virtually all net population growth will occur in urban regions of developing countries. At the same time, worldwide food production will become increasingly limited by the availability of land, water, and energy. These constraints will be further worsened by climate change and the expected addition of two billion people to today’s four billion now living in urban regions. Meanwhile, current urban food ecosystems in the developing world are inefficient and critically inadequate to meet the challenges of the future.

Combined, these trends could have catastrophic economic and political consequences. A new path forward for urban food ecosystems needs to be found. But what is that path?

New technologies, coupled with new business models and supportive government policies, can create more resilient urban food ecosystems in the coming decades. These tech-enabled systems can sustainably link rural, peri-urban (areas just outside cities), and urban producers and consumers, increase overall food production, and generate opportunities for new businesses and jobs (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The urban food value chain nodes from rural, peri-urban and urban producers
to servicing end customers in urban and peri-urban markets.
Here’s a glimpse of the changes technology may bring to the systems feeding cities in the future.

A technology-linked urban food ecosystem would create unprecedented opportunities for small farms to reach wider markets and progress from subsistence farming to commercially producing niche cash crops and animal protein, such as poultry, fish, pork, and insects.

Meanwhile, new opportunities within cities will appear with the creation of vertical farms and other controlled-environment agricultural systems as well as production of plant-based and 3D printed foods and cultured meat. Uberized facilitation of production and distribution of food will reduce bottlenecks and provide new business opportunities and jobs. Off-the-shelf precision agriculture technology will increasingly be the new norm, from smallholders to larger producers.

As part of Agricultural Revolution 4.0, all this will be integrated into the larger collaborative economy—connected by digital platforms, the cloud, and the Internet of Things and powered by artificial intelligence. It will more efficiently and effectively use resources and people to connect the nexus of food, water, energy, nutrition, and human health. It will also aid in the development of a circular economy that is designed to be restorative and regenerative, minimizing waste and maximizing recycling and reuse to build economic, natural, and social capital.

In short, technology will enable transformation of urban food ecosystems, from expanded production in cities to more efficient and inclusive distribution and closer connections with rural farmers. Here’s a closer look at seven tech-driven trends that will help feed tomorrow’s cities.

1. Worldwide Connectivity: Information, Learning, and Markets
Connectivity from simple cell phone SMS communication to internet-enabled smartphones and cloud services are providing platforms for the increasingly powerful technologies enabling development of a new agricultural revolution. Internet connections currently reach more than 4 billion people, about 55% of the global population. That number will grow fast in coming years.

These information and communications technologies connect food producers to consumers with just-in-time data, enhanced good agricultural practices, mobile money and credit, telecommunications, market information and merchandising, and greater transparency and traceability of goods and services throughout the value chain. Text messages on mobile devices have become the one-stop-shop for small farmers to place orders, gain technology information for best management practices, and access market information to increase profitability.

Hershey’s CocoaLink in Ghana, for example, uses text and voice messages with cocoa industry experts and small farm producers. Digital Green is a technology-enabled communication system in Asia and Africa to bring needed agricultural and management practices to small farmers in their own language by filming and recording successful farmers in their own communities. MFarm is a mobile app that connects Kenyan farmers with urban markets via text messaging.

2. Blockchain Technology: Greater Access to Basic Financial Services and Enhanced Food Safety
Gaining access to credit and executing financial transactions have been persistent constraints for small farm producers. Blockchain promises to help the unbanked access basic financial services.

The Gates Foundation has released an open source platform, Mojaloop, to allow software developers and banks and financial service providers to build secure digital payment platforms at scale. Mojaloop software uses more secure blockchain technology to enable urban food system players in the developing world to conduct business and trade. The free software reduces complexity and cost in building payment platforms to connect small farmers with customers, merchants, banks, and mobile money providers. Such digital financial services will allow small farm producers in the developing world to conduct business without a brick-and-mortar bank.

Blockchain is also important for traceability and transparency requirements to meet food regulatory and consumer requirement during the production, post-harvest, shipping, processing and distribution to consumers. Combining blockchain with RFID technologies also will enhance food safety.

3. Uberized Services: On-Demand Equipment, Storage, and More
Uberized services can advance development of the urban food ecosystem across the spectrum, from rural to peri-urban to urban food production and distribution. Whereas Uber and Airbnb enable sharing of rides and homes, the model can be extended in the developing world to include on-demand use of expensive equipment, such as farm machinery, or storage space.

This includes uberization of planting and harvesting equipment (Hello Tractor), transportation vehicles, refrigeration facilities for temporary storage of perishable product, and “cloud kitchens” (EasyAppetite in Nigeria, FoodCourt in Rwanda, and Swiggy and Zomto in India) that produce fresh meals to be delivered to urban customers, enabling young people with motorbikes and cell phones to become entrepreneurs or contractors delivering meals to urban customers.

Another uberized service is marketing and distributing “ugly food” or imperfect produce to reduce food waste. About a third of the world’s food goes to waste, often because of appearance; this is enough to feed two billion people. Such services supply consumers with cheaper, nutritious, tasty, healthy fruits and vegetables that would normally be discarded as culls due to imperfections in shape or size.

4. Technology for Producing Plant-Based Foods in Cities
We need to change diet choices through education and marketing and by developing tasty plant-based substitutes. This is not only critical for environmental sustainability, but also offers opportunities for new businesses and services. It turns out that current agricultural production systems for “red meat” have a far greater detrimental impact on the environment than automobiles.

There have been great advances in plant-based foods, like the Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat, that can satisfy the consumer’s experience and perception of meat. Rather than giving up the experience of eating red meat, technology is enabling marketable, attractive plant-based products that can potentially drastically reduce world per capita consumption of red meat.

5. Cellular Agriculture, Lab-Grown Meat, and 3D Printed Food
Lab-grown meat, literally meat grown from cultured cells, may radically change where and how protein and food is produced, including the cities where it is consumed. There is a wide range of innovative alternatives to traditional meats that can supplement the need for livestock, farms, and butchers. The history of innovation is about getting rid of the bottleneck in the system, and with meat, the bottleneck is the animal. Finless Foods is a new company trying to replicate fish fillets, for example, while Memphis meats is working on beef and poultry.

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a “general purpose technology” used for making, plastic toys, human tissues, aircraft parts, and buildings. 3D printing can also be used to convert alternative ingredients such as proteins from algae, beet leaves, or insects into tasty and healthy products that can be produced by small, inexpensive printers in home kitchens. The food can be customized for individual health needs as well as preferences. 3D printing can also contribute to the food ecosystem by making possible on-demand replacement parts—which are badly needed in the developing world for tractors, pumps, and other equipment. Catapult Design 3D prints tractor replacement parts as well as corn shellers, cart designs, prosthetic limbs, and rolling water barrels for the Indian market.

6. Alt Farming: Vertical Farms to Produce Food in Urban Centers
Urban food ecosystem production systems will rely not only on field-grown crops, but also on production of food within cities. There are a host of new, alternative production systems using “controlled environmental agriculture.” These include low-cost, protected poly hoop houses, greenhouses, roof-top and sack/container gardens, and vertical farming in buildings using artificial lighting. Vertical farms enable year-round production of selected crops, regardless of weather—which will be increasingly important in response to climate change—and without concern for deteriorating soil conditions that affect crop quality and productivity. AeroFarms claims 390 times more productivity per square foot than normal field production.

7. Biotechnology and Nanotechnology for Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture
CRISPR is a promising gene editing technology that can be used to enhance crop productivity while avoiding societal concerns about GMOs. CRISPR can accelerate traditional breeding and selection programs for developing new climate and disease-resistant, higher-yielding, nutritious crops and animals.

Plant-derived coating materials, developed with nanotechnology, can decrease waste, extend shelf-life and transportability of fruits and vegetables, and significantly reduce post-harvest crop loss in developing countries that lack adequate refrigeration. Nanotechnology is also used in polymers to coat seeds to increase their shelf-life and increase their germination success and production for niche, high-value crops.

Putting It All Together
The next generation “urban food industry” will be part of the larger collaborative economy that is connected by digital platforms, the cloud, and the Internet of Things. A tech-enabled urban food ecosystem integrated with new business models and smart agricultural policies offers the opportunity for sustainable intensification (doing more with less) of agriculture to feed a rapidly growing global urban population—while also creating viable economic opportunities for rural and peri-urban as well as urban producers and value-chain players.

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#433278 Outdated Evolution: Updating Our ...

Posted on September 9, 2018 by Android

What happens when evolution shapes an animal for tribes of 150 primitive individuals living in a chaotic jungle, and then suddenly that animal finds itself living with millions of others in an engineered metropolis, their pockets all bulging with devices of godlike power?

The result, it seems, is a modern era of tension where archaic forms of governance struggle to keep up with the technological advances of their citizenry, where governmental policies act like constraining bottlenecks rather than spearheads of progress.

Simply put, our governments have failed to adapt to disruptive technologies. And if we are to regain our stability moving forward into a future of even greater disruption, it’s imperative that we understand the issues that got us into this situation and what kind of solutions we can engineer to overcome our governmental weaknesses.

Hierarchy vs. Technological Decentralization
Many of the greatest issues our governments face today come from humanity’s biologically-hardwired desire for centralized hierarchies. This innate proclivity towards building and navigating systems of status and rank were evolutionary gifts handed down to us by our ape ancestors, where each member of a community had a mental map of their social hierarchy. Their nervous systems behaved differently depending on their rank in this hierarchy, influencing their interactions in a way that ensured only the most competent ape would rise to the top to gain access to the best food and mates.

As humanity emerged and discovered the power of language, we continued this practice by ensuring that those at the top of the hierarchies, those with the greatest education and access to information, were the dominant decision-makers for our communities.

However, this kind of structured chain of power is only necessary if we’re operating in conditions of scarcity. But resources, including information, are no longer scarce.

It’s estimated that more than two-thirds of adults in the world now own a smartphone, giving the average citizen the same access to the world’s information as the leaders of our governments. And with global poverty falling from 35.5 percent to 10.9 percent over the last 25 years, our younger generations are growing up seeing automation and abundance as a likely default, where innovations like solar energy, lab-grown meat, and 3D printing are expected to become commonplace.

It’s awareness of this paradigm shift that has empowered the recent rise of decentralization. As information and access to resources become ubiquitous, there is noticeably less need for our inefficient and bureaucratic hierarchies.

For example, if blockchain can prove its feasibility for large-scale systems, it can be used to update and upgrade numerous applications to a decentralized model, including currency and voting. Such innovations would lower the risk of failing banks collapsing the economy like they did in 2008, as well as prevent corrupt politicians from using gerrymandering and long queues at polling stations to deter voter participation.

Of course, technology isn’t a magic wand that should be implemented carelessly. Facebook’s “move fast and break things” approach might have very possibly broken American democracy in 2016, as social media played on some of the worst tendencies humanity can operate on during an election: fear and hostility.

But if decentralized technology, like blockchain’s public ledgers, can continue to spread a sense of security and transparency throughout society, perhaps we can begin to quiet that paranoia and hyper-vigilance our brains evolved to cope with living as apes in dangerous jungles. By decentralizing our power structures, we take away the channels our outdated biological behaviors might use to enact social dominance and manipulation.

The peace of mind this creates helps to reestablish trust in our communities and in our governments. And with trust in the government increased, it’s likely we’ll see our next issue corrected.

From Business and Law to Science and Technology
A study found that 59 percent of US presidents, 68 percent of vice presidents, and 78 percent of secretaries of state were lawyers by education and occupation. That’s more than one out of every two people in the most powerful positions in the American government restricted to a field dedicated to convincing other people (judges) their perspective is true, even if they lack evidence.

And so the scientific method became less important than semantics to our leaders.

Similarly, of the 535 individuals in the American congress, only 24 hold a PhD, only 2 of which are in a STEM field. And so far, it’s not getting better: Trump is the first president since WWII not to name a science advisor.

But if we can use technologies like blockchain to increase transparency, efficiency, and trust in the government, then the upcoming generations who understand decentralization, abundance, and exponential technologies might feel inspired enough to run for government positions. This helps solve that common problem where the smartest and most altruistic people tend to avoid government positions because they don’t want to play the semantic and deceitful game of politics.

By changing this narrative, our governments can begin to fill with techno-progressive individuals who actually understand the technologies that are rapidly reshaping our reality. And this influence of expertise is going to be crucial as our governments are forced to restructure and create new policies to accommodate the incoming disruption.

Clearing Regulations to Begin Safe Experimentation
As exponential technologies become more ubiquitous, we’re likely going to see young kids and garage tinkerers creating powerful AIs and altering genetics thanks to tools like CRISPR and free virtual reality tutorials.

This easy accessibility to such powerful technology means unexpected and rapid progress can occur almost overnight, quickly overwhelming our government’s regulatory systems.

Uber and Airbnb are two of the best examples of our government’s inability to keep up with such technology, both companies achieving market dominance before regulators were even able to consider how to handle them. And when a government has decided against them, they often still continue to operate because people simply choose to keep using the apps.

Luckily, this kind of disruption hasn’t yet posed a major existential threat. But this will change when we see companies begin developing cyborg body parts, brain-computer interfaces, nanobot health injectors, and at-home genetic engineering kits.

For this reason, it’s crucial that we have experts who understand how to update our regulations to be as flexible as is necessary to ensure we don’t create black market conditions like we’ve done with drugs. It’s better to have safe and monitored experimentation, rather than forcing individuals into seedy communities using unsafe products.

Survival of the Most Adaptable
If we hope to be an animal that survives our changing environment, we have to adapt. We cannot cling to the behaviors and systems formed thousands of years ago. We must instead acknowledge that we now exist in an ecosystem of disruptive technology, and we must evolve and update our governments if they’re going to be capable of navigating these transformative impacts.

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#432640 Artificial Intelligence And Education

Posted on April 25, 2018 by Android

Today, we frequently hear the term artificial intelligence. Furthermore, we experience its benefits in our everyday life, but how does it influence the educational system? Can AI improve its quality and boost the productivity of college or university students? Several years ago, its impact wasn’t as noticeable as it is today. Nevertheless, it shows a …

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Posted in Human Robots

#432568 Tech Optimists See a Golden ...

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Android

Technology evangelists dream about a future where we’re all liberated from the more mundane aspects of our jobs by artificial intelligence. Other futurists go further, imagining AI will enable us to become superhuman, enhancing our intelligence, abandoning our mortal bodies, and uploading ourselves to the cloud.

Paradise is all very well, although your mileage may vary on whether these scenarios are realistic or desirable. The real question is, how do we get there?

Economist John Maynard Keynes notably argued in favor of active intervention when an economic crisis hits, rather than waiting for the markets to settle down to a more healthy equilibrium in the long run. His rebuttal to critics was, “In the long run, we are all dead.” After all, if it takes 50 years of upheaval and economic chaos for things to return to normality, there has been an immense amount of human suffering first.

Similar problems arise with the transition to a world where AI is intimately involved in our lives. In the long term, automation of labor might benefit the human species immensely. But in the short term, it has all kinds of potential pitfalls, especially in exacerbating inequality within societies where AI takes on a larger role. A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research has deep concerns about the future of work.

Uneven Distribution
While the report doesn’t foresee the same gloom and doom of mass unemployment that other commentators have considered, the concern is that the gains in productivity and economic benefits from AI will be unevenly distributed. In the UK, jobs that account for £290 billion worth of wages in today’s economy could potentially be automated with current technology. But these are disproportionately jobs held by people who are already suffering from social inequality.

Low-wage jobs are five times more likely to be automated than high-wage jobs. A greater proportion of jobs held by women are likely to be automated. The solution that’s often suggested is that people should simply “retrain”; but if no funding or assistance is provided, this burden is too much to bear. You can’t expect people to seamlessly transition from driving taxis to writing self-driving car software without help. As we have already seen, inequality is exacerbated when jobs that don’t require advanced education (even if they require a great deal of technical skill) are the first to go.

No Room for Beginners
Optimists say algorithms won’t replace humans, but will instead liberate us from the dull parts of our jobs. Lawyers used to have to spend hours trawling through case law to find legal precedents; now AI can identify the most relevant documents for them. Doctors no longer need to look through endless scans and perform diagnostic tests; machines can do this, leaving the decision-making to humans. This boosts productivity and provides invaluable tools for workers.

But there are issues with this rosy picture. If humans need to do less work, the economic incentive is for the boss to reduce their hours. Some of these “dull, routine” parts of the job were traditionally how people getting into the field learned the ropes: paralegals used to look through case law, but AI may render them obsolete. Even in the field of journalism, there’s now software that will rewrite press releases for publication, traditionally something close to an entry-level task. If there are no entry-level jobs, or if entry-level now requires years of training, the result is to exacerbate inequality and reduce social mobility.

Automating Our Biases
The adoption of algorithms into employment has already had negative impacts on equality. Cathy O’Neil, mathematics PhD from Harvard, raises these concerns in her excellent book Weapons of Math Destruction. She notes that algorithms designed by humans often encode the biases of that society, whether they’re racial or based on gender and sexuality.

Google’s search engine advertises more executive-level jobs to users it thinks are male. AI programs predict that black offenders are more likely to re-offend than white offenders; they receive correspondingly longer sentences. It needn’t necessarily be that bias has been actively programmed; perhaps the algorithms just learn from historical data, but this means they will perpetuate historical inequalities.

Take candidate-screening software HireVue, used by many major corporations to assess new employees. It analyzes “verbal and non-verbal cues” of candidates, comparing them to employees that historically did well. Either way, according to Cathy O’Neil, they are “using people’s fear and trust of mathematics to prevent them from asking questions.” With no transparency or understanding of how the algorithm generates its results, and no consensus over who’s responsible for the results, discrimination can occur automatically, on a massive scale.

Combine this with other demographic trends. In rich countries, people are living longer. An increasing burden will be placed on a shrinking tax base to support that elderly population. A recent study said that due to the accumulation of wealth in older generations, millennials stand to inherit more than any previous generation, but it won’t happen until they’re in their 60s. Meanwhile, those with savings and capital will benefit as the economy shifts: the stock market and GDP will grow, but wages and equality will fall, a situation that favors people who are already wealthy.

Even in the most dramatic AI scenarios, inequality is exacerbated. If someone develops a general intelligence that’s near-human or super-human, and they manage to control and monopolize it, they instantly become immensely wealthy and powerful. If the glorious technological future that Silicon Valley enthusiasts dream about is only going to serve to make the growing gaps wider and strengthen existing unfair power structures, is it something worth striving for?

What Makes a Utopia?
We urgently need to redefine our notion of progress. Philosophers worry about an AI that is misaligned—the things it seeks to maximize are not the things we want maximized. At the same time, we measure the development of our countries by GDP, not the quality of life of workers or the equality of opportunity in the society. Growing wealth with increased inequality is not progress.

Some people will take the position that there are always winners and losers in society, and that any attempt to redress the inequalities of our society will stifle economic growth and leave everyone worse off. Some will see this as an argument for a new economic model, based around universal basic income. Any moves towards this will need to take care that it’s affordable, sustainable, and doesn’t lead towards an entrenched two-tier society.

Walter Schiedel’s book The Great Leveller is a huge survey of inequality across all of human history, from the 21st century to prehistoric cave-dwellers. He argues that only revolutions, wars, and other catastrophes have historically reduced inequality: a perfect example is the Black Death in Europe, which (by reducing the population and therefore the labor supply that was available) increased wages and reduced inequality. Meanwhile, our solution to the financial crisis of 2007-8 may have only made the problem worse.

But in a world of nuclear weapons, of biowarfare, of cyberwarfare—a world of unprecedented, complex, distributed threats—the consequences of these “safety valves” could be worse than ever before. Inequality increases the risk of global catastrophe, and global catastrophes could scupper any progress towards the techno-utopia that the utopians dream of. And a society with entrenched inequality is no utopia at all.

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Posted in Human Robots