Hello all – Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. My purpose is to pick interesting pieces, based on my own curiosity (and the curiosity of the many interesting people I follow), about developments in some key domains (work, organization, social-economy, intelligence, domestication of DNA, energy, etc.) that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.
Many thanks to those who enjoy this. ☺
In the 21st Century curiosity will SKILL the cat.
Jobs are dying - work is just beginning.
“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9
Content
Quotes:
Articles:
In the U.S. you have to make money, otherwise you are nobody. If you have 40 years of earning capacity and you want to make $4 million, that means $100,000 per annum. If you can achieve this in 250 working days, that comes to $400 a day or $50 an hour. With this orientation Americans can say that their time costs $50 an hour. Americans also talk about wasting, spending, budgeting and saving time.
This seems logical enough, until one begins to apply the idea to other cultures. Has the Portuguese fisherman, who failed to hook a fish in two hours, wasted his time? Has the Sicilian priest, failing to make a convert on Thursday, lost ground? Have the German composer, the French poet, the Spanish painter, devoid of ideas last week, missed opportunities that can be qualified in monetary terms?
The Americans are not the only ones who sanctify timekeeping, for it is practically a religion in Switzerland and Germany, too. These countries, along with Britain, the Anglo-Saxon world in general, the Netherlands, Austria and Scandinavia, have a linear vision of time and action. They suspect, like the Americans, that time is passing (being wasted) without decisions being made or actions being performed.
These groups are also monochronic; that is, they prefer to do only one thing at a time, to concentrate on it and do it within a fixed schedule. They think that in this way they get more things done — and more efficiently. Furthermore, being imbued with the Protestant work ethic, they equate working time with success: the harder you work — the more hours, that is — the more successful you will be and the more money you will make. This idea makes perfect sense to American ears, would carry less weight in class-conscious Britain, and would be viewed as entirely unrealistic in Southern European countries, where authority, privilege and birthright negate the theory at every turn. In a society such as existed in the Soviet Union, one could postulate that those who achieved substantial remuneration by working little (or not at all) were the most successful of all.
Southern Europeans are multi-active, rather than linear-active [read Lewis's analysis of cultures as multi-active, linear-active, and reactive]. The more things they can do at the same time, the happier and the more fulfilled they feel. They organize their time (and lives) in an entirely different way from Americans, Germans and the Swiss. Multi-active peoples are not very interested in schedules or punctuality. They pretend to observe them, especially if a linear-active partner or colleague insists on it, but they consider the present reality to be more important than appointments. In their ordering of things, priority is given to the relative thrill or significance of each meeting.
It’s not surprising, then, that business decisions are arrived at in a different way from in the West. Westerners often expect an Asian to make a quick decision or to treat a current deal on its present merits, irrespective of what has happened in the past. Asians cannot do this. The past formulates the contextual background to the present decision, about which in any case, as Asians, they must think long term—their hands are tied in many ways. Americans see time passing without decisions being made or actions performed as having been “wasted.” Asians do not see time as racing away unutilized in a linear future, but coming around again in a circle, where the same opportunities, risks and dangers will re- present themselves when people are so many days, weeks or months wiser. As proof of the veracity of the cyclical nature of time, how often do we (in the West) say, “If I had known then what I know now, I would never have done what I did?”
How Different Cultures Understand Time
“When scientists see the world and artists see the world, they are looking at the same thing,” he says, “using a different language and viewpoint to describe it. But it’s all true. Everything is interconnected.”
Mark Sagar Made a Baby in His Lab. Now It Plays the Piano
So are we alone? Well, there is one other possibility, at this point. I've lately been trumpeting my revision of Clarke's Law (which originally said 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'). My revision says that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Nature. (Astute readers will recognize this as a refinement and further advancement of my argument in Permanence.) Basically, either advanced alien civilizations don't exist, or we can't see them because they are indistinguishable from natural systems. I vote for the latter.
Karl Schroeder
My version of Clarke’s Law was “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from garbage.” This may seem like a thesis antithesis, but it’s resolved in the fact that a radically polluted Next Nature is so rapidly becoming garbage.
Bruce Sterling
Any sufficiently advanced technology is….
Suppose then, that scientist observes distant aliens that are so highly advanced that their technology works in concert with the generative natural forces of their planet. Using our current empirical methods of observation, scientists will note the alien landscapes, but they will not be able to discriminate the meaning that is flowing within its organizing networks. Yet the flow and structure of information within the planetary terrain is of vital importance in establishing just exactly what is technology, what is garbage and what is ‘life’. The issue here is how can we ‘prove’ meaning? Currently we do not have the right tools, materials and methods that enable us to ask the ‘why’ questions that Aristotle was so fond of, and which could be most revealing in this context.
The development of living technologies and the cultural questions that Next Nature asks are important steps to be taken along the journey towards a more ecological kind of human development. Until complex technologies can be built and deduced from their meaning: Any sufficiently advanced civilization will be indistinguishable from its nature – and also from its garbage.
Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature
What makes both Schroeder and Sterling right - is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from garbage ..... because it can metabolize everything it uses-produces. This make it also indistinguishable from Nature.
This is a must read/view signal of the future of food production - or at least some of the future - especially if we consider how this approach can be integrated into new urban environments.
The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it?
This Tiny Country Feeds the World
The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant by showing what the future of farming could look like.
In a potato field near the Netherlands’ border with Belgium, Dutch farmer Jacob van den Borne is seated in the cabin of an immense harvester before an instrument panel worthy of the starship Enterprise.
From his perch 10 feet above the ground, he’s monitoring two drones—a driverless tractor roaming the fields and a quadcopter in the air—that provide detailed readings on soil chemistry, water content, nutrients, and growth, measuring the progress of every plant down to the individual potato. Van den Borne’s production numbers testify to the power of this “precision farming,” as it’s known. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons. Van den Borne’s fields reliably produce more than 20.
That copious output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of the balance sheet: inputs. Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much food using half as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent.
And other forms of farming continue to expand and develop. Perhaps the next frontier will be the domestication of insects.
If aquaculture were developed in only the most productive areas, the oceans could theoretically produce the same amount of seafood that is currently caught by all of the world’s wild-caught fisheries, using less than 0.015 percent of the total ocean surface – a combined area the size of Lake Michigan. This is possible because many aquatic species can be farmed very efficiently, and because farming in the oceans can spread in three dimensions, across the surface of the ocean and downward below the waves.
How a tiny portion of the world’s oceans could help meet global seafood demand
Seafood is an essential staple in the diets of people around the world. Global consumption of fish and shellfish has more than doubled over the last 50 years, and is expected to keep rising with global population growth. Many people assume that most seafood is something that we catch in the wild with lines, trawls and traps. In fact, aquaculture (aquatic farming) accounts for just over half of all the seafood consumed worldwide.
Today aquaculture is the fastest-growing food sector in the world. Most farmed seafood is currently produced in freshwater environments such as ponds, land-based tanks and raceways, but some producers are expanding to the open ocean.
Total global wild catches have remained relatively unchanged for the past two decades. In 2015, 92 million tons of wild species were harvested worldwide – the same amount as in 1995. In contrast, seafood production from aquaculture increased from 24 million tons to 77 million tons during the same time period, and is still rising to help meet growing demand. In fact, it’s estimated that the world will need around 40 million more tons of seafood as soon as 2030.
Like all food production, aquaculture affects the environment and can be done in ways that are more or less sustainable. We want our science to help avoid destructive forms of aquaculture, such as converting mangrove forests into shrimp farms, and support more sustainable production. When it is done properly, aquaculture can be an efficient farming method with reduced impacts, compared to other types of protein such as beef, pork and even chicken.
Humans have domesticated many plants in the last few thousand years, it might seem that we are masters in this regard - but maybe we are entering a new horizon of plant domestication.
Are plants secretly soaking up memories, flicking their epigenetic switches on and off in response to every significant stimulus they receive? It seems unlikely. Last year, a group of plant scientists based in Australia argued in the journal Science Advances that, for plants, forgetting (or not forming memories at all) may be a more powerful tool for survival than memory, and that “memory, in particular epigenetic memory, is likely a relatively rare event.”
The Hidden Memories of Plants
Inside a quiet revolution in the study of the world’s other great kingdom.
In the study of the plant kingdom, a slow revolution is underway. Scientists are beginning to understand that plants have abilities, previously unnoticed and unimagined, that we’ve only ever associated with animals. In their own ways, plants can see, smell, feel, hear, and know where they are in the world. One recent study found that clusters of cells in plant embryos act a lot like brain cells and help the embryo to decide when to start growing.
Of the possible plant talents that have gone under-recognized, memory is one of the most intriguing. Some plants live their whole lives in one season, while others grow for hundreds of years. Either way, it has not been obvious to us that any of them hold on to past events in ways that change how they react to new challenges. But biologists have shown that certain plants in certain situations can store information about their experiences and use that information to guide how they grow, develop, or behave. Functionally, at least, they appear to be creating memories. How, when, and why they form these memories might help scientists train plants to face the challenges—poor soil, drought, extreme heat—that are happening with increasing frequency and intensity. But first they have to understand: What does a plant remember? What is better to forget?
Scientists first started talking about “plant memory” explicitly in the 1980s. A team in France, for example, happened upon a type of memory in which a plant recalled a history of damage to a leaf on one side of its stem and therefore dedicated its energy to growing in the other direction. Since then, scientists have found that certain plants can remember experiences of drought and dehydration, cold and heat, excess light, acidic soil, exposure to short-wave radiation, and a simulation of insects eating their leaves. Faced with the same stress again, the plants modify their responses. They might retain more water, become more sensitive to light, or improve their tolerance to salt or cold. In some cases, these memories are even passed down to the next generation, as Lysenko thought they could be, though in an entirely different way than he imagined. We now know that plants are capable of much more than they’re given credit for. They can “hear” vibrations, which might help them recognize insect attacks. They share information by broadcasting chemicals through the air or from their roots. In the study of the memories they form, the next step has been to understand how they do it.
And in terms of the potential for new farming paradigms - that could perhaps also be involved in new forms of domestication - here’s a signal. At least one shadow involves the types of business models that aim and monopolistic control of both the technology and the farmers.
John Deere spent $300 million on a company that murders weeds with AI
If you are a weed, we have some somber news.
John Deere, the farm equipment company that’s been chasing autonomous technology for more than 20 years, has agreed to buy Blue River Technology, a startup that uses AI to automatically identify and spray herbicide on weeds. The price of a 60-person farming AI startup? $305 million.
Blue River Technology makes a number of farm tools: an automatic precision weed-sprayer, a device that trims lettuce at scale, and software for drones to analyze crops. The company once considered using a Tesla coil to zap weeds, according to Willy Pell, Blue River’s director of new technology, which is objectively a cool idea.
John Deere’s tractors have a level of autonomy today—some can steer themselves via help from GPS signals, while image sensors can determine the quality of grain during harvesting. But the company says Blue River’s AI will allow future tractors to understand each individual plant in crops like lettuce and cotton, two areas Blue River has already showcased.
The acquisition underscores the immense value placed on AI research and development companies in recent years. Twitter infamously paid $150 million for the 11-person Magic Pony Technology in 2016, and in a deal that’s looking more and more like a steal, Google bought the DeepMind research lab in 2014 for more than $500 million.
Here is a good signal indicating the acceleration of our domestication of DNA.
Scientists sequence a whole genome to identify a plant species within hours
In a paper published today in Scientific Reports , researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, detail for the first time the opportunities for plant sciences that are now available with portable, real-time DNA sequencing.
Kew scientist and co-author of the paper Joe Parker says; "This research proves that we can now rapidly read the DNA sequence of an organism to identify it with minimum equipment. Rapidly reading DNA anywhere, at will, should become a routine step in many research fields. Despite hundreds of years of taxonomic research, it is still not always easy to work out which species a plant belongs to just by looking at it. Few people could correctly identify all the species in their own gardens."
Over the last forty years, DNA sequencing has revolutionised the scientific world but has remained laboratory-bound. Using current methods, a complete experiment to identify a species, from fieldwork to result, could easily take a scientist months to complete. Species identification is, by nature, a largely a field-based area of pursuit, thereby limiting the pace of discovery and decision making that can depend upon it. Using new technology to identify species quickly and on-site is critical for scientific research, the conservation of biodiversity and in the fight against species crime.
This is a signal pointing to the rapid emergence of new medical technologies that we’ve become familiar with as viewers of Star Trek.
Nondestructive tissue analysis for ex vivo and in vivo cancer diagnosis using a handheld mass spectrometry system
Is the pen mightier than the scalpel?
Although a surgeon’s goal is to remove cancer in its entirety during excision surgery, achieving negative margins (absence of cancer cells at the outer edge of the excised tumor specimen) can be challenging. To facilitate intraoperative diagnosis, Zhang et al.developed a handheld pen-like device that rapidly identifies the molecular profile of tissues using a small volume water droplet and mass spectrometry analysis. After 3 s of gentle physical contact with a tissue surface, the water droplet is transported to a mass spectrometer, which characterizes diagnostic proteins, lipids, and metabolites. The pen could be used to rapidly distinguish tumor from healthy tissue during surgery in mice, without requiring specific labeling or imaging and without evidence of tissue destruction.
Despite the slow-down or metamorphosis of Moore’s Law - software is taking up the role of computational acceleration with the exponential increase in Algorithmic Intelligence capabilities. The uncanny relationship between AI and humans is already being felt.
Mark Sagar Made a Baby in His Lab. Now It Plays the Piano
The AI genius, who has built out his virtual BabyX from a laughing, crying head, sees a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines.
People get up to weird things in New Zealand. At the University of Auckland, if you want to run hours upon hours of experiments on a baby trapped in a high chair, that’s cool. You can even have a conversation with her surprisingly chatty disembodied head.
BabyX, the virtual creation of Mark Sagar and his researchers, looks impossibly real. The child, a 3D digital rendering based on images of Sagar’s daughter at 18 months, has rosy cheeks, warm eyes, a full head of blond hair, and a soft, sweet voice. When I visited the computer scientist’s lab last year, BabyX was stuck inside a computer but could still see me sitting in front of the screen with her “father.” To get her attention, we’d call out, “Hi, baby. Look at me, baby,” and wave our hands. When her gaze locked onto our faces, we’d hold up a book filled with words (such as “apple” or “ball”) and pictures (sheep, clocks), then ask BabyX to read the words and identify the objects. When she got an answer right, we praised her, and she smiled with confidence. When she got one wrong, chiding her would turn her teary and sullen.
If it sounds odd to encounter a virtual child that can read words from a book, it’s much more disorienting to feel a sense of fatherly pride after she nails a bunch in a row and lights up with what appears to be authentic joy. BabyX and I seemed to be having a moment, learning from each other while trading expressions and subtle cues so familiar to the human experience. That’s the feeling Sagar is after with his research and his new company Soul Machines Ltd.
Sagar is a leading figure in the camp trying to humanize AI, which he says has the potential to yield a more symbiotic relationship between humans and machines. While he wasn’t the first to this idea, his approach is unique, a synthesis of his early years as a computer scientist and later ones in the world of Hollywood special effects. The face, he’s concluded, is the key to barreling through the uncanny valley and making virtual beings feel truly lifelike. Soul Machines’ creations are unparalleled in this respect, able to wince and grin with musculature and features that move shockingly like ours. They have human voices, too, and are already contracted for use as online helpers for companies ranging from insurance providers to airlines. Soul Machines wants to produce the first wave of likable, believable virtual assistants that work as customer service agents and breathe life into hunks of plastic such as Amazon.com’s Echo and Google Inc.’s Home.
Another signal building on the looming emergence of human-AI interface that makes interaction more human.
Facial Recognition: Cracking the Brain’s Code
A recent study has unlocked the code that allows the brain, using a surprisingly small number of neurons, to recognize any face. The discovery opens new perspectives for research, and could lead to applications in the therapeutic fields as well as forensic medicine. The neuroscientist Lucie Bard explains this breakthrough.
Even in the middle of a crowd, we manage to identify—instantly and often without even thinking about it—the people we know. In contrast to the ease with which we recognize faces, the underlying cerebral mechanisms are extremely complex and poorly understood. In June of this year, the laboratory headed by Dr. Doris Tsao at the California Institute of Technology achieved a breakthrough in the understanding of these mental processes. Published in the journal Cell, the results of this study show that it takes only a few hundred neurons, each one encoding a specific physical characteristic, to recognize a face.
The inferior temporal cortex, the center of facial recognition
Starting from the beginning, which neurons are activated when we look at a face? In a previous study, Tsao used the functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance imaging) technique to detect changes in the blood flow of the brain, resulting from an increase in neuronal activity. The authors measured the cerebral activity of monkeys presented with facial images as well as random objects and shapes. Their findings showed that facial identification is concentrated in six small areas of the inferior temporal cortex, called “face patches”. Within these zones, certain neurons, also called "face cells," are strongly activated when a face, rather than any other object, is presented to the subject.
A strong signal on the looming phase transition in global energy geopolitics (despite the source of the report).
Wind Energy Is One of the Cheapest Sources of Electricity, and It's Getting Cheaper
A comprehensive survey of the wind industry shows wind energy is routinely purchased in bulk for just two cents per kilowatt-hour—and turbines are only getting cheaper, bigger, and better
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released the latest iteration of its annual Wind Technologies Market Report, which pulls together a wealth of data to track trends in the cost, performance, and growth of wind energy.
The report found that U.S. wind energy will continue to be one of the lowest cost electricity generation technologies available, with the long-term wind electricity price available through a power purchase agreement coming in at about half the expected cost of just running a natural gas power plant.
Furthermore, stiff competition from both natural gas and solar energy are poised to push the wind industry to achieve even lower prices and higher performance through the development of bigger turbines tailored to maximize their output even in regions with less than optimal wind speeds.
This post will review a few of the major U.S. wind energy trends tracked in the DOE report. For a full rundown, I suggest you check out the full report and associated slide deck.
And here’s another signal aligning with a number of other nations conscious transformation of their energy infrastructure. I think there is no doubt that we are at the edge of a phase transition - that within 20 years there will be no new internal combustion land transportation. And possibly it will be a double transition that shift from gas to electric to self-driving mass transit.
China to Ban Sale of Fossil Fuel Cars in Electric Vehicle Push
China will set a deadline for automakers to end sales of fossil-fuel powered vehicles, a move aimed at pushing companies to speed efforts in developing electric vehicles for the world’s biggest auto market.
Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said the government is working with other regulators on a timetable to end production and sales. The move will have a profound impact on the environment and growth of China’s auto industry, Xin said at an auto forum in Tianjin on Saturday.
A ban on combustion-engine vehicles will help push both local and global automakers to shift toward electric vehicles, a carrot-and-stick approach that could boost sales of energy-efficient cars and trucks and reduce air pollution while serving the strategic goal of cutting oil imports. The government offers generous subsidies to makers of new-energy vehicles. It also plans to require automakers to earn enough credits or buy them from competitors with a surplus under a new cap-and-trade program for fuel economy and emissions.
Honda Motor Co. will launch an electric car for the China market in 2018, China Chief Operating Officer Yasuhide Mizuno said at the same forum. The Japanese carmaker is developing the vehicle with Chinese joint ventures of Guangqi Honda Automobile Co. and Dongfeng Honda Automobile Co. and will create a new brand with them, he said.
And the speed at which AI can learn includes real-time real-world experience (what one car learns - all cars learn) as well as the learning that can happen in virtual worlds.
….our self-driving car has learned how to confidently turn at a flashing yellow arrow. That new skill then becomes part of our car’s permanent knowledge base, and will be shared with every vehicle across the fleet. In turn, we’ll use real-world driving and our private test track to verify and validate our experience in simulation. And then the cycle begins again.
How simulation turns one flashing yellow light into thousands of hours of experience
Each day, as many as 25,000 Waymo self-driving cars drive 8 million miles in our virtual world, testing out new skills and refining old ones.
Just like for human drivers, the key to learning is practice. That’s where our simulator comes in. Waymo’s simulator is a realistic virtual world where we can recreate every real-world mile we’ve driven. Each day, as many as 25,000 virtual Waymo self-driving cars drive up to 8 million miles in simulation, testing out new skills and refining old ones. Like athletes visualizing the playing field, our virtual cars envision various scenarios and practice maneuvers that help them safely navigate the real world.
With simulation, we can turn a single real-world encounter — such as a flashing yellow left turn — into thousands of opportunities to practice and master a skill.
Our first step is to make our virtual world super-realistic. Using a powerful suite of custom-built sensors, we can build a virtual replica of this complicated left turn in Mesa, complete with identical dimensions, lanes, curbs, and traffic lights. One of the key advantages of simulation is that you can focus on the most interesting interactions — flashing yellow signals, wrong-way drivers, or nimble pedestrians and cyclists — rather than monotonous highway miles.
This is an important warning signal of the security shadows inherent in the Digital environment - and the initial emerging technology of the Internet-of-Things.
A Simple Design Flaw Makes It Astoundingly Easy To Hack Siri And Alexa
Hackers can take control of the world’s most popular voice assistants by whispering to them in frequencies humans can’t hear.
Chinese researchers have discovered a terrifying vulnerability in voice assistants from Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Huawei. It affects every iPhone and Macbook running Siri, any Galaxy phone, any PC running Windows 10, and even Amazon’s Alexa assistant.
Using a technique called the DolphinAttack, a team from Zhejiang University translated typical vocal commands into ultrasonic frequencies that are too high for the human ear to hear, but perfectly decipherable by the microphones and software powering our always-on voice assistants. This relatively simple translation process lets them take control of gadgets with just a few words uttered in frequencies none of us can hear.
The researchers didn’t just activate basic commands like “Hey Siri” or “Okay Google,” though. They could also tell an iPhone to “call 1234567890” or tell an iPad to FaceTime the number. They could force a Macbook or a Nexus 7 to open a malicious website. They could order an Amazon Echo to “open the backdoor” (a pin would also be required, an August spokesperson clarifies). Even an Audi Q3 could have its navigation system redirected to a new location. “Inaudible voice commands question the common design assumption that adversaries may at most try to manipulate a [voice assistant] vocally and can be detected by an alert user,” the research team writes in a paper just accepted to the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.
In other words, Silicon Valley has designed human-friendly UI with a huge security oversight. While we might not hear the bad guys talking, our computers clearly can. “From a UX point of view, it feels like a betrayal,” says Ame Elliott, design director at the nonprofit SimplySecure. “The premise of how you interact with the device is ‘tell it what to do,’ so the silent, surreptitious command is shocking.”
This is a more positive signal of the emerging Internet of Things-Sensors-Robots - essentially moving to a world of real-time big data on the state of …. Everything.
Avitas uses drones, wheeled robots, and autonomous underwater vehicles to collect images required for inspection from oil refineries, gas pipelines, coolant towers, and other equipment. The company is using Nvidia’s DGX-1 system, a computer designed for a cutting-edge kind of machine learning, to guide these vehicles to the same spot, and to analyze the image data for possible defects.
Drones and Robots Are Taking Over Industrial Inspection
Advances in AI have made it possible for machines to autonomously inspect pipelines, power lines, and transportation systems.
Avitas Systems, a GE subsidiary based in Boston, is now using drones and robots to automate the inspection of infrastructure such as pipelines, power lines, and transportation systems. The company is using off-the-shelf machine-learning technology from Nvidia (50 Smartest Companies 2017) to guide the checkups, and to automatically identify anomalies in the data collected.
The effort shows how low-cost drones and robotic systems—combined with rapid advances in machine learning—are making it possible to automate whole sectors of low-skill work. While there is plenty of worry about the automation of jobs in manufacturing and offices, routine security and safety inspections may be one of the first big areas to be undermined by advances in AI.
Drones have been used on some industrial sites for a while (see “New Boss on Construction Sites Is a Drone”), and various companies, such as Kespry, Flyability, and CyPhy, offer aerial systems for monitoring mines, inspecting wind turbines, and assessing building insurance claims. But the technology required to automate more of the process is now becoming accessible. Similar technology is also enabling robots to cruise autonomously through offices and malls looking for anomalous behavior (see “Rise of the Robot Security Guard”).
And another signal of AI, robotics and bio-economy.
Scientists from Bengaluru will now grow forests using drones
KPJ Reddy, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, will soon be growing forests with the help of seed-bombing drones. Alarmed by how fast natural habitats and wildlife are disappearing, the nature lover was inspired to make a difference.
On World Environment Day last month, he got together with scientists from the aerodynamics and forest departments, and they hit upon the idea of using drones to increase green cover. He chose Karnataka’s Kolar district as the site for the trial of the project.
Though the project is in its initial days, the scientists involved are determined to turn all the barren lands green by planting as many trees as possible. One of the team members, Professor SN Omkar, said that the goal right now is to seed 10,000 acres.
This a signal all nations should hear.
The secret to Germany’s scientific excellence
With a national election this month, Germany proves that foresight and stability can power research.
Ask any German researcher why the country’s science base is blooming, and they are bound to mention Chancellor Angela Merkel. The world’s most powerful woman, they say, has not forgotten her roots as an East German physicist.
During a decade of global financial turbulence, her government has increased annual science budgets in a stable, predictable, quintessentially German way. It has spurred competition among universities and improved collaboration with the country’s unique publicly funded research institutions. Under Merkel’s watch, Germany has maintained its position as a world leader in areas such as renewable energy and climate; and with the guarantee of strong support for basic research, its impact in other sectors has grown.
Foreign researchers are increasingly choosing to make their careers in Germany rather than opting for traditional brain magnets such as the United States or the United Kingdom. With its safe-but-dull reputation, Germany is starting to look like the tortoise to their hare. And as the country prepares for a national election on 24 September, most onlookers expect the trends to continue.
The reasons behind Germany’s success go beyond science budgets or some sort of ‘Merkel effect’, says Wolfgang Schön, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich and vice-president of the DFG, Germany’s main university-research funding agency. Like Merkel, the country has deep science roots, he says.
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