Lifeboat Foundation

RAND has opened an office in the San Francisco Bay Area to foster collaboration with the region’s leaders and researchers working to solve today’s complex problems—issues including technological change and innovation, social inequality, water resource management, and transportation.

“RAND’s research and analysis in technology, science, and economic policy intersect directly with the innovation emerging from the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Michael D. Rich, president and CEO of RAND. “RAND’s new office should help strengthen awareness within the Bay Area community of our long-standing commitment to using evidence and data to help policy and decisionmakers enhance well-being in the region and beyond.”

RAND brings a unique set of tools to address these policy concerns: big-data analytics, gaming, and methods to help people make difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty. Nidhi Kalra, a senior information scientist, is leading the new office and will be convening public- and private-sector stakeholders to discuss important issues. “We want to partner with the region’s technology and innovation communities, to link our research and their expertise to make better policies and improve people’s lives,” she said.

Continue reading “RAND Opens Office in the San Francisco Bay Area” »

United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tory Bruno and key space enterprise partners discuss the vision of a self-sustained space economy within the confines of CisLunar space.

Panel members will representatives from American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Boeing, Made in Space, Offworld, and the United States Air Force.

Thanks for your interest!

Thanks to SAP Italia for making this video available, the original video is at https://youtu.be/PLS5wGAM3R8 You can download all my slides at www.gerdcloud.net; direct link to the slides used here is gerd.fm/sapitaliagerd

Continue reading “Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard at SAP Executive Summit 2017: Exponential technological (r)evolutions” »

By Paula Klein

Is work becoming obsolete? Will Americans learn to love their leisure time? As the spotlight focuses on AI and its various implementations, former Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs, now at Columbia University and a special adviser to the United Nations, has some strong and diverse opinions about the macroeconomic impact of robots on the role of work in the future.

At a Mar. 24 seminar hosted by MIT IDE — the same day Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin amazed the tech community by saying AI wasn’t even on his radar — Sachs described AI developments as a “huge” with implications as vast as any previous seismic technology wave. “We are in the midst of a major transformation” that will fundamentally change civilization from the past, he said.

Continue reading “Redefining Work, Income in the AI Economy” »

I’m excited to share my interview and footage I took of Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows at The Venus Project for Now This. This video is really doing well! https://www.facebook.com/NowThisFuture/videos/1500983249942850/ #transhumanism #future

This man is trying to create a world without money.

Reusable rockets will drive down the cost of space access and power America’s economy into the 21st century. Entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers should take note of what SpaceX has demonstrated.

The race is on to edit genes and prevent disease. But this technology is ripe for abuse.

Economic inequity already exists in the reproductive industry. IVF, for example, is not covered by insurance in most states (Massachusetts excepted), setting up a situation in which only infertile people with well-padded pockets can afford the treatment. And of course the well-off have easier access to good health care via quality private insurance — or their own bank accounts. Steve Jobs, for example, spent $100,000 in 2011 to sequence his genome and that of his pancreatic tumor — a bill not many could hope to afford.

“The beautiful thing about this [gene-editing] work is it offers an opportunity to intervene around the moment of birth,” says Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor in the Division of Health Policy at University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. “That said, as we pay attention to the opportunity of that moment, it’s important to bear in mind the value of liberty and justice for all.”

Continue reading “Customized babies are closer than you think” »

ES Emerging Technology are delighted to invite you to the second event in our Exponential Series!

Nathan Waters is a futurist, decentralist and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the monthly Ethereum blockchain meetup (SydEthereum) and Australia’s largest independent hackathon (Hackagong).

In this discussion Nathan will be presenting a new project for a blockchain-based economic protocol intended to transition humanity to a post-Capitalist future. We’ll be covering topics such as: runaway automation, technological unemployment, future of work and education, wage slavery, wealth inequality, rising precariat, universal basic income, peer production, platform co-operatives, post-scarcity and decentralised autonomous organisations.

Continue reading “Exponential Series — Nathan Waters” »

The fear that automation in the form of robots or artificial intelligence is going to destroy jobs is widespread. But it can be difficult to gauge just how serious to take the threat. Different reports offer different estimations of how many jobs will be lost, while politicians and economists argue that technology creates as many jobs as it destroys, maintaining an equilibrium in employment over the long run.

But is this really true? A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research aims to add some solid numbers to the debate, looking at the historical effects of robots on employment in the US. Economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo studied the US labor market between 1990 and 2007, looking at employment rates in different areas and industries while controlling for the influence of factors like increased imports from China and the offshoring of jobs.