Category: Big Ideas

So… Seth Miller doesn’t have to be 100% right… he can be 50% right and still rock your investing world. 

https://medium.com/@sethmiller_59231/this-is-how-big-oil-will-die-38b843bd4fe0
Big Oil believes it is different. I am less optimistic for them.

An autonomous vehicle will cost about $0.13 per mile to operate, and even less as battery life improves. By comparison, your 20 miles per gallon automobile costs $0.10 per mile to refuel if gasoline is $2/gallon, and that is before paying for insurance, repairs, or parking. Add those, and the price of operating a vehicle you have already paid off shoots to $0.20 per mile, or more.

And this is what will kill oil: It will cost less to hail an autonomous electric vehicle than to drive the car that you already own.

If you think this reasoning is too coarse, consider the recent analysis from the consulting company RethinkX (run by the aforementioned Tony Seba), which built a much more detailed, sophisticated model to explicitly analyze the future costs of autonomous vehicles. Here is a sampling of what they predict:

Self-driving cars will launch around 2021

A private ride will be priced at 16¢ per mile, falling to 10¢ over time.

A shared ride will be priced at 5¢ per mile, falling to 3¢ over time.

By 2022, oil use will have peaked

By 2023, used car prices will crash as people give up their vehicles. New car sales for individuals will drop to nearly zero.

By 2030, gasoline use for cars will have dropped to near zero, and total crude oil use will have dropped by 30% compared to today.

The driver behind all this is simple: Given a choice, people will select the cheaper option.

Your initial reaction may be to believe that cars are somehow different — they are built into the fabric of our culture. But consider how people have proven more than happy to sell seemingly unyielding parts of their culture for far less money. Think about how long a beloved mom and pop store lasts after Walmart moves into town, or how hard we try to “Buy American” when a cheaper option from China emerges.

And autonomous vehicles will not only be cheaper, but more convenient as well — there is no need to focus on driving, there will be fewer accidents, and no need to circle the lot for parking. And your garage suddenly becomes a sunroom.

For the moment, let’s make the assumption that the RethinkX team has their analysis right (and I broadly agree[1]): Self-driving EVs will be approved worldwide starting around 2021, and adoption will occur in less than a decade.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2095576/rise-qr-code-and-how-it-has-forever-changed-chinas-social-habits

A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode with a random pattern of tiny black squares against a white background, capable of holding 300 times more data than a traditional one-dimensional code. According to internet consulting firm iResearch, payments made via mobile devices by Chinese consumers last year reached 38 trillion yuan (US$5.5 trillion, HK$43 trillion), more than half the nation’s GDP.
QR code scams rise in China, putting e-payment security in spotlight

Thanks to QR code’s rapidly increasing usage at off-line shops, the amount of mobile payments on the mainland is now 50 times greater than that of the US. Mobile payments in the US totalled US$112 billion in 2016, according to Forrester Research.
To consumer behaviour researcher Chen Yiwen, we are witnessing the dawn of “codeconomy”.
“China has started the transition to a cash-free economy faster than anyone could have imagined, largely because of the viral spread of two-dimensional barcode,” said Chen, a professor and researcher with the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “It creates a new economy based on scannable codes.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-07/generals-warn-u-s-security-at-stake-in-race-for-new-energy-superiority

Failure to adopt new energy technologies will hurt America’s chances to help slow climate change. It may also jeopardize U.S. global power and security.

“If we don’t want to necessarily repeat a lot of the tough lessons of the last 40 to 50 years,” said retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Richard Zilmer. “Better to plan now and get ahead of that—and control the process—than react to it.”

The quest for cleaner and more efficient energy systems is already forging new trade ties and, consequently, political relationships, according to a report by Zilmer and 14 other former high-ranking military officials. Ultimately, those ties will bring “dramatic changes in global spheres of influence,” they wrote. China and European Union members are steering their economies into “the vanguard of manufacturing” and commerce, with the U.S. showing little competitive vision.

“Ceding U.S. leadership here has inherent national security risk,” the authors, part of the CNA Military Advisory Board, warn, “including loss of global influence and diplomatic leverage, as well as forgone economic opportunities.”

Dismissing multiple decades of research into manmade climate change has been a common theme among Republicans who control Congress and now the White House. Dismissing market forces that push nations and industries to clean up while becoming more energy efficient, however, is another thing. The CNA report doesn’t mention “climate change” or “global warming,” but it makes clear that ignoring these market signals carries ominous implications for U.S. economic and national security.

The report, called Advanced Energy and U.S. National Security [pdf], is the seventh analysis put out in 10 years by the nonprofit research group’s advisory board. Initiated in 2015, the study was led by 14 U.S. generals and admirals and a retired British Royal Navy rear admiral.

By “advanced energy,” the authors mean technologies that make energy more accessible, cleaner, and safer—namely renewables, batteries, nuclear, hydropower, and efficiency. Coined in 2011 with the launch of the clean-energy U.S. business network Advanced Energy Economy, the phrase has a euphemistic quality that shields the analysis from sounding like a clean-energy scouting report.

https://m.imgur.com/r/Futurology/2rWxy
If you trade energy complex you might wanna understand this…

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/humanlevel-ai-is-right-around-the-corner-or-hundreds-of-years-away
Artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly, and its impact on our daily lives will only increase. Today, there are still many things humans can do that computers can’t. But will it always be that way? Should we worry about a future in which the capabilities of machines rival those of humans across the board? For IEEE Spectrum’s June 2017 special issue, we asked a range of technologists and visionaries to weigh in on what the future holds for AI and brainlike computing.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/04/deep-thinking-where-machine-intelligence-ends-human-creativity-begins-garry-kasparov-review
Garry Kasparov is arguably the greatest chess player of all time. From 1986 until his retirement in 2005, he was ranked world No 1. He is also a leading human rights activist and is probably close to the top of Vladimir Putin’s hitlist, not least because he tried to run against him for the Russian presidency in 2007. But for people who are interested only in technology, Kasparov is probably best known as the first world champion to be beaten by a machine. In 1997, in a famous six-game match with the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, he lost 3½-2½.

The passage of time has mellowed Kasparov and his reflections on the match and its outcome are more thoughtful, measured and insightful than I had expected from the opening chapters of the book. His initial thoughts about the implications of AI seemed banal and predictable. “Romanticising the loss of jobs to technology,” he writes on page 42, “is little better than complaining that antibiotics put too many gravediggers out of work.” The transfer of labour from humans to our inventions “is nothing less than the history of civilisation”. And the early Kasparov sounds like a technological determinist on steroids. “Even if it were possible to mandate slowing down the development and implementation of intelligent machines,” he writes, “it would only ease the pain for a few for a little while and make the situations worse for everyone in the long run.” And so on.

Yet by the end of the book, he has arrived at a more enlightened view of machine intelligence than most people in the tech industry, who are obsessed with machines that will replace people. Kasparov was an early enthusiast for chess-playing computers and indeed did much to foster the technology that enables every child nowadays to learn to play against a grandmaster-level virtual opponent. In the end, the technology he inspired defeated him. But the message he bears is that the really intelligent approach is not to rail against the machine for being better than we are at some things, but to celebrate its capacity to augment our human capabilities. And therein lies the beginning of wisdom in these matters.
• Deep Thinking by Garry Kasparov is published by John Murray (£20). To order a copy for £17 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

 

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/585c3439be65942f022bbf9b/t/591a2e4be6f2e1c13df930c5/1494888038959/RethinkX+Report_051517.pdf
We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history. By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of autonomous vehicles (AVs), 95% of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by eets, not individuals, in a new business model we call “transport- as-a-service” (TaaS). The TaaS disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions
of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions of dollars in investor value — but also creating trillions of dollars in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.
The disruption will be driven by economics. Using TaaS, the average American family will save more than $5,600 per year in transportation costs, equivalent to a wage raise of 10%. This will keep an additional $1 trillion
per year in Americans’ pockets by 2030, potentially generating the largest infusion of consumer spending in history.

Designing systems on the assumption they’ll never fail doesn’t give you good systems, it gives you the Titanic. Smart engineers know entropy isn’t just a good idea, it’s the (second) law (of thermodynamics) and plan accordingly, designing systems that glide to a graceful halt when they go wrong – rather than exploding in a cloud of white-hot shrapnel.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/6ej8xj/technology_is_making_the_world_more_unequal_only/?st=J3DTOBRN&sh=e543f6ca

Great read!

https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/3/8/14712286/artificial-intelligence-science-technology-robots-singularity-automation
AI has the special property that it’s easy to imagine scary science fiction scenarios in which artificial minds grab control of all the machines on Earth, and enslave its pitiful human population. That’s not very likely, but there is a real concern that AI’s will gain the ability to perform certain tasks without we humans having any real idea how they are doing them. … That raises the prospect of unintended consequences in a serious way.
It is absolutely right to think very carefully and thoroughly about what those consequences might be, and how we might guard against them, without preventing real progress on improved artificial intelligence. — Sean Carroll, cosmology and physics professor, the California Institute of Technology

AI will likely get rid of a lot of jobs
I am worried about the impact on employment as more and more niches are filled by technology. (I don’t see AI as fundamentally different from so many other technologies — the borders are arbitrary.) Will we be able to adapt by inventing new jobs, particularly in the service sector and in the human face of bureaucracy? Or will we have to pay people to not work? — Julian Togelius, computer science professor, New York University

AI is not going to kill us or enslave us. It will eliminate some jobs rather more rapidly than we know how to deal with. Some of the pinch will be coming to white-collar workers too. Eventually we’ll adjust, but the transitions resulting from major technological changes are typically not as easy as we would like. — Tyler Cowen, economics professor, George Mason University
How to get ready for AI
There are issues society needs to prepare for. One key issue is how to prepare for significantly reduced employment due to future AI technology being able to handle much of routine work. In addition, instead of concerns about AI being “too smart” for us, the initial rollout of AI technologies more likely poses a concern in terms of not being as smart as people think such technology will be.

Early autonomous AI systems will likely make mistakes that most humans would not make. It’s therefore important for society to be educated about the limits and implicit hidden biases of AI and machine learning methods. — Bart Selman, computer science professor, Cornell University

http://leadership.ng/2017/05/28/nigeria-nations-lose-50-jobs-automation/

 There is a lot of work being done on this right now. Undoubtedly our economic future will be changed by robotics and AI. Jobs will be lost and created.  My question is this:  The google AI that recently won the Go tournament, while an apparent genius at the ancient game, did it know it was playing a game called Go?  

Sentience is what it does not have. A chainsaw is much better at cutting things than a human –but does the chainsaw know it is cutting anything? It is my contention that until AI are sentient they will create more jobs than they destroy.