Robotics
Robotics are utilized in the mines of Sweden and are slowly
replacing jobs such as truck driving.
This article focuses on the concept of replacing people and subsequently
taking their jobs over as the human side of this process would be
obsolete. Considering Sweden’s
government and financial standing, this is not much of a concern in their
immediate culture. This will obviously
not be the case in other areas of the world, but it is my belief that it will
drive technical education for the future and allow for safety measures to be
less of a concern, thereby lessening injuries and deaths of humans as well as
automating certain processes to the point of complete efficiency.
Linus Sundahl-Djerf, DEC. 28, 2017 The
New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/business/the-robots-are-coming-and-sweden-is-fine.html
AI
The legislative side of a new technology is often imperative,
particularly when the subject is divisive.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been disputed to be a dangerous field
as it progresses by some of the greatest minds of this century. The New York City Council has now passed a
bill to increase the transparency of the AI creation and processes. This has been seen as a premature motion
considering the depth of AI has barely been explored. Defining what AI is in the modern world is
crucial to begin understanding how to control what even has the capability to
one day become beyond or grasp.
Future
The technological advancements we see today appear to be the
norm for our generation, but the leaps and bounds being made is leading some
experts to believe there will be a singularity effect. This may increase the gap of human equality
even further. What is currently seen
between developed and non-developed countries will become detrimental to the
global economy and possibly some political relations.
The coinciding factors for AI, robotics, and the future
(when pertaining to technological advancements) will be made clear as time
progresses but not in the obvious sense.
There will likely be an intense technology boom where one or two
discoveries bring forth a plethora of new inventions and these will cause
strife in the blue collar world as well as impede the societies, now lacking in
technological literacy, from closing the gap.
Comments:
Zac,
Concerning your comments on networks and the ever-increasing need for security; some of these companies may benefit further from allowing certain branches to access databases that are isolated to their branch but update regularly with a master system so as to avoid any unwanted security breaches.Of course having instantaneous results are almost a requirement nowadays and databases have been known to be fairly slow within monumental companies and their related data.
Cody,
The article you discussed about smart vent technology is absolutely user-friendly and able to meet new comfort levels, though the efficiency is something I'd like to learn more about. Most "Green Standards" out there are warranting sizable monetary incentives to get the proverbial ball rolling for energy conscious buildings and systems, but the residential market has proven much more difficult to break into. This may play a key role in the HVAC side of things since it offers numerous facets of concepts typical consumers may enjoy.
Thomas,
I have been curious about the applications of structural 3-D printing since the larger-scale objects have begun production. Clearly the inherent issue is the need of flexibility to create the material within the proper medium, though much of steel design is based on ratios of flexibility, that of which the printer could not nearly replicate. I am excited to see how they face this challenge and what compromises or innovations are required to meet today's building standards.
Comments:
Zac,
Concerning your comments on networks and the ever-increasing need for security; some of these companies may benefit further from allowing certain branches to access databases that are isolated to their branch but update regularly with a master system so as to avoid any unwanted security breaches.Of course having instantaneous results are almost a requirement nowadays and databases have been known to be fairly slow within monumental companies and their related data.
Cody,
The article you discussed about smart vent technology is absolutely user-friendly and able to meet new comfort levels, though the efficiency is something I'd like to learn more about. Most "Green Standards" out there are warranting sizable monetary incentives to get the proverbial ball rolling for energy conscious buildings and systems, but the residential market has proven much more difficult to break into. This may play a key role in the HVAC side of things since it offers numerous facets of concepts typical consumers may enjoy.
Thomas,
I have been curious about the applications of structural 3-D printing since the larger-scale objects have begun production. Clearly the inherent issue is the need of flexibility to create the material within the proper medium, though much of steel design is based on ratios of flexibility, that of which the printer could not nearly replicate. I am excited to see how they face this challenge and what compromises or innovations are required to meet today's building standards.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI liked the articles you posted. The NY Times usually does a great job of explaining the issue at hand while also providing some interesting backstory. However, the author of the first article you posted seems like they did not dive into the issue too much, only highlighting positives of present day automation. I really don't think that the author considered how many jobs automation will actually replace. Automation that comes slowly and that is foreseen can be managed; such as the miners' jobs in the article. As different mining machines were slowly automated, the mine could retrain and find new jobs for the miners. That is no different than in the United States, which the author doesn't really highlight. However, automation in large masses is what Sweden and every other country should be worried about. For example, even the Swedish government organizations that helps find jobs for people will suddenly be overwhelmed when hundreds of thousands of truckers are replaced by an AI. No amount of government support can find that many jobs at once. The author even mentions some of this at the end, but fails to delve into it, probably because doing so would hurt the position of the article.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI as well was interested in the New York Times article as I read through it while searching AI myself. I feel like there is a very strong case for the fact that AI can be deemed as dangerous, but I feel like we have no way of monitoring transparency being that it is up to the discretion of the company what they disclose to the public and even though its law how well will it be followed. I think anything new introduced to a society can have negative results but something of this magnitude can pose such a threat to humanity and our country as everything is done on computers and these days cyber security is a touchy subject and if in the wrong hands technology designed to create large benefits can be easily switched to negatives.
Josh: The article you referenced about AI legislation is really interesting to me. I think the early legislation about AI developments is a direct result of something that is often at the root of legislation: fear. Legislators don't know much about what AI actually is; instead many of them likely base their ideas off of what they've learned from movies and other media. While I'm sure they don't actually believe that a Terminator situation will happen tomorrow, they have been taught for decades to fear what "sentient robots" may do, and it's now ingrained in their way of thinking. Whether or not AI proves to be a threat to civilization down the road, I think that it's just to early to be scared of any such developments, and that the legislation that they passed may be premature.
ReplyDelete