Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
In early 2019, Foreign Affairs took a detailed look at the social and potentially political implication of the emergence of a phenomenon called “Deepfakes,” the result of recent advances in digital technology. The article describes the kind of manipulation of images and sound that now...
With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the potential to integrate technology into the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is reaching new heights. According to Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum, 4IR is “blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and...
Around 20 years into the new millennium, everything about our lives and surroundings is changing at an incredible pace. The ways we work, play, study, communicate, spend and earn are rapidly evolving to bear little resemblance to how we’ve lived through most of modern times, let alone history....
At the climax of a “60 Minutes” segment on ethical technology design, host Anderson Cooper demanded suspiciously of Tristan Harris, “Is technology neutral?” While Cooper made the word “neutral” seem like a loaded challenge, the truth is that “neutral” is as neutral a word as can...
At the end of August, two prestigious names in the technology and business world graced the stage of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. The Chinese television station that broadcast the debate between Jack Ma, (CEO of Alibaba) and hyperreal hero Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla,...
This is a list of straightforward ways to feel better in the age of smartphones. This list can serve as a companion to an earlier edition of Tech Turncoat Truths listing how screens damage the human nervous system, and also to a peer-reviewed article making the same case. Here's the gist of...
In April, Reuters reported that automakers are investing heavily in electric vehicles despite still-low demand. They are releasing “a flurry of new electric vehicle models” because governments are raising regulatory requirements for emissions around the world. Automakers are being pushed into...
Each year, the MIT Technology Review publishes a list of outstanding innovators under 35. They come from fields as diverse as biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy, the web, transportation, communications, materials and computer hardware. Their innovations are...
Imagine that your government could identify you and track your movements digitally, solely based on your physical appearance and perceived ethnicity or race. This is not the stuff of dystopian science fiction, but is happening now due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools....
The world’s governments and peoples must decide how to address the increasing surveillance and data collection — and the resulting loss of privacy — that digital formats provide. In recent years, much of this attention has focused on the rapidly building surveillance and data aggregation in...
Almost all observers of economic transformation have recently focused on the feared (or cheered) future dominance of artificial intelligence and robotics. This week, Atul Singh, the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Fair Observer, reviews a fascinating book, “The Smartest Places on Earth,”...
