Tag: artificial intelligence

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News You Can Use: 10/31/2018

  • A groundbreaking study reveals how we want machines to treat us

    In a new study published in Nature, they show that when it comes to how machines treat us, our sense of right and wrong is informed by the economic and cultural norms of where we live. They discovered three general geographic areas with distinct ethical ideas about how autonomous vehicles should behave: West (which includes North America and Christian European countries), East (which includes Far East countries and Islamic countries), and South (which includes much of South America and countries with French influences). These groups also have their own subclusters, like Scandinavia within the West and Latin American countries within the South. As the study’s interactive graphic shows, Brazilians tend to prefer sparing passengers over pedestrians; Iranians are much more likely to spare pedestrians; Australians are more likely to spare the physically fit than the average.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90259513/a-groundbreaking-study-reveals-how-we-want-machines-to-treat-us

  • Upgrade? No Thanks. Americans Are Sticking With Their Old Phones

    Pricier devices, fewer subsidies from carriers and the demise of the two-year cellphone contract have led consumers to wait an average of 2.83 years to upgrade their smartphones, according to data for the third quarter from HYLA Mobile Inc., a mobile-device trade-in company that works with carriers and big-box stores. That is up from 2.39 years two years earlier.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/upgrade-no-thanks-americans-are-sticking-with-their-old-phones-1540818000?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
    Samsung Chalks Up Another Record Profit, but Phones Are a Worry

    In an earnings release, Samsung said smartphone shipments were flat and the profit drop was attributable to “increased promotional costs and a negative currency impact.”

    Consumers are balking at $1,000 phones and holding on to their devices longer than ever. But the South Korean technology giant was surprised this year by poor sales for its flagship Galaxy S9 handsets, a device marketed around its animated human emojis. To rejuvenate sales, Samsung moved up the release of its large-size Galaxy Note 9 to Aug. 24, weeks earlier than the prior-year model.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chips-displays-drive-samsung-to-another-record-profit-1540946737

  • Why whistleblowing is the loneliest and most courageous act in the world
  • Wisconsin’s $4.1 billion Foxconn factory boondoggle

    But what seemed so simple on a napkin has turned out to be far more complicated and messy in real life. As the size of the subsidy has steadily increased to a jaw-dropping $4.1 billion, Foxconn has repeatedly changed what it plans to do, raising doubts about the number of jobs it will create. Instead of the promised Generation 10.5 plant, Foxconn now says it will build a much smaller Gen 6 plant, which would require one-third of the promised investment, although the company insists it will eventually hit the $10 billion investment target. And instead of a factory of workers building panels for 75-inch TVs, Foxconn executives now say the goal is to build “ecosystem” of buzzwords called “AI 8K+5G” with most of the manufacturing done by robots.

    Polls now show most Wisconsin voters don’t believe the subsidy will pay off for taxpayers, and Walker didn’t even mention the deal in a November 2017 speech announcing his run for re-election.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/29/18027032/foxconn-wisconsin-plant-jobs-deal-subsidy-governor-scott-walker

  • FCC Falsely Claims Community Broadband an ‘Ominous Threat to The First Amendment’

    More than 750 such networks have been built in the United States in direct response to a lack of meaningful broadband competition and availability plaguing America. Studies have routinely shown that these networks provide cheaper and better broadband service, in large part because these ISPs have a vested interest in the communities they serve.

    In his speech, O’Rielly highlighted efforts by the last FCC, led by former boss Tom Wheeler, to encourage such community-run broadband networks as a creative solution to private sector failure. O’Rielly subsequently tried to claim, without evidence, that encouraging such networks would somehow result in government attempts to censor public opinion.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj49j8/fcc-falsely-claims-community-broadband-an-ominous-threat-to-the-first-amendment

Photo by Yucel Moran on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 5/30/2018

  • Why We Gave Up a Star Employee to a Top Customer, and Why You Should, Too

    For us, encouraging our former COO to take on a major role at a customer company has accomplished just that. “Close business relationships are more important than ever, and my moving from intive-FDV to DropCar has, if anything, made our relationship stronger,” said Leandro Larroulet, who is now that company’s CIO. “Because I still work with the same team in the same office at intive-FDV, we can all leverage our established relationships to easily communicate based on an underlying trust from years working together.”

    Even if the employee who makes the move doesn’t stay in the same office, the two companies involved can still build a similar level of trust and provide exceptional customer experience. Though most of our clients are based in other countries, we continue to be able to cement relationships by making communication a matter of culture and habit. The same practices apply to the case of an employee leaving to work with a customer.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/313637

  • Is Remote Work Taking a Psychological Toll on Your External Workers? Researchers Say Yes.

    Concerns about remote work are why a country like France has passed a “right to disconnect” provision to keep work at work. And while a similar provision was recently introduced in New York, it may be a long time before other cities — let alone the nation — embrace this kind of thinking.

    So, where does this leave employers in the United States? Companies can’t just tell their employees “We know what’s best for you,” and revoke remote work policies. That could upset employees by removing flexibility, while also decreasing productivity.

    The best compromise may be to add flexible policies, rather than remove them. To avoid the issues of isolation, companies can require employees to work in-office two or three times per month or per quarter.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/313496

  • Has our ability to create intelligence outpaced our wisdom?
  • Report: Demand for these skills will rise dramatically by 2030
    1. Demand for technological skills, both basic digital and advanced tech, will rise by 55%
    2. Demand for social and emotional skills, such as leadership and managing others, will rise by 24%
    3. Demand for basic cognitive skills, which include basic data input and processing, will decline by 15%
    4. Demand for physical and manual skills, which include general equipment operation, will decline by 14%

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40577234/report-demand-for-these-skills-will-rise-dramatically-by-2030

  • What’s the Secret to Becoming a Leader? Stop Being a Boss.

    Having trouble delegating? You’ll never get far in your role as a leader if you hoard the major responsibilities for yourself. Imagine you’re jogging along a path at your local park: Not only will you stumble and potentially fall if you’re carrying a lot of luggage, but you also won’t move very efficiently. Instead, evaluate which responsibilities you should continue to shoulder, and delegate the rest to other team members.

    Transitioning from being an ear-to-the-ground manager to an effective leader isn’t possible if you can’t tell others what to do and then allow them to finish the job their way. To help you feel more comfortable doing that, try providing context to your team members about how their role fits into the big picture. Remember that teammates may not take the routes you would to achieve results — and that that’s OK. If they make missteps, be a leader they can come to for suggestions rather than reprimands. Not only will you get more done, but your employees will get a boost of self-esteem and empowerment.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/313388

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

Posted on

News You Can Use: 5/23/2018

News You Can Use

  • What the ‘Sixers School of Management’ Teaches Us About Strategy Execution 101

    Brown understood that to build support for the Process within the team, he would have to create a sense of mutual trust. He most famously does this through monthly breakfast meetings, in which players deliver a PowerPoint presentation about a subject of intense personal interest. Topics have run the gamut from tattoos to coffee to snakes. There was even one as serious the Balkan conflict, which touched the life of Croatian power forward Dario Saric.

    The point is get to know one other as whole people, not just employees, and thereby make the strategy that assembled these players feel like a part of the team’s core identity. The morning storytelling sessions might seem superfluous, but their ability to get players’ buy-in was real. In fact, it was a player, Tony Wroten, who first used the phrase “Trust the Process.” Those words caught on among the team’s members before spreading like wildfire across the league.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/313095

  • Thanks to AI, you may not have to pay attention to conference calls anymore

    VoiceAI also comes with real-time sentiment analyses and coaching for call centers. For businesses with a large customer service component, this could help expedite calls by “providing real-time recommendations to representatives as conversations happen,” per a press release.

    The service will also provide smart notes, which automatically pick out the salient points in a meeting or call, so you’ll know exactly what Elon Musk said about investors and their “bonehead” and “boring” questions during a Tesla earnings call.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40574042/thanks-to-ai-you-may-not-have-to-pay-attention-to-conference-calls-anymore

  • NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars to get a bird’s-eye view of the planet

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/17346414/nasa-mars-2020-helicopter-atmosphere
  • Learn to Stop Saying ‘Um’ and ‘Ah’ Before the Media Comes Calling

    Put a Post-It note on your computer or your phone that says the words um and ah (or the words you’re wanting to stop saying) with a red line through them. This will help make you aware when you’re about to say these words.

    What you’ll notice after a few days is that you’ll be conscious when you’re about to say these words. After a week you’ll be so aware that you’ll be able to pause and not say them. Awareness is the key to success so when you become mindful when you’re saying these words during general conversations you’ll have the ability to not say them during your media interviews.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312563

  • Subscriptions for the 1%

    Just take a look at the abysmal conversion rates for online content. The New York Times gets 89 million uniques per month, but only has 2.2 million subscribers, excluding crossword and other app subscribers. The Guardian has 800,000 financial supporters, but about 140 million unique visitors at a peak a few years ago. Last year, the Wikimedia Foundation received donations from 6.1 million donors, yet just the English language edition of Wikipedia received 7.7 billion page views last month. That’s 1,300 April page views per annual donor.

    The implied conversion rates here are in the very low single digits, if not lower. And that’s no surprise given the extreme lengths people go to get content for free. A friend of mine uses AWS to rent IP addresses to reset his article meter on popular news pages, allowing him to download web pages through a Singapore data center using a custom command line utility. Engineers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars are suddenly tantalized by the challenge of trying to break through a porous paywall. I have less technical friends Googling URLs, setting up proxies, and other tactics to get to the same outcome.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/13/subscriptions-for-the-1-percent/

Photo by MontyLov on Unsplash