Petervan's Delicacies - Issue #109

The very best

About power and responsibility in creating alternate synthetic minds. A philosophical take by Susan Schneider.

About the wrestle of business leaders to stay honest with themselves or to give in to greed and growth. By Business Romantic Tim Leberecht

About fighting "embedded growth obligation"​ and the "Intellectual Dark Web". By Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital.

About a redefinition of work in the age of artificial intelligence. A very good report with @jhagel Deloitte Centre for the Edge.

One more about responsibility and anticipating what could go wrong and the role for VCs and entrepreneurs.

About Deepfakes: getting undistinguishable from real video and more.

Google's sibling company Sidewalk Labs offers planning agencies the ability to model an entire city's patterns of movement.

We should use technology to address the problem with modern surveillance: a power imbalance between those who control the cameras and those who don’t.

Though Amazon and Alibaba seem quite similar at first glance, they have very different approaches and business models.

In “Team Human,” media theorist and veteran cyberpunk Douglas Rushkoff reminds us why we wanted progress in the first place.

Some of the major problems humanity faces today—how to generate clean energy and potable water for example—will be solved with biology ... and peace.

Now putting aside moral and ethical issues, it’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, but when

I perceive that fear is becoming pervasive and increasingly intense around the world. When I share this perception with others, I often get the response: “What fear? I don’t know many people who are afraid.” That’s part of the problem....

While we may see the dangers that digital technologies pose to the political system, others see new opportunities to influence election outcomes. Managing and containing these threats must now be an urgent priority for democrats everywhere.

The Royal College of Art is expanding its curriculum to include more science and technology. Expect other schools to do the same.

Celebrating its 10th class, the 2019 TED Fellows program welcomes a fleet of artists, inventors and entrepreneurs from a dozen countries and four continents. The honorees work across several industries and mediums, ranging from documentary photography and investigative journalism to urban astrophysics and space environmentalism—they come in to the program with work in progress and unanswered…

A couple years ago a friend shared with me an interesting article that argued that one of our basic notions of how the brain works is completely wrong. The article, titled The Empty Brain, begins…

The next big tech trend is humanity, not blockchain or AI,

Data and Society

In 2004, the social network site was set up to connect people. But now, with lives increasingly played out online, have we forgotten how to be alone?

It was a intense communication week for Facebook. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the company chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg stated the 87th iteration of the company’s “we are sorry”…

Facebook’s use of its “Research” app may violate Apple’s developer rules.

The so-called Collections #1-5 represent a gargantuan, patched-together Frankenstein of rotting personal data.

Facebook employees are fuming after Apple revoked the company's enterprise certificates.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are lashing out at the Facebook over its teen data project, raising new questions about how the company might fare in future privacy legislation.

A San Francisco lawmaker is introducing legislation that would make the city the first in the nation to ban the government use of facial recognition technology.

Health data is valuable: Your employer wants it, your insurers want it, and you're only too happy to give it away to apps for free.

ure, is that such utopian schemes are destined to fail. As experience has shown, the world – life itself – is cloudy, contingent and defined by change. As horrifying as the surveillance capitalists’ view of a totally controlled, perfectly articulated and error-free future might be, the inevitable failure of its vision, and the resultant violence – already evident in our fractured worldviews, competing fundamentalisms, weakening of social

As Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri become more “human,” more ambient noise in our homes is turned over to tech companies as data. What happens when every noise in our lives is a search prompt?

Zeitgeist

We’ve come a long way in the past decade.

Discovery of genes, possibly carried by birds or humans, shows rapid spread of crisis

I can tell the people what it is you’re really trying to say. “Mark Zuckerberg, Let Me Be Your Ghost Writer” is published by New York Times Opinion in New York Times Opinion

Can a trio of privacy advocates effect change from within Facebook—or will they be stifled by corporate bureaucracy?

Apple’s Excessive Power In the last few days Apple suspended the enterprise certificates for first Facebook and then Google, rendering internal iOS apps instantly useless. Apple did so in response to...

Innovation

Apple Inc. plans to launch iPhones with a more-powerful 3-D camera as soon as next year, stepping up the company’s push into augmented reality, according to people familiar with the plans.

A decade ago, many still questioned the relevance of digital technology. While Internet penetration was already significant, e-commerce made up less than 4% of retail sales. Mobile and cloud…

Future of work

I saw the greatest minds of my generation log 18-hour days — and then boast about #hustle on Instagram. When did performative workaholism become a lifestyle?

The American workforce has seen the tidal wave of artificial intelligence coming for decades, yet we still have preparation to do. Those who do not, their professions will not survive. Those who embrace the evolution will strive and own the future.

Internet Culture

To Fix the Web, Give It Back to the Users. Letting people control the data they create and make informed decisions about privacy would shift the balance of power from platforms to…

The move is sure to raise privacy concerns as law enforcement gains the ability to match DNA from crime scenes to a vast library of possible relatives.

A Q+A with computer scientist Cal Newport about his new book "Digital Minimalism," how Facebook is poised to fail, why workplaces may go email-free, and why the tech backlash is about to go mainstream.

FinTech

Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu’s millions of monthly readers. Title: Fintech Finance presents: The FIntech Magazine Issue 11, Author: ADVERTAINMENT MEDIA, Name: ff11_combined_singles, Length: undefined pages, Page: 01, Published: 2019-01-28

The list of top fintech and banking influencers is a who's who of people to follow. List creator Jay Palter explains how the list is compiled.

How two Estonian friends built popular money transfer business TransferWise.

International Monetary Fund Head, Christine Lagarde, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, "fintech is going to shake the system." She also urged International Monetary Fund Head, Christine Lagarde, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, 'fintech is going to shake the system'.

Neal Cross bids farewell to DBS Bank, and resigns his role as Chief Innovation Officer. Now, he focuses on PictureWealth and Orangutan conservation.

US tech company Motiv has revealed its smart ring will soon use its wearer's unique heartbeat to verify their identity and make payments.

Well after nearly 5 years at DBS Bank it’s time to say goodbye and I must admit it was an incredibly hard decision for me to make. I think the playwright Thomas Meehan says it best – “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

XRP and Ripple have always proved divisive among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as they are seen by many as being representative of the very financial system which they regard Bitcoin’s primary goal of defeating.

Top 5 Trends in the Insurance Industry

Three-quarters of insurance executives believe artificial intelligence will revolutionise the industry within a few years. It promises lower premiums, but brings ethical risks too.

A recent report from JPMorgan reportedly notes the potential for blockchain technology in banking and payments.

Initial proof of concept to connect gpi with blockchain enterprise software firm R3

When it comes to financial technology companies, Ant is in it own league.

AI will continue to disrupt the insurance sector. Find out how large insurance firms can look to adopting AI into their company's workflows.

Stripe, a San Francisco-based electronic payments firm, has raised $100 million in funding from Tiger Global Management, putting the company's valuation at $22.5 billion, according to Stripe spokesman Ted Ladd. Ladd confirmed that the funds will be used to accelerate...

AI, Robots, Algorythms

In 2013, Oxford University professors Carl Frey and Michael Osborne published a now-seminal study on the likelihood that various professions would be automated. In that study, medical doctors were…

Efforts to Acknowledge the Risks of New AI Technology. A group called the Future of Computing Academy wants scientists to explain both the good and the bad potential of their research.

Robotics doesn’t only borrow from biology—sometimes it gives back to it, too. A new flapping-winged robot that mimics the fruit fly has done just that.

Demographics will determine who gets hit worst by automation. Policy will help curb the damage.

He sells kits to help anyone modify organisms for as little as $30.

The technology could help people with diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) speak via a brain-computer interface.

Many leading intellectuals see a future where A.I. “superintelligence” will take over humanity. But this theory overlooks the reality of evolution and our nonprogressive world.

Walgreens is exploring new tech that turns your purchases, your movements, even your gaze, into data.

It's cutting costs and freeing up public workers to do things humans do best.

AI may be shaping our lives and taking over the world. Are we giving computers too much power and decision-making authority?

Digital Ethics

THE ANNOUNCEMENT in November of the editing of the genomes of two embryos that are now baby girls, by He Jiankui, a Chinese DNA-sequencing expert—brought much righteous, and rightful, condemnation.

Algorithms are so good at racism that it will hopefully become impossible to ignore.

The release of Google’s AI principles last week are promising. It is hard to imagine how these principles will be baked into the DNA of the company and how their implementation will play out in terms…

I watched a preview of the feature documentary “Immortality or Bust,” which follows Zoltan Istvan and his Immortality Bus on the roads of America. The film, directed by Daniel Sollinger, has won the…

A new draft charter provides details about how an independent “Supreme Court” for Facebook’s content decisions might work, but crucial questions remain.

Executives and companies should take note of the ethics of artificial intelligence and work to mitigate the potential negative effects.

Cryptocurrency, biohacking, and the fantastic plan for transgenic humans.

Former FTC chief technologist Ashkan Soltani argues it's time for Silicon Valley companies to formalize and test not just their products' security, but its "abusability."

Machine learning uses patterns in data to label things. Sounds magical? The core concepts are actually embarrassingly simple. I say “embarrassingly” because if someone made you think it’s mystical…

As technology develops, we’re not automating individual jobs but entire industries, as we meet more of our needs through massively scalable software. It’s a huge shift in the way society works, and it doesn’t have to be a bad one.

The company enables the surveillance that supposedly offends its values.

In recent years, researchers have identified or designed a handful of senolytic compounds that can curb aging by regulating senescent cells.

A man has been fined after refusing to be scanned by controversial facial recognition cameras being trialled by the Metropolitan Police. The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”. However, witnesses said several people were stopped after covering their faces or pulling up hoods.

Men in Saudi Arabia have near-total control where women travel. INSIDER investigated the government's Absher website, which can help them do it.

AI in public sector: Artificial intelligence can help government agencies solve complex issues. For those that are new at it, here are five factors that can affect the benefits and risks.

“Google’s director of engineering Ray Kurzweil is aligned with Mr Musk on this issue, and regularly enthuses about the possibility of man and machine combining to optimise our skills and extend our lifespans. Mr Leonhard, however, does not share...

Post Capitalism

In Germany, we have a saying: “Money doesn’t stink.” But you don’t believe that, do you? Well, you’re not alone — and it’s keeping us from getting rich.

Art related

Colossal | Art, design, and visual culture

Aesthetics

Storaro's Eye

it's disturbing to some. it's gorgeous to others. it's a new series for schön! magazine. fresh meat is SHSadler's latest commentary on beauty standards. an interview with 'it's nice that' explains the photographers' proccess in creating their...

Other

Watch the video above and see if can you tell the masks from a human face

like sophia the robot, her younger sibling little sophia can walk, talk, sing, play games and, tell jokes - all with creepily life like expression.