(¯`*• Observatory of the Future, articulated under Andres Agostini's book http://lnkd.in/R5pXnK

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

THE STATE OF THE FUTURE - March 12, 2015 UPDATES - via @AndresAgostini

UPDATE

Google Secretly Working On Big Virtual Reality

Google GOOGL -2.36% is secretly working on a major virtual reality project, much bigger than previously thought, as part of efforts to take on Facebook, Microsoft MSFT -1.84% and mobile handset makers in that technology.

The search giant is employing a number of engineers to focus exclusively on developing a specific version of the Android mobile OS to support VR applications, according to reports.

In VR, Google could be seen as a little off the pace, having only released a relatively basic viewing device called Cardboard. Facebook, which last year bought virtual reality firm Oculus for $2 billion, is many months into its work to develop VR-backed communications. Samsung has also teamed up with Oculus for a mobile version of the tech, and Sony has developed its own Morpheus headset. Elsewhere, Microsoft is well into developing a VR device linking the real world and simulated data.

Google is reportedly expected to put some significant resources behind VR as the revenue opportunities begin to clarify. It has invested heavily in other areas where it sees revenue potential, including smart contact lenses, technology to support people with Parkinson’s, balloon powered Internet for remote areas, and of course self driving cars.

For the VR-supporting version of Android, Google has so far employed dozens of engineers dedicated to initial work, according to the Wall Street Journal, which quotes unnamed staff working on the project. Crucially, in order to gain quick adoption, the system would be made freely available as with existing versions of Android, the report notes. Google has not officially commented on its plans.

The potential for selling to consumers and businesses is evident. For consumers, virtual reality could offer the ability to communicate much more immersively (one of Facebook’s initial aims in this area), as well as powering impressive video game, retail, cinematic and sports viewing experiences.

In business, there are clear opportunities for different industries. Surgeons could perform operations remotely and engineers could make repairs offsite. Manufacturing staff could produce goods outside of their own factory, controlling machines remotely while seeing the objects in front of them. The training applications are endless, too, especially for military and civil aviation flight simluations. In education, colleges and schools can provide a remote immersive experience, while media businesses could further increase the impact of news reports and entertainment.

Miya Knights, senior research analyst at IDC Retail Insights, tells Forbes that Google’s reported efforts could “add competition and drive speed of development” in the virtual reality market. Google could also have a development advantage given its search, mobile OS, mapping technology, geolocation-based navigation, and shopping services.

However, the benefits could still be some time off, and VR remains “an answer desperately looking for a question” as industries seek use cases, according to Spencer Izard, European head at the retail analyst house.

“VR would provide an ability for consumers at home or in stores where certain stock items are not available to see a product represented in a 3D form that allows the customer to better understand it,” he says. “However, that is a very specific use case and I would question whether it would see mainstream adoption by consumers.”

One area that could change adoption is the blending of two types of technology, a kind of augmented virtual reality, in which people wearing a VR headset see information and images overlaid on what is in front of them. Last year Google invested more than $500 million in Magic Leap, a company that is developing such a device.

With such technology, VR could be used to deliver Google-powered navigation, Knights explains, as well as “personalized and timely offers, physically showing nearby restaurants or stores a person might like, in their view as they shop.”

READ MORE. https://tr.im/r1igI

UPDATE

Nuclear weapons. The unkicked addiction. Despite optimistic attempts to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the threat they pose to peace is growing

IN JANUARY 2007 Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn—two Republican secretaries of state, a Democratic defence secretary and a Democratic head of the Senate Armed Services Committee—called for a global effort to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons. The ultimate goal, they wrote in the Wall Street Journal, should be to remove the threat such weapons pose completely. The article generated an astonishing response. Long seen as drippily Utopian, the idea of getting rid of nuclear weapons was suddenly taken on by think-tankers, academics and all sorts of very serious people in the nuclear-policy business. The next year a pressure group, Global Zero, was set up to campaign for complete nuclear disarmament. Its aims were endorsed by scores of government leaders, present and past, and hundreds of thousands of citizens.

In April 2009 Barack Obama, speaking in Prague, promised to put weapons reduction back on the table and, by dealing peacefully but firmly with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, to give new momentum to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Processes could now be set in train, he said, that would lead to the worldwide renunciation of nuclear weapons within a generation. This speech, along with his ability not to be George W. Bush, was a key factor in landing Mr Obama the Nobel peace prize a few months later.

The following year he returned to Prague to sign an arms agreement with Russia, New START, which capped the number of deployed strategic warheads allowed to each side at 1,550. His co-signatory, Russia’s then president, Dmitry Medvedev, had endorsed Global Zero’s aims. A month later the NPT’s quinquennial review conference agreed a 64-point plan intended to reinforce the treaty’s three mutually supportive legs: the promise that all countries can share in the non-military benefits of nuclear technology; the agreement by non-weapons states not to become weapons states; and the commitment of the weapons states to pursue nuclear disarmament. There were hopes that, when the parties to the NPT met again in May 2015, there would be substantial progress to report.

Alas, no. Mr Obama’s agreement with Iran remains possible, even likely—but it will hardly be one that energises the cause of a nuclear-free world (see article). Iran will continue to sit close to the nuclear threshold, retaining an ability to enrich uranium which, if it were to withdraw from the agreement, would allow it to create a bomb’s worth of weapons-grade material in about a year. That is more than the current estimated breakout period of three months, and long enough, it is felt, for America and its allies to mount a response, should it come to that. But it is hardly a huge step back from the threshold, or forward for peace.

And the Iran deal is pretty much the only item on 2010’s list of high hopes that has got anywhere at all. The chilling of relations between America and Russia over Ukraine has resulted in cooperation on nuclear security measures being suspended, while promised follow-on measures relating to New START have been quietly abandoned. Vladimir Putin, Mr Medvedev’s predecessor and successor, takes every opportunity to laud his country’s nuclear prowess, and is committing a third of Russia’s booming military budget to bolstering it.

It is not the only power investing in its nukes (see table). America is embarking on a $348-billion decade-long modernisation programme. Britain is about to commit to modernising its forces, as well, while France is halfway through the process. China is investing heavily in a second-strike capability. In short, there has been no attempt to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the military and security doctrines of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, despite their commitments under the NPT. An initiative aimed at making nuclear weapons illegal under international humanitarian law, backed by over 150 NPT signatory countries, has attracted little to no support from the weapons states and only lip service from countries which welcome America’s nuclear protection.

READ MORE. http://linkis.com/www.economist.com/ne/zSg8O

UPDATE

Big Data's Dark Side

don’t mean to pick on big data. All technology has a dark side, if you let it loose. Mobile devices can be leashes or liberators (speaking as someone who once took his laptop to spring training, I count them as the latter). Sometimes I think security devices trip up the people they’re trying to protect more than they stymie the hackers they’re trying to target.

Arguably, most of my time here is spent promoting the value that big data provides. So when I start highlighting its limitations, it’s not that I want you think of a haunting, mellifluous voice cajoling, “Come to the dark side, Luuuuuuuke.” It’s that I want to point out things to think about so that we can be aware of those limitations, and thereby sidestep or overcome them.

Forbes columnist Steve Andriole concurs with this philosophy, I suspect. In his recent piece, Unstructured Data: The Other Side of Analytics, he writes, “‘Big data analytics’ is already a cult (like so many cults we’ve seen before). The data Gods are angry, my friends, and they’re pouring data onto us so fast that it’s impossible to avoid being buried alive – or so the pundits and consultants would have us believe.”

READ MORE. http://tinyurl.com/oxxtbz4

UPDATE

The little engine that could. Downsizing to a car with a smaller engine is being made easier by the latest turbochargers. They can transform a standard four-cylinder engine into a much more powerful motor

FRUGAL four-cylinder engines used to be found only in the cheapest cars. But today they are being fitted to even luxury models. What has made them more acceptable—indeed, desirable—is the development of advanced turbochargers that cram more air than normal into the fixed volume of their cylinders, allowing the engines to burn proportionally more fuel. The result is a compact unit that punches way above its weight in terms of power and torque, a turning force which makes that power available at lower revs. These engines also provide better fuel economy and emit less pollution.

A turbocharger works by tapping the hot exhaust gas from the engine to spin a small turbine which, in turn, drives an equally small air compressor. For higher performance, an intercooler is sometimes placed between the compressor and the engine’s inlet manifold. This lowers the temperature of the compressed air and raises its density still further. In general, a turbocharged 1.8-litre four-cylinder petrol engine can deliver the power and torque of a naturally aspirated 3-litre six-cylinder unit. By the same token, a turbocharged V6 can be more than a match for a conventional V8.

Turbochargers are not to be confused with superchargers, made famous by the 4.5-litre Blower Bentleys of the 1920s. While they serve broadly the same purpose—to squeeze more air into an engine—they function differently. A supercharger does not rely on an exhaust-driven turbine but is driven directly by the engine. Superchargers are better in one respect: they do not suffer from “turbo lag” (the time taken for a turbocharger to spool up to speed). The disadvantage is that a supercharger robs the engine of power and, thermodynamically, it is nowhere near as efficient.

READ MORE. http://tinyurl.com/n4oqv46

UPDATE

Global banks. A world of pain. The giants of global finance are in trouble

ONLY pop music and pornography embraced globalisation more keenly than banks did. Since the 1990s three kinds of international firm have emerged. Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs deal in securities and cater to the rich from a handful of financial hubs such as Hong Kong and Singapore. A few banks, such as Spain’s Santander, have “gone native”, establishing a deep retail-banking presence in multiple countries. But the most popular approach is the “global network bank”: a jack of all trades, lending to and shifting money for multinationals in scores of countries, and in some places acting like a universal bank doing everything from bond-trading to car loans. The names of the biggest half-dozen such firms adorn skyscrapers all over the world.

This model of the global bank had a reasonable crisis in 2008-09: only Citigroup required a full-scale bail out. Yet it is now in deep trouble. In recent weeks Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan Chase, has been forced to field questions about breaking up his bank. Stuart Gulliver, the head of HSBC, has abandoned the financial targets that he set upon taking the job in 2011. Citigroup is awaiting the results of its annual exam from the Federal Reserve. If it fails, calls for a mercy killing will be deafening (see next story). Deutsche Bank is likely to shrink further. Standard Chartered, which operates in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, is parting company with its longstanding boss, Peter Sands.

The panic about global banks reflects their weak recent results: in aggregate the five firms mentioned above reported a return on equity of just 6% last year. Only JPMorgan Chase did passably well (see chart). Investors worry these figures betray a deeper strategic problem. There is a growing fear that the costs of global reach—in terms of regulation and complexity—exceed the potential benefits.

It all seemed far rosier 20 years ago. Back then banks saw that globalisation would lead to an explosion in trade and capital flows. A handful of firms sought to capture that growth. Most had inherited skeleton global networks of some kind. European lenders such as BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank had been active abroad for over a century. HSBC and Standard Chartered were bankers to the British empire. Citigroup embarked on a big international expansion a century ago; Chase, now part of JPMorgan Chase, opened many foreign branches in the 1960s and 1970s.

As they expanded in the 1990s and 2000s all of these firms concentrated on multinationals, which required things like trade finance, currency trading and cash management. But all expanded beyond these activities to varying degrees and in different directions; today they typically account for only a quarter of sales. Deutsche and StanChart bulked up in investment banking. BNP built up retail operations in America. At the most extreme end of the spectrum Citi and HSBC tried to do everything for everyone everywhere, through lots of acquisitions. They sold derivatives in Delhi and originated subprime debt in Detroit.

This model is in trouble for three reasons. First, these giant firms proved hard to manage. Their subsidiaries struggled to build common IT systems, let alone establish a common culture. Synergies have been elusive and global banks’ cost-to-income ratios, bloated by the costs of being in lots of countries, have rarely been better than those of local banks. As a result these firms have all too often been tempted to make a fast buck. Citi made a kamikaze excursion into mortgage-backed bonds in 2005-08. StanChart made loans to indebted Asian tycoons.

Second, competition proved to be fiercer than expected. The banking bubble in the 2000s led second-rate firms such as Barclays, Société Générale, ABN Amro and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to expand globally, eroding margins. In 2007 RBS bought ABN in a bid to rival the big network banks. It promptly went bust, proving that two dogs do not make a tiger. The global giants also lost market share in Asia to so-called “super-regional” banks, such as ANZ of Australia and DBS of Singapore. Big local banks in emerging markets, such as ICBC in China, Itaú in Brazil and ICICI in India, also began to build out cross-border operations.

If mismanagement and fierce competition were problems before the crisis, the regulatory backlash after it has been brutal. American officials have begun to enforce strict rules on money-laundering, tax evasion and sanctions, meaning that global banks must know their customers, and their customers’ customers, if they want to maintain access to America’s financial system—which is essential given that the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Huge fines have been imposed on StanChart, BNP and HSBC, among others, for breaking these rules.

Bank supervisors, meanwhile, have imposed higher capital standards on global banks. Most face both the international “Basel 3” regime and a hotch-potch of local and regional regimes. A rule of thumb is that big global banks will need buffers of equity (or “core tier one capital”) equivalent to 12-13% of their risk-adjusted assets, compared to about 10% for domestic firms. National regulators increasingly demand that global banks ring-fence their local operations, limiting their ability to shift capital around the world. The cost of operating the systems that keep regulators happy is huge. HSBC’s compliance costs rose to $2.4 billion in 2014, 50% higher than the year before. JPMorgan is spending $3 billion more on controls than it did in 2011.

One measure of these firms’ viability is their “best case” return on equity (ie, assuming that the huge, supposedly, one-off legal fines and restructuring costs incurred over the past half-decade suddenly stop, but the new capital standards are fully implemented). On this basis most global banks barely achieve 10% (see prior chart). The overall figures hide lots of rot. After three decades of trying to diversify from its base in Asia, HSBC still makes the bulk of its money there; the other two-thirds of its business underperforms badly for the most part. JPMorgan Chase’s profits are more evenly spread, but about two-thirds of its businesses fail to cross the 10% hurdle. The same is true of StanChart. From the outside—and perhaps from the inside, too—Citi’s reporting system is too crude to make any sensible judgment. Deutsche looks better than most, but many of its rivals question its capital calculations.

Another test of viability is to compare the benefits of being global with the costs. In February JPMorgan Chase said that the revenue uplift and cost savings it gets from its scale boost profits by $6 billion-7 billion a year. There is a plausible case that the extra capital it must carry, and the regulatory costs its complexity incurs, offset a big chunk of that benefit. (If they dared to reveal them, the figures for other banks would probably look far worse.) Scale does not seem to mean cheaper funding. It is no cheaper to buy a credit-default swap, which pays out if a borrower goes bust and so is a reasonable proxy for borrowing costs, on the debt of JPMorgan Chase or Citi than it is on that of mid-sized American banks. All are regarded by debt investors as government-backed.

The financial arguments for global banks no longer appear convincing. Yet unscrambling these firms would be hellish. And in any case both managers and investors see two possible rays of light. One is gradually rising interest rates in America: JPMorgan Chase reckons these might add a fifth to its profits by 2017. The other is declining competition, which would allow them to raise their prices. The withdrawal of second-tier banks should help—on February 26th RBS said it would shrink its commercial and investment-banking operations down to 13 countries from over 50 at the peak of its pomp in 2008.

Yet there are always new competitors to push down margins. Japanese banks are on a cross-border lending bender for the first time since the 1980s. China’s banks are steadily expanding. The Western network banks were right to assume that globalisation would lead to a big increase in the amounts of money sloshing around the world. They have yet to work out how to prosper from it.

READ MORE. http://tinyurl.com/q3kpnps

UPDATE

Why You Will Always End Up Doing Your Marketing Yourself

Talking to startups and clients I sometimes get the impression, they believe for their marketing it would be sufficient to get some influencers to give a shout out or to get a handful of bloggers to write some coverage.

The hard truth is: It is part of your job as an entrepreneur to market your business, and if you do not get this job done, you are likely to fail. And the influencers and bloggers have their own interests in mind, it is not their job to do your marketing.

Don’t get me wrong: Of course there is help to be had and you should go for every help that you can get (or afford): Talk to people who have done it. Get someone to advise you on how to get started and how to optimize your marketing processes. But it is not the job of influencers, bloggers or friends and family to give you persistent exposure. And that is what you are looking for if you really want to make your venture a success.

The hard truth is:

One article on TechCrunch, Mashable or GigaOM will give you traffic for a day or two, if you are lucky a few hundred of signups – most of which are going to forget about you tomorrow. (How I know? Been there, done that.)

A shout out from an influencer (hopefully from your area of interest) on Facebook or Twitter might give you some attention – or it might not even do that. Those visitors are very unlikely to turn into instant customers.

And why do you think a blogger should do your marketing by covering your new service? You might be lucky and convince a blogger to write about your cool service – congratulations. Your chances are higher, if you target the influencers well. Just blasting out to everyone with a large Twitter following will not get you anywhere. However, this can be great for bringing your products before an already attentive audience – but keep in mind that this is not your audience. Tomorrow these people will again listen to the same blogger writing about other products and services. And you will still have to figure out how to market your product.

Marketing is about building brand recognition and trust

You need persistence and constant exposure for this. To manage this with bloggers or influencers when your startup is still small and yet has to proof it is going to grow and last, is more than hard. One shout out or one big blog writing about you is not going to make your marketing. You would need an ongoing stream of TechCrunch articles, influencer shout outs and blog articles – the only way to achieve that is with marketing.

READ MORE. http://tinyurl.com/http-blog-thesocialms-com-wh

This Sticker Automatically Injects Meds When a Chemo Patient Can't

Chemotherapy is a brutal but often life-saving treatment for an even worse disease. It can also reduce a patient's white blood cell count, which hinders the body's ability to fight off infections. Injections of Neulasta (pegfilgrastim) can help boost white blood cells, if given exactly a day later. That's where this sticker comes in handy.

To ensure those injections are given a full 27 hours after chemotherapy, this sticker, applied after treatment, automatically injects the necessary dosage exactly when needed.

The side effects of chemotherapy are notoriously unpleasant, and having to immediately return to a doctor's office for a shot while a patient is trying to recover isn't easy. So Amgen, the company who manufactures Neulasta, created this stick-on injector that allows chemotherapy patients to automatically receive the necessary injection while they're comfortably recovering at home. It also means there are less patients filling a clinic's waiting room who are just there for a simple shot.

The Neulasta injector does need to be applied to a patient by a medical professional. It uses a small needle inserted under the skin for the medication to be properly delivered—it's not just a sticker. But it can be applied and prepped while a patient is still at the clinic receiving their chemotherapy. After the injection it can presumably be easily removed by the patient, or their caregiver, without the need for further medical intervention. So it saves them from having to make the trip to a doctor while they're feeling awful, which helps make the treatment slightly more bearable.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/lNLM7

UPDATE

Great Satire and Marketing Take Care of "Unfinished Business"

Satire is best when everyone can laugh. Such is the case with a marketing campaign for the movie Unfinished Business, which opens today.

Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco strike the poses we know so well from stock photos — those generic images adorning white papers, clickbait and yes, even blog posts on this venue. To promote their movie, the actors recreate many of your favorite stock photo stereotypes, such as business people pointing at a screen; business people inexplicably standing in wedge formation; and business people clapping about … something.

“Successful brands are becoming platforms and need to do more than just drive consumers to a purchase,” a Forbes story about digital marketing stated. “They have to inspire them to participate.”

You can participate by using these images in your next PowerPoint presentation or corporate newsletter. And you can download the images here for free; so you don’t have to see the movie or buy a stock photo subscription to play along.

This is the intersection of brilliant parody and culturally savvy marketing. And everyone is in on the joke, from the movie studio, 20th Century Fox, to a stock image company, iStock by Getty Images.

“We hope these images bring a smile to people’s faces as they recognize classic business stock concepts with a twist,” Craig Peters, general manager of iStock by Getty Images in a statement on Getty’s Web page.

iStock is even creating the illusion of scarcity by offering only four of 12 downloads at a time. You’d have to visit the Web site every week for three weeks to collect all of the photos.

Unfinished Business is a comedy about “a hard-working small business owner and his two associates who travel to Europe to close the most important deal of their lives,” according to the movie’s IMDB page. “But what began as a routine business trip goes off the rails in every way imaginable — and unimaginable.”

Speaking of IMDB, these stock images already appear as photos on the actors’ pages. We can’t be surprised by Vaughn and Franco participating in these shenanigans, given their roles in comedies such as Old School and 21 Jump Street.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/4PUUU

UPDATE

Big & Fast Data: The Rise of Insight-Driven Business

We live in a fast-moving, complex world of increasingly connected people and connected things that are creating vast new digital footprints. To thrive, organizations need to make sense of this big and fast-moving data, to gain real-time access to powerful insights and deliver them at the point of action. But how are data-driven insights changing businesses? Where are organizations today and where are they going?

We surveyed 1,000 C-level executives and senior decision makers in nine regions and nine industries to help us assess where the market is heading.

Big data has brought the market to an inflection point, causing massive disruption:
64% of companies believe that big data is changing traditional business boundaries
58% expect to face increased competition from start-ups enabled by data
24% of companies report disruption from new competitors moving into their industry
In our report, we explore how far companies have got with their initiatives to gain and use insights from big data. Although everybody has realized it is time to move, there are still barriers to big data adoption. We look at the steps that organizations are taking to address them and explain how these steps can evolve into a set of guiding principles that can shape an effective transformation into an insights-led organization.

Today, big data is about business disruption. Organizations are embarking on a battle not just for success but for survival. If you want to survive it’s time to act.

The real battle is for the data that delivers the most relevant and pertinent insights – the combination of data sets that enable effective and more rapid monetization of data. Your data could ultimately become more valuable than your traditional product or services. Big data technologies are the enabler for developing new business models to make that happen.

Profiting from big data is at least as much about organizational integration, change and evolution as it is about the underlying technology. Organizations in our study are already implementing the technology. Now they need to drive the organizational changes needed to make it effective.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/MkbsT

UPDATE

Your New Mantra: Done Is Better Than Perfect. Keep the momentum going, and don't take a zero. That's how the truly exceptional do it. One foot in front of the other.

At the elite level, mental performance--and mental toughness--is what separates the vast pool of "really goods" from the truly exceptional.

And, just like any other world class skill, elite mental toughness isn't something you pick up in a few hours, or over the weekend. Building and keeping it is "abnormal."

I don't say that to discourage you, or to make it seem like it's impossible to improve your own mental performance. In fact, it's the opposite. It's hard to do, but the only barrier between doing it and not doing it is deciding that you'll be determined and consistent.

Unlike throwing a 97-mph fastball, hitting a 320-yard tee shot or shooting a three-pointer, it doesn't take superhuman skill to be mentally tough.

Anybody can do it. It's a matter of going to the "mental gym" I talked about in a previous column, and applying yourself every day.

The every-day part is where most people struggle.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You decide that you want to get in better shape, so you join a gym. You do all the "right" things. You hire a trainer for an introductory session, to get an idea of what kinds of exercises to do. You start going every day, and pound the weights and treadmill hard.

For two weeks, it's great. You're feeling better, and the lifting and running is becoming easier.

But then, you have to travel for work for a few days. When you come back, you want to spend some time with your kids, so you blow off the gym for the weekend and resolve that you'll pick it up again on Monday.

You don't get to the gym until Tuesday, and when you weigh yourself in the locker room, you're back to where you where at the beginning of the process. You get frustrated, and you drop out of the workout routine like you have before.

That's "normal."

To be "abnormal," you don't need superhuman willpower, or to spend thousands of dollars on a trainer to guilt yourself into a commitment.

You need to start with a small step.

Instead of striving to be perfect, commit to getting something done.

Take the mental workouts I described in the other column. They take two minutes to complete. Even at that short interval, there will be days when you don't feel like doing it, or you get too busy.

Instead of putting it off until the next day or some other time, do something. Even if it's just 30 seconds. Whether your working out your mind or your body in the gym, every workout doesn't have to be perfect.

Keep the momentum going, and don't take a zero. That's how the truly exceptional do it. One foot in front of the other.

Done is better than perfect.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/jJxhC

UPDATE

IMF Expected To Approve Fresh Ukraine Bailout

The board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is widely expected to approve a fresh $17.5 billion loan program for Ukraine when it meets on March 11.

The Ukrainian economy -- forecast to contract by 5.5 percent in 2015 -- has suffered in the past year as government forces fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and trade with Russia has almost ceased.

Last week, Ukrainian lawmakers passed austerity measures, including pension cuts and tax increases, intended to help secure the fresh IMF bailout package.

Kyiv hopes to receive up to $11 billion this year to boost its international reserves, which are at their lowest level in more than a decade.

President Petro Poroshenko this week called on the country to "look truth in the eye" and stay united.

"As long as there is war there will be no investment in Ukraine, and people must be told the truth," he said in an interview on March 9.

RAED MORE. https://tr.im/Oaz5f

UPDATE

Google in initial talks to buy Indian startup InMobi: source

Google Inc (GOOGL.O) is in early talks to buy Bangalore-based start-up InMobi, in a move that would strengthen its offering in the increasingly competitive mobile advertising space, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

InMobi, which helps companies target phones and mobile devices in their advertising, was launched in 2007 and claims to have over 1 billion users across 200 countries. It counts Japan's SoftBank (9984.T), an early backer of China's Alibaba, and early stage venture capital firm Sherpalo among investors.

The source, who asked not to be named because the companies have not made the negotiations public, said talks were at an early stage. The source said Google had not yet detailed its terms and conditions for the deal.

InMobi would likely be valued at around $1 billion, the source said.

The Economic Times newspaper first reported news of these ongoing talks on Wednesday.

Both InMobi and Google declined to comment.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/ZruBz

UPDATE

12 Easy Steps to Massive Business Success With Pinterest. 70 million people can't be wrong. Use the power of Pinterest to grow your business now.

Pinterest is an image-filled catalogue of possibilities. Users create boards such as "my dream home," wedding or party ideas, favorite clothes or shoes, awesome DIY projects--and much, much more. A user then searches for vivid images through Pinterest, Internet searches, or off their favorite websites and pins them to their board.

Simply put, people use Pinterest to create boards that represent the things that interest them most. They pin images to their boards that they would love to own, experience, share with others--their boards are their place to go back to that fully resonates with who they are.

As of January 2015, more than 70 million people were using Pinterest. 80 percent of these users are women. Women account for more than 85 percent of consumer purchases. And, the number of pins (or pictures) sent every day through Pinterest is over 2 million. Pinterest is growing so rapidly that it is now creating more internet traffic than Twitter and Reddit combined.

There are more than 30 billion pins and growing--rapidly--on Pinterest.

In just one example of the power of Pinterest--a Denver-based company pinned one of their products onto Pinterest, and the very next week their virtually unknown website was visited 48,000 times. They went from a small-time company to a multi-million dollar company within 18 months.

Think that marketing your business through Pinterest just might be the way to go? If the answer is yes, here are 12 easy steps to knock your business out of the park (in a very good way) with Pinterest.

1. Set up a Business Page on Pinterest (not a personal page).

2. Your business page should have your business name, website, and a very clear description of what you are offering or what your company is about.

3. If your company is connected, link your Pinterest account to your company's Twitter, Facebook, and Google accounts. Have a successful Facebook business page? Check out Pinvolve and increase repins by more than 150%.

4. Explore Pinterest. Search similar products or services and take note of boards, popular pins, and commentary--it's always enlightening to see what pinners are saying and asking.

5. If you don't have images of your products or services (or don't think the ones you do have will work), brainstorm ideas and come up with beautiful, imaginative, and persuasive images. You may need to hire a professional photographer--beautiful images fly on Pinterest.

6. Each image representing your company should be linked to your website and contain rich, clear descriptions.

7. Create some boards--each board should represent your business in a different way. Title boards with keywords--make it easy for pinners to find your images.

8. So that Pinterest users can easily pin images from your website, add a Pin It Button to your website or add an On Hover Pin It Button. The On Hover Pin It Button is not mobile friendly

9. Pin images from your website and from other related pins throughout Pinterest onto your boards.

10. Once established on Pinterest, you will be able to use Pinterest Analytics, which tracks your success and provides invaluable information to help you navigate and grow your business.

11. Communication is important too--follow those businesses on Pinterest that you normally follow on other platforms and if someone leaves a comment or question on one of your pinned images, always follow up.

12. The above steps will get your company on the map within the huge, wonderful world of Pinterest. Keep searching, pinning, interacting, and learning all that Pinterest has to offer. If you Need Help, Pinterest is there to support you and your company.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/xIIRB

UPDATE

Y Combinator-Backed SIRUM Matches Unused Medicine With Low-Income Patients

An estimated $5 billion worth of prescription medication gets burned up, flushed down the drain or thrown in the garbage each year. About $2 billion worth of it just sits on the shelf at long-term care facilities in the United States until it expires, according to University of Chicago researchers.

That’s a terrible waste, considering prescription medication is one of the highest costs in our healthcare system and that one in four families in the United States can’t afford to pay for those prescribed medications.

SIRUM (Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine) is a Y Combinator-backed nonprofit that operates out of the Haas Center at Stanford University. It’s a patent-pending software platform that acts as a sort of on-demand inventory for pharmacies and care facilities to make it easier to redistribute the otherwise unused medications to patients who can’t afford to pay for their prescriptions each year.

The law varies from state to state but 42 states and Guam currently have some sort of “Good Samaritan” program for donated, unused, unexpired medications to low-income patients with a valid prescription. There are state-run drug-donation facilities and other third-party programs, such as Dispose My Meds to locate places to donate this unused medicine in each area, as well.

SIRUM works with these drug donation facilities, pharmacies, nursing homes and clinics as a peer-to-peer redistribution platform that cuts out third-party networks. Instead it lets each organization upload their medical surpluses and needs on the platform in order to find a match for patients in need at that moment.

SIRUM co-founders Kiah Williams, George Wang and Adam Kircher estimate the service has helped redistribute about $3 million worth of unopened, unexpired pills to 20,000 low-income patients since its start in 2011.

With funding from Y Combinator, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, and Google.org, SIRUM is currently operating within California, Oregon and Colorado at the moment. It plans to eventually open in all 50 states.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/Oqe39

UPDATE

Minister sees 'out-dated attitudes' towards apprentices

The skills minister says parents and teachers often have "outdated attitudes" towards apprenticeships.

Nick Boles said apprenticeships should be regarded as a clear alternative to a full-time university place.

Marking national apprentice week, he said he wanted to promote the idea that apprentices could "go as far as they want to go".

Labour has also been highlighting the issue, saying it would introduce a "gold standard" for apprenticeships.

Mr Boles believes apprenticeships have an image problem with older generations - teachers and parents - because they were brought up at a time when university was the clear choice for able pupils.

'Attitude problem'

But he said young people were increasingly seeing them as a viable career path, partly as an "unintended consequence" of university tuition fees.

"People are making quite hard-headed pragmatic judgements," he said.

"I certainly think that when I was growing up, even though many fewer people went to university, there was this sense that if you could go to university, then of course you would - it was automatic, the government basically paid for it and it was the thing you would do if you could.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

I would like to get to a place where there's a choice between two routes, both of which could take you as far as you want to go - one of which is a full-time university degree, the other is an apprenticeship”

He said there was still a perception that apprenticeships were for "mechanics and brickies".

And while he was quick to stress these were important, he said they were by no means the whole picture.

"You can now become an apprentice lawyer, an apprentice accountant, or an apprentice journalist, and I think that perception is taking some time to change," he said.

Mr Boles acknowledged the UK lagged behind other countries - notably Germany - where apprenticeships are regarded far more positively as routes into trades and technical professions.

He said we could learn much from Germany, but it would not fit "our economic model" in its entirety.

"I would like to get to a place where there's a choice between two routes, both of which could take you as far as you want to go - one of which is a full-time university degree, the other is an apprenticeship," he said.

The minister was speaking during a visit to Holition, a London-based creative technology company, which specialises in supplying retailers.

He was shown a "virtual mirror" the company has developed that allows shoppers to see what they would look like in selected clothes without having to change into them, or how make-up might look without having to actually put any on.

To my uneducated eye, it appeared to work by magic.

Thomas Monkman, who is 20 years old, could be described as a poster boy of the government's apprenticeship campaign.

He joined the company as an 18-year-old, and three weeks into his 13-month apprenticeship was handling an important project for Hugo Boss.

"I wanted to get straight into programming and this apprenticeship was a great way to do that.

"I wanted to see how programming is actually used in the real world, rather than in theory," he told me.

"Everyone is just told to go down the university route, apprenticeships are not even seen as a viable alternative.

"But it was a fairly easy choice for me - I wanted learn practically, rather than academically.

"Of course there should be a balance - university is the best option for some people.

"But I think apprenticeships should be more widely known about and used."

"We can find talented people, but they can't necessarily do what we need them to do - apprenticeships give us the chance to mould people into what we need," he said.

"We had quite high minded - almost philanthropic - reasons why we wanted to take on an apprentice.

"But we very quickly realised it was a sound investment.

"We ended up with someone specifically trained to fit into our business."

But Mr Chippindale also recognises that the apprentices also need to benefit.

"We had to prove to him that we were a better career choice for him than going to university."

"Thomas joined at a busy time, and we threw him in at the deep end.

"Three weeks into his apprenticeship he was doing a project for Hugo Boss by himself."

Labour have also been marking national apprentice week, with the shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna outlining his party's plans.

He said he wanted to see more "high-quality apprenticeships, and routes on to technical degrees".

He said he wanted to see the same number of school leavers going into apprenticeships as go to university by 2025.

But he said in order to "ensure genuine parity of esteem between academic and vocational pathways", quality should not be sacrificed for quantity, and that expansion should be "based on a relentless commitment to excellence".

READ MORE. https://tr.im/LTmYx

UPDATE

EEFIG report: Energy Efficiency is the first fuel for the EU Economy
Deutsche Bank contributes to land-mark energy efficiency finance report for the European Union. The conclusion: Energy efficiency investment is the most cost effective way to reduce the European Union’s reliance, and expenditure, on energy imports which today cost the EU over EUR 400 billion a year.
In 2050, 75-90% of today’s buildings will still be in use but 75% of current buildings were built with no or minimal focus on energy efficiency. As buildings account for 40% of Europe’s energy consumption, increasing the renovation rate of buildings is critical. As well, only half of the estimated EUR 60 -100 billion of annual investment required to achieve Europe's 2020 energy efficiency targets in buildings is being met. The dramatic fall in the oil price, and its likely impact in lower European gas prices, highlights the need for Europe to have buildings, industry and SMEs whose competitiveness and running costs are better insulated from the uncertainties and volatility created by commodity price shocks. Combined with the need for Europe to transition to a competitive low carbon economy, these factors make increasing the level of energy efficiency investment of strategic importance to Europe.
International landmark study on how to scale-up investment levels

The European Commission and UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) co-convened a group of finance and other experts to recommend ways to scale-up investment levels. Deutsche Bank was a core member of the Energy Efficiency Financial Institutions Group (EEFIG), which recently published its final report “Energy Efficiency – the first fuel for the EU Economy: How to drive new finance for energy efficiency investments”. The EEFIG report identifies the critical success factors, policies, market instruments and financing solutions to increase energy efficiency investments in Europe in the buildings, industry and SME sectors. The international landmark study is the result of 16 months of work of more than 120 active participants representing finance, policy makers, the buildings sector, industry, SMEs and energy efficiency market participants.
A five-fold increase in private energy efficiency investments in European buildings is required

The EEFIG report estimates that a five-fold increase in private energy efficiency investments in European buildings is required by 2030. Whilst there is no single solution, EEFIG identifies a framework of cross-cutting measures and requirements for different building and industry sub-segments. EEFIG identifies the need to engage multiple stakeholder groups, scale-up the use of several financial instruments within a clear and enforced “carrot and stick” legislative framework and identifies 19 recommended market and policy actions in four strategic areas of market, economic, financial and institutional.
Investing into energy efficiency measures is fundamentally important for Europe

European Commission Vice President, Maroš Šefcovic, welcomed the launch of the report with the following words: "Investing into energy efficiency measures in buildings, industry and in SMEs is fundamentally important for Europe. I will strive to ensure that energy efficiency investment financing is looked at in our forthcoming policies and that this Report will be used as inspiration for our further work.” The EEFIG report had a direct influence on the new European Energy Union strategy.

Caio Koch-Weser, Vice Chairman of Deutsche Bank, said in reference to EEFIG’s work: “Our experience and research shows that energy efficiency finance and investment opportunities can be profitable and contribute to improving energy security, economic growth and reduce our footprint. Scaling up investment into Europe’s buildings and industry requires much greater cooperation between policy makers, companies and the financial sector. There is also great potential to help deepen the real estate investment industry’s already strong focus on energy efficiency by using robust information, incentives and targets to drive investment.”

Felipe Calderón, Former President of Mexico and Chair of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate commented: “This report’s conclusion that scaling up energy efficiency is strategically and economically important for the European Union matches both my experience in government and the conclusion of the New Climate Economy initiative. Energy efficiency is already the biggest source of “new” energy supply, but large untapped potential remains in Europe. Implementing the report’s recommendations can support economic growth and help tackle climate change at the same time.”

Deutsche Bank’s financial expertise to assist clients in reducing energy use

There are many ways in which Deutsche Bank is active in energy efficiency and deploys our financial expertise to assist clients in reducing energy use:

The Bank has made significant efforts to reduce our own energy use, such as the green refurbishment of the Frankfurt Towers and installing energy efficient services, lighting and heating systems in many of our buildings and using green leases in more of the buildings we occupy. These efforts contribute to the Bank’s carbon neutrality and cost reduction goals.

This expertise was used to help win the fund mandate for the European Energy Efficiency Fund, which invests in projects to improve the energy efficiency of public sector buildings.

Deutsche AWM real estate has an increasing focus on energy efficiency and will publish an annual report on progress in March, alongside Deutsche Bank’s Annual Report and Corporate Responsibility report
Deutsche AWM real estate has an energy efficient property investment team focused on retrofits of physical buildings.

The Sal Oppenheim managed Green For Growth Fund focuses on investments in Southeast Europe and other neighboring countries such as Turkey and Ukraine.

The Corporate Banking & Securities (CB&S) division has structured an energy efficiency bond in California and is a leading player in the growing green bond market.
The Private and Business Clients (PBC) division provides loans to businesses and individuals to support energy efficiency and renewable energy investment.

READ MORE. https://tr.im/8XK1g

ORGANIZATIONS .. I HAVE WORKED WITH !

(¯`*•. As a consultant, manager and strategist, Andres has worked with institutions such as:

► Toyota,
► Mitsubishi,
► World Bank,
► Shell,
► Statoil,
► Total,
► Exxon,
► Mobil,
► Citgo,
► PDVSA,
► GE,
► GMAC,
► TNT Delivery Express,
► GTE,
► Amoco,
► BP,
► Abbot Laboratories,
► World Health Organization,
► Ernst Young Consulting,
► SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation),
► Pak Mail,
► Wilpro (Williams Company),
► Phillips Petroleum Company,
► Dupont,
► Conoco,
► ENI (Italy’s petroleum state-owned firm),
► Chevron, and
► LDG Management (HCC Benefits).

NASA's VISION-21 Symposium

The VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993.

The original version of this article was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993. A slightly changed version appeared in the Winter 1993 issue of Whole Earth Review.

Vernor Vinge

Department of Mathematical Sciences

San Diego State University

(This article may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes if it is copied in its entirety, including this notice.)

Abstract

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? These questions are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are presented.

What is The Singularity?

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):

There may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly thereafter.)

Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.

Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.

Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.

The first three possibilities depend in large part on improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles Platt [20] has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)

What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter time scale.

The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.

Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.

From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.

Developments that before were thought might only happen in "a million years" (if ever) will likely happen in the next century. (In [5], Greg Bear paints a picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.)

I think it's fair to call this event a singularity ("the Singularity" for the purposes of this paper). It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace.

Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown. In the 1950s there were very few who saw it: Stan Ulam [28] paraphrased John von Neumann as saying:

One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.

Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman intellect. (For me, the superhumanity is the essence of the Singularity. Without that we would get a glut of technical riches, never properly absorbed (see [25]).)

In the 1960s there was recognition of some of the implications of superhuman intelligence. I. J. Good wrote [11]:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any any man however clever.

Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind.

Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. ... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make.

Good has captured the essence of the runaway, but does not pursue its most disturbing consequences. Any intelligent machine of the sort he describes would not be humankind's "tool" -- any more than humans are the tools of rabbits or robins or chimpanzees.

Through the '60s and '70s and '80s, recognition of the cataclysm spread [29] [1] [31] [5].

Perhaps it was the science-fiction writers who felt the first concrete impact. After all, the "hard" science-fiction writers are the ones who try to write specific stories about all that technology may do for us.

More and more, these writers felt an opaque wall across the future. Once, they could put such fantasies millions of years in the future [24]. Now they saw that their most diligent extrapolations resulted in the unknowable ... soon. Once, galactic empires might have seemed a Post-Human domain. Now, sadly, even interplanetary ones are.

What about the '90s and the '00s and the '10s, as we slide toward the edge? How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view? For a while yet, the general critics of machine sapience will have good press.

After all, till we have hardware as powerful as a human brain it is probably foolish to think we'll be able to create human equivalent (or greater) intelligence. (There is the far-fetched possibility that we could make a human equivalent out of less powerful hardware, if we were willing to give up speed, if we were willing to settle for an artificial being who was literally slow [30].

But it's much more likely that devising the software will be a tricky process, involving lots of false starts and experimentation. If so, then the arrival of self-aware machines will not happen till after the development of hardware that is substantially more powerful than humans' natural equipment.)

But as time passes, we should see more symptoms. The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors. (I have heard thoughtful comic book writers worry about how to have spectacular effects when everything visible can be produced by the technologically commonplace.)

We will see automation replacing higher and higher level jobs. We have tools right now (symbolic math programs, cad/cam) that release us from most low-level drudgery.

Or put another way: The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of _true_ technological unemployment finally come true.

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months. (Of course, this could just be me losing my imagination as I get old, but I see the effect in others too.)

Like the shock in a compressible flow, the Singularity moves closer as we accelerate through the critical speed.

And what of the arrival of the Singularity itself? What can be said of its actual appearance? Since it involves an intellectual runaway, it will probably occur faster than any technical revolution seen so far.

The precipitating event will likely be unexpected -- perhaps even to the researchers involved. ("But all our previous models were catatonic!

We were just tweaking some parameters....") If networking is widespread enough (into ubiquitous embedded systems), it may seem as if our artifacts as a whole had suddenly wakened.

And what happens a month or two (or a day or two) after that? I have only analogies to point to: The rise of humankind. We will be in the Post-Human era. And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove ... instead of twenty.

Can the Singularity be Avoided?

Well, maybe it won't happen at all: Sometimes I try to imagine the symptoms that we should expect to see if the Singularity is not to develop.

There are the widely respected arguments of Penrose [19] and Searle [22] against the practicality of machine sapience. In August of 1992, Thinking Machines Corporation held a workshop to investigate the question "How We Will Build a Machine that Thinks" [27].

As you might guess from the workshop's title, the participants were not especially supportive of the arguments against machine intelligence.

In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds.

However, there was much debate about the raw hardware power that is present in organic brains. A minority felt that the largest 1992 computers were within three orders of magnitude of the power of the human brain.

The majority of the participants agreed with Moravec's estimate [17] that we are ten to forty years away from hardware parity.

And yet there was another minority who pointed to [7] [21], and conjectured that the computational competence of single neurons may be far higher than generally believed.

If so, our present computer hardware might be as much as _ten_ orders of magnitude short of the equipment we carry around in our heads. If this is true (or for that matter, if the Penrose or Searle critique is valid), we might never see a Singularity.

Instead, in the early '00s we would find our hardware performance curves beginning to level off -- this because of our inability to automate the design work needed to support further hardware improvements.

We'd end up with some _very_ powerful hardware, but without the ability to push it further.

Commercial digital signal processing might be awesome, giving an analog appearance even to digital operations, but nothing would ever "wake up" and there would never be the intellectual runaway which is the essence of the Singularity.

It would likely be seen as a golden age ... and it would also be an end of progress. This is very like the future predicted by Gunther Stent. In fact, on page 137 of [25], Stent explicitly cites the development of transhuman intelligence as a sufficient condition to break his projections.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the "threat" and be in deadly fear of it, progress toward the goal would continue. In fiction, there have been stories of laws passed forbidding the construction of "a machine in the likeness of the human mind" [13].

In fact, the competitive advantage -- economic, military, even artistic -- of every advance in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will get them first.

Eric Drexler [8] has provided spectacular insights about how far technical improvement may go. He agrees that superhuman intelligences will be available in the near future -- and that such entities pose a threat to the human status quo.

But Drexler argues that we can confine such transhuman devices so that their results can be examined and used safely.

This is I. J. Good's ultraintelligent machine, with a dose of caution.

I argue that confinement is intrinsically impractical. For the case of physical confinement: Imagine yourself locked in your home with only limited data access to the outside, to your masters.

If those masters thought at a rate -- say -- one million times slower than you, there is little doubt that over a period of years (your time) you could come up with "helpful advice" that would incidentally set you free. (I call this "fast thinking" form of superintelligence "weak superhumanity".

Such a "weakly superhuman" entity would probably burn out in a few weeks of outside time.

"Strong superhumanity" would be more than cranking up the clock speed on a human-equivalent mind.

It's hard to say precisely what "strong superhumanity" would be like, but the difference appears to be profound. Imagine running a dog mind at very high speed.

Would a thousand years of doggy living add up to any human insight? (Now if the dog mind were cleverly rewired and _then_ run at high speed, we might see something different....) Many speculations about superintelligence seem to be based on the weakly superhuman model.

I believe that our best guesses about the post-Singularity world can be obtained by thinking on the nature of strong superhumanity. I will return to this point later in the paper.)

Another approach to confinement is to build _rules_ into the mind of the created superhuman entity (for example, Asimov's Laws [3]).

I think that any rules strict enough to be effective would also produce a device whose ability was clearly inferior to the unfettered versions (and so human competition would favor the development of the those more dangerous models).

Still, the Asimov dream is a wonderful one: Imagine a willing slave, who has 1000 times your capabilities in every way.

Imagine a creature who could satisfy your every safe wish (whatever that means) and still have 99.9% of its time free for other activities.

There would be a new universe we never really understood, but filled with benevolent gods (though one of _my_ wishes might be to become one of them).

If the Singularity can not be prevented or confined, just how bad could the Post-Human era be? Well ... pretty bad. The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility. (Or as Eric Drexler put it of nanotechnology: Given all that such technology can do, perhaps governments would simply decide that they no longer need citizens!).

Yet physical extinction may not be the scariest possibility. Again, analogies: Think of the different ways we relate to animals. Some of the crude physical abuses are implausible, yet.... In a Post-Human world there would still be plenty of niches where human equivalent automation would be desirable: embedded systems in autonomous devices, self-aware daemons in the lower functioning of larger sentients. (A strongly superhuman intelligence would likely be a Society of Mind [16] with some very competent components.) Some of these human equivalents might be used for nothing more than digital signal processing.

They would be more like whales than humans. Others might be very human-like, yet with a one-sidedness, a _dedication_ that would put them in a mental hospital in our era.

Though none of these creatures might be flesh-and-blood humans, they might be the closest things in the new enviroment to what we call human now. (I. J. Good had something to say about this, though at this late date the advice may be moot: Good [12] proposed a "Meta-Golden Rule", which might be paraphrased as "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors."

It's a wonderful, paradoxical idea (and most of my friends don't believe it) since the game-theoretic payoff is so hard to articulate. Yet if we were able to follow it, in some se

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology. And yet ... we are the initiators.

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things. We have the freedom to establish initial conditions, make things happen in ways that are less inimical than others.

Of course (as with starting avalanches), it may not be clear what the right guiding nudge really is:

Other Paths to the Singularity: Intelligence Amplification_

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

But as I noted at the beginning of this paper, there are other paths to superhumanity. Computer networks and human-computer interfaces seem more mundane than AI, and yet they could lead to the Singularity.

I call this contrasting approach Intelligence Amplification (IA). IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.

But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence. Even now, the team of a PhD human and good computer workstation (even an off-net workstation!) could probably max any written intelligence test in existence.

And it's very likely that IA is a much easier road to the achievement of superhumanity than pure AI. In humans, the hardest development problems have already been solved.

Building up from within ourselves ought to be easier than figuring out first what we really are and then building machines that are all of that. And there is at least conjectural precedent for this approach. Cairns-Smith [6] has speculated that biological life may have begun as an adjunct to still more primitive life based on crystalline growth.

Lynn Margulis (in [15] and elsewhere) has made strong arguments that mutualism is a great driving force in evolution.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded. What goes on with AI will often have applications in IA, and vice versa.

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence.

With that insight, we may see projects that are not as directly applicable as conventional interface and network design work, but which serve to advance us toward the Singularity along the IA path.

Here are some possible projects that take on special significance, given the IA point of view:

Human/computer team automation: Take problems that are normally considered for purely machine solution (like hill-climbing problems), and design programs and interfaces that take a advantage of humans' intuition and available computer hardware.

Considering all the bizarreness of higher dimensional hill-climbing problems (and the neat algorithms that have been devised for their solution), there could be some very interesting displays and control tools provided to the human team member.

Develop human/computer symbiosis in art: Combine the graphic generation capability of modern machines and the esthetic sensibility of humans.

Of course, there has been an enormous amount of research in designing computer aids for artists, as labor saving tools. I'm suggesting that we explicitly aim for a greater merging of competence, that we explicitly recognize the cooperative approach that is possible. Karl Sims [23] has done wonderful work in this direction.

Allow human/computer teams at chess tournaments. We already have programs that can play better than almost all humans. But how much work has been done on how this power could be used by a human, to get something even better?

If such teams were allowed in at least some chess tournaments, it could have the positive effect on IA research that allowing computers in tournaments had for the corresponding niche in AI.

Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer. (This is an aspect of IA that fits so well with known economic advantages that lots of effort is already being spent on it.)

Develop more symmetrical decision support systems. A popular research/product area in recent years has been decision support systems. This is a form of IA, but may be too focussed on systems that are oracular.

As much as the program giving the user information, there must be the idea of the user giving the program guidance.

Use local area nets to make human teams that really work (ie, are more effective than their component members). This is generally the area of "groupware", already a very popular commercial pursuit.

The change in viewpoint here would be to regard the group activity as a combination organism. In one sense, this suggestion might be regarded as the goal of inventing a "Rules of Order" for such combination operations.

For instance, group focus might be more easily maintained than in classical meetings. Expertise of individual human members could be isolated from ego issues such that the contribution of different members is focussed on the team project.

And of course shared data bases could be used much more conveniently than in conventional committee operations. (Note that this suggestion is aimed at team operations rather than political meetings.

In a political setting, the automation described above would simply enforce the power of the persons making the rules!)

Exploit the worldwide Internet as a combination human/machine tool.

Of all the items on the list, progress in this is proceeding the fastest and may run us into the Singularity before anything else.

The power and influence of even the present-day Internet is vastly underestimated.

For instance, I think our contemporary computer systems would break under the weight of their own complexity if it weren't for the edge that the USENET "group mind" gives the system administration and support people!

The very anarchy of the worldwide net development is evidence of its potential. As connectivity and bandwidth and archive size and computer speed all increase, we are seeing something like Lynn Margulis' [15] vision of the biosphere as data processor recapitulated, but at a million times greater speed and with millions of humanly intelligent agents (ourselves).

The above examples illustrate research that can be done within the context of contemporary computer science departments. There are other paradigms.

For example, much of the work in Artificial Intelligence and neural nets would benefit from a closer connection with biological life. Instead of simply trying to model and understand biological life with computers, research could be directed toward the creation of composite systems that rely on biological life for guidance or for the providing features we don't understand well enough yet to implement in hardware.

A long-time dream of science-fiction has been direct brain to computer interfaces [2] [29]. In fact, there is concrete work that can be done (and is being done) in this area:

Limb prosthetics is a topic of direct commercial applicability. Nerve to silicon transducers can be made [14].

This is an exciting, near-term step toward direct communication.

Direct links into brains seem feasible, if the bit rate is low: given human learning flexibility, the actual brain neuron targets might not have to be precisely selected.

Even 100 bits per second would be of great use to stroke victims who would otherwise be confined to menu-driven interfaces.

Plugging in to the optic trunk has the potential for bandwidths of 1 Mbit/second or so. But for this, we need to know the fine-scale architecture of vision, and we need to place an enormous web of electrodes with exquisite precision.

If we want our high bandwidth connection to be _in addition_ to what paths are already present in the brain, the problem becomes vastly more intractable. Just sticking a grid of high-bandwidth receivers into a brain certainly won't do it.

But suppose that the high-bandwidth grid were present while the brain structure was actually setting up, as the embryo develops.

That suggests: Animal embryo experiments. I wouldn't expect any IA success in the first years of such research, but giving developing brains access to complex simulated neural structures might be very interesting to the people who study how the embryonic brain develops.

In the long run, such experiments might produce animals with additional sense paths and interesting intellectual abilities.

Originally, I had hoped that this discussion of IA would yield some clearly safer approaches to the Singularity. (After all, IA allows our participation in a kind of transcendance.)

Alas, looking back over these IA proposals, about all I am sure of is that they should be considered, that they may give us more options. But as for safety ... well, some of the suggestions are a little scarey on their face.

One of my informal reviewers pointed out that IA for individual humans creates a rather sinister elite. We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

Much of that deadliness may not be necessary in today's world, one where losers take on the winners' tricks and are coopted into the winners' enterprises.

A creature that was built _de novo_ might possibly be a much more benign entity than one with a kernel based on fang and talon. And even the egalitarian view of an Internet that wakes up along with all mankind can be viewed as a nightmare [26].

The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being. I think a closer look at the notion of strong superhumanity can show why that is.

Strong Superhumanity and the Best We Can Ask for

Suppose we could tailor the Singularity. Suppose we could attain our most extravagant hopes. What then would we ask for: That humans themselves would become their own successors, that whatever injustice occurs would be tempered by our knowledge of our roots.

For those who remained unaltered, the goal would be benign treatment (perhaps even giving the stay-behinds the appearance of being masters of godlike slaves).

It could be a golden age that also involved progress (overleaping Stent's barrier). Immortality (or at least a lifetime as long as we can make the universe survive [10] [4]) would be achievable.

But in this brightest and kindest world, the philosophical problems themselves become intimidating.

A mind that stays at the same capacity cannot live forever; after a few thousand years it would look more like a repeating tape loop than a person. (The most chilling picture I have seen of this is in [18].)

To live indefinitely long, the mind itself must grow ... and when it becomes great enough, and looks back ... what fellow-feeling can it have with the soul that it was originally?

Certainly the later being would be everything the original was, but so much vastly more. And so even for the individual, the Cairns-Smith or Lynn Margulis notion of new life growing incrementally out of the old must still be valid.

This "problem" about immortality comes up in much more direct ways. The notion of ego and self-awareness has been the bedrock of the hardheaded rationalism of the last few centuries.

Yet now the notion of self-awareness is under attack from the Artificial Intelligence people ("self-awareness and other delusions").

Intelligence Amplification undercuts our concept of ego from another direction.

The post-Singularity world will involve extremely high-bandwidth networking. A central feature of strongly superhuman entities will likely be their ability to communicate at variable bandwidths, including ones far higher than speech or written messages.

What happens when pieces of ego can be copied and merged, when the size of a selfawareness can grow or shrink to fit the nature of the problems under consideration?

These are essential features of strong superhumanity and the Singularity. Thinking about them, one begins to feel how essentially strange and different the Post-Human era will be -- _no matter how cleverly and benignly it is brought to be_.

From one angle, the vision fits many of our happiest dreams: a time unending, where we can truly know one another and understand the deepest mysteries. From another angle, it's a lot like the worst- case scenario I imagined earlier in this paper.

Which is the valid viewpoint? In fact, I think the new era is simply too different to fit into the classical frame of good and evil.

That frame is based on the idea of isolated, immutable minds connected by tenuous, low-bandwith links. But the post-Singularity world _does_ fit with the larger tradition of change and cooperation that started long ago (perhaps even before the rise of biological life). I think there _are_ notions of ethics that would apply in such an era.

Research into IA and high-bandwidth communications should improve this understanding.

I see just the glimmerings of this now [32]. There is Good's Meta-Golden Rule; perhaps there are rules for distinguishing self from others on the basis of bandwidth of connection.

And while mind and self will be vastly more labile than in the past, much of what we value (knowledge, memory, thought) need never be lost.

I think Freeman Dyson has it right when he says [9]: "God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension."

[I wish to thank John Carroll of San Diego State University and Howard Davidson of Sun Microsystems for discussing the draft version of this paper with me.]

Annotated Sources [and an occasional plea for bibliographical help]

[1] Alfve'n, Hannes, writing as Olof Johanneson, _The End of Man?_, Award Books, 1969 earlier published as "The Tale of the Big Computer", Coward-McCann, translated from a book copyright 1966 Albert Bonniers Forlag AB with English translation copyright 1966 by Victor Gollanz, Ltd.

[2] Anderson, Poul, "Kings Who Die", _If_, March 1962, p8-36. Reprinted in _Seven Conquests_, Poul Anderson, MacMillan Co., 1969.

[3] Asimov, Isaac, "Runaround", _Astounding Science Fiction_, March 1942, p94. Reprinted in _Robot Visions_, Isaac Asimov, ROC, 1990. Asimov describes the development of his robotics stories in this book.

[4] Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler, _The Anthropic Cosmological Principle_, Oxford University Press, 1986.

[5] Bear, Greg, "Blood Music", _Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact_, June, 1983. Expanded into the novel _Blood Music_, Morrow, 1985.

[6] Cairns-Smith, A. G., _Seven Clues to the Origin of Life_, Cambridge University Press, 1985.

[7] Conrad, Michael _et al._, "Towards an Artificial Brain", _BioSystems_, vol 23, pp175-218, 1989.

[8] Drexler, K. Eric, _Engines of Creation_, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986.

[9] Dyson, Freeman, _Infinite in All Directions_, Harper && Row, 1988.

[10] Dyson, Freeman, "Physics and Biology in an Open Universe", _Review of Modern Physics_, vol 51, pp447-460, 1979.

[11] Good, I. J., "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine", in _Advances in Computers_, vol 6, Franz L. Alt and Morris Rubinoff, eds, pp31-88, 1965, Academic Press.

[12] Good, I. J., [Help! I can't find the source of Good's Meta-Golden Rule, though I have the clear recollection of hearing about it sometime in the 1960s. Through the help of the net, I have found pointers to a number of related items. G. Harry Stine and Andrew Haley have written about metalaw as it might relate to extraterrestrials: G. Harry Stine, "How to Get along with Extraterrestrials ... or Your Neighbor", _Analog Science Fact- Science Fiction_, February, 1980, p39-47.] [13] Herbert, Frank, _Dune_, Berkley Books, 1985. However, this novel was serialized in _Analog Science Fiction-Science Fact_ in the 1960s.

[14] Kovacs, G. T. A. _et al._, "Regeneration Microelectrode Array for Peripheral Nerve Recording and Stimulation", _IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering_, v 39, n 9, pp 893-902.

[15] Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan, _Microcosmos, Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors_, Summit Books, 1986.

[16] Minsky, Marvin, _Society of Mind_, Simon and Schuster, 1985.

[17] Moravec, Hans, _Mind Children_, Harvard University Press, 1988.

[18] Niven, Larry, "The Ethics of Madness", _If_, April 1967, pp82-108. Reprinted in _Neutron Star_, Larry Niven, Ballantine Books, 1968.

[19] Penrose, Roger, _The Emperor's New Mind_, Oxford University Press, 1989.

[20] Platt, Charles, Private Communication.

[21] Rasmussen, S. _et al._, "Computational Connectionism within Neurons: a Model of Cytoskeletal Automata Subserving Neural Networks", in _Emergent Computation_, Stephanie Forrest, ed., pp428-449, MIT Press, 1991.

[22] Searle, John R., "Minds, Brains, and Programs", in _The Behavioral and Brain Sciences_, vol 3, Cambridge University Press, 1980. The essay is reprinted in _The Mind's I_, edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, Basic Books, 1981 (my source for this reference). This reprinting contains an excellent critique of the Searle essay.

[23] Sims, Karl, "Interactive Evolution of Dynamical Systems", Thinking Machines Corporation, Technical Report Series (published in _Toward a Practice of Autonomous Systems: Proceedings of the First European Conference on Artificial Life_, Paris, MIT Press, December 1991.

[24] Stapledon, Olaf, _The Starmaker_, Berkley Books, 1961 (but from the date on forward, probably written before 1937).

[25] Stent, Gunther S., _The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress_, The Natural History Press, 1969.

[26] Swanwick Michael, _Vacuum Flowers_, serialized in _Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine_, December(?) 1986 - February 1987. Republished by Ace Books, 1988.

[27] Thearling, Kurt, "How We Will Build a Machine that Thinks", a workshop at Thinking Machines Corporation, August 24-26, 1992. Personal Communication.

[28] Ulam, S., Tribute to John von Neumann, _Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society_, vol 64, nr 3, part 2, May 1958, pp1-49.

[29] Vinge, Vernor, "Bookworm, Run!", _Analog_, March 1966, pp8-40. Reprinted in _True Names and Other Dangers_, Vernor Vinge, Baen Books, 1987.

[30] Vinge, Vernor, "True Names", _Binary Star Number 5_, Dell, 1981. Reprinted in _True Names and Other Dangers_, Vernor Vinge, Baen Books, 1987.

[31] Vinge, Vernor, First Word, _Omni_, January 1983, p10.

[32] Vinge, Vernor, To Appear [ :-) ].

QUANTA

Wednesday, March 11, 2015