One of the first big crowdsourcing wins came through Peter Diamandis's X Prize platform. Their stated mission is to bring about "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentivized competition.
I spent some time this week with Christian Cotichini, co-founder, and CEO of HeroX. Watch this three-minute video to get an idea how crowdsourcing is becoming more mainstream and powerful.
And, ultimately, it's inspiring and momentum building to a new age of future space explorers.
When I was growing up, the space race caught the public's hearts and minds. I was a kid, but I still remember watching the lunar landing. It was a big deal!
Likewise, I remember when astronauts were positioned as national heroes. Now, we're more jaded.
In the past decade, rockets, space-stations, satellites, etc. were often just an afterthought or a small filler news item. Meanwhile, A.I., Cloning, Voice Recognition, 3D Printing, Drones, and other technological advances were the sexy attention-getting topics.
Recently, that has changed. The space race is getting hot again. Resources are pouring into this area, and SpaceX's launch is proof that we are making progress (and probably altering life's history).
Take a look.
This was supposed to be captivating. Teachers can show their students a rocket launch where a man shot a car into space … then they can watch the car float through space. It's taking what we're used to only seeing in movies … and making it real.
Passion in the sciences is important, and successes like this can ignite passion in our future, in more than just space exploration.
The adoption of Artificial Intelligence by more industries, and it's subsequent advances, raise a lot of questions.
For example, Saudi Arabia recently gave "Sophia the Robot" citizenship. That makes Saudi Arabia the first country to grant a robot citizenship. This isn't the first time non-persons have been granted the rights of a citizen, but it does raise questions.
Another question I hear more often is:
How long until the machines are better at my job than me?
Automation used to mean big, bulky machines doing manual and repetitive work, but today, automation can land aircraft, diagnose cancer and trade.
Kurzgesagt, a YouTube channel specializing in explaining things "in a nutshell" took on the new wave of automation. It's a little long at 11 minutes, but it's worth watching.
Kurzesegast asserts that in the past, innovation created new industries or allowed increased scale … but the number of jobs the internet and Artificial Intelligence create aren't matchingthe number of jobs they're making obsolete.
Personally, I believe that freeing us to do more has always been a boon to society. Electricity put a lot of people out of work as well. Nonetheless, look what it made possible.
To date, human progress has been based on the division of labor. As our society progressed, our jobs have become more and more specialized. Now, machines will be able to break-down complex jobs into simple parts and complete them faster than we can.
Machine Learning is being done faster and better. And you can bet that will only become more true. So, yes, the same technology that's currently creating opportunities could eventually put you out of a job … but it also creates an opportunity for something new.
Basic concepts (like what constitutes a person and which things are alive) are not so basic anymore. And the implications are fascinating as well. For example, people are discussing the taxation of robots, a Universal Basic Income, and even One-Child Policies.
There's a lot of change coming, and that can be scary, but there's plenty of reason to be excited as well.
It was just announced that Chinese scientists have cloned two long-trailed macaques using the same technique that produced Dolly.
Since humans are primates as well, this is an exciting, and mildly terrifying, step towards cloning humans.
Pragmatically, this bolsters medical research by making it possible to study diseases on uniform subjects, but it also raises tough questions on human cloning.
I know it's late notice, but a friend of mine has two tickets for the Super Bowl in Minneapolis, MN at the new U. S. Bank Stadium on Sunday, February 4th. They are box seats and he paid $3,500 per ticket, which includes the ride to and from the airport, lunch, dinner, a $400.00 bar tab and a pass to the winner's locker room after the game.
What he didn't realize when he bought them last year was that it's on the same day as his wedding.
story hat-tip to JW.
If you are interested, he is looking for someone to take his place. It's at St. Paul's Church at 3 p.m. Her name is Ashley. She's 5'4", about 115 pounds, a good cook, loves to fish and hunt and will clean your truck. She'll be the one in the white dress.
Saw this and thought it was funny.
Who do you think is going to win the Superbowl? Patriots or Eagles?
What is worth noting, however, is that while you may be thinking "this player must be unstoppable" … statistically, he's average.
The "composite" NBA player would be the 112th best player in the league. He's the fourth best starter on an okay team.
We found the same thing with our trading bots. The ones that made it through the most filters weren't the star performers. They were the average bots that did enough not to fail (but failed to make the list as top performers in any of the categories). The survivors were generalists, not specialists.
The reminder is that you won't find exceptional specialists if your focus is on generalized safety.
