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The Big Nine

Author : Amy Webb

Publisher : PublicAffairs

Page : 280 pages

File Size : 43,87 MB

Release : 2019-03-05

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1541773748

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Book Description

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.



The Work of the Future

Author : David H. Autor

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 189 pages

File Size : 38,67 MB

Release : 2022-06-21

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0262367742

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Book Description

Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.



Artificial Intelligence and Social Work

Author : Milind Tambe

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 269 pages

File Size : 10,81 MB

Release : 2018-11-29

Category : Computers

ISBN : 1108425992

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Book Description

An introductory guide with real-life examples on using AI to help homeless youth, diabetes patients, and other social welfare interventions.



Routledge Handbook of Social Futures

Author : Carlos López Galviz

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 436 pages

File Size : 45,31 MB

Release : 2021-11-22

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0429803842

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Book Description

Featuring chapters from an international range of leading and emerging scholars, this Handbook provides a collection of cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research that sheds new light on contemporary futures studies. Engaging with key defining questions of the early twenty-first century such as climate change, big data, AI, the future of economics, education, mental health, cities and more, the Handbook provides a review and synthesis of futures scholarship, highlighting the role that societies can and should play in their making. While the various chapters demonstrate how futures emerge and take shape in particular places at particular times, the distinctive insight provided by the volume overall is that futures thinking today must be social and contextual. By presenting a range of futures work from contexts around the globe, the Handbook contextualizes techniques – forecasting, backcasting, scenario planning, collaboration and co-production– to ask how different dimensions of the social are created and circulated in the process. Through its thirty chapters, the volume explores and interrogates narratives, anticipations, enactments, ecologies, collaborations, prospections and so on to highlight which versions of the social are legitimized and which are encouraged and foreclosed. This Handbook opens an important conversation about the centrality of the social in futures thinking. By bringing arts, humanities and social sciences scholars and practitioners into conversation with biologists, environmental, climate and computer scientists, this volume seeks to encourage new pathways across, between and within multiple disciplines to interrogate the futures we need and want. The social must be our starting point if we are to steer our planet in a direction that supports good lives for the many, everywhere.



Full-Spectrum Thinking

Author : Bob Johansen

Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Page : 272 pages

File Size : 48,29 MB

Release : 2020-03-02

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 1523087536

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Book Description

Leading futurist Bob Johansen shows how a new way of thinking, enhanced by new technologies, will help leaders break free of limiting labels and see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world. The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we're restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. Categories lead us toward certainty but away from clarity, and categorical thinking moves us away from understanding the bigger picture. Sticking with this old way of thinking and seeing isn't just foolish, it's dangerous. Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to seek patterns and clarity outside, across, beyond, or maybe even without any boxes or categories while resisting false certainty and simplistic binary choices. It reveals our commonalities that are hidden in plain view. Bob Johansen lays out the core concepts of full-spectrum thinking and reveals the role that digital media—including gameful engagement, big-data analytics, visualization, blockchain, and machine learning—will play in facilitating and enhancing it. He offers examples of broader spectrums and new applications in a wide range of areas that will become possible first, then mandatory. This visionary book provides powerful ways to make sense of new opportunities and see the world as it really is.



Imagining Collective Futures

Author : Constance de Saint-Laurent

Publisher : Springer

Page : 301 pages

File Size : 42,9 MB

Release : 2018-05-08

Category : Psychology

ISBN : 3319760513

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Book Description

It is a commonly held assumption among cultural, social, and political psychologists that imagining the future of societies we live in has the potential to change how we think and act in the world. However little research has been devoted to whether this effect exists in collective imaginations, of social groups, communities and nations, for instance. This book explores the part that imagination and creativity play in the construction of collective futures, and the diversity of outlets in which these are presented, from fiction and cultural symbols to science and technology. The authors discuss this effect in social phenomena such as in intergroup conflict and social change, and focus on several cases studies to illustrate how the imagination of collective futures can guide social and political action. This book brings together theoretical and empirical contributions from cultural, social, and political psychology to offer insight into our constant (re)imagination of the societies in which we live.



Shaping the Futures of Work

Author : Nilanjan Raghunath

Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Page : 212 pages

File Size : 40,22 MB

Release : 2021-09-15

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0228010063

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Book Description

The widespread belief that tech-savvy, educated millennials are well positioned to handle the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution is unfounded. It does not fully grasp the reality of a flux society, where relevant technological skills and knowledge are continuously changing: no one is permanently tech-savvy. Millennials, like other generations, face the challenge of needing to continually reskill. This has compounded their struggle to begin their careers at a point when there is no longer any guarantee of lifetime employment or retirement at a set age. Shaping the Futures of Work is a timely sociological exploration of the impact of technological innovations on employment. Nilanjan Raghunath proposes that stakeholders such as states, enterprises, and citizens hold equally important roles in ensuring that people can adapt, innovate, and thrive within conditions of flux. A promising model focuses on collaboration and proactive governance. While good governance includes citizen engagement, proactive governance goes one step further, creating inclusive policies, roadmaps, and infrastructure for social and economic progress. This book reveals that lifelong learning and adaptability are imperative, even for well-educated professionals. Using Singapore and Singaporean millennials as a case study, Raghunath examines proactive governance and delivers research and analysis to elucidate career trajectories, pointing to a work ethic that aims to engage with technological futures. Looking at local and global sociological literature to confirm the need for proactive governance, Shaping the Futures of Work suggests that Singaporean millennials – and professionals around the world – need to better prepare themselves for flux, risk, failure, and reinvention for career mobility.



Futures Beyond Dystopia

Author : Richard A. Slaughter

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 338 pages

File Size : 48,99 MB

Release : 2003-11-13

Category : Education

ISBN : 1134414579

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Book Description

How can dystopian futures help provide the motivation to change the ways we operate day to day? Futures Beyond Dystopia takes the view that the dominant trends in the world suggest a long-term decline into unliveable Dystopian futures. The human prospect is therefore very challenging, yet the perception of dangers and dysfunctions is the first step towards dealing with them. The motivation to avoid future dangers is matched by the human need to create plans and move forward. These twin motivations can be very powerful and help to stimulate the fields of Futures Studies and Applied Foresight. This analysis of current Futures practice is split into six sections: * The Case Against Hegemony * Expanding and Deepening a Futures Frame * Futures Studies and the Integral Agenda * Social Learning through Applied Foresight * Strategies and Outlooks * The Dialectic of Foresight and Experience. This fascinating book will stimulate anyone involved in Futures work around the world and will challenge practitioners and others to re-examine many of their assumptions, methodologies and practices.



Learning Futures

Author : Keri Facer

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 228 pages

File Size : 48,29 MB

Release : 2011-03-29

Category : Education

ISBN : 113672821X

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Book Description

In the twenty-first century, educators around the world are being told that they need to transform education systems to adapt young people for the challenges of a global digital knowledge economy. Too rarely, however, do we ask whether this future vision is robust, achievable or even desirable, whether alternative futures might be in development, and what other possible futures might demand of education. Drawing on ten years of research into educational innovation and socio-technical change, working with educators, researchers, digital industries, students and policy-makers, this book questions taken-for-granted assumptions about the future of education. Arguing that we have been working with too narrow a vision of the future, Keri Facer makes a case for recognizing the challenges that the next two decades may bring, including: the emergence of new relationships between humans and technology the opportunities and challenges of aging populations the development of new forms of knowledge and democracy the challenges of climate warming and environmental disruption the potential for radical economic and social inequalities. This book describes the potential for these developments to impact critical aspects of education – including adult-child relationships, social justice, curriculum design, community relationships and learning ecologies. Packed with examples from around the world and utilising vital research undertaken by the author while Research Director at the UK’s Futurelab, the book helps to bring into focus the risks and opportunities for schools, students and societies over the coming two decades. It makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationship between education and social and technological change, and presents a set of key strategies for creating schools better able to meet the emerging needs of their students and communities. An important contribution to the debates surrounding educational futures, this book is compelling reading for all of those, including educators, researchers, policy-makers and students, who are asking the question 'how can education help us to build desirable futures for everyone in the context of social and technological change?'



Social Work Futures

Author : Robert Adams

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan

Page : 336 pages

File Size : 13,33 MB

Release : 2005-07-08

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9781403916143

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Book Description

This is the third and final volume in the trilogy begun by Social Work: Themes, Issues and Critical Debates and Critical Practice in Social Work. Edited by the same highly regarded team and bringing together a mix of established scholars and newer voices, the book follows a similar three-part structure to its companions but is carefully designed to complement rather than overlap with these. Its distinctive focus is on the development of practice through deepened understanding of social work processes, organizational settings and the evidence base for practice and multiprofessional working.