The coronavirus will accelerate the third great innovation revolution of modern times. Beginning about 100 years ago, three fundamental components were discovered: the atom, the bit, and the gene. Understanding the atom led to atomic bombs and nuclear power, semiconductors and transistors, spaceships and GPS, lasers and radar. Bits led to the development of the…
Over the last decade, the dramatic rise of deep learning has led to stunning transformations in dozens of industries. It has powered our pursuit of self-driving cars, fundamentally changed the way we interact with our devices, and reinvented our approach to cybersecurity.
In health care, however, despite many studies showing its promise for detecting and diagnosing diseases, progress in using deep learning to help real patients has been agonizingly slow. All this could change with distributed learning.
Technological innovation ignites economic growth feeding further innovation. But, has our relentless progress irrevocably tipped the balance from a virtuous circle of innovation and growth to a downward spiral of disaster and decline?
A global economic and political chess game is on between the United States and China. There are many moves, defensive and offensive strategies, short- and long-term gains, but, unlike chess, mutual victory is possible.
Maybe the reason we find it so hard to get anything done is that most of the things we do just fundamentally don’t need to be done. All the productivity lifehacks out there are ultimately missing the point: we’re avoiding our work because our work is pointless.
The Myth of New Ideas “A reasonable person adapts to his or her environment. An unreasonable person forces his or her environment to adapt. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.” Many have accepted this as assumed knowledge. Progress is made by the unreasonable, right? Well, not really. If you want to inspire and…
Thinking the government now can take over services provided privately as if it is the appropriate entity to provide those services from now on only leads to inefficiency, misuse of capital, the demand for more tax revenue to support the inefficiency, and the downward spiral which ultimately creates more inefficiency that private industry will look to rectify.
Disruptive technologies are apparently being developed faster than we can adapt to the full impact of their disruption. Really? Internet time may not be the fast-paced disruptive force we assume, and these “disruptions” may not come close to the scale society experienced over 100 years ago. Consider the following innovations, all occurring within a short…
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has become the latest hot topic in AI. It is defined as the intelligence of a machine that can understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can. It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research, and it receives reasonable intellectual debate from the likes of Kai-fu Lee in his new book, “AI Superpowers.” Kai-fu Lee argues that AGI…
Chinese economic policies and motivations since 2008 not only emphasize growth and sustainability of state-owned enterprises but, a critical but much less well-appreciated dimension is the Chinese government’s emphasis on stability. No economic policy in China will ignore this, and the high value placed on stability pervades all the current trade talks with the United…
