January 22, 2017
”… the next wave of economic dislocations won’t come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle class jobs obsolete.
And so we’re going to have to forge a new social compact to guarantee all our kids the education they need, to give workers the power to unionize for better wages, to update the social safety net to reflect the way we live now, and make more reforms to the tax code so corporations and the individuals who reap the most from this new economy don’t avoid their obligations to the country that’s made their very success possible.
…For blacks and other minorities, it means tying our own struggles for justice to the challenges that a lot of people in this country face – the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender American, and also the middle-aged white man who from the outside may seem like he’s got all the advantages, but who’s seen his world upended by economic, cultural, and technological change.”
Obama made his final speech, recommending that America’s safety net needs an overhaul. He’s probably thought this for a while.
Last week Finland started trialling Basic Income… Following on from that The World Economic Forum is discussing UBI, as are MEPs and a piece from The Guardian.
“Our scenarios suggest that half of today’s work activities could be automated by 2055, but this could happen up to 20 years earlier or later depending on various factors, in addition to other economic conditions.”
SpaceX is back to launching rockets that automatically self-land (!!)
Latest update from Facebook: We’re using AI to analyse your content and serve you better ads, but longterm we’re really hoping to win the AI Assistant wars vs Amazon, Apple, Google etc.
The creator of Android (Operating System of 90%+ of the smartphone market) is working on a new phone. Will be interesting to see differentiation in hardware features and if anything interesting with software happens.
Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, questions or feedback please get in contact. Have a nice Sunday.
I'm Henry Moulton, a software design and development freelancer living in London, UK.
My portfolio will be online soon.