Aurametrix
  • About
    • Q & A
    • Blog
    • Topics
    • Studies
    • Founders
    • Pipeline

AURAMETRIX

Sharing the Future with Artificial Intelligence

2 Comments

 
Picture
Artificial intelligence has reached a buzzword utopia as it seems everyone is talking about self-driving cars, delivery drones and virtual assistants with human-like "intelligence." Some believe this new era of AI will make the American Dream universally accessible, enabling early retirement in bucolic settings. Others are concerned about a greater inequality created by a jobless future.  ​

Picture
Technological advancements have connected billions of people (and digitally divided the rest), merged real and virtual worlds and enabled our collaboration with robots - at least in the form of software that streamlines everyday tasks. 

Yet, since the beginning of the third industrial revolution about 40 years ago, job insecurity has steadily increased as the life cycle of relevant skills has decreased (Blanchflower and Oswald, 2011). 

This trend could continue with the AI-enabled fourth industrial revolution. While having the potential to significantly improve productivity, AI could dramatically reduce the need for workers and present serious challenges for healthcare industries, governments and individuals (Schwab, 2015). ​

Picture
One option for reducing financial anxiety related to the decreased demand for human labor is to provide subsidies to every adult. A recent US survey found that 46% of people support the idea of a universal basic income, formulated as a "negative income tax" (Milton Friedman), guaranteed income (Martin Luther King Jr.) or annual cash grant (Charles Murray). The idea did not pass the vote in Switzerland, but is under consideration in India, Finland and Oakland, California. Earlier case studies - such as the Alaska Permanent Fund, established 40 years ago, has revealed unintended consequences: the program encouraged retirees to move to Alaska, squeezed wages, fostered addiction to "free money", and created a “consumption-frenzy” at local shops when the checks were distributed. Last month Alaska House voted to lower the dividend, and this could hit middle-income residents relying on it. ​

Picture
​But even if the government provided a stable money supply, would it be easy to find a purpose in the jobless future?

Gig economy, volunteerism and citizen science could potentially provide such a purpose. But Uber-like platforms are built for "lone wolf" and low skilled kind of jobs, while collaborative research, in its current form, works best for environmental sciences. Besides, it increases expectations that research for the public good should be done by volunteers rather than paid professionals.

​
To prepare for the new automated future, we need completely new collaboration platforms that help master and utilize high level skills. We'll share our thoughts about it next time.

REFERENCES
David G. Blanchflower, & Andrew J. Oswald (2011).
International Happiness: A New View on the Measure of Performance Academy of Management Perspectives, 25 (1), 6-22

Klaus Schwab. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. World Economic Forum; 2015

​Goldsmith, Oliver Scott. "The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend: A Case Study in Implementation of a Basic Income Guarantee." (2010).
Painter, A. (2016). A universal basic income: the answer to poverty, insecurity, and health inequality? BMJ DOI: 10.1136/bmj.i6473
Forget EL. The town with no poverty: using health administration data to revisit outcomes of a Canadian guaranteed annual income field experiment. 2011. 
Brougham, D., & Haar, J. (2017). Smart Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Algorithms (STARA): Employees’ perceptions of our future workplace Journal of Management & Organization, 1-19 DOI: 10.1017/jmo.2016.55
Pfeiffer S (2017). The Vision of "Industrie 4.0" in the Making-a Case of Future Told, Tamed, and Traded. Nanoethics, 11 (1), 107-121 PMID: 28435474
2 Comments

What The Future Will Hold

2 Comments

 
2016 Elections
Elections are bad for your health.

More than half of Americans, independently of their party preference, are stressed about upcoming elections (see this August 2016 
survey of over 3.5 thousand adults conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of American Psychological Association). Especially the oldest and the youngest voters (Traditionalists and Millennials). Social media is one of the major factors making this stress even worse. 

​
Election stress is higher than we think - judging by cortisol levels in saliva versus self-reported emotional distress. Stress is high at the ballot box - higher than when voting at home by mail-in ballot and significantly higher than on an average day and a few days after the election - unless we strongly dislike post-election media coverage. 

Picture
Elections may cause anxiety, obsessive compulsive behavior and even depression. And then there are post-election blues. Stock market always performs weaker. Supporters of the winning candidate go through withdrawal pains, although, research shows, they might get more interested in the Internet porn. Supporters of a losing candidate move through sadness and decreased levels of testosterone. 

Yet, anxiety can sharpen our eyes and help us learn. 

To vote is like the payment of a debt (R.B. Hayes, 19th US president). One who does not vote has no right to complain (novelist Louis L'Amour). Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost (John Quincy Adams, 6th US president)

And no matter what happens, we should not feel powerless for we actually possess more power than ever before to control our own lives and make them what we want to be. 
​

REFERENCES
Stanton SJ, Beehner JC, Saini EK, Kuhn CM, & Labar KS (2009). Dominance, politics, and physiology: voters' testosterone changes on the night of the 2008 United States presidential election. PloS one, 4 (10) PMID: 19844583
Markey, P., & Markey, C. (2011). Pornography-seeking behaviors following midterm political elections in the United States: A replication of the challenge hypothesis Computers in Human Behavior, 27 (3), 1262-1264 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2011.01.007
Waismel-Manor I, Ifergane G, & Cohen H (2011). When endocrinology and democracy collide: emotions, cortisol and voting at national elections. European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 21 (11), 789-95 PMID: 21482457
Blanton, H., Strauts, E., & Perez, M. (2012). Partisan Identification as a Predictor of Cortisol Response to Election News Political Communication, 29 (4), 447-460 DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2012.736239
Neiman J, Giuseffi K, Smith K, French J, Waismel-Manor I, & Hibbing J (2015). Voting at Home Is Associated with Lower Cortisol than Voting at the Polls. PloS one, 10 (9) PMID: 26335591
2 Comments

The Future of Brain, Brawn and Beauty

0 Comments

 
Picture
In the future all humans will be tall and beautiful look-alikes, as in GATTACA. Or they will split into frail beauties and sturdy beasts, as described in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. British evolutionary psychologist Oliver Curry and paleoanthropologist Matthew Skinner believe in the possibility of similar scenarios, based on either the rich and poor divide ("gracile" vs "robust" species) or climate change-related evolution (pale hairy giants vs aquatic and space humans). 

The change may be already happening, as humans continue to evolve. What traits - end products of our individual developmental histories - are most important to succeed in the modern age? 
​

Picture
Human history tells that individuals whose brains were better at manipulating others were more likely to survive. Additional abilities of the brain such as processing complex visual, auditory and olfactory clues have been also proven helpful and compensated for diminishing physical and sensory abilities. Invention of more sophisticated weapons, computers and sensors and the increased specialization of jobs may have slowed down the progress in some of the brain areas. Hyperspecialization would offer significant advantages for companies and society, but could it reduce humans into masters of a few simple operations? Stanford geneticist Gerald Crabtree even argues that our brains reached a peak several thousand years and have declined ever since. Not everyone agrees with this conclusion, so the jury is still out on the direction of brain evolution and the future of the intellectual elite.

Picture
​The evolutionary "beauty race" is also still on. According to scientific research, humans are becoming more attractive, or at least gaining more traits preferred by other humans. It is especially pronounced in those more successful than average. American presidents, for example, are taller and healthier than other American men. French executives are 2.6 cm (1.02 inches) taller than the national average. Unattractive men in England earn 15% less than those deemed attractive, while plain women earn 11% less than pretty ones. Yet most of these traits are not exclusively determined by genes but by the access to resources and knowledge, the abilities to make the most of what you have and the confidence to carry yourself in the best way. Scientists found that height and looks during the most difficult pubescent years, influencing the development of self-confidence,  are important in determining future success. ​

Picture
100 years ago, Olympic athletes looked pretty much like each other. Modern Olympians present vastly different versions of an athletic body, illustrating that human evolution could go many different ways. 6'5'' Usain Bolt is less aerodynamic and has far more "fast-twitch" muscle fibers than previous runners and most modern day humans. 5'3'' Kohei Uchimura has BMI of 21 and lower body fat percentage than most Olympic gymnasts of the past.  

Commercially available genetic tests related to exercise and sport are widely criticized for ethical and scientific reasons, but height and the length of limbs are already used for pre-screening of children to determine which sport they might excel in. More genetic and physiological measurements will be utilized in the future. One recent discovery is the asymmetrical egg shape of the right hip joints for golfers, although it remains to be established whether professional golfers have this trait because of extensive training or whether players with such hip shapes are more likely to become professional. 

Like beauty and brains, bodies are shaped by both nature and nurture and might require early training and specialization. Will the future society be divided into factions with pre-determined fates? In an ever more competitive world starting to resemble Olympic games, will our genes and childhood bodies decide  - once and for all - what we do for the rest of our lives?

REFERENCES
Crabtree, G. (2013). Our fragile intellect. Part II Trends in Genetics, 29 (1), 3-5 DOI: 10.1016/j.tig.2012.10.003
Williams AG, Wackerhage H, & Day SH (2016). Genetic Testing for Sports Performance, Responses to Training and Injury Risk: Practical and Ethical Considerations. Medicine and sport science, 61, 105-19 PMID: 27287080
Dickenson, E., O'Connor, P., Robinson, P., Campbell, R., Ahmed, I., Fernandez, M., Hawkes, R., Charles, H., & Griffin, D. (2016). Hip morphology in elite golfers: asymmetry between lead and trail hips British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50 (17), 1081-1086 DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2016-096007
0 Comments

Where Are All the Wearables We Want to Wear?

 
Picture
Millions of years ago our ancestors straightened up and started carrying tools around, instead of dropping them after use. And so technology became a part of daily routine.  ​


Read More

All You Need to Know About Wearables

 
Read More at Linkedin Pulse
2015 was predicted to be the breakthrough year for wearable technology. Wearables were the most common talk topic of technology-, advertising- and fashion-focused conferences. The market for wearable tech, especially that which is focused on fitness, is indeed exploding. But while cute and increasingly ubiquitous -- on the wrists, necks, or clipped to the body of all your friends -- many wearables are still single-purpose, redundant, or just plain useless, raising concerns about privacy and even etiquette. No wonder, there is a high return and product abandonment rate. Yet, the wearable future is coming faster than most futurologists thought  ...

<<Previous

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    February 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    April 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009

    Categories

    All
    AI
    Air We Breathe
    Allergies
    Analytics
    Asthma
    Behavioral Health
    Big Data
    Chemical Sensing
    Circadian Rhythms
    COVID19
    COVID19 Vaccines
    Dermatology
    Diagnostics
    Digestion
    Elderly
    Emotions
    Environment
    Exercise
    Food We Eat
    Generations
    Genetics
    Health Management
    Hearing
    Heart Health
    Infections
    Internet Of Things
    Long COVID
    Metabolomics
    Microbiome
    Music
    Odor
    Privacy
    Resolutions
    Seasons
    Security
    Senses
    Sensors
    Technology
    Tricorder
    Vision
    Wearables
    Weather
    Weight Loss

    RSS Feed

    Environment
    Irritable Bowel
    Olfactics
    Technologies

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • About
    • Q & A
    • Blog
    • Topics
    • Studies
    • Founders
    • Pipeline