Daily Archives: June 23, 2017

Published Jun 22, 2017 at 12:03 pm (Updated Jun 22, 2017 at 10:29 pm)

The Bermy Bouncers (Photograph supplied)

The Bermy Bounce Backs (Photograph supplied)

Bermudas national youth jump rope team is gearing up to compete on the global stage next month.

The Bermy Bouncers will take part in the World Jump Rope Championships in Orlando, Florida, from July 2-9, before heading to Seattle for an invitational jump rope and gymnastics camp.

In Orlando, the youth team, comprising girls and boys aged 9 to 15, will be joined by an adult competitive team, the Bermy Bounce Backs, with both teams competing in power-based speed and freestyle events. The Bermy Bounce Backs are aged 19 to 50 and over, and are led by former Bermy Bouncer Sophia Richmond.

The Bermy Bouncers are run as an arm of the Bermuda Heart Foundations Jump 2B Fit active outreach programme, which aims to produce youth ambassadors for the island who are passionate about jump rope, physical activity, civic engagement and personal empowerment.

A press release said: Our jumpers train three times a week for 2 to three hours, comprising a mix of strength, conditioning and endurance training, as well as working to enhance their single rope, double Dutch, speed and freestyle jump skills.

Although the sport may be a new one, and not one widely recognised, the hard work and dedication put forth by these Bermudian youth is something that should be highly recognised. Our team takes what other athletes use as a conditioning tool and makes a sport of it. Jump rope is one of the most physically challenging sports there is and these youth and adults are planning to represent our island proudly.

Watch the Jump 2B Fit 2016 documentary here. The Jump 2B Fit programme is also on Facebook.

Read more here:

Bermy Bouncers to compete overseas | The Royal Gazette:Bermuda ... - Royal Gazette

By Dr. Bill Lipsky

Whether they believed he was a creative spirit, a colorful nonconformist, or a kooky eccentric, everyone thought Chester Alan Arthur III, known to everyone as Gavin, was memorable, a true only in San Francisco personality. The grandson and namesake of the twenty-first president of the United States, he was well known as both a sexologist and an astrologer. Openly bisexual, he published The Circle of Sex in 1962, where he explained that sexuality was a circle with twelve orientations, each corresponding to a sign of the zodiac.

Arthur was a lifelong activist, deeply involved with both the Beat Generation and the early gay rights movement. He also became an influential leader of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture, where he was part of the discussions to bring together different groups of the Bay Areas counter-culture simply to experience being with each other. Using astrology, Arthur set the date for the first Human Be-In for January 14, 1967, in Golden Gate Park.

Some 30,000 celebrants attended. Many identified as hippies. They heard Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Learywho famously told them to turn on, tune in, drop outLenore Kandel, Gary Snyder, and others speak about some of the basic tenets of the counterculture: personal empowerment, communal living, higher consciousness (achievable with the help of psychedelic drugs), and radical political awareness. Others simply enjoyed the days good vibrations and groovy sounds.

The event made the Citys hippie scene world famous and led first to the Easter Vacation Onslaught and then to the transformative Summer of Love. Young middle-class Americans from all over the country tripped to San Francisco, with or without a flower in their hair, leaving the comfort of their parents homes or the conforming drabness of their dormitories for a Neverland where there would be free love, free pot, free food and a free place to sleep.

Once in San Francisco, they traded in their button-down shirts and their sorority sweaters for tie-dyed shirts and fringed jackets. Khaki pants gave way to frayed bell bottoms, and granny dresses replaced pleated skirts. In their rebellion against conformity, everyone wore beads. At its center, Haight-Ashbury quickly became both a mecca and a tourist attraction.

Among the head shops and psychedelic clothing stores of a neighborhood that embraced self-discovery, personal freedom, an if it feels good, do it attitude, sexual liberation, and free love, the newly arrived found an established, vibrant LGBT community. It flourished even before the Summer of Love, at least back into the 1950s, and had created a lively main street for itself.

During the decade of the Summer of Love, Margaret Forster and Charlotte Coleman opened The Golden Cask at 1725 Haight in 1962, a bar and restaurant popular with both gay men and lesbians. My Place #4 opened at 1784 Haight in 1963. The next year, Rikki Streicher opened Mauds around the corner at 937 Cole, at the former site of The Study, also a bar. Early customers included singer Janis Joplin and activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon.

At the time Mauds opened, California law forbade women from being bartenders in clubs they did not own, so the honor of pouring drinks in the early years went to men from nearby gay establishments. Because many lesbians lived in the Haight, Mauds became a popular, then a legendary watering hole for a generation of women, a place where they could meet, find each other, discover community, gossip, hug. When it closed in 1989, it was the longest surviving lesbian bar in the country.

1965 was a banner year for the Haights expanding LGBT community. The Golden Elephant opened at 530 Haight, while The Nite Lite opened a block away at 668 Haight. Blighs Bounty, which became the neighborhood bar most popular with black men, opened nearby at 782 Haight. Less than a block from Mauds, there was Bradleys Corner at 900 Cole; popular with both men and women, it featured spaghetti dinner for 69 cents on Tuesdays.

There was more to come. In 1966, The Lucky Club opened at 1801 Haight, and in 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, Nick ODemus established Taste of Leather 545 Ashbury, the first gay-owned leather business in the Bay Area. Dozens of other bars, clubs, restaurants, and shops tied to the burgeoning counterculture movement went into business during the next 10 years.

1967 brought both setbacks and good news for the LGBT community. On March 7, CBS broadcast The Homosexuals. The first such television documentary seen by a national audience, it was described as the single most destructive hour of antigay propaganda in our nations history. The Episcopal Diocese of California that year, however, urged the state to abolish the laws regulating private sexual behavior.

By the end of the Summer of Love, an estimated 100,000 people journeyed to San Francisco, hoping to join, or at least behold, the Citys counterculture. On October 6, the Diggers, a neighborhood group of activists and performers, held a funeral service for Hippie, devoted son of Mass Media, to indicate that the tremendous cultural experiment, which was the Haight-Ashbury, had ended. It had, they felt, been co-opted, sanitized and commercialized out of existence.

The LGBT community, however, survived the invasion. Gavin Arthur, who died in 1972, surely would have been gladdened by how LGBT culture and community endured in the Haight for another decade and now prosper throughout todays San Francisco.

Bill Lipsky, Ph.D., author of Gay and Lesbian San Francisco (2006), is a member of the Rainbow Honor Walk board of directors.

Read this article:

Gavin Arthur and the Summer of Love - San Francisco Bay Times

news

The highly contentious and arguably irresponsible comments from Alibaba founder Jack Ma around AI and its likelihood of creating a third World War will have done little to inspire confidence in those that harbour fears around the subject of intelligent machines.

For some, the two words placed together spark a sense of dread, trepidation or even fear. For others, it represents the beginning of an exciting new digital world with untold benefits and opportunities.

Unfortunately, however, its often the former,which seems to seep more into peoples consciousness.

Its perhaps then of little surprise that in recent survey by the British Science Association (BSA) that 36% of respondents believe that AI will eventually takeover or destroy humanity.

A history of scaremongering

Its not difficult to see why. For years now, the subject of AI has largely experienced a love-hate relationship with the media and entertainment industry. This is largely thanks to sensationalist headlines and storytelling, which more-often-than-not represent AI in a negative light.

It doesnt take long discussing the subject of AI before all the usual suspects get a mention; 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), iRobot(2004), Ex Machina (2011) et al. A generation of largely damning representations falling under the horror genre.

Little evidence to back-up Robophobia Its also worth noting that, whilst fears exist around AI, there is actually very little real life evidence to back up such anxieties of AI, in particular with robotics.

In fact, robots are technically responsible for only two deaths in the past 30 years neither of which were directly associated with machine intelligence.

Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford Motor Company factory in Flat Rock, Michigan, holds his place in history as the first person, after accidentally being hit by an industrial robot arm on January 25, 1979. The family successfully sued for $15 million.

The second was Kenji Urada, a maintenance engineer at a Kawasaki Heavy Industries plant, who was killed in 1981 while working on a broken robot. The report stated he failed to turnit off completely, resulting in the robot pushing him into a grinding machine with its hydraulicarm. Ouch!

Real concerns

But its not just the Hollywood writers sending fears into humanity.The subject of autonomous weapons being developed in the military to do harm against humans, and super-computers being built to surpass the abilities to that of the human brain is one, which is causing much debate in the AI community.

Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk (pictured) has been particularly vocal of his concerns, describing AI as potentially the biggest threat to humanity, even once describing the potential threat as more dangerous than nuclear bombs.

Such are his concerns, Musk recently donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute (FoLI) as part of a global research programme to ensure AI remains beneficial to humanity, and not run the risk of getting out of control.

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence, says Musk. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, its probably that. So, we need to be very careful. Im increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we dont do something very foolish.

The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not know which. Stephen Hawking

Professor Stephen Hawking is another high profile person to express his anxieties around the importance of ensuring AI is governed appropriately.

The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not know which, said Hawking during the opening of a new AI lab at Cambridge University in 2016.

A report from Forrester stated: Getting more sophisticated isnt the same as being able to understand, and computers arent going to take over the world because theyve started out thinking humans or developed evil intentions. But the fear of machines unleashing a major destructive event isnt as misplaced as it may seem, and Skynet-type scenarios [Terminator] could conceivably evolve if humans misjudge the extent to which they should trust software to make appropriate decisions.

The greater the degree of unpredictability in an AI-powered system, the greater the likelihood that unforeseen negative outcomes will occur. Thats why humans and their ability to reason will remain an essential part of the equation for the foreseeable future, possibly forever.

American physicist Michio Kaku added: No one knows when a robot will approach human intelligence, but I suspect it will be late in the 21st century. Will they be dangerous? Possibly. So, I suggest we put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they have murderous thoughts.

It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. Alan Turing

So,,is AI really all about robots that are one day being hell-bent on destroying mankind? Of course its not at least not for a while yet anyway.

Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), is the term to look out for when thinking of AI as something you can compare to what youve read in a book or seen on the big screen.

The general definition of ASI is a level of intelligencesuperior to any level of human intelligence and will (potentially), if allowed, be in complete control of its own decision making.

This form of AI is something which has been discussed by some of the worlds leading tech companies and world leaders as potentially having a detrimental impact on the human-race if, not governed correctly.

The idea of ASI is not new and has been discussed (loosely) since the definition of AI was first coined back in 1956.

Alan Turing, the godfather of AI, famously stated: It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.

But when will this happen? Again, there is no concrete answer. Oxford University professor, philosopher and author Nick Bostrom, wrote in his latest book, Superintelligence, that, based on several expert surveys, this level of human level intelligence could arrive between 2075 and 2090. Other reports suggest much later or even not at all.

Perhaps for now, its best to leave that one for the kids to worry about.

Industry is taking action

These concerns are not being ignored by the tech industry and measures are being taken.

In September of last year (2016) , US tech giants Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google and IBM joined forces to ensure the opportunities and benefits of artificial intelligence are maximized in society and fears around safety are addressed.

The move saw the creation of a new non-profit organisation called Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society.

The main purpose is to collaborate on ways to advance public understanding of AI and its benefits, to research and publish best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field and to tackle any ethical concerns over trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology.

A vital voice Over the past five years, weve seen tremendous advances in the deployment of AI and cognitive computing technologies, ranging from useful consumer apps to transforming some of the worlds most complex industries, including healthcare, financial services, commerce and the Internet of Things, commented IBM AI Ethics Researcher Francesca Rossi.

This partnership will provide consumer and industrial users of cognitive systems a vital voice in the advancement of the defining technology of this century one that will foster collaboration between people and machines to solve some of the worlds most enduring problems in a way that is both trustworthy and beneficial.

Historic collaboration Microsoft research managing director Eric Horvitz, described the deal as a historic collaboration, and claimed early discussions already held, have already proved valuable.

Were excited about this historic collaboration on AI and its influences on people and society, said Horvitz. We see great value ahead with harnessing AI advances in numerous areas, including health, education, transportation, public welfare, and personal empowerment.

This partnership will ensure were including the best and the brightest in this space in the conversation to improve customer trust and benefit society.

Ralph Herbrich, Amazon Director

Were extremely pleased with how early discussions among colleagues blossomed into a promising long-term collaboration. Beyond folks in industry, were thrilled to have other stakeholders at the table, including colleagues in ethics, law, policy, and the public at large. We look forward to working arm-in-arm on best practices and on such important topics as ethics, privacy, transparency, bias, inclusiveness, and safety.

Exciting opportunities Amazon Director of Machine Learning Science and Core Machine Learning Ralf Herbrich, said he was excited about the opportunities the partnership will provide by bringing together the industrys leading personnel for the first time in such an environment.

Were in a golden age of Machine Learning and AI. As a scientific community, we are still a long way from being able to do things the way humans do things, but were solving unbelievably complex problems every day and making incredibly rapid progress.

This partnership will ensure were including the best and the brightest in this space in the conversation to improve customer trust and benefit society. We are excited to work together in this partnership with thought leaders from both industry and academia.

Huge step DeepMind/Google Co-Founder and Head of Applied AI Mustafa Suleyman (pictured), described the partnerships as a huge step forward for the industry.

Google and DeepMind strongly support an open, collaborative process for developing AI. This group is a huge step forward, breaking down barriers for AI teams to share best practices, research ways to maximize societal benefits, and tackle ethical concerns.

See more here:

Will Artificial Intelligence really become a threat to humanity? - Access Ai

Collaboration will aim to enable refugees to send and receive funds digitally

Mastercard and Western Union have teamed up to help refugees around the world access goods, services and financial services within refugee settlements.

Paybefore, Banking Technologys sister publication, reports that the partnership will explore ways to use a digital model to serve the more than 65 million people around the world currently displaced from their homes due to political conflict and natural disasters.

The collaboration will aim to enable refugees, their host communities and donors to send and receive funds digitally, creating more transparency and long-term empowerment of refugees, according to Mastercard and Western Union.

Over the past year, the firms studied a pair of settlement camps in northwestern Kenya to examine the needs, challenges and opportunities for refugees and their host communities. The findings led to the development of Smart Communities: Using Digital Technology to Create Sustainable Refugee Economies, a blueprint designed to serve refugees by combining digital access to remittances, banking, education, health care and other basic needs in way that is unified and trackable.

The model emphasises digital solutions including the delivery of mobile money, digital vouchers and prepaid cards, notes Maureen Sigliano, head of customer relationship management, Western Union. The goal is to drive personal empowerment, stimulate growth and promote social cohesion among the worlds refugee populations, while driving better governance and transparency, she says.

Both Mastercard and Western Union are founding members of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a coalition of more than 70 companies committed to addressing the global refugee crisis.

The private sector is uniquely positioned to bring greater innovation and ingenuity to this crisis, says Gideon Maltz, executive director of Tent. The Mastercard-Western Union initiative reflects the contributions that companies can make when they identify problems, collaborate with each other, and work tirelessly to find and fund scalable solutions to fix them, adds Maltz.

Yesterday (21 June), Banking Technology reported that the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity (FRP) launched a new competition to find financial products and services that improve the lives of poor people in rural areas of Africa.

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Mastercard and Western Union designing digital solutions for refugees - Banking Technology