Monthly Archives: July 2017

Those of my generation have seen enormous advances in speech recognition systems.

In the early days, the user had to train herself to the system, exaggerating phonemes, speaking in slow staccato bursts. These days, it's the system that trains itself to the user. The results aren't perfect, but they're pretty darn good.

The development of speech recognition illustrates one facet of the relationship between people and technology. Sometimes, we have to change ourselves to meet the technology where it is. But the goal is often the other way around: to improve the technology to fit us as we are.

That's why it's interesting to reflect on some exceptions to the rule cases where technology isn't just a tool, but also a teacher. Good teachers meet their students where they are, and they adapt their methods accordingly. But the ultimate goal isn't to accommodate the student as he is, it's to change the student by changing the way he thinks and acts. When technology is a teacher, it isn't enough for the technology to adapt; we need to change ourselves, too. This turns out to have some interesting implications.

Consider some examples. Tutoring systems, language learning apps, and educational games are all designed to change our mental abilities. Weight loss apps, posture sensors, and exercise monitors are designed to change the way we behave. The ultimate aim is for YOU to learn Mandarin or achieve some target weight, not to have a device that translates your English into Mandarin for you, or creates the illusion of lower mass.

It's when we consider what it takes to change mental abilities or behaviors that things start to get interesting. Take the case of learning a language. The best teacher isn't necessarily the nicest teacher, or the easiest teacher, or the most flexible teacher. The best teacher (qua teacher) is the one who does the best job getting you to learn the language. In fact, we know from research in psychology and education that the best way to learn is unlikely to be the easiest, or the one that gives you the most immediate sense of mastery. There's value in desirable difficulties features of a task that increase effort, but support better long-term performance. There are also plenty of examples of learning interventions that increase immediate learning, or just the sense of having learned, but that are ultimately less effective than more effortful alternatives.

This means that shaping technology to the aim we care about in these cases some form of learning could depart pretty radically from the more familiar aim of shaping technology to the way we are now: making it comfortable, easy, convenient, and so on. Just as it might be a mistake to evaluate teachers based (only) on student evaluations, it might be a mistake to evaluate these technologies (only) on familiar metrics, such as user ratings and our own impressions from immediate use. We really want them vetted by our future selves; it's their reviews we should be reading.

These issues also apply to technology designed to change behavior, but often there's an additional twist. We typically resort to technology for behavior change when our own good intentions prove insufficient. For all my sincere efforts not to slouch at the keyboard or have a second cookie, I'm guilty of both on a regular basis.

Technological tools for behavior change are a way to nudge ourselves into better behavior. We intervene on our environment to shape ourselves, because we can't simply will ourselves into the target behavior directly. As a result, these technological tools aren't just teachers in the business of sharing information and rational persuasion; they're tricksters in the business of manipulating us albeit at our bidding.

Of course, the relationship between people and technology is more complex (as Alva No has written about here at 13.7). It isn't just that people adapt to technology, and that technology adapts to people. The relationship is dynamic and bidirectional; we are, to use Alva's phrase, "the tool-using species." But our tools aren't merely implements; they are also teachers and tricksters, balancing the values of our current and future selves.

Tania Lombrozo is a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes about psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, with occasional forays into parenting and veganism. You can keep up with more of what she is thinking on Twitter: @TaniaLombrozo

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Technology Can Be A Tool, A Teacher, A Trickster - NPR

The Google-owned company Waymo has partnered with Chrysler for its Pacifica minivan, which it says will make self-driving technology more accessible. Photograph: Google

The innovation race between car companies and tech giants like Google and Uber has seen expectations for driverless technology soar.

Proponents claim autonomous vehicles (AVs) can solve the problems we currently experience on the road: traffic will be safer, less congested and cleaner, there will be more car and ride-sharing, reduced labour costs in freight transport, and greater mobility and social participation among the disabled and elderly.

But will AVs achieve all this in 10 or even 25 years time?

There are good reasons to be sceptical. Spreading optimism about AVs makes sense if you are trying to generate support among regulators and investors. But the capabilities of new technology to have deep impacts on existing road transport systems are simply overestimated.

Being able to drive may not be as culturally significant as it once was but it is still important to the identity of many people, including many youngsters. And while driving is certainly not always enjoyable, the positive emotions and sensations it can generate are one reason why cars remain the dominant form of transport.

Some barriers to widespread uptake of AVs like insurance, culpability and liability in accidents, and the risk of hacking are well recognised. They are, however, framed as fixable instead of as wicked social controversies that might erupt once the public has gained first-hand experience of riding or sharing the road with AVs.

Industry and governments alike make strong assumptions about AVs desirability after market introduction. As long as AV developments revolve around vehicles and technology rather than people and everyday mobility, large-scale public resistance is a genuine risk.

Some of the promised benefits also seem too good to be true. If freight movements on the motorway or in cities become fully autonomous, drivers are unlikely to be eliminated in many if not most cases.

Drivers, after all, do so much more than drive: they manage loading and unloading operations, offer consumer services and intervene when things go awry. Replacing their roles would require far deeper changes to logistical systems than automation of driving.

Large-scale uptake of full autonomy may, for quite some time at least, be limited to places with simple and low traffic, for instance in ports or distribution centres, and to platooning of trucks on motorways.

Urban traffic is by far the most difficult to automate. Stop-and-go traffic and interactions with pedestrians, cyclists and other road users are challenging for all AVs but formidable for larger and heavier ones.

Given that conventional vehicle manufacturers have become key to AV developments, a large-scale shift from car ownership to car clubs and Uber-style ride sharing following automation looks increasingly doubtful. The car industry is venturing into mobility services like car sharing and smartphone apps for personalised mobility planning, but remains deeply locked into business models premised on individual ownership.

AVs may strengthen car- and ride-sharing in places where various forms of public transport and cycling are seamlessly interconnected. Yet, in the UK tightly integrated mobility systems are sparse, especially outside central London. Car-sharing is often more competitor than complement to public transport, which reflects a wider post-privatisation culture of transport service provision characterised by competition, short-term profitability and distrust of other players.

This makes the long-term growth potential of car-sharing uncertain. AVs may well re-entrench individual ownership and kill off peak car the reversal since the 1990s of the historic growth in car use and ownership.

Moreover, it looks increasingly likely that AVs sensing and data-processing technologies will be integrated into vehicles themselves rather than the wider road infrastructure. The inevitable extra costs of AV technologies will therefore be shouldered by owners and users, and this will raise social justice issues.

The disabled and elderly, who might in theory benefit substantially from AVs, will be over-represented among groups for whom these vehicles will be unaffordable. The same holds for small operators in the freight and service sectors, including white van drivers.

At a time when many investments in public transport and cycling in UK cities contribute to gentrification and disproportionately favour the middle classes, as with HS2 and most bike-sharing schemes, AV developments risk further increasing transports role in enhancing social inequality.

AVs can reduce some of road transports problems, but only under specific conditions. Without careful, proactive and participatory planning, they may create and exacerbate more problems than they are expected to solve.

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Peak car? Driverless technology may actually accelerate car ownership - The Guardian

Technology has long been helping peopleparticularly womenin their quest to balance work and family responsibilities. The ability to work from home, tele- and video-conference into work meetings, has created new work paradigms; the internet has created new ways for part-time workers and entrepreneurs to make money from their homes.

Heres another way that technology can help improve work life for women: By giving women access to information about how companies treat their female employees. USA Today explains how one online service is doing just that:

Even with the rise of sites like Glassdoor and Monster, many women are still left wondering exactly how prospective employers handle gender-specific issues in the workplace likefamily leave and pay equity.

To find out, female job seekers are turning to Fairygodboss, a job review site exclusivelyfor women. The site provides crowdsourced intel on how female-friendly company policy is at thousands of businesses.

The 2-year-old start-up just released their2017 rankings of the best companies where women are happiest.

The rankings were based on the responses from almost 15,000 women about overall job satisfaction, gender equityand likelihood of recommendingtheir company to another woman.

The data is pulled from the anonymous job reviews that Fairygodboss usesto create company profiles.

This is great information for employees to have: women who want a company that is dedicated to supporting their advancement, and that will offer flexibility if and when they have children, have a new tool for identifying what companies might be the right fit for them. And its also important for employers to learn directly from employees and prospects what workers want most from their employers. Sites like this will give employers an incentive to try to do right by their workers so that they can earn a reputation as a place where quality employees want to work.

Unsurprisingly, most of the companies that top the list as the best places to work are large and primarily employ higher-skilled workers. But this kind of information could help women and workers at all income scales. Employers that rely more or hourly or lower-skilled workers also have an incentive to attract and retain the best, most reliable workforce possible. They will have to compete against other employers for such workers and will benefit from having a reputation of treating employees well.

Finding solutions to help people balance work and family responsibilities isnt easy, especially because not all workersnot even all womenwant the same type of support from their employers. But more information, and true flexibility, is a key to helping people find employment situations that suit them and to encourage businesses to meet the needs of workers.

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How Technology Can Solve Workplace Challenges - National Review

SWANTON, Vt. -

A rare, inside look at the work of the men and women who secure our northern border. Our Tyler Dumont went on the job with the U.S. Border Patrol and found much of their work relies on secret, hidden technology.

The Canada-United States border is the longest international border between two countries in the world. The Vermont-based Swanton sector patrols 300 miles of it by land, water and air.

"We're looking for cross-border traffic between ports of entry," said Brad Brant of the U.S. Border Patrol.

But there are only so many agents and that's where this technology center comes in.

"Technology helps us cover more area with more people," Brant explained.

Based at the Swanton Border Patrol headquarters, it's known from days past as the "radio room." But it's clear here that technology has come a long way.

"We can use sensing systems that detect motion, we can use sensing systems that detect magnetic mass," Brant said.

High-tech sensors and cameras have become the Border Patrol's leading detection systems. They help the agency catch intruders illegally entering the U.S.

"There's an audio alert. The audio alert will key them to what they need to look at," Brant said.

Inside this room, there are constant notification sounds and constant communication. Dispatchers use cameras to determine what set off a sensor and if an agent needs to investigate it further. Staffed around the clock, the radio room can get busy.

"It's very busy in here. So we've got 300 miles of border, all these sensors, all these sensing systems all feeding back into here. And you've got two people acting as the nerve system of the sector," Brant said.

Workers in this center act as extra eyes and ears for agents in the field. They also help those field agents identify who they stop.

Border Patrol asked us not to show what cameras and sensors look like or their locations to maintain security. But they told us they're set up in more difficult terrain to cross the border where high-value smuggling is likely and in easier terrain where people willfully enter illegally.

While technology may help agents get ahead of illegal crossers, indicating where-- it doesn't identify who and why.

"It doesn't tell us what that person is, their criminal history, their background, what country they're from. So, we have to catch everybody to find out who we've caught," Brant said.

Watching backwoods, water boundaries, ports of entry and everything in between to keep our border secure.

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Walking the line: Technology and the US Border Patrol - WCAX

JENKS, Oklahoma -

Jenks Police say technology helped play a role in a man's arrest.

Police say this arrest is due to a helpful community and an observant police officer working together.

Tulsa resident Anne Trees hassurveillance video which captured a manwalking up to her porch Friday afternoon, taking a package and driving away.

"I could see this white van driving into the driveway. The guy gets out, goes to the porch, grabs the boxes, gets back in and leaves," Trees said.

At first she was not going to report the incident.

Trees did, however,post pictures to an online platform called Nextdoor that allows users to talk and share information with each other in their communities.

Flash forward to Sunday, when Jenks police pulled over a van on a traffic stop.

"We actually had a passerby recognize the van, and he said, that looks similar to the van I saw on the Nextdoor app," said Corporal Michael Gauldin ."So he stopped and talked with the officers, and said, 'Hey I think this is the same van.'"

That man's name is Nick Elder.

Police say they found the same clothes in the vehicle that matched the surveillance video from Trees.

They also foundaddresses and phone numbers for other people, and a stolen package from Glenpool.

But police did not find Trees's items.

They also asked Trees to file a police report, which she did.

"To us, it's huge, because we're here to serve the general public. In turn they act as our eyes and ears," Gauldin said.

Police say technology is a great tool, but are asking people to take the next step and call them no matter how big or how small they believe the crime may be.

"I'm encouraging others to also file a police report if they have not," Trees said.

Elder was arrested on complaints ofpossession of a stolen vehicle andpossession of stolen property,as well as other complaints.

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Technology Leads To Arrest Of Jenks Man For Package Theft - News On 6