Monthly Archives: July 2017

In BriefThe adoption of digital currencies on both the individual andinstitutional level in China and Japan is propellingcryptocurrencies to ever greater heights. However, some are stillskeptical that they are the finance systems of the future due totheir current volatility. China and Japans Crypto Craze

The age of cryptocurrencies is upon us, and two countries in particular have been instrumental in their stratospheric rise: China and Japan.

Cryptocurrencies have become popular in China due to the governments stringent control of the yuan a power they occasionally exercise by artificially devaluing the currency for trading purposes. With private wealth in China growing, affluent individuals have found a more stable and accessible alternative to the yuan in cryptocurrencies.

Additionally, China has an abundance of cheap energy and hardware, which facilitates crypto mining (the process throughwhich new blocks in the blockchain are created and transactions are verified). Chinese exchanges runmining poolsto generate these blocks, and these efforts constitute 60 percent of Bitcoins total hashrate (the speed at which Bitcoin operations are completed).

Japan got its foot in the cryptocurrency door at the beginning of 2017 when the market in China experienced an institutional and systematic crackdown, with the most potent measure being a ban on all cryptocurrency withdrawals. This caused an increase in Japans trading volume, which grew from one percent to as high as six percent.

Cryptocurrency adoption was further amplified by currency turbulence in the country. Quantitive easing lead to extremely low interest rates, which have occasionally even become negative, meaning that it costs an individual to save money. As in China, cryptocurrencies therefore became viewed as a more stable asset than the native currency, so morepeople have chosen to invest and store their money in them.

The final piece in the cryptocurrency success puzzle for both countries is increasing institutional acceptance. In China, this takes the form of the countrys Royal Mint, which has invested resources and money into digitizing the yuan and promoting blockchain technology. Japan, meanwhile, began accepting payments in stores using cryptocurrencies earlier this year, and its three largest banks MUFJ, Mizuho, and SMBC have all backed the countrys largest Bitcoin exchange, bitFlyer.

The enthusiasm with which China and Japan have embraced cryptocurrency systems has contributed totheir worldwide success. Virtual currencies have become more popular and valuable than the vast majority of people could have anticipated upontheir inception around a decade ago. The value of a single bitcoin has risen from roughly $0.00075 to $2,500, and the market cap for all cryptocurrencies has exceed $100 billion.

The success of cryptocurrencies is also reflected in their increasing adoption by formal institutions. Wall Street is making moves to start using cryptocurrency systems by next year, a Swiss town called Zug has begun to accept payments in bitcoins, and the Gemini Trust in New York has been licensed to trade ether.

However, some worrying news concerning cryptocurrencies has emerged as well. Recently, in spite of claims that the systems are highly secure, hacks have lead to personal information being leakedand exchanges have been robbed, one to the tune of$79 million.

In addition, while cryptocurrencies may be more stable assets than the native currency in Japan and China, they are not absolutely stable. In fact, they are currently far from it, and though prices continue to rise, rapid drops are not uncommon, and public opinion can have a major impact on value.

Mark Cuban illustrated the issue perfectly when he took to Twitter to assert that Bitcoin wasnt a currency, its valuation dropped rapidly. Even more recently, Ethereum lost $4 billion worth of market value when a bogus story that its founder, Vitalik Buterin, had died in a car crash was published on 4chan.

Cryptocurrencies are clearly on the rise, and due to their successes, they can no longer be dismissed as a niche monetary system. The pertinent question is will this rise will lead to the worldwide adoption of an entirely new currency and finance system?

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China and Japan Are Largely Responsible for the Current Success of Cryptocurrency - Futurism

In Brief The world is facing an overpopulation crisis that is only set to become more severe: the UN has predicted the global population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. Thus far, proposed solutions to overcrowding on Earth has proven to be a knotty ethical problem. Musks Warning

Arecent article inNew Scientistgot the attention of Elon Musk on Twitter this week, prompting him to tweet out the link.

The article argues that decreasing fertility rates are indicative of the worlds population slowly imploding rather than exponentially rising a trend that will continue until we reach some form of crisis point. As it stands, half of the worlds countries have fallen below the replacement rate for developed nations (which is, on average,2 children per woman).If this trend continues on, countries like Germany and Italy will see their populations decrease by half over the next 60 years.

This is not the first time Elon Musk has discussed overpopulation: in March he warned that we face a demographic implosion, because in many countries you have a very high dependency ratio, where the number of people who are retired is very high relative to the number of people who are net producers.

The world isfacing an overpopulation crisis that is only set to become more severe:the UN haspredicted theglobal population will reach9.7 billion by 2050. In recent years therehave been a number of somewhat apocalyptic predictions and statements made by high profile members of the scientific community:David Attenboroughissued a warning in a 2013 Radio Times interview, saying thateither we limit our population growth, or the natural world will do it for us.

Population affectsevery resource imaginable: from our planets stores of energy and environment to the financial sector, to the amount of food we need to produce, and issues likegeographical overcrowding. As for theissue of limiting population, its proven to be aknotty ethical problem.So far, none of the proposed answers to itsuch as introducing a limited child policy, moving to new planets, or introducing a child tax have beenparticularly attractive or easily executable.

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Elon Musk: The World's Population is Accelerating Towards Collapse - Futurism

In BriefA study has found that it would be fairly simple to programautonomous vehicles to make similar moral decisions as humandrivers. In light of this, the question becomes whether we wantdriverless cars to emulate us or behave differently. Programming Morality

A new study from The Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrck has found that the moral decisions humans make while driving are not as complex or context dependent as previously thought. Based on the research, which has been published inFrontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience,these decisions follow a fairly simple value-of-life-based model, which means programming autonomous vehicles to make ethical decisions should be relatively easy.

For the study, 105 participants were put in a virtual reality (VR) scenario during which they drove around suburbia on a foggy day. They then encountered unavoidable dilemmas that forced them to choose between hitting people, animals, and inanimate objects with their virtual car.

The previous assumption was that these types of moral decisions were highly contextual and therefore beyond computational modeling. But we found quite the opposite, Leon Stfeld, first author of the study, told Science Daily. Human behavior in dilemma situations can be modeled by a rather simple value-of-life-based model that is attributed by the participant to every human, animal, or inanimate object.

Alot of virtual ink has been spilt online concerning the benefits of driverless cars. Elon Musk is in the vanguard, stating emphatically that those who do not support the technology are killing people.His view is that the technology can be smarter, more impartial, and better at driving than humans, and thus able to save lives.

Currently, however, the cars are large pieces of hardware supported byrudimentary driverless technology. The question of how many lives they could save is contingent upon how we choose to program them, and thats where the resultsof this study come into play. If we expect driverless cars to be better than humans, why would we program them like human drivers?

As Professor Gordon Pipa, a senior author on the study, explained, We need to ask whether autonomous systems should adopt moral judgements. If yes, should they imitate moral behavior by imitating human decisions? Should they behave along ethical theories, and if so, which ones? And critically, if things go wrong, who or what is at fault?

The ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) remains swampy moral territory in general, and numerous guidelines and initiatives are being formed in an attempt to codify a set of responsible laws for AI.The Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society is composed of tech giants, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, while the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure has developed a set of 20 principles that AI-powered cars should follow.

Just how safe driverless vehicles will be in the future is dependent on how we choose to program them, and while that task wont be easy, knowing how we would react in various situations should help us along the way.

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Study Finds That Human Ethics Could Be Easily Programmed Into Driverless Cars - Futurism

In Brief Swedish startup Einride has unveiled a prototype for their T-Pod self-driving truck. It doesn't have space for a human driver, but can be remotely controlled if need be.

At present, there are already a number of vehicles that feature autonomous driving softwares. As advanced as they are, these vehicles still havent attained Level 5 autonomy reserved for truly autonomous systems. For Swedish startup Einride, however, this is the bar to meet, and they have developed a prototype vehicle that fully embraces the autonomous future.

Einrides T-Pod is an all electric truck built for long-haul deliveries. The trailer, which is a little over 7 meters (23 feet) has space for cargo but lacks a cabin for a human driver or operator as well as everything else that goes in a driving space, i.e. pedals, a steering wheel, and a windshield. It can be remotely controlled by a human operator or run completely free of human control.

The goal is to setup a complete transport system running between the cities of Gothenburg and Helsingborg, Sweden, and the first active system will cover a capacity of 2,000,000 pallets per year, according to an Einride press release. The prototype, unveiled at a week-long Swedish political event, is set for testing this year. If all goes well, international distribution would soon follow.

Long-haul trucking has always been the number one industry that seemed viable for a full autonomous takeover, as its mostly confined to the highway. Back in 2016, Uber demonstrated the potential for driverless trucks. Einride wants to turn that potential into reality.

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This Swedish Startup Could Automate the Trucking Industry - Futurism