Category Archives: Futurist

Yamaha Scooter 125cc: Company introduces futuristic scooter with E20 fuel-compliant engines; all you must know about this beauty  DNP INDIA

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Yamaha Scooter 125cc: Company introduces futuristic scooter with E20 fuel-compliant engines; all you must know about this beauty - DNP INDIA

Posted on February 1, 2023

EV supply chain issues in the U.S. will level out, making a more bullish EV market with expanding model options that make EVs more practical

St. Petersburg, Fla.After a difficult year dealing with electric vehicle (EV) availability and supply chain shortfalls, the U.S. EV market will rebound in 2023 and beyond, predicts Lars Thomsen, speaking on behalf of Juice Americas Inc. Consumers will have more model options to choose from and efficiencies in batteries and charging will continue to expand making EV adoption more attractive.

Thomsen, who is considered one of the most influential experts on the future of energy, mobility and smart networks, sees a number of factors driving EV adoption.

The Inflation Reduction Act and high gas prices, along with a lot of new compelling products across the board, have created a new momentum for the EV adoption in the U.S., he said. In many segments, EVs are the better choice for vehicles, not just for ecological, but also for economical and performance considerations. EV charging infrastructure is expanding as well in the U.S. but needs to catch up with the speed of rising demand.

Five key trends Thomsen says will influence EV adoption in 2023 and beyond are:

Increased global competition and innovation and price options will drive the EV market growth over the next decade. However, aligning supply and demand continues to be a challenge. Right now, demand for EVs exceeds most production capacity of many manufacturers and adds to their need for critical parts over the next two years, Thomsen said.

In parallel, he addeds, charging infrastructure will have to keep pace with EVs. The demand in all three areas of charging infrastructure (highway, destination, and home) is rising exponentially. Suddenly, money is to be made by building up public charging infrastructure, because there are customers that use and pay for it. This changes the game: We believe there will be a race for the most lucrative and best solutions that will turn a profit.

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Juice Americas Futurist Predicts Electric Vehicle Trends for 2023 | MOTOR

FilmYearDescriptionAfronauts2014The film, directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Frances Bodomo, features the Zambia Space Academy that works to beat the United States to the moon as the latter prepares its Apollo 11 launch.[4][5]Air Conditioner2020The Angolan film directed by Fradique revolves around the air-conditioners mysteriously starting to fall in the city of Luanda. The Guardian called the film Afrofuturist, writing, "Its a magic-realist parable with the thinnest shrinkwrapping of sci-fi" that shows how "the service guarantee runs out on the technology".[6]Black Is King2020The musical film and video album directed, written, and executive produced by American singer Beyonc. Scholar Kinitra D. Brooks describes the film as "an aural and visual rendering of Afrofuturistic Blackness in the 21st century". Brooks said, "Afrofuturism urges Black people to recover their pasts in order to create their own futures. 'Black Is King' imagines what it looks like to be there, whole and healed."[7]Black Panther2018The superhero film, directed by Ryan Coogler, stars the comic book character Black Panther who is the king of the fictional kingdom of Wakanda. The film features Afrofuturist themes.[8][9][10]Black Panther: Wakanda Forever2022The superhero film is a sequel to Black Panther. The film explores Afrofuturism "in the way the mantle of Black Panther presumably passes to Princess Shuri".[11]Blade1998In the superhero film, the human-vampire hybrid Blade, played by black actor Wesley Snipes, protects humanity from evil vampires.[1][12][10]Born in Flames1983The film, directed by Lizzie Borden, is described by Hyperallergic's Jeremy Polacek: "[It] presents the revolution as televised, paraded, reported, and reiterated by pundits and politicians and yet still incomplete. Socialism may reign in Bordens post-revolutionary America, but so does patriarchy, racism, and sexism."[12]The Brother from Another Planet1984The science fiction film, directed by John Sayles, features an alien who escapes slavery on "Another Planet" and crash-lands and hides in Harlem.[12][10]Brown Girl Begins2017The film is set in Toronto in the near future, and the upper class is protected by a force field.[13][5][10]Crumbs2015The Ethiopian post-apocalyptic film is directed by Miguel Llans.[4][10]Earthbound2021Short film directed by Swedish-Ugandan filmmaker Baker Karim. 2121. Earth has become uninhabitable and some have been chosen to leave the planet. Max is not among the chosen ones, but his goal is to get aboard the Ark, at any cost. "Earthbound" is the first Swedish Afro-futuristic film.[14]Executive Order2020A 2020 Brazilian dystopian drama film directed by Lzaro Ramos (in his feature directorial debut), based on the stage play Namibia, no! by Aldri Anunciao.Fast Color2018In the American superhero film, three generations of women have superpowers and are on the run from the government.[15]Hello, Rain2018The short film, directed by C.J. Obasi features a Scientist-Witch, who through an alchemical combination of juju and technology creates wigs which grant her and her friends supernatural powers. But when their powers grow uncontrollable, she must stop them by any means. It is based on the short story Hello, Moto by Nigerian-American author, Nnedi Okorafor.[16][5]Kwaku Ananse2013The short film, directed by Akosua Adoma Owusu, shows a parallel between the Ghanaian fable "Anansi the Spider" and a young girl's life.[9]The Last Angel of History1996The film, produced by Black Audio Film Collective and directed by John Akomfrah, combines science fiction and essay approaches and features a time-traveling "data thief" who searches for code to reveal his future.[1][17][5][9][10]A Love Letter to the Ancestors From Chicago2017The short film is directed by Ytasha Womack.[18]Memory Room 4511997The film, produced by the Black Audio Film Collective, is set in a dystopian world and presented as a documentary in which a time traveler interviews people of an earlier era.[4]Monsoons Over The Moon2015The two-part short film, directed by Kenyan filmmaker Dan Muchina, is set in Nairobi in a dystopian future. A street gang fights against totalitarianism by freeing young people trapped in the system.[19]Neptune Frost2021The film is set in a Burundian village that is made from recycled parts of computers. It features a romance between a coltan miner and an intersex runaway.[20]An Oversimplification of Her Beauty2012The film, directed by Terence Nance, is described by Ashley Clark as a "mash-up of integrated fiction/nonfiction shorts, home video, voiceover narration and stock footage" including "plentiful, head-spinningly trippy animation sequences that place the film squarely in Afrofuturistic territory".[1]Pumzi2009The short film, directed by Wanuri Kahiu, is Kenya's first science fiction film.[4][12][19][5][9][10]Ratnik2019The Nigerian science-fiction thriller film, directed by Dimeji Ajibola, features a soldier who comes home from World War III to find her sister deathly ill as a result of a chemical substance.[10]Robots of Brixton2011The computer-generated short film, directed by Kibwe Tavares, re-contextualizes the 1981 Brixton riot in a dystopian future where robots riot against human police forces.[4]Les Saignantes (English: Those Who Bleed)2005The erotic science fiction thriller is directed by Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo.[4]Sankofa1993The film, directed by Ethiopian-born Haile Gerima, features a contemporary model who, during a photo shoot, suddenly finds herself on a plantation in the Southern United States during the plantation era.[4][12][17][5][10]See You Yesterday2019The time-travel film with a social-justice narrative features two black teenagers from Brooklyn trying to use time travel to change the world.[21]The Sin Seer2015A cop and a person who can "see" others' sins work together to solve cases, but one case leads the gifted person to face her past.[5][10]Space Is the Place1974The film, directed by John Coney, is a science-fiction take on the real-life musician Sun Ra and his crew The Arkestra. Ashley Clark said Ra plays "a cosmic card game" with a megapimp "to determine the fate of the black race". Clark said, "What follows is a brilliant and bizarre melange of comedy, musical performance and occasionally lurid blaxploitation aesthetics. It also, crucially, has a number of serious points to make about the plight of young urban blacks in a harsh, post-civil rights climate."[1][8][12][2][17][10]Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse2018The animated superhero film follows Miles Morales becoming Spider-Man after the death of the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, in his universe. Morales also teams up with other Spider-People, including an alternate version of Parker, to defeat Kingpin and return them to their home realities.[22]Supa Modo2018In the feature film, a nine-year-old girl from a Kenyan village has a terminal illness and dreams of becoming a superhero. Her village helps her realize her dream. 14East said of the film's Afrofuturist touch, "There is a very mysterious element of magic realism and fantasy."[9][10]Swimming In Your Skin Again2015The short film is directed by Terence Nance. 14East described it as "a film that leans toward experimental stylistically, its content is very thematic and its sequences are dreamlike... [and] speculates what could be some major issues in the future if we do not respect nature".[9]They Charge for the Sun2017The short film, directed by Terence Nance, is set in a future where people live at night to avoid harmful sun rays and in which melanin comes into play.[17][5][10]To Catch a Dream2015The Kenyan surrealist short film, written and directed by Jim Chuchu, features a grieving widow who has nightmares and tries a mystical remedy to end them.[19]Touch2013The short film, directed by Shola Amoo, is set in the near future.[4]Touki Bouki1973The Senegalese road film is directed by Djibril Diop Mambty. The New York Times's Glenn Kenny said, "The movie is replete with such purposeful disjointedness, the better to articulate space-time dissociations."[2][9]Trafik d'Info2005The film, directed by Janluk Stanislas, was shot in Guadelope and is considered the first science fiction film to be shot in the Caribbean.[4]Welcome II the Terrordome1995The film, directed by Ngozi Onwurah, is set in an inner-city slum in a dystopian near-future. The film is the first directed by a black British woman to be released in theaters.[1][12][17]White Out, Black In2014The science fiction documentary, directed by Adirley Queirs, is set in Brazil and follows three men who deal with a past tragedy.[4]A Wrinkle in Time2018The multiracial adaptation of the 1962 science fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time has, according to author and filmmaker Ytasha Womack, an Afrofuturistic signature of "strong female" characters.[13]Yeelen (English: Brightness)1987The Malian film, directed by Souleymane Ciss "follows a young mage on a journey to confront his power-mad father". The New York Times's Glenn Kenny said of the film in the context of Afrofuturism, "Mr. Cisss languid but mindful pacing and his indifference to Western film language conventions on space and time transitions also contribute to the movies distinction."[2][17]

The rest is here:
List of Afrofuturist films - Wikipedia

David Houle

(NOTE: Most of this column is a direct quote from my second book on the Shift Age Entering the Shift Age published in 2012.)

Prior to the development of the communications technologies of the last 200 years, the concept of place was an overriding reality of human life. Where one lived largely determined ones life, as other places could not be experienced without lengthy and arduous travel.This meant that the concept of place was the dominant reality and ones life was largely defined by what one did and experienced in that place. Reality meant physical reality.

Even during the explosive growth of communications technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, radio and television from the 1830s through the 1970s, one had to be in a specific place to communicate with another place. The telegraph office gave way to the telephone at home and at work, both connected to the wall.Radios were large and in the home, as were televisions. The experienced reality was still about places with these electric devices anchored in them.So, one lived in a place, was largely defined by that place, and was connected to the world through these place-based appliances.

No longer.

We now live in a broadband world, the world of connectivity.This new broadband world shows up on screen, from giant televisions to smartphones.

This screen reality can be every bit as compelling as the reality that we physically inhabit.Do we not all check our screens with close to addictive regularity?Isnt how a teenager is perceived at night on social media every bit as important to them as how they are seen in school the next day?

This connectedness, happening at the speed of light, is creating an entirely new place: the noosphere. Our physical reality exists in the biosphere the thin surface of the planet where life exists. But this new, rapidly growing noosphere is the electronic extension of our collective neurological activity. It is a pulsing, cyber-repository of humanitys creative brainpower, knowledge, history, culture, social interactions, entertainment, and commerce.This is a global village vastly more comprehensive and interconnected than Marshall McLuhan could ever have envisioned when he coined the phrase electric village more than 50 years ago. We now live in a two-reality world: the physical reality in which we live and the noosphere reality of the screen that connects us to everything and everyone else on the planet.

Story continues

The Shift Age is the first time that humanity has experienced these two realities. These realities will develop at significantly different evolutionary rates. This will cause an incredible transformation of physical reality and of human consciousness.

Often, if not always the future shows up first in the screen reality and then the physical reality. Here is one clear, real-time example of that.

10 years ago I was speaking to dozens of CEO groups and dozens of business conferences every year, These audiences expect a futurist to provide forecasts. Back during the Great Recession, it became clear that online retail was growing dramatically while physical retail was not. As a big fan of Amazon since the late 1990s, I was impressed with their long-term focus on growth and total market share. All the time that financial analysts criticized the company for low or non-existent profits, Amazon always responded that they were focused on the long-term.

At this same time, in an already over-retailed America, retail chains were fighting for anchor positions in new malls, undertaking growth for growth's sake.Basically, physical retail chains were competing against each other in the physical reality at a time when online retail was gaining ever more total market share.

So I looked at that reality and projected rapid growth online with flat to down growth in physical retail. I then, and for several years from 2010-2014 stated that the 2010-2020 decade would be a time of massive contraction in the physical retail space. That was clearly a forecast that came true. Dozens, if not hundreds of retail chains and outlets declared bankruptcy in this decade.

The key lesson to learn here is that, if one operates in physical reality, one must be aware of what is going on in the screen reality. The screen reality has, is, and will reshape our physical realities, business and personal.

NOTE TO READERS: In this space at the Herald-Tribune I write future-focused columns through a local filter. Three months ago, I launched a newsletter that covers many topics not covered here. You can sign up atEvolutionshift.substack.com.

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written 13 books and is futurist in residence at Ringling College of Art andDesign. His websites aredavidhoule.comandthe2020sdecade.com. Email him at david@davidhoule.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: The two realities of the Shift Age | The Futurist

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The two realities of the Shift Age | The Futurist

Women futurists shape the future

Increasingly futurists are being hired by businesses to present visions of what the future could look like. Sometimes futurists are sci fi writers like Isaac Asimov (whose books inspired Elon Musks companies), and other times they predict business futures like Faith Popcorn. In 1991 Faith predicted that "humanoid robots" would become companions and workers. As we see automation and robotics have found their way into our businesses and our lives; we can see she was right.

There arent a ton of resources compiling lists of female futurists, other than this list from Ross Dawson. But this is an important community that has a voice. We need to make sure they have a platform to share their ideas. Women bring unique perspectives, and the experience of being able to bear children. After centuries of decisions being made almost entirely by men, now women are stepping up to shape the future in real and concrete ways. The way we approach global challenges for the future matters, and its critical that women are a central part of shaping this conversation.

In the past, the roles of corporate leaders and futurists have been predominantly male, but in recent years, women have started making their mark. Roughly one-third of members of the Association of Professional Futurists are women, and the leaders of many futurist groups are female. These women are looking at vast possibilities on topics ranging from business to education and technology to see what the future holds.

Women need to be visible in boardrooms, at conferences, and anywhere we are planning how to make our societies healthy and more equitable for tomorrow. The unique female perspective creates more diversity of thought and opinion, which opens the future to fresh ideas that represent the entire population.

On Sunday March 8, International Womens Day, were celebrating the women leaders working to create solutions for potential futures. These women are looking ahead to prepare themselves, their organizations and their audiences for how the world could change. And as they delve into the future, they have a chance to shape it. This list was created to help build community among this group, but also for conference organizers and businesses that want to engage futurists.

These 50 women are shaping the future and encouraging and inspiring other females to join them:

Amy Webb

Named by Forbes as one of the Women Changing the World, Amy Webb is a quantitative futurist. She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business and founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex futures. Founded in 2006, the Institute advises Fortune 100 and Global 1000 companies, investment firms and government agencies.

Cindy Frewen

Cindy Frewen is an architect and urban designer who examines how buildings will grow and interact with people in the future. She consults on the future of cities and how architecture and technology can work together. Cindy is the head of the Association of Professional Futurists and has received awards for her sustainable designs and community development.

Amy Zalman

Amy Zalman specializes in using storytelling to guide strategy and communications and has worked with governments and companies around the world. She is the former CEO of the World Future Society and is involved in a number of global causes, including promoting peace and global security.

Madeline Ashby

Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer and speaker who has applied science fiction prototypes to a number of leading organizations. She examines the future by telling stories about topics ranging from smart cities to global security and the future of warfare.

Erica Orange

Erica Orange is an executive at The Future Hunters, where she identifies trends and changes for large companies and public agencies. Erica is focused on changing demographics, including Millennials and the growth of the she-conomy, as well as new technology and its interaction with humans.

Shara Evans

Shara Evans expertise lies in telecommunications analysis. Her expansive career has provided the foundation to look towards the future of telecom in Australia and around the world. She is focused on the future of technology, including robotics, cybercrime and consumer tech.

Nancy Giordano

From a career of working with the worlds top organizations, Nancy Giordano has become a leading futurist helping businesses transform and succeed. She aims to help organizations become more sustainable and beneficial to society by combining the future of tech, business and social issues.

Tessa Finlev

Tessa Finlev works at the intersection of cultural change, diversity and inclusion with an eye towards the future. She encourages civic engagement and social change to create sustainable systems that solve the worlds problems.

Kristin Alford

Combining science, art and innovation, Kristin Alford is passionate about driving sustainable change in the future and in inspiring the next generation of futurists. She is involved in developing smart cities that offer sustainable environmental and economic solutions.

Mei-Mei Song

As a professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan, Mei-Mei Song is a global leader in the future of education and globalization. Her work has the potential to shape future teachers and universities around the world, especially as more technology is integrated into education.

Fabienne Goux-Baudiment

With a passion for the future of education and training new futurists, Fabienne Goux-Baudiment studies and speaks on a variety of topics ranging from climate change to robots and how cultures and people need to continually evolve. Her work has been applied to numerous government organizations and businesses.

Susan Cox-Smith

Based in the Netherlands, Susan Cox-Smith helps organizations combine research and storytelling to prepare for the future and make strategic decisions. Her How to Future project helps organizations, especially in healthcare and technology, create teams and structures to succeed in the future.

Gayemarie Brown

With more than 25 years experience, Gayemarie Brown helps worldwide companies use emerging technologies to update their business models for the future. She is an expert and global speaker on digital transformation and disruption, especially AI, robotics and blockchain.

Maria Konovalenko

With a goal of leveraging new technology to make people as healthy as possible, Maria Konovalenko uses her scientific background to look at the future of aging, including AI, cell therapy and regenerative medicine. She hopes to create a future where people can live longer and happier lives thanks to science and technology.

Anne Lise Kjaer

Anne Lise Kjaers organization focuses on business and communications trend forecasting for global corporations. She encourages organizations to look towards the future with trend management and establish mindful leaders to create a more inclusive economy.

Faith Popcorn

A vocal advocate for female empowerment, Faith Popcorn looks to the future as the She-change. She forecasts future trends and consumer patterns for numerous industries and has been called the Nostradamus of Marketing by Fortune Magazine.

Ufuk Tarhan

Based in Turkey, Ufuk Tarhan uses her background in economics and IT to consult companies on creating strong strategies for the future. She is also the curator of Future Day, a day she hopes will be an international public holiday dedicated to the future.

Elina Hiltunen

Elina Hiltunen created a tool to crowdsource organizational futures, especially regarding new technology. She aims to anticipate the future through weak signals and has created tools for individuals and organizations to look towards the future and adapt as the world changes.

Youngsook Park

A prominent figure in South Korea, Youngsook Park focuses her efforts on social justice and human development. She trains students and organizations on the future of housing and interior design and has established programs to prepare her country for social issues of the future.

Cecily Sommers

With a background in medicine and dance, Cecily Sommers looks towards the future of innovation. She runs a think tank that examines the impact of global trends on businesses and society over the next one to five decades.

Alexandra Whittington

Alexandra Whittington teaches Forecasting for Technology Entrepreneurship at the University of Houston. Her focus is on the future of social issues, including families, education and gender roles. She works with corporations and non-profit groups to prepare them for future changes.

Jennifer Gidley

With a background in education and psychology, Jennifer Gidley aims to raise awareness about new thinking that will be required in the future, especially in regards to youth education and sustainable urban development. Her work brings awareness to the growing climate crisis and the future plight of oceans.

Maree Conway

Maree Conway has spent her career consulting on the future of universities and education. She is the founder of an organization that helps professionals in education and government plan for the future by re-framing strategic conversations about the future using foresight.

Catarina Tully

As cofounder of the School of International Futures, Cat Tully advises the U.S. and U.K. governments on the future and national security. She also trains business leaders, lawmakers and activists around the world to prepare for the future. Cat encourages her clients to adopt a long-term view with foresight tools to adapt to change.

Extended List:

Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and the author of the bestselling bookThe Customer Of The Future. Sign up for her weekly newsletterhere.

See the rest here:
50 Leading Female Futurists - Forbes

The site initially addressed widespread backlash to the bot-written articles by assuring readers that a human editor was carefully fact-checking them all prior to publication.

Afterward, though,Futurism found that a substantial number of errors had been slipping into the AI's published work. CNET, a titan of tech journalism that sold for $1.8 billion back in 2008, responded by issuing a formidable correction and slapping a warning on all the bot's prior work, alerting readers that the posts' content was under factual review. Days later, its parent company Red Ventures announced in a series of internal meetings that it was temporarily pausing the AI-generated articles at CNET and various other properties including Bankrate, at least until the storm of negative press died down.

Now, a fresh development may make efforts to spin the program back up even more controversial for the embattled newsroom. In addition to those factual errors, a new Futurism investigation found extensive evidence that the CNET AI's work has demonstrated deep structural and phrasing similarities to articles previously published elsewhere, without giving credit. In other words, it looks like the bot directly plagiarized the work of Red Ventures competitors, as well as human writers at Bankrateand evenCNETitself.

Jeff Schatten, a professor at Washington and Lee University who has been examining the rise of AI-enabled misconduct, reviewed numerous examples of the bot's apparent cribbing that we provided. He found that they "clearly" rose to the level of plagiarism.

We asked Schatten what would happen if a student turned in an essay with a comparable number of similarities to existing documents with no attribution.

"They would be sent to the student-run ethics council and given the repeated nature of the behavior would almost certainly be expelled from the university," he replied.

The bot's misbehavior ranges from verbatim copying to moderate edits to significant rephrasings, all without properly crediting the original. In at least some of its articles, it appears that virtually every sentence maps directly onto something previously published elsewhere.

Take this excerpt, for instance, from arecent article by theCNET AI about overdraft protection:

How to avoid overdraft and NSF fees

Overdraft fees and NSF fees don't have to be a common consequence. There are a few steps you can take to avoid them.

And compare it to this verbiage from a previously published article in Forbes Advisor, a Red Ventures competitor:

How to Avoid Overdraft and NSF Fees

Overdraft and NSF fees need not be the norm. There are several tools at your disposal to avoid them.

Sure, the bot's version altered the capitalization and swapped out a few words for impressively lateral-minded synonyms "the norm" becomes "a common consequence," for instance, and "several tools" becomes "a few steps" along with a few minor changes to the syntax. But apart from those semantic tweaks, the two sentences are nearly identical.

Here's another excerpt from the same article by CNET's AI financial writer:

Sign up for low-balance alerts

You may be able to receive low balance alerts from your bank's mobile app, so you know if your account balance is dropping below a certain threshold.

Now compare it to this section from another previously published article, this one fromThe Balance, another Red Ventures competitor:

Sign Up for Low Balance Alerts

You can sign up for low-balance alerts through most banks to alert you when your account hits a certain amount.

Again, it seems clear that the AI is simply parsing through and making small modifications to obscure the source.

Sometimes the similarities are almost comical in their lack of subtlety. Take the first sentence of this article, also published by CNET's AI:

Gift cards are an easy go-to when buying a present for someone.

And compare it to the first sentence of this previously published Forbesarticle:

Gift cards are an easy-to-please present for just about anyone.

The kicker on that one? Check out the almost imperceptible difference between those two articles' headlines. Here's the CNETAI's title:

Can You Buy a Gift Card With a Credit Card?

And here's what Forbes ran with for a headline:

Can You Buy Gift Cards With a Credit Card?

That's right: the only difference is switching "Gift Cards" to a singular.

Here's another example, from the same AI-generated CNET article about overdraft fees:

What is overdraft protection?

Overdraft protection is an optional feature offered by banks to prevent the rejection of a charge on a checking account with insufficient funds.

Which, it turns out, appears to be a word salad rephrasing of a line from this article on Investopedia, another Red Ventures competitor.

What Is Overdraft Protection?

Overdraft protection is an optional service that prevents the rejection of charges to a bank account... that are in excess of the available funds in the account.

The AI appears to sometimes also borrow language from writers at CNET's sister site Bankratewithout giving credit. For example, look at this line from an article published by CNET's AI back in November:

Becoming an authorized user can help you avoid applying for a card on your own, which is a major benefit if you currently have bad credit or no credit history.

And compare it to this wording, previously published by a Bankrate writer:

Becoming an authorized user also lets you avoid having to apply for a card on your own, which is a major benefit if you currently have bad credit or no credit history at all.

All told, a pattern quickly emerges. Essentially, CNET's AI seems to approach a topic by examining similar articles that have already been published and ripping sentences out of them. As it goes, it makes adjustments sometimes minor, sometimes major to the original sentence's syntax, word choice, and structure. Sometimes it mashes two sentences together, or breaks one apart, or assembles chunks into new Frankensentences. Then it seems to repeat the process until it's cooked up an entire article.

A current Red Ventures employee also reviewed examples of the bot's seemingly lifted work.

"You ever copy your homework off of somebody," they quipped, "but they told you to kind of rephrase it?"

"It poses the question of what kind of institutions do CNET and Bankrate want to be seen as," they continued. "They're just taking these articles and rephrasing a couple of things."

Are you a current or former Red Ventures employee and want to share your thoughts about the company's use of AI? Email us at tips@futurism.com. We can keep you anonymous.

In short, a close examination of the work produced by CNET's AI makes it seem less like a sophisticated text generator and more like an automated plagiarism machine, casually pumping out pilfered work that would get a human journalist fired.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, none of this should be terribly surprising. At their core, the way that machine learning systems work is that you feed in an immense pile of "training data," process it with sophisticated algorithms, and end up with a model that can produce similar work on demand.

Investigators have sometimes found examples of AI plagiarizing its own training data. In 2021, for instance, researchers from Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Microsoft found that text-generating AIs "sometimes copy substantially, in some cases duplicating passages over 1,000 words long from the training set."

As such, the question of exactly how CNET's disastrous AI was trained may end up taking center stage as the drama continues to unfold. At a CNET company meeting late last week, The Vergereported at the time, the outlet's executive vice president of content and audience refused to tell staff many of them acclaimed tech journalists who have written extensively about the rise of machine learning what data had been used to train the AI.

The legality of using data to train an AI without the consent of the people who created that data is currently being tested by several lawsuits against the makers of prominent image generators, and could become a flashpoint in the commercialization of the tech.

"If a student presented the equivalent of what CNET has produced for an assignment in my class, and if they did not cite their sources, then I would definitely count it as plagiarism," said Antony Aumann, a philosophy professor at Northern Michigan University who recently made headlines when he discovered that one of his own students had submitted an essay generated using ChatGPT, after reviewing examples of theCNET AI's similar phrasing to other outlets.

"Now, there is some dispute among academics about exactly what plagiarism is," he continued. "Some scholars consider it a form of stealing; other scholars regard it as a kind of lying. I think of it in the latter way. Plagiarism involves representing something as your own that is in fact not your own. And that appears to be what CNET is doing."

CNET did not respond to examples of the bot's seemingly cribbed writing, nor to questions about this story.

In a sense, the relentless ineptitude of the company's braindead AI probably obfuscates many of the thornier themes we're likely to see emerge as the tech continues to spread into the workplace and information ecosystems.

Schatten, for instance, warned that issues around AI and intellectual property are likely to get more ambiguous and difficult to detect as AI systems continue to improve, or even as publishers start to experiment with more advanced systems that already exist (Red Ventures has declined to say what AI it's using, though the editor-in-chief of CNET has said that it's not ChatGPT.)

"The CNET example is noteworthy because whatever AI they were using was not drawing from the entirety of the internet and carefully coming up with a new mosaic, but rather just lifting more or less word for word from existing stories," Schatten said. "But the more sophisticated AIs of today, and certainly the AIs of the future, will do a better job of hiding the origins of the material."

"And especially once AIs are drawing from the writing of other AIs, which themselves are quoting AI (dark, I know) it might become quite difficult to detect," he added.

In a practical sense, it seems increasingly obvious that CNET and Red Ventures deployed the AI system and started blasting its articles out to the site's colossal audience without ever really scrutinizing its output. It wasn't just that the architects of the program missed obvious factual errors, but that they appear never to have checked whether the system's work might have been poached.

And to be fair, why would they? AsThe Verge reported in a fascinating deep dive last week, the company's primary strategy is to post massive quantities of content, carefully engineered to rank highly in Google, and loaded with lucrative affiliate links.

For Red Ventures, The Verge found, those priorities have transformed the once-venerable CNETinto an "AI-powered SEO money machine."

More on CNET: SEO Spammers Are Absolutely Thrilled Google Isn't Cracking Down on CNET's AI-Generated Articles

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CNET's AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism

Tin Mok Appointed to Faraday Future's Board of Directors as an Executive Director  Marketscreener.com

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Tin Mok Appointed to Faraday Future's Board of Directors as an Executive Director - Marketscreener.com

Futuristic tech flagship smartphone the HUAWEI Mate50 Pro with ultimate Ultra Aperture XMAGE camera launches in SA  Mail and Guardian

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Futuristic tech flagship smartphone the HUAWEI Mate50 Pro with ultimate Ultra Aperture XMAGE camera launches in SA - Mail and Guardian

Glen Hiemstra is the founder andFuturist Emeritusof Futurist.com.

Glen is dedicated to disseminating information about the future to assist individuals, organizations, and industries in effective strategic planning. An internationally respected expert on future trends, long-range planning and creating the preferred future, Glen has advised professional, business, and governmental organizations for three decades and has served as a technical advisor for futuristic television programs. Audience members for Glens keynote speeches and clients for his long-range planning say things like, Once you hear Glen Hiemstra speak, the future will never look the same.

A writer as well as a speaker and consultant, Glen is the author of Millennial City: How a New Generation Can Save the Future,Turning the Future into Revenue: What Businesses and Individuals Need to Know to Shape Their Future. Previously he co-authoredStrategic Leadership: Achieving Your Preferred Future.

Glen has worked with many leading companies, government agencies and organizations across a wide variety of domains. These include Microsoft, The Home Depot, Boeing, Adobe, Ernst & Young, PaineWebber, ShareBuilder, Ambrosetti (Italy), Club of Amsterdam, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pacific Ocean Division, Northern Telecom, REI, Weyerhaeuser, Hewlett Packard, Novo Nordisk, U.S./Mexico JWC, APAX Partners, Costa Rica Hotel Association, Atlanta 2060, Tulsa 2025, Idaho Transportation 2030, Michigan DOT 2030, Federal Highway Administration Advanced Research, Eddie Bauer, Procter & Gamble, ACE Hardware, IHOP, John Deere, Weitz Construction, Lexis Nexus, Land O Lakes, GHD Engineering (Australia), SONAE (Portugal), and others.

As a recognized expert in preferred future planning, Glen is a popular keynote speaker who can zero in on emerging trends in economics, demographics, energy, the environment, Internet and communications, science, technology, housing, and transportation. Glen goes beyond simple trend analysis to discuss the opportunities that we all have to shape the preferred future. In his consulting, Glen utilizes tools such as environmental scanning, scenario development, whole systems perspectives, paradigm shifts, and analysis of organizational culture for managing change to assist enterprises to achieve high performance.

A skilled communicator, Glen also offers a variety of informational resources for those interested in exploring the future. Each month visitors from 120 nations come to Futurist.com and the blog for provocative snapshots of emerging ideas, trends, and technologies.

As a media technical advisor Glen has worked on several television productions, including with Steven Bochco Productions (creator of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue), among others. He has oft beencited in publicationssuch as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, US News & World Report, Newsweek, The Futurist, USA Today, Business Week, the Economist, Puget Sound Business Journal, and the Los Angeles Times.

In a first career, Glen was an award-winning educator; he also served as a Visiting Scholar at the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington, which worked on virtual and augmented reality technology.

Glen was educated at Whitworth College, the University of Oregon, and the University of Washington. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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David Houle| Special to the Herald-Tribune

As a futurist, my goal is to be directionally accurate in all my forecasts. Long-term trends and dynamics are what guide me. Through the years I have had great accuracy in directions, if not in specific details or timing.

So this column is based on the direction and acceleration of trends and what that might look like in 2023.

The long-term trend to EVs will keep accelerating. 2023 and 2024 will both be years of increasing sales until 2025 when there will be dozens of EV models in a price-competitive marketplace. That is when sales figures become truly significant, rather than just moderate year-over-year growth.

Cable subscriptions will go down and streaming subscriptions will continue to rise. That said, the average number of subscriptions for households will go down as people continue to cut costs for television

Inflation is now starting to trend downward. By late spring 2023, inflation will be down to 3-4%.

The Fed will continue to increase rates in the first quarter of 2023 but at lower increments. By mid-year, they will stop increasing rates.

The Ukraine War will drag on. There will not be a negotiated settlement to the conflict. I think there is a possibility that Putin might be forced to step down by the end of the year, but the opaqueness of the Kremlin is such that we wont know until a coup is over. By the end of the year, it will be clear that tens of billions of dollars will be needed to rebuild Ukraine. It will also become clear by the end of the year that Russia is on a fast track to become a secondary economic power.

The Senate is controlled by the Democrats and the House is controlled by the GOP. This will end up showcasing the perception that the Senate puts forth legislation and the House rejects it. To the degree the GOP does not address their two campaign issues inflation and crime but instead goes down the rabbit hole of irrelevant investigations, they will lower their chances for elective victory in 2024.

The Senate will need to become more centrist if there is to be hope for support in the House. President Bidens deep desire for bi-partisanship will manifest in a good working relationship with Minority Leader McConnell.

Governor DeSantis is the clear front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination. He will start to build up a campaign effort for a 4th quarter announcement that he is running for president in 2024

Donald Trump will get indicted.

Joe Biden will decide by the end of the year to not run for reelection in 2024.

The residential housing market will enter a national recession. Florida will be less affected than the rest of the country. Sarasota and Manatee counties will be less affected than the rest of the state. But all prices will be down compared to a year ago.

There will be a global recession, but it will be a mild one and will vary greatly around the world. Some countries will truly suffer hard landings and others will most definitely have soft landings. The U.S. will experience a mild slowdown.

The price of oil will continue to drift lower through the course of the year. The average for 2023 will be around $70-$75 for WTI.

Equity markets will largely go sideways in 2023. with continued volatility.

China will continue to have problems. The real estate market is way over-leveraged and overpriced. There could be a million COVID-19 deaths there in the coming months. In addition, large numbers of people under 30 will emigrate to Europe and North America.

After half a decade of democracy in decline around the world, democracy is and will be ascendant throughout the year. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and to a lesser extent Turkey, will all undergo economic and social problems.

The U.K. will continue to suffer through its post-Brexit malaise of inflation, contraction and political disarray.

Crime will increase in many cities across the U.S. This is due in part to the massive changes in the workplace. The vacancy rate in downtown office buildings hit a high of 17% in the third quarter of 2021 and has been consistently around 12.5% since, which is above the historical average.

The work-from-home trend that came from COVID-19 will continue. It is clear that upper management would like employees to come back to the office, at least a few days a week. Corporate leaders seem to want workers to return, and there is a slow movement in that direction. The problem that will need to be addressed, is inflation.

Someone who used to commute five days a week was the same person who left the office at lunchtime for a $10 sandwich or a trip to a salad bar will now be confronted by a $15 price tag at the minimum.

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written 13 books and is futurist in residence at Ringling College of Art andDesign. His websites aredavidhoule.comandthe2020sdecade.com. Email him at david@davidhoule.com.

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2023 The Year Ahead | The Futurist