Category Archives: Economy

The Dark Green City

Photo by Nicolas Haro

Smart urban technology has the potential to transform our cities — but watch out for unintended consequences.

What would cities look like if they were built from scratch, from the internet up? This is the question being asked by Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation unit of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. What’s emerging from this thought experiment is a new approach to city-building, one that sees urban districts as platforms for testing and refining technologies that improve quality of life. Sidewalk Labs’ mission, it claims, is not to create a city of the future, but to create the future of cities. Continue reading →

Friendly A.I. :)

There is perhaps no scientific innovation more anticipated — or misunderstood — than artificial intelligence (A.I.). A.I. will transform every industry, from medicine to finance, from law to education, and from energy to agriculture. It holds the potential to bring unprecedented benefits to humanity, influencing how we will communicate, travel, learn, work, and live. It will fundamentally change how we see ourselves. It has the potential to help us solve some of our most enduring problems, from climate change to economic inequality.

A.I. isn’t without its risks, however. It seems increasingly likely that as long as we continue to make advances in A.I. we will one day build machines that possess  intelligence far superior to our own. The concern is not that this “superintelligent” A.I. will become malevolent or evil, as is so often portrayed in pop culture and the media. Rather, the concern is that we will build machines that are so much more competent than we are that even the slightest divergence between their goals and our own could turn out to be disastrous. Even in the best-case scenario, where our interests and the interests of a superintelligent A.I. are aligned, we will still need to absorb the social and economic consequences.  Continue reading →

Artificial intelligence as a philosophical endeavour

It’s true that artificial intelligence will quickly disrupt the economy and society, but not necessarily in ways that are beneficial. To dismiss the potentially adverse consequences of AI demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what it will be capable of. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — a machine or system that cannot only learn, but also teach itself to learn — would quickly outpace human intellectual ability in scope and scale, something referred to as an “intelligence explosion”. Unless an AGI’s goals are aligned with our own, the economic and ethical risks posed by this scenario are obvious.

This is why many experts have predicted that moral philosophy will soon become part of the tech sector. So, while the federal government may see AI as a path to reverse stalled economic growth, it needs to remember that it isn’t just a technical or economic endeavour — it’s also a philosophical one. The very people who are developing AI — those trained in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) — should also have a better foundation in the humanities.

Our Last Invention

AlainDelorme_Murmuration08

Many people — specialists and laypeople alike — celebrate the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as a means to render work as we know it obsolete. While AI has the potential to provide many labour-saving benefits, not to mention the ability to solve many of our current problems related to economics and ecology, it also holds many ethical – and potentially existential – risks. Continue reading →

Nature is Enough

“The Chirp Heard Across the Universe” (editorial, Feb. 16), about the recent discovery of the gravitational waves that were predicted by Einstein a century ago, asks, “Does science, or knowledge, really need a justification?”

The answer, of course, is no. But in a culture that has become saturated with the idea that only commercial value matters, we’ve become afraid of expressing an impulse as natural and basic as this.

Much like literature, music, philosophy and art, enjoyment of the natural sciences — and of nature itself — has intrinsic value. No further justification is required. Curiosity, wonder and beauty are enough.

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Note: This appeared as a letter to the editor in The New York Times.

Building Partnerships for a Low-Carbon Future

Creating a low-carbon society will require public-private collaboration related to buildings and cities

Tokyo Skyline (Credit - Sean Pavone)

[Note: This is my response to this year’s Masdar blogging contest which asks the following question:

“In your view, what are the policies that governments should adopt to encourage public-private partnership and enable the private sector to develop the goods and services necessary for a global transition to a low-carbon economy by 2030?”]

In 1800, only 10% of the world’s people lived in cities. By 1990, it jumped to 40%. Today, over half live in cities. It’s estimated that by the end of this decade, 60% people will live not only in cities, but in megacities (cities with population of 10 million or more). By 2030, a staggering 80% will live in cities. This has had — and will continue to have — huge environmental and social consequences.

Therefore, while the transition to a low-carbon society will require action by various sectors and at multiple scales, the most important actions — and most pragmatic — will be those related to cities, in general, and buildings, in particular. As the world is quickly becoming more urbanized, if we are to transition to a low-carbon society we must not merely make this the century of the city, but rather the century of the low-carbon city. Continue reading →