H1 General Paper Content Notes Science and Technology

general paper
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science a nd te chnology
H1 General Paper Content Notes
Science and Technology
Essay Questions..........................................................................................2
Quotes.........................................................................................................3
1 The Fourth Industrial Revolution..........................................................5
1.1 Trends in Science and Technology............................................................5
1.2 Automation and Employment..............................................................7
2 Ethics of Science and Technology........................................................11
2.1 Ethics of Artificial Intelligence............................................................11
2.2 Digital Authoritarianism.....................................................................13
2.3 Ethics of Scientific Research..............................................................14
3 Privacy and Regulation of Technology.............................................................16
3.1 Big Tech..........................................................................................16
3.2 Internet of Things............................................................................22
4 Technology Cold War...........................................................................25
5 Science, Technology and the Humanities.........................................................28
6 Technological Innovations..................................................................33
6.1 Artificial Intelligence and Robots.............................................................33
6.2 Facial Recognition.............................................................................37
6.3 Smart Cities.....................................................................................37
6.4 Biotechnology...................................................................................40
6.5 Technology and Healthcare.....................................................................43
6.6 Technology and the Environment............................................................47
6.7 Technology and Education......................................................................51
6.8 Technology and Retail.......................................................................51
6.9 Technology and Security.........................................................................52
6.10 Technology and Empowerment...............................................................52
H1 General Paper Content
Notes
Essay Questions
GCE A Level Paper 1 Questions
1. In an age of rapid technological advancement, is a single career for life realistic?
(2018 Q3)
2. Can the use of animals for scientific research ever be justified? (2017 Q2)
3. How far is science fiction becoming fact? (2017 Q7)
4. ‘Longer life expectancy creates more problems than benefits.’ Discuss (2016 Q3)
5. ‘Human need, rather than profit, should always be the main concern of scientific
research.’ Discuss. (2016 Q5)
6. How far has modern technology made it unnecessary for individuals to possess
mathematical skills? (2016 Q7)
7. ‘Books serve little purpose in education as technological developments become more
sophisticated’. How far do you agree? (2015 Q8)
8. To what extent can the regulation of scientific or technological developments be justified?
(2014 Q9)
9. Is there any point in trying to predict future trends? (2013 Q3)
10. “Scientific research into health and diet is unreliable as it so often contradicts itself.” Is
this a fair comment? (2013 Q7)
11. Should people be allowed to have children by artificial means? (2012 Q3)
12. How far is it acceptable for technology to be used only for financial benefit? (2012 Q12)
13. ‘The more science advances, the more religion will decline.’ To what extent do
you agree? (2008 Q3)
14. Should research into expensive medical treatment be allowed when only a few can afford
them? (2007 Q11)
15. Does modern technology always improve the quality of people’s lives? (2006 Q3)
16. Is effective farming possible without science? (2005 Q1)
17. ‘Medical science has been so successful that people now expect too much of it.’ Do you
agree? (2005 Q5)
Science encompasses the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical
and natural world through observation and experiment, and technology is the application of
scientific knowledge for practical purposes.
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Quotes
Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum
 The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never
been a time of greater promise or potential peril. (2016, The Fourth Industrial Revolution)
 Technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control. We are not
constrained by a binary choice between “accept and live with it” and “reject and live
without it”. Instead, take dramatic technological change as an invitation to reflect about
who we are and how we see the world. The more we think about how to harness the
technology revolution, the more we will examine ourselves and the underlying social
models that these technologies embody and enable, and the more we will have an
opportunity to shape the revolution in a manner that improves the state of the world.
(2016, The Fourth Industrial Revolution)
Robert J. Shiller, 2013 Nobel laureate in Economics

 We cannot wait until there are massive dislocations in our society to prepare for the
Fourth Industrial Revolution. (2016)
Pierre Nanterme, CEO of Accenture

 Digital is the main reason just over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 have
disappeared since the year 2000. (2016)
Max Tegmark, President of the Future of Life Institute

 Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence, so amplifying our
human intelligence with artificial intelligence has the potential of helping civilization
flourish like never before – as long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial.
Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist

 The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.
(2014)
 Most of the threats we face come from the progress we’ve made in science and
technology. We are not going to stop making progress, or reverse it, so we must recognize
the dangers and control them. I’m an optimist, and I believe we can. (2016)
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

 We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to
serve you. (2018, in a public apology regarding the Cambridge Analytica breach)
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Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple

 It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with
liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart
sing. (2011)
Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

 We want our humanists to understand technology and our technologists to understand the
humanities. (2018)
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft

 I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do
it.
 Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.
Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist

 Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand
more, so that we may fear less.
 I am one of those who think like Nobel, that humanity will draw more good than evil
from new discoveries.
Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

 It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
 The human spirit must prevail over technology.
 Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
 Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
 All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are
directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence
and leading the individual towards freedom.
Isaac Asimov, American science fiction writer

 The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than
society gathers wisdom. (1988)
Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist

 Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. (1968)
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., American historian

 Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame
our response.
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1 The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work
and relate to one another. It is a new chapter in human development, enabled by
extraordinary technology advances commensurate with those of the first, second and third
industrial revolutions. These advances are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds
in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The speed, breadth and depth of
this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organisations create
value and even what it means to be human. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more
than just technology-driven change; it is an opportunity to help everyone, including leaders,
policy-makers and people from all income groups and nations, to harness converging
technologies in order to create an inclusive, human-centred future. The real opportunity is
to look beyond technology, and find ways to give the greatest number of people the ability
to positively impact their families, organisations and communities.
1.1 Trends in Science and Technology
Tech Trends 2019: Executive summary

Deloitte Insights. Jan 16, 2019
 A persistent theme of every “Tech Trends” report by Deloitte Insights has been the
increasing, often mind-bending velocity of change. Interestingly, many of things that
seemed so incredible ten years ago are now foundational.
 Looking back, we can see the value these emerging innovations offered, but in the
moment, their promise seemed less clear. It is, therefore, remarkable how quickly
organizations across sectors and regions navigated through the “so what” and into the
“now what” for these trends and went on to successfully traverse the new digital
landscape.
Emerging Science and Technology Trends: 2017-2047

Report published by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and
Technology (DASA R&T)
10 cross-cutting science and technology trends
1. Robotics, autonomous systems, and automation
2. Advanced materials and manufacturing
3. Energy production, harvesting, storage, and distribution
4. Biomedical science and human augmentation
5. Quantum computing
6. Mixed reality and digital mimicry (e.g., AR, VR, voice synthesis)
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7. Food and water security technologies (e.g., water harvesting, lab-grown meat)
8. Synthetic biology
9. Space technologies (e.g., asteroid mining, commercial space travel, antisatellite weapons)
10. Climate change adaptation technologies (e.g., geoengineering, super-carbon-absorbing
plants)
The Biggest Tech Takeaways From the 2018 World Economic Forum
Vanessa Bates Ramirez. Singularity Hub. Feb 4, 2018
1. Artificial Intelligence
 Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are forecast to add US$15 trillion to the
global economy by 2030.
 Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview, “AI will be bigger than electricity
or fire” because it has the potential to fundamentally change how we do everything—
significantly, because it’s not subject to the constraints most resources are.
 Mary Cummings, the director of Duke University’s Humans and Autonomy Lab,
cautioned that “technology is not a panacea.” With technology in general and AI
especially, she believes we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
2. Automation
 The 2018 Global Risks report, compiled from survey data before the summit, lists
“adverse consequences of technological advances” as one of the top risks societies
are facing today.
 The report notes that automation has already disrupted the labor market, and not only
will it continue to do so, it will do so in a way that’s widening the gap between rich
and poor; low-skill jobs are being eliminated fastest, leaving uneducated workers
without many options while adding to the bottom line of big tech companies. The
report warned that this divide has repercussions beyond just economics.
 The Forum also announced its Closing the Skills Gap initiative, a global, business-led
plan to deliver new skills to 10 million workers by 2020, and its IT Industry Skills
Initiative, whose SkillSET portal aims to reach one million IT workers by 2021.
3. Bitcoin
 Bitcoin aside, the panelists were all more enthusiastic about Blockchain as a
promising technology with many useful applications.
4. Cybersecurity
 Cyberattacks and massive data fraud are among the top five global risks by perceived
likelihood in the 2018 Global Risks report.
 The Internet of Things is expected to grow to around 20.4 billion devices by 2020,
and use of cloud services will grow as well. That growth will bring us numerous
benefits and conveniences, but it will simultaneously give hackers an exponentially-
increasing number of targets. Beyond just stealing credit card numbers or individual
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identities, cybercriminals could trigger a breakdown in the systems that keep societies
functioning—such as power grids.
 Most significantly, the Forum announced the launch of the Global Centre
for Cybersecurity.
5. Regulating Tech Giants
 British Prime Minister Theresa May devoted a portion of her Davos speech to
regulation of technology companies as well.
 Businessman George Soros was quite straightforward in calling out Facebook and
Google as “obstacles to innovation,” saying “…social media companies influence
how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-
reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on
the integrity of elections.”
 A new joint venture was launched between the Craig Newmark Foundation and the
WEF to bring together internet platform giants and multi-stakeholder leaders.
6. Biotech
 Panelist Feng Zhang, MIT neuroscience professor and one of the scientists who
developed CRISPR gene editing, spoke of the promise and peril of advancing gene
editing technology.
 But he also emphasized the importance of exercising extreme caution when altering
organisms’ DNA and developing a “containment mechanism” to control technologies
that turn out to be dangerous for humanity.
 The Forum announced a partnership between the Earth Bio-Genome Project and the
Earth Bank of Codes. As part of the WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth
initiative, these organizations will collaborate to sequence the DNA of all life on
earth, a hugely ambitious project estimated to take ten years and cost $4.7 billion.
1.2 Automation and Employment
The Future of Jobs Report 2016

World Economic Forum. 2016
 In many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not
exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate.
 By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately
end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.
 In such a rapidly evolving employment landscape, the ability to anticipate and prepare for
future skills requirements, job content and the aggregate effect on employment is
increasingly critical for businesses, governments and individuals in order to fully seize
the opportunities presented by these trends—and to mitigate undesirable outcomes.
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 Current technological trends are bringing about an unprecedented rate of change in the
core curriculum content of many academic fields, with nearly 50% of subject knowledge
acquired during the first year of a four-year technical degree outdated by the time students
graduate, according to one popular estimate.
OECD Employment Outlook 2019

OECD. 2019
 The diffusion of industrial robots perhaps best epitomises technological penetration and
fears of job automation in the workplace.
 While robots have been on factory floors for decades, their diffusion has recently
accelerated and spread beyond manufacturing. As one example, supermarkets have
started to employ robots as shop assistants, and a number of companies are piloting
cashier-less stores – e.g. Browne.
 The capabilities of robots are also expanding within the manufacturing sector. For
example, certain robots are now able to move by themselves around the factory floor.
 Data from the International Federation of Robotics show that orders of industrial robots
have increased fivefold between 2001 and 2017, and such a trend is projected to
accelerate further.
Digitalisation will leave an impact on the future of work

The Business Times. Aug 13, 2019
 According to Brookings Institution's 2019 report, 25 per cent of US jobs, representing 36
million workers, are highly susceptible to automation.
 According to a report by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC),
advancements in technology will impact more than half of the workforce in Asia, and
up until the year 2030, one can expect more losses than gains in employment
opportunities.
Using AI to Make Knowledge Workers More Effective

Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson. Harvard Business Review. April 19, 2019
 New AI capabilities that can recognize context, concepts, and meaning are opening up
surprising new pathways for collaboration between knowledge workers and machines.
They could profoundly affect the 48% of the US workforce that are knowledge workers—
and the more than 230 million knowledge-worker roles globally.
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 Of more than 150 such experts drawn from a larger global survey on AI in the
enterprise, almost 60% say their old job descriptions are rapidly becoming obsolete
in light of their new collaborations with AI. Some 70% say they will need training and
reskilling (and on-the-job-learning) due to the new requirements for working with AI.
And 85% agree that C-suite executives must get involved in the overall effort of
redesigning knowledge work roles and processes.
A.I. Expert Says Automation Could Replace 40% of Jobs in 15 Years

Fortune. Jan 10, 2019
 Artificial intelligence expert and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee believes that 40% of the
world’s jobs will be replaced by automation.
What the next 20 years will mean for jobs – and how to prepare
Stephane Kasriel. World Economic Forum. Jan 10, 2019
 AI and robotics will ultimately create more work, not less. As the number of robots at
work has reached record levels, it’s worth noting that in 2018 the global unemployment
level fell to 5.2% – the lowest level in 38 years. In other words, high tech and high
employment don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
 There won’t be a shortage of jobs but – if we don’t take the right steps – a shortage of
skilled talent to fill those jobs.
 As remote work becomes the norm, cities will enter the talent wars of the future.
Untethering work from place is going to give people new geographic freedom to live
where they want, and cities and metropolitan regions will compete to attract this new
mobile labour force.
 The majority of the workforce will freelance by 2027, based on workforce growth
rates found in Freelancing in America 2017.
 Technological change will keep increasing, so learning new skills will be an ongoing
necessity throughout life.
5 things to know about the future of jobs

World Economic Form. Sep 17, 2018
1. Automation, robotization and digitization look different across different industries.
2. There is a net positive outlook for jobs – amid significant job disruption.
 75 million current job roles may be displaced by the shift in the division of labour
between humans, machines and algorithms, while 133 million new job roles may
emerge at the same time.
3. The division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms is shifting fast.
4. New tasks at work are driving demand for new skills.
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 Skills growing in prominence include analytical thinking and active learning as

well as skills such as technology design.
 “Human” skills such as creativity, originality and initiative, critical thinking,
persuasion and negotiation will likewise retain or increase their value, as will
attention to detail, resilience, flexibility and complex problem-solving.
5. We will all need to become lifelong learners.
Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages
McKinsey Global Institute. 2017
 McKinsey Global Institute found that robots could replace up to 800 million jobs by
2030.
 About half the activities people are paid to do globally could theoretically be automated
using currently demonstrated technologies.
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2 Ethics of Science and Technology
2.1 Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Asilomar AI Principles
Future of Life Institute. 2017
 The Asilomar A.I. Principles were developed at the 2017 conference hosted by Future of
Life Institute. These principles have been endorsed by Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and
hundreds of other tech leaders, entrepreneurs and scientists.
How Big Tech is struggling with the ethics of AI

Madhumita Murgia, Siddarth Shrikanth. Financial Times. Apr 29, 2019
 In recent months, Google employees have protested at its bid for a Pentagon cloud
computing contract, and its involvement in a US government AI weapons
program.
 The development and application of AI is causing huge divisions both inside and outside
tech companies, and Google is not alone in struggling to find an ethical approach.
 The companies that are leading research into AI in the US and China, including Google,
Amazon, Microsoft, Baidu, SenseTime and Tencent, have taken very different approaches
to AI and whether to develop technology that can ultimately be used for military and
surveillance purposes. For instance, Google has said it will not sell facial recognition
services to governments, while Amazon and Microsoft both do so.
 They have also been attacked for the algorithmic bias of their programmes, where
computers inadvertently propagate bias through unfair or corrupt data inputs.
 In response to criticism not only from campaigners and academics but also their own
staff, companies have begun to self-regulate by trying to set up their own “AI ethics”
initiatives that perform roles ranging from academic research — as in the case of Google-
owned DeepMind’s Ethics and Society division — to formulating guidelines and
convening external oversight panels.
 The most common practice has been to publish company principles for ethical AI.
Microsoft, Google, IBM and others have all published lists of company ethics, while
research bodies such as the Future of Life Institute, which developed the “Asilomar
principles”, have tried to get scientists from around the world to sign on.
 Many companies have also joined wider bodies to work across academia, business and
civil society. One such effort, the Partnership on AI, was founded in 2017 by Google,
DeepMind, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. The partnership now numbers
almost 90 groups.
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 Meanwhile, in China, companies are taking divergent approaches to ethical AI. De Kai, a
computer scientist at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology, and a member
of Google’s shortlived ethics council, said that Chinese companies are generally more
concerned with solving real-world problems as a way to do good, rather than
focusing on abstract ethical principles.
 How they define “doing good”, however, has been the subject of intense criticism from
some quarters. AI companies such as CloudWalk, Yitu and SenseTime have partnered
with the Chinese government to roll out facial recognition and predictive policing,
particularly among minority groups such as the Uighur Muslims.
 In March, Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive, urged the “contribution of Chinese wisdom”
to the ethics debate, and emphasised that providing a “good life to common people” was
the ultimate goal. Tencent declares on its website that one of its goals is to “use
technology to accelerate the development of the public good”.
 Ultimately, experts say the field is still nascent, and a joint approach between the
private and public sectors is required to build consensus.
Can we make artificial intelligence ethical?

Stephen A. Schwarzman. The Straits Times. Jan 25, 2019
 As academic Thomas H. Davenport and Deloitte principal Vivek Katyal argue in the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan Management Review, we must also
recognise that AI often works best with humans instead of by itself.
 That is especially true in cases in which human judgments are necessary to identify
content that is "inappropriate", or areas such as marketing where companies must ensure
AI does not inadvertently apply biases. These situations benefit from people who are
"bilingual", marrying AI fluency with expertise in fields as varied as history and cross-
cultural communication.
Ethics and the pursuit of artificial intelligence

South China Morning Post. Aug 6, 2018
 So many businesses and governments are scurrying to get into the artificial intelligence
(AI) race that many appear to be losing sight of some important things that should matter
along the way – such as legality, good governance, and ethics.
 In the AI arena the stakes are extremely high and it is quickly becoming a free-for-all
from data acquisition to the stealing of corporate and state secrets. The “rules of the road”
are either being addressed along the way or not at all, since the legal regime governing
who can do what to whom, and how, is either wholly inadequate or simply does not exist.
As is the case in the cyber world, the law is well behind the curve.
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 Ethical questions abound with AI systems, raising questions about how machines
recognise and process values and ethical paradigms. AI is certainly not unique among
emerging technologies in creating ethical quandaries, but ethical questions in AI research
and development present unique challenges in that they ask us to consider whether, when,
and how machines should make decisions about human lives – and whose values should
guide those decisions.
 Some military strategists already view future AI-laden battlefields as “casualty-free”
warfare, since machines will be the ones killing and at risk. All the leading AI
researchers in the West are signatories to an open letter from 2015 calling for a ban on
the creation of autonomous weapons.
 Just as Microsoft proposed in 2017 a Digital Geneva Convention that would govern
how governments use cyber capabilities against the private sector, an international
protocol should be created. Attempting to govern AI will not be an easy or pretty process,
for there are overlapping frames of reference.
 We may see a profound shift in agency away from man and toward machine, wherein
decision-making could become increasingly delegated to machines. If so, our ability to
implement and enforce the rule of law could prove to be the last guarantor of human
dignity and values in an AI-dominated world.
 Some professionals in the field worry that regulations imposed in the future could prove
to be unhelpful, misguided, or even stifle innovation and cede competitive advantage to
individuals and organisations in countries where the principles may not be adopted.
Others see them as a definitive step in the right direction.
 The number of AI researchers who signed the Principles as well as the open letters
regarding developing beneficial AI and opposing lethal autonomous weapons shows that
there is strong consensus among researchers more generally that much more needs to be
done to understand and address known and potential risks of AI.
2.2 Digital Authoritarianism
China’s Cryptocurrency Plan Has a Powerful Partner: Big Brother

The New York Times. Oct 18, 2019
 China wants to start replacing the cash that people carry with a digital currency — an
effort that went into overdrive this year after Facebook announced a plan to create a
cryptocurrency called Libra.
 But unlike most cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and beyond the reach of big
banks and government, Beijing’s state-issued version will be used to strengthen its grip
on citizens by giving it access to data on every transaction.
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Hong Kong Takes Symbolic Stand Against China’s High-Tech Controls

 One growing concern in Hong Kong is that the city will fall under the shadow of China’s
technological authoritarianism, which leverages broad surveillance, digital censorship
and artificial intelligence to tighten the Communist Party’s control.
 Those worries are now playing out on the streets: Protesters have used umbrellas to hide
from cameras, abandoned Chinese messaging apps, and even pulled down a camera-
equipped lamppost out of fear that it was running surveillance software.
Exporting digital authoritarianism

Alina Polyakova and Chris Meserole. Brookings Institution. Aug 2019
 Digital authoritarianism — the use of digital information technology by authoritarian
regimes to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic and foreign populations — is
reshaping the power balance between democracies and autocracies.
 At the forefront of this phenomenon, China and Russia have developed and exported
distinct technology-driven playbooks for authoritarian rule.
 China pioneered digital age censorship with its “Great Firewall” of a state-controlled
Internet and unprecedented high-tech repression deployed in Xinjiang in recent years, and
has exported surveillance and monitoring systems to at least 18 countries.
 Russia relies less on filtering information and more on a repressive legal regime and
intimidation of key companies and civil society, a lower-cost ad hoc model more easily
transferable to most countries. The Russian government has made recent legal and
technical moves which further tighten control, including legislation passed this year to
establish a “sovereign Russian internet.”
2.3 Ethics of Scientific Research
Recent events highlight an unpleasant scientific practice: ethics dumping

The Economist. Jan 31, 2019
 Ethics dumping is the carrying out by researchers from one country (usually rich, and
with strict regulations) in another (usually less well off, and with laxer laws) of an
experiment that would not be permitted at home, or of one that might be permitted, but in
a way that would be frowned on.
 The most worrisome cases involve medical research, in which health, and possibly lives,
are at stake. But other investigations—anthropological ones, for example—may also be
carried out in a more cavalier fashion abroad.
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 As science becomes more international the risk of ethics dumping, both intentional and
unintentional, has risen. The suggestion in this case is that Dr He Jiankui was
encouraged and assisted in his project by a researcher at an American university, Dr
Michael Deem of Rice University in Houston, Texas.
 The Commission of the European Union (EU) has sponsored a three-year, €2.7m
investigation into ethics dumping, TRUST. It scrutinised past examples of ethics dumping
and sought ways of stopping similar things happening in the future.
 Zhai Xiaomei, the executive director of the Centre for Bioethics at the Chinese Academy
of Medical Sciences, in Beijing, who is also deputy director of the health ministry’s ethics
committee, welcomes what TRUST has done. “China’s weak ethics governance has made
it an attractive destination for the export of unethical practices from the developed
world,” she says.
 Another case highlighted by TRUST involved the San, a group of people in southern
Africa. In 2010 a paper published in Nature on the first San genome to be sequenced
caused an outcry among some San. They found the consent procedures inappropriate and
some of the language used in the paper, such as “Bushmen”, pejorative.
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3 Privacy and Regulation of Technology
3.1 Big Tech
How to Tame Big Tech

Kaushik Basu. Project Syndicate. Oct 31, 2019
 The Internet was once hailed as a powerful democratizing force – enabling innovative
startups to compete with established businesses, disrupt entire industries, and create new
ones. But as some of those startups grew into behemoths, they turned this force on its
head. Far from leveling the playing field, Big Tech now largely owns it, and rather than
democratizing the economy, the Internet has ended up exacerbating the world’s inequality
problem.
 Big Tech’s rise has made a few people extremely wealthy. Meanwhile, some 736 million
people still lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day) in 2015, and billions more
lived on less than $2.50 per day. Many workers worldwide – including low-level
employees at tech companies like Amazon and freelancers who use platforms like Uber to
find customers – face poor and deteriorating working conditions and stagnant wages. As
labor’s share of income declines, capital’s share increases – trends that benefit the
wealthy above all.
 Given the power of major tech companies to stifle competition, reversing these trends will
require government intervention. And, indeed, taming Big Tech has become a major issue
ahead of the 2020 presidential election in the United States. In particular, Senators Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have called for breaking up major tech companies.
 But the solutions being proposed, including by legal scholars like Lina Khan, tend to
focus on making better use of antitrust laws. This approach is unlikely to work, because
markets have changed dramatically since antitrust laws were conceived. Applying
antitrust laws to break them up would eliminate their most fundamental advantage and
destroy their ability to deliver benefits to economies and consumers.
 Still, given the ways digital platforms have transformed markets, governments must think
beyond antitrust. One approach worth considering focuses not on breaking up tech giants,
but rather on ensuring that their profits are more widely shared.
Dissent Erupts at Facebook Over Hands-Off Stance on Political Ads

 More than 250 employees have signed a letter aimed at the company’s top executives,
decrying their recent decision to let politicians use the platform to advertise any claims
they want — even false ones. “Free speech and paid speech are not the same thing,”
the letter reads. “Misinformation affects us all.”
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 Though the number is a fraction of Facebook’s 35,000-plus work force, the signatures are
a sign of internal resistance that is in line with criticism from presidential candidates,
lawmakers and civil rights groups.
 Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, has defended the policy by citing freedom
of expression and the policies of other social and broadcast networks. “We remain
committed to not censoring political speech,” a spokeswoman said in response to the
letter.
 When Zuckerberg says, in defense of the ad policy, “most people don’t want to live in a
world where you can only post things that tech companies judged to be 100 percent true,”
and, “in a democracy people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are
saying,” what he’s not saying is that the underlying problem is that policing political ads
would be politically tenuous and hard.
Defiant Zuckerberg Says Facebook Won’t Police Political Speech

 In a speech in Washington, Mark Zuckerberg gave a full-throated defense of Facebook as
a crucial new structure in human culture. He portrayed the platform — under fire for
years over enabling the dissemination of disinformation and violent, hateful content — as
spreading free speech and democracy. He referred by way of contrast to China, where
Beijing controls and censors speech, including on the internet.
 “People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the
world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Mr. Zuckerberg
said.
 The Times’s Mike Isaac, who interviewed Mr. Zuckerberg before the speech, said the
Facebook founder was “positioning himself and his company as the hero of Western
ideals.”
Facebook Can Be Forced to Delete Content Worldwide, E.U.’s Top Court Rules
 Europe’s top court ruled that an individual country can order Facebook to take down
posts, photographs and videos around the world.
Google Antitrust Investigation Outlined by State Attorneys General

The New York Times. Sep 9, 2019
 The attorneys general from more than four dozen states and territories announced
investigations into the market power and corporate behavior of big tech
companies.
 Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are often lumped together, but their business
models differ. The growing grievances against them, however, have one thing in
common: fear that the companies are amassing too much power.
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Google Is Fined $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube

 Regulators fined the internet giant a record $170 million for knowingly and illegally
violating children’s privacy on YouTube by harvesting and using their personal
information to target them with ads.
Justice Department Opens Antitrust Review of Big Tech Companies

The New York Times. Jul 23, 2019
 The U.S. Justice Department said that it would start an antitrust review to examine how
internet giants had accumulated market power, the clearest sign yet that the arguments
that helped shield the tech giants from competition scrutiny are eroding.
Big brother in big tech

The Straits Times. May 14, 2019
 In the past two weeks, the chief executives of Google and Facebook - two tech companies
that frequently track our digital habits - have made protecting user data the central theme
in their conference speeches. But experts believe there is more that tech firms can do.
Similarly, consumers want an easier way to monitor if the tech firms are actually walking
the talk.
 At Google's annual gathering of software developers in the United States last week, its
chief executive Sundar Pichai said: "We strongly believe that privacy and security are
for everyone, not just a few." At the event, called Google I/O, the company said its new
mobile operating system Android Q and existing products such as YouTube and Google
Maps will have new privacy features so users can be in control of their data. The bulk of
such data will also remain in the users' devices rather than being collected and stored in
the cloud at the firm's end.
 At Facebook's annual F8 developer conference two weeks ago in the US, company chief
executive Mark Zukerberg declared that "the future is private". He vowed to do more,
including extending popular messaging app WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption to other
Facebook-owned private messaging platforms Messenger and Instagram Direct.
 This spotlight on privacy and security comes as big tech firms suffer public backlash
over how they handle users' personal information.
 In January, Google was slapped with a €50 million fine in France for breaching European
Union online privacy rules. The French regulator said Google lacked transparency and
clarity in how it informs users about its handling of personal data and failed to properly
obtain their consent for personalised ads.
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 Facebook went under intense fire after it reported early last year sharing the private
information of as many as 87 million users with political consultancy firm Cambridge
Analytica. The third-party firm had used users' personal data to design advertising and
content to influence their votes during the 2016 United States presidential election.
 Experts say tighter regulatory scrutiny and heightened consumer awareness are two
key drivers in protecting user privacy among big tech firms.
 For instance, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into
force in May last year, is the biggest shake-up of data privacy laws in more than two
decades. It allows users to better control their personal data and gives regulators the
power to impose fines of up to 4 percent of global revenue for violations.
 But critics have pointed out that some of the changes pledged by the tech firms are not
enough to address the central issue of privacy related to data sharing. So far, only Google
and Apple have applied an advanced privacy preservation mechanism, and only in some
of their data collection processes.
 Mr Claus Mortensen, principal analyst of Ecosystm, a technology research and advisory
firm, did not think Facebook would walk the talk and put new privacy safeguards into
effect until it comes up with a clear business strategy to wean itself off data sharing as
the main revenue-generating tool.
 But he said that Google, on the other hand, has taken some real steps that would help
protect user privacy, including stopping the scanning of Gmail users' e-mails for ad
targeting and rolling out an auto-delete feature that erases web and app activity after three
or 18 months.
Chris Hughes’s Call to Break Up Facebook: 5 Takeaways

The Editorial Board. The New York Times. May 9, 2019
1. Mark Zuckerberg is really powerful. Like, cartoonishly, Bond-villain powerful.
 Mr. Hughes describes the breathtaking power that Mark Zuckerberg has amassed
through a combination of market dominance and lack of regulatory oversight.
 “Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of almost anyone else in the private
sector or in government.” Mr. Hughes writes. Because Mr. Zuckerberg controls most
of the company’s voting shares, Facebook’s board “works more like an advisory
committee,” and he alone can decide how to configure the algorithms of Facebook,
Instagram and WhatsApp, determining who sees what. It’s a power that could be used
to make or break rival companies or political candidates.
2. Facebook’s founders had no idea of the power of what they were building.
 The power of social media companies to rewire how humankind communicates was
obvious. But the new tools had unintended consequences and soon started to alter
society in alarming ways.
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 “I’m disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about
how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and
empower nationalist leaders,” Mr. Hughes writes.
3. Facebook’s concentration of power and influence is part of a trend that extends
beyond Silicon Valley.
 Mr. Hughes sets the power of Facebook in the context of a broader movement toward
monopolistic consolidation.
 “The results are a decline in entrepreneurship, stalled productivity growth, and higher
prices and fewer choices for consumers.”
4. There are no alternatives to Facebook. That’s the problem.
 No major social networking company has been founded since the fall of 2011. In
the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as many as one in four Facebook users
in the United States deleted the app from their phones, at least temporarily. But they
often migrated to Instagram or WhatsApp, not realizing that both companies were
also owned by Facebook.
 Mr. Hughes writes that Facebook’s ubiquity was a result of Mr. Zuckerberg’s drive
to grow and the government’s unwillingness to do anything to stop it. “The
company’s strategy was to beat every competitor in plain view, and regulators and the
government tacitly — and at times explicitly — approved.”
 Now, Facebook isn’t checked by conventional market forces. “This means that
every time Facebook messes up, we repeat an exhausting pattern: first outrage,
then disappointment and, finally, resignation,” Mr. Hughes writes.
5. We have the tools to regulate Facebook but not the will. Yet.
 The government has had an aversion stretching back decades to bringing antitrust
cases. But the statutes are still on the books and could be used to rein in even the
biggest tech giants. “We already have the tools we need to check the domination of
Facebook. We just seem to have forgotten about them,” Mr. Hughes writes.
 Mr. Hughes’s call for breaking up Facebook may have greater resonance given the
political moment. The Democratic senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth
Warren has called explicitly for the breakup of tech giants including Amazon, Apple,
Google and Facebook.
Opinion | It’s Time to Panic About Privacy

Farhad Manjoo. The New York Times. Apr 10, 2019
 “We in the West are building a surveillance state. But while China is doing it through
government, we are doing it through corporations and consumer products, in the absence
of any real regulation that recognizes the stakes at hand.”
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Opinion | Tech Companies Say They Care

Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson. The New York Times. Apr 10, 2019
 On June 9, 1999, Google made a pledge to its small but growing number of customers in
a blunt 600-word statement. “Google is sensitive to the privacy concerns of its users,” it
proclaimed. The statement, which today reads like a quaint artifact of a simpler time,
would become the company’s first privacy policy.
 It was not only Google; all of today’s tech giants have made similar commitments. In
2002, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates declared, “Users should be in control of how their
data is used.” Three years later, Facebook, through its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, echoed
the statement in a note to its campus user base, “We give you control of your
information.” Similar statements from countless technology companies have followed in
the years since. If there is one thing that the torrent of hacks and data breaches have
shown us, it is that such rhetoric is often incongruous with reality.
 It’s been almost twenty years since Google’s first privacy statement. The internet today is
a significantly different place, one that is largely powered by the transmission and transfer
of our personal information. Data breaches—some of vertiginous scale—are common, as
is the creeping sense that, in order to log on, we are forced to submit to being tracked and
targeted.
 But if the modern internet has changed greatly, the statements from the multinational
corporations that transformed it have remained strikingly similar. The technology
companies and their leaders have been saying we should be in charge of our information
for twenty years. So why—now, more than ever—does it feel that we are not?
Opinion | Zuckerberg's So-Called Shift Toward Privacy

Zeynep Tufekci. The New York Times. Mar 7, 2019
 I was tempted to roll my eyes when Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg posted
a manifesto outlining his plan to make social networking more "privacy-focused" and less
about public disclosure of information.
 Here are four pressing questions about privacy that Mr Zuckerberg conspicuously did not
address: Will Facebook stop collecting data about people's browsing behaviour, which it
does extensively? Will it stop purchasing information from data brokers who collect or
"scrape" vast amounts of data about billions of people, often including information
related to our health and finances? Will it stop creating "shadow profiles" - collections of
data about people who aren't even on Facebook? And most importantly: Will it change
its fundamental business model, which is based on charging advertisers to take
advantage of this widespread surveillance to "micro-target" consumers?
 Until Mr Zuckerberg gives us satisfying answers to those questions, any effort to make
Facebook truly "privacy-focused" is sure to disappoint. Most of his post was devoted to
acknowledging familiar realities about social media and citing familiar solutions.
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 Mr Zuckerberg said that the company would expand end-to-end encryption of messaging.
In addition to releasing Facebook from the obligation to moderate content, encrypted
messaging won't interfere with the surveillance that Facebook conducts for the benefit of
advertisers.
 Another point that Mr Zuckerberg emphasised in his post was his intention to make
Facebook's messaging platforms, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram
"interoperable". Merging those apps just might, however, serve Facebook's interest in
avoiding antitrust remedies.
 In short, the few genuinely new steps that Mr Zuckerberg announced seem all too
conveniently aligned with Facebook's needs, whether they concern government
regulation, public scandal or profitability. This supposed shift towards a "privacy-
focused vision" looks more to me like shrewd competitive positioning, dressed up in
privacy rhetoric.
3.2 Internet of Things
How to Set Your Google Data to Self-Destruct

 The search giant recently introduced settings to auto-delete search and location history,
and is rolling out private modes for YouTube and Google Maps.
FaceApp Lets You ‘Age’ a Photo by Decades. Does It Also Violate Your Privacy?
The New York Times. Jul 17, 2019
 The popular app, FaceApp, which uses “artificial intelligence” to make users’ faces look
older, has raised privacy concerns that security experts believe are mostly exaggerated.
While you're sleeping, your iPhone stays busy harvesting data

 Many app trackers feed the personal data economy, used to target us for marketing and
political messaging. In apps, there's little notice that trackers are lurking and you can't
choose a different browser to block them.
The Internet of Things will bring the internet’s business model into the rest of the world
The Economist. Sep 12, 2019
 Data are the currency of the online world, gathered, analysed, sold and occasionally
stolen in a business model that has built some of the world’s most valuable companies—
but which is attracting increasingly unfriendly scrutiny from governments and regulators,
and which its critics decry as “surveillance capitalism”.
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 If ubiquitous computing will turn companies of things into companies of services, the
IOT will transform consumers of things into computer users, with all that implies. Like
social networks or email, smart gadgets offer convenience and comfort, at the price of
turning everything done with them into fuel for an ever more pervasive data economy.
 Smart televisions already watch the users watching them, sending back data on
programme choices and viewing habits; some even monitor background conversation.
Consent is murky. In 2017 Vizio, an American TV-maker, was fined $2.2m by the
Federal Trade Commission after regulators found it was not properly seeking users’
permission to harvest and resell information on viewing habits.
 Smart scales monitor weight and fat percentage, a gold mine for the fitness industry. The
advertising industry is already experimenting with “smart” billboards, which can use
cameras and facial-recognition software to assess people’s reactions to their contents.
 The rise of surveillance capitalism proves that, in the end, consumers are willing to trade
their data for the products and conveniences that it offers. A survey in 2016 by the
Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade body, reported that 65% of IOT users seemed
happy to see advertising on their devices, presumably in return for lower prices.
 Another reading, though, is that the business models of the internet established
themselves early, at a time when neither regulators nor consumers properly understood
the technologies underlying them, and when not even the most avid techies could have
predicted all their implications.
 These days, things are different. Blamed for everything from addicted children to
nurturing terrorism, Big Tech has lost its Utopian shine. That disillusionment has fed
back into gloomy predictions about the IOT. In many ways, that is valuable, for if
problems can be foreseen they can be more easily prevented.
 But if the techno-optimism that infused the 1990s and 2000s now looks naive, the
techno-pessimism that is fashionable today can be similarly overdone. Like the
original internet, the IOT promises huge benefits. Unlike the original internet, the IOT
will mature in an age that has become sceptical about where a connected, computerised
future might lead. If it has to earn the trust of its users, it will be the better for it in the
long run.
Online identification is getting more and more intrusive - Behavioural biometrics

The Economist. May 23, 2019
 UnifyID relies on the wealth of measurements made by today’s devices, making it
possible to identify an individual’s “unique motion fingerprint”. It can also detect
circumstances in which it is likely that a fraud is being committed.
 Used unwisely, however, the system could become yet another electronic spy on people’s
privacy.
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Beware the dangers of smart homes

The Straits Times. Jul 16, 2019
 The growth of smart home devices increases the number of targets for attack and the
potential impact of a breach, if the systems are not secured.
 In Google's case, a Belgian news site reported it had obtained samples of audio
conversations between users and their virtual assistant software from a contract worker - a
breach of privacy.
How creepy is your smart speaker?

 Smart home devices are currently an untamed frontier of data, with the potential for
massive abuse. As smart speakers from Amazon, Apple, Google and other technology
giants proliferate (global sales more than doubled last year) concerns that they might be
digitally snooping have become more widespread.
 And now that these devices are acquiring other senses beyond hearing—the latest models
have cameras, and future ones may use “lidar” sensors to see shapes and detect human
gestures—the scope for infringing privacy is increasing.
 But there will also be a countervailing incentive for manufacturers to differentiate
themselves by making more privacy-friendly devices.
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4 Technology Cold War
The Great Tech Race

Project Syndicate. 2019
 As the Trump administration busies itself with propping up legacy industries, China is
pursuing a Five-Year Plan that would transform it from a manufacturing powerhouse
into an innovation leader. Will Silicon Valley someday play second fiddle to
Shenzhen?
 Simon Johnson doesn't rule out that possibility, given that Trump's protectionist, anti-
immigration agenda could undercut the US tech industry's competitiveness. Likewise,
Edmund S. Phelps notes that the Chinese are realizing the value of competition-driven
innovation just when Americans seem to have forgotten it.
 But Kenneth Rogoff counters that advances in automation and artificial intelligence will
pose even greater political challenges to China than to the US, owing to China’s much
larger population. And Laura Tyson reminds US policymakers that they could still
adopt a pro-innovation industrial policy of their own, while working alongside allies to
keep China honest on trade and intellectual property.
Without Naming Huawei, E.U. Warns Against 5G Firms From ‘Hostile’ Powers
 In language that appeared to point to but did not name the Chinese giant Huawei, a
European Union report warned that a 5G supplier from a “hostile” country could be
forced by its home government to wreak havoc by causing cyberattacks.
 Huawei was blacklisted by the U.S. after the White House labeled it a tool for espionage
by Beijing.
China’s Silicon Valley is transforming China, but not yet the world
The Economist. Jul 11, 2019
 Zhongguancun is now a concept as much as a place, China’s “Silicon Valley”. It is also
China’s best hope for the domestic innovation that might insulate the country from a
world perturbed by its rise. The government calls this “self-dependent innovation”, an
idea that the trade war with America has given urgency.
 Xi Jinping, China’s leader, emphasised the need for Zhongguancun to generate “high-
quality” economic development. The country must accelerate a shift from assembling
tech products to creating them. Surrounded by the world’s largest, fastest-growing market
for such goods, Zhongguancun is creating new apps, services and devices more speedily
and cleverly than ever before.
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 The ingredients for success are in place, though it is hardly assured. The amount of
money pouring into Chinese technology companies has grown rapidly over the past ten
years, with the total annual levels of venture-capital investment now reaching parity with
America.
 China has long since moved beyond producing merely Chinese versions of Silicon Valley
companies. WeChat, an all-encompassing chat and payment app introduced in 2011 by
Tencent, an internet giant in the southern city of Shenzhen, has inspired copycattery from
Facebook.
 The newest firms in Zhongguancun employ business models that do not exist yet in
America. One company (YunHu Health) lets doctors in small family practices order up
complex lab tests for their patients on their phone. Another (Rokae) sells robotic arms
to knife factories, which use them to sharpen the blades automatically.
 The international popularity of TikTok, a video-sharing app made by Bytedance, a
Beijing company, shows that even in areas where Silicon Valley dominates globally,
like social media, Zhongguancun can compete.
 Investment firm Shunwei also aims to address Zhongguancun’s greatest weakness—a
reliance on imported components and technology. If Zhongguancun is to blossom as a
global, not just a regional, tech hub, and if it is to insulate China against protectionism, it
will need to nurture its own suppliers.
 The latest crop of startups have set their sights on foreign markets. They see the trade
war not as a threat, but as an opportunity—to fill the gaps in Chinese supply chains
and then compete in the West. But to become a world-shaping force like Silicon Valley,
Zhongguancun will have to overcome Western concerns about the potential misuses of
Chinese technology. So far, very few Chinese tech companies have managed to go
global, Huawei and Bytedance being the most prominent. And Huawei, in particular, is
under threat due to security fears raised by Western governments.
Trump’s feud with Huawei and China could lead to the balkanization of tech
Will Knight. MIT Technology Review. May 24, 2019
 America’s foreign policy, and tensions with China especially, are threatening to carve
up the tech world along national boundaries.
 “We are already seeing the balkanization of technology in many domains,” says Zvika
Krieger, head of technology policy at the World Economic Forum. “If this trend
continues, companies will have to create different products for different markets, leading
to even further divergence.”
 Incompatible products and platforms that replicate the same function would take
things backwards, Krieger says: “This will also have a chilling effect on innovation,
where digital companies can no longer assume the ability to scale globally with the
same ease and speed that has defined the past decade of unprecedented innovation.”
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 Huawei executives claimed the company would ride out the storm. But they also
argued that whatever happens to Huawei, Trump’s actions risk creating an increasingly
divided tech world, most immediately by eroding trust in an electronics supply chain
that spans the globe.
 “This is the real danger,” said Vincent Peng, a senior vice president and the company’s
head of corporate communications. “Different standards, different ecosystems, different
technology—it will make the whole world a mess. From the short term you are damaging
Huawei, but longer term you are damaging the American supply chain system and the
American industry.”
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5 Science, Technology and the Humanities
Mind Over STEM

Nicholas Agar. Project Syndicate. Aug 30, 2019
 The humanities are essential in times of change. They teach us that human experience
is subject to radical contingency, and that we should be wary of complacent and overly
confident predictions about how people will adapt to the economy of the future. They also
teach us to reject technological determinism.
 While the STEM fields can tell us what humans will be able to do in the future, they tell
us nothing about why they should do it or, more grandly but no less germanely, what it
will mean to be human.
 Will we be passive recipients of new technologies, simply letting the tides of change
carry us into the future? Or will we be active agents, demanding that new technologies
and business models make some allowance for the human condition and the values we
hold dear? If there is one thing of which we can be certain, it is that we will need
people who know how to think outside the STEM box.
Behind the scenes at the STEM-humanities culture war

Chemical & Engineering News. Jul 16, 2019
 Last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a
report that advocates a return to a traditional mode of liberal education that
balances science and the humanities. It takes its subtitle, “Branches from the Same
Tree,” from an Albert Einstein quote on science, religion, and the arts.
 In the US, budget cuts that began in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis have resulted in
some schools eliminating courses and degrees in subjects, such as foreign languages, art,
and history, that loan-burdened students and their parents increasingly view as irrelevant
to getting a job after graduation.
 The latest data available from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate that
the number of degrees awarded annually in the US dropped by more than 10% in almost
every subject in the humanities and social sciences between 2011 and 2017. In the same
period, the number of degrees awarded rose in all STEM subjects.
 “Knowing science kind of stands in for smartness in a way that knowing
Shakespeare used to stand in for that,” said Deborah Fitzgerald, a professor of the
history of technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Why ‘worthless’ humanities degrees may set you up for life

BBC Worklife. Apr 2, 2019
 In the US, politicians from Senator Marco Rubio to former President Barack Obama have
made the humanities a punch line. In China, the government has unveiled plans to turn 42
universities into “world class” institutions of science and technology. In the UK,
government focus on Stem has led to a nearly 20% drop in students taking A-levels in
English and a 15% decline in the arts.
 Take a look at the skills employers say they’re after. LinkedIn’s research on the most
sought-after job skills by employers for 2019 found that the three most-wanted “soft
skills” were creativity, persuasion and collaboration, while one of the five top “hard
skills” was people management.
 A full 56% of UK employers surveyed said their staff lacked essential teamwork skills
and 46% thought it was a problem that their employees struggled with handling
feelings, whether theirs or others’. It’s not just UK employers: one 2017 study found
that the fastest-growing jobs in the US in the last 30 years have almost all specifically
required a high level of social skills.
 Or take it directly from two top executives at tech giant Microsoft who wrote recently:
“As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become
even more important. Languages, art, history, economics, ethics, philosophy, psychology
and human development courses can teach critical, philosophical and ethics-based skills
that will be instrumental in the development and management of AI solutions.”
 One recent study of 1,700 people from 30 countries found that the majority of those in
leadership positions had either a social sciences or humanities degree.
We Need More Arts & Humanities in Tech

Medium. Jan 1, 2019
 While much of the modern educational system puts a focus on STEM, it seems that
liberal arts skillsets, such as writing, are becoming the most sought-after skills in the
hiring world.
 At the collegiate level, the Association of American Colleges and Universities echoed this
belief. Their 2013 survey found that 93% of employers stated “a demonstrated capacity
to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is important”
(Inc Magazine).
 In a recent LinkedIn survey of employer’s most sought-after soft skills in 2018, “57% of
leaders say soft skills are more important than hard skills” (LinkedIn).
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The case for humanities in the era of AI

Faisal Hoque. Fast Company. Sep 18, 2018
 A recent RBC research paper, Humans Wanted – How Canadian youth can thrive in the
age of disruption, has revealed that:
o Being ‘human’ will ensure resiliency in an era of disruption and artificial intelligence.
o Skills mobility—the ability to move from one job to another—will become a new
competitive advantage.
o The demand for “human skills” will grow across all job sectors and will include
critical thinking, coordination, social perceptiveness, active listening, and complex
problem solving.
o Rather than a nation of coders, digital literacy—the ability to understand digital
items, digital technologies or the internet fluently—will be necessary for all new jobs.
o Global competencies like cultural awareness, language, and adaptability will be in
demand. Virtually all job openings will place significant importance on judgment and
decision making and more than two thirds will value an ability to manage people and
resources.
 In his book “You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts
Education,” George Anders says:
o “Curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren’t unruly traits that must be reined in. You
can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from
anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into
management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. You can
bring a humanist’s grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you
know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast.”
 Even Tesla’s Elon Musk admits that over-automation has hampered creativity and
productivity at his company, which is well known for its innovative, out-of-the-box
thinking on the automobile manufacturing front. In other words, where human
interaction ends and full automation begins, ideas can die—maybe never to come back.
Tech industry’s missing piece: The humanities

Scott Hartley. Tech in Asia. Mar 28, 2018
 So, why then are we embroiled in a world where robots threaten our jobs, algorithms
determine our news and curate the communication of our friends, self-driving cars cause
fatalities, and misuse of data undermines democracy?
 We’ve too long, too falsely believed in the monotheism of technology, of learning to
code. But what we forget in endless hashtags and coding bootcamps is that without an
appreciation for our own humanity, this optimization is mechanistic.
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 If science is the study of the natural world and how it works, the humanities are the study
of our place in it. Anthropology is the study of humanity, and history is our written
record. Politics and sociology teach us about our collaborative and interdependent nature.
Psychology and philosophy are the introspection into our fears, passions, and motivations.
They are the study of how we persuade and how we can be manipulated, a contemplation
not just of what we can do, but the more complex how and why we actually do them.
 One look at Facebook today and it’s clear that the gravest challenges are ethical, editorial,
and philosophical. They’re issues of culture and communication, of politics and law.
While they certainly face technical challenges daily, these algorithmic tweaks in how they
store, sort, and retrieve data are less interesting than the sociological and political
ramifications they take on when they become public.
 People don’t understand or question the technology in the abstract, but they question the
outcome any technology generates. We forget that it is the application of technology that
matters—its touch point, or friction, with human beings.
 Fei-Fei Li (Google Cloud’s head of artificial intelligence) recently wrote a piece on The
New York Times in which she called for “human-centered AI.” Along with Melinda
Gates, she founded an organization called AI4All, a non-profit with the mission of
broadening the diversity of those who participate in shaping our AI.
 There is no way to build effectively for human beings without engaging in the
study of human nature.
 At Stanford University, some of the most successful founders have come out of a major
called “Symbolic Systems.” The course gives graduates an appreciation for technology
while at the same time teaching philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and logic.
Why tech needs the humanities

Eric Berridge. TED. Dec 2017
 If you want to build a team of innovative problem-solvers, you should value the
humanities just as much as the sciences, says entrepreneur Eric Berridge. He shares why
tech companies should look beyond STEM graduates for new hires -- and how people
with backgrounds in the arts and humanities can bring creativity and insight to technical
workplaces.
 “… while the sciences teach us how to build things, it's the humanities that teach us
what to build and why to build them.”
How the humanities, not STEM, can lead Chinese students towards creative innovation
Elaine Tuttle Hansen. South China Morning Post. Jul 4, 2017
 Future global citizens who study the humanities – including language, literature, history
and philosophy – will be best prepared for success in a world that increasingly depends
on innovation and creativity.
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 A key educational outcome if we want to foster creativity is “flexible thinking”, the

ability to test and transfer knowledge within and across domains. In the humanities, we
don’t just learn about historical events or parse Shakespeare’s words; we discuss,
interpret and communicate complex ideas – skills necessary to solving today’s
problems.
 Humanities study fosters social and emotional learning; increasing evidence suggests
language study may open neural pathways, reading and artistic activities foster empathy,
and studying history and politics develops social awareness.
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6 Technological Innovations
6.1 Artificial Intelligence and Robots
6.1.1 Breakthroughs in AI
The age of artificial intelligence: Cities and the A.I. edge

The Straits Times. Aug 11, 2019
 In itself, the technique is not new. The first working program was written in 1951,
allowing humans to play chess and checkers with the world's first commercially available
computer - the Ferranti Mark 1 created by British firm Ferranti.
 What has changed since the 1950s is the increasing power of computation that allows
an enormous amount of data to be processed in milliseconds. For instance, 200,000 hours
of the sounds of the ocean can be analysed in hours to detect humpback whales and chart
their migration patterns. It would take years to do the analysis without AI software
powered by fast computers.
 Over the past five years, big American tech firms Google, Amazon and Apple as well as
China tech giants Huawei and Alibaba have contributed to quantum leaps in computing
power by developing their own AI chips to allow for faster and cheaper data processing
for machine learning, much of which takes place on systems hosted on the Internet.
 Machine learning is a key part of AI, allowing specific tasks to be done by way of
inference in the absence of explicit instructions and computing rules.
Google Claims a Quantum Breakthrough That Could Change Computing

 The company said that it had achieved “quantum supremacy,” a long-sought milestone
that could mark the arrival of computing speeds that are inconceivable with today’s
technology.
 At a research lab in California, Google’s quantum computer needed just over 3 minutes to
perform a mathematical calculation that would take a supercomputer at least 10,000
years, the company said in a paper in the science journal Nature.
 Scientists likened the announcement to the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903 — proof
that a technological breakthrough is possible, though it may be years before it can fulfill
its potential.
 The idea behind quantum computing is to exponentially improve the processing speed
and power of computers to be able to simulate large systems, driving advances in physics,
chemistry and other fields.
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 Rather than storing information in binary 0s or 1s like classical computers, quantum

computers rely on "qubits", which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously, dramatically
increasing the amount of information that can be encoded.
 Both China and the U.S. have made quantum computing a national priority, in part
because it has the potential to make crucial encryption schemes obsolete.
If a Robotic Hand Solves a Rubik’s Cube, Does It Prove Something?

 A robotic hand designed by an artificial intelligence lab, OpenAI, can successfully solve a
Rubik’s Cube — a feat that many researchers believe is an indication that machines can
be trained to perform more complex tasks.
Finally, a Machine That Can Finish Your Sentence

The New York Times. Nov 18, 2018
 In August, researchers from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a lab based
in Seattle, unveiled an English test for computers.
 Then, two months later, a team of Google researchers unveiled a system called Bert. Its
improved technology answered those questions just as well as humans did — and it was
not even designed to take the test.
 Bert’s arrival punctuated a significant development in artificial intelligence. Over the last
several months, researchers have shown that computer systems can learn the vagaries of
language in general ways and then apply what they have learned to a variety of specific
tasks.
 Built in quick succession by several independent research organizations, including
Google and the Allen Institute, these systems could improve technology as diverse as
digital assistants like Alexa and Google Home as well as software that automatically
analyzes documents inside law firms, hospitals, banks and other businesses.
Machines Beat Humans on a Reading Test. But Do They Understand?

Quanta Magazine. Oct 17, 2019
 But is AI actually starting to understand our language — or is it just getting better at
gaming our systems? As BERT-based neural networks have taken benchmarks like
GLUE (General Language Understanding Evaluation) by storm, new evaluation methods
have emerged that seem to paint these powerful NLP (natural language processing)
systems as computational versions of Clever Hans, the early 20th-century horse who
seemed smart enough to do arithmetic, but who was actually just following unconscious
cues from his trainer.
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 In the famous Chinese Room thought experiment, a non-Chinese-speaking person sits

in a room furnished with many rulebooks. Taken together, these rulebooks perfectly
specify how to take any incoming sequence of Chinese symbols and craft an appropriate
response. A person outside slips questions written in Chinese under the door. The person
inside consults the rulebooks, then sends back perfectly coherent answers in Chinese.
 The thought experiment has been used to argue that, no matter how it might appear from
the outside, the person inside the room can’t be said to have any true understanding of
Chinese. Still, even a simulacrum of understanding has been a good enough goal for
natural language processing.
The Chinese Room Argument

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
 First published in 1980 by American philosopher John Searle.
 The narrow conclusion of the argument is that programming a digital computer may
make it appear to understand language but does not produce real understanding. The
thought experiment underscores the fact that computers merely use syntactic rules to
manipulate symbol strings, but have no understanding of meaning or semantics.
 The broader conclusion of the argument is that the theory that human minds are
computer-like computational or information processing systems is refuted. Instead minds
must result from biological processes; computers can at best simulate these biological
processes.
6.1.2 Applications of AI
Gymnastics’ Latest Twist? Robot Judges That See Everything

 Gymnastics officials are making artificial intelligence technology available to judges at
this week’s world championships in Stuttgart, Germany. The robot judges made by
Fujitsu, each about the size and shape of a Wi-Fi router, use three-dimensional laser
sensors to track the gymnasts’ movements.
 Baseball is already experimenting with robot umpires, and tennis is starting to expand
electronic line-calling. For now, humans have the final say.
Pioneering daily use of cutting-edge tech

China Daily. Jul 8, 2019
 An agricultural robot is part of a broader trend in China, which involves tech companies
teaming up with a variety of industries－ agriculture, automobile, healthcare－ to
explore possibilities of combining 5G and AI to revolutionise the traditional sectors
of the economy.
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 From conducting the world’s first 5G-enabled surgery on a human and transmitting 8K
ultra-high-definition TV content through 5G networks to piloting self-driving buses and
cars, a range of cutting-edge technologies are being put to commercial use.
 The nation is implementing an AI development plan that aims to build a 1 trillion yuan
(US$141 billion) AI core industry by 2030, which is expected to stimulate related
businesses to the tune of 10 trillion yuan.
 The commercial use of 5G will impart further momentum to AI, but more discussions are
needed to talk about the legal and ethical issues surrounding its wider applications. China
took a step in that direction in June when it issued new guidelines for scientists and
lawmakers to promote the “safe, controllable and responsible use” of AI for the benefit of
mankind.
 AI has raised many new and complex issues, like data privacy, machine ethics, safety,
risks and misuse like spreading misinformation using “deepfake videos”, and AI-
manipulated footage. But AI is not as uncontrollable or mystical as some people appear to
presume, experts said. The regulatory or supervisory mechanisms could steer it in the
right direction and leave enough room for exploration, course-correction, remedies and
calibrated growth, analysts said.
Using AI to Make Knowledge Workers More Effective

Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson. Harvard Business Review. Apr 19, 2019
 Google Brain has developed a system that opens up the black box in medical diagnosis,
allowing medical experts to know to what extent the model considered various factors, as
well as to enter concepts in the system they deem important and to test their own
hypotheses.
 While many AI-based cybersecurity systems incorporate human decision-making at the
last minute, researchers at the Alan Turing Institute are seeking ways to represent and
incorporate expert knowledge throughout the system.
 Hewlett Packard’s cognitive computing platform was able to determine each agent’s
unique “micro-skills”, which are now used to match incoming calls to agents who have
successfully processed similar requests. As customer service agents learn new skills, the
AI software automatically updates their expertise, and learns to route more complex
problems to them.
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019, curated by Bill Gates

Bill Gates. MIT Technology Review. Feb 27, 2019
 Robot dexterity: Dactyl is a robot that taught itself to flip a toy building block in its
fingers, using reinforcement learning. We will need further breakthroughs for robots to
master the advanced dexterity needed in a real warehouse or factory.
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 Smooth-talking AI assistants: AI assistants can now perform conversation-based tasks

like booking a restaurant reservation (Google Duplex) or coordinating a package drop-off
(Alibaba’s AliMe) rather than just obey simple commands.
6.2 Facial Recognition
Police Use of Facial Recognition Is Accepted by British Court

 In one of the first lawsuits to address the use of live facial recognition technology by
governments, a British court ruled that police use of the systems is acceptable and does
not violate privacy and human rights.
 The case has been closely watched by law enforcement agencies, privacy groups and
government officials because there is little legal precedent concerning the use of the
technology.
San Francisco Bans Facial Recognition Technology

The New York Times. May 14, 2019
 San Francisco became the first major city to ban the use of facial recognition technology
by the police and all other municipal agencies.
Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

Reuters. Apr 13, 2018
 In the not too distant future, surveillance cameras sitting atop over 100,000 lampposts in
Singapore could help authorities pick out and recognize faces in crowds across the island-
state.
 The plan to install the cameras, which will be linked to facial recognition software, is
raising privacy fears among security experts and rights groups. The government said the
system would allow it to “perform crowd analytics” and support anti-terror operations.
6.3 Smart Cities
Smart cities put data and digital technology to work to make better decisions and improve
the quality of life. More comprehensive, real-time data gives agencies the ability to watch
events as they unfold, understand how demand patterns are changing, and respond with
faster and lower-cost solutions. As cities get smarter, they are becoming more liveable and
more responsive—and today we are seeing only a preview of what technology could
eventually do in the urban environment.
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Smart city technology for a more liveable future

McKinsey. June 2018
 (Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is
expected to increase to 68% by 2050.)
 The latest report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Smart cities: Digital
solutions for a more livable future, finds that cities can use smart technologies to improve
some key quality-of-life indicators by 10 to 30 percent—numbers that translate into lives
saved, fewer crime incidents, shorter commutes, a reduced health burden, and carbon
emissions averted.
 Among the most advanced are Amsterdam, New York, Seoul, Singapore, and
Stockholm—but even these front-runners are only about two-thirds of the way toward
what constitutes a fully comprehensive technology base today.
Singapore tops list of 105 cities most ready for AI disruption, new index shows
The Straits Times. Sep 26, 2019
 The other cities in the top 10 on the Global Cities AI Disruption Index are London (75.6),
New York (72.7), San Francisco (71.9), Paris (71.0), Stockholm (70.4), Amsterdam
(68.6), Boston (68.5), Berlin (67.3), and Sydney (67.3).
 Cities in China, known for the widespread roll-out of AI technologies, did not appear in
the overall top 10, pulled down by relatively lower scores in most of the categories.
 But Chinese cities Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou scored the
highest in the growth trajectory category, which measures how fast technology
infrastructures evolve, city administration effectiveness and the size of venture capital
investment.
o For one thing, gait and facial recognition technologies are already in use by law
enforcement in Beijing and Shanghai to help identify individuals even when their
faces are obscured.
o Meanwhile, Shenzhen is home to telecommunications equipment giant Huawei,
which is leading the world in 5G technology developments, and Hangzhou is home to
global e-commerce titan Alibaba.
o Alibaba’s AI-powered technology is also automating traffic management in
Hangzhou such as changing traffic lights in favour of ambulances.
 Mr Jacob Hook, managing partner of the research outfit Oliver Wyman, said China’s
high tolerance for privacy invasive technologies has led to the introduction of citizen
surveillance systems which employ facial and gait recognition technology. This, he
argued, encourages innovation and “creates a strong runway for Chinese cities to deploy
AI, giving them a stronger growth trajectory”.
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The age of artificial intelligence: Cities and the A.I. edge

 AI is fast becoming the defining competitive advantage for cities, said experts.
 In Padang, West Sumatra, San Francisco-based non-profit organisation Rainforest
Connection is mounting used cellphones on trees to detect illegal logging activities and
alert rangers, villagers and law enforcement agencies.
 In Singapore, DBS Bank is predicting when employees will quit, so management can
intervene and retain staff. The Singapore Government is testing the use of AI to ease
traffic congestion, deter fraud in claims for government funding and detect potential
drownings in public pools.
 In Taipei, Taiwan's National Theatre and Concert Hall is using technology to provide
automatic sub-titling so that people with hearing disabilities can also enjoy
performances.
 In "passive data collection", people out in public are having their bodies and faces
scanned without their consent by security cameras for law enforcement purposes. In
China, home to the world's largest network of surveillance cameras and gait recognition
technology for law enforcement, not many have raised concerns. But San Francisco has
earlier this year banned the use of facial scanning for administrative efficiencies or public
safety, to prevent potential abuse.
The time for cities to get smart is now

Howard Elias. World Economic Forum. Jan 8, 2019
 Unprecedented urbanisation is compelling cities to fundamentally reimagine and
transform for the future – and fast.
 Boston is replacing its existing city-wide communications system with a state-of-the-art
fibre-optic network to provide residents, businesses, schools and other facilities with
more bandwidth and broadband speed, as well as improved wireless service.
 A proof of concept in Las Vegas uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to
increase public safety. It takes real-time data from sensors and devices across the city and
combines it with historical datasets, such as crime, weather and social media, to alert
authorities of abnormal patterns.
 Local governments in India are proactively investing in innovative smart city programs to
improve the quality of life for residents and visitors. For example, Chennai is automating
its traffic system to improve regulation and road safety, as well as overhauling its public
transportation system for a more predictive and seamless experience for its customers.
 In June 2018, London launched a roadmap to make it "the world’s smartest city" and
address its most pressing challenges: poor air quality, urban design and digital
connectivity. The roadmap includes more than 20 initiatives, such as a new approach to
connectivity, greater data sharing among public services, commission of new smart
technology and a pan-London cyber-security strategy.
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6.4 Biotechnology
Biotechnology “harnesses cellular and biomolecular processes to develop technologies

and products that help improve our lives and the health of our planet”. In general terms,
biotechnology is the use of living organisms or compounds obtained from living organisms
to create products of value to humans. Today, biotechnology breakthroughs help combat
life-threatening and difficult-to-treat diseases, increase food production, provide cleaner
energy and make manufacturing more efficient and environmentally friendly.
Scientists 'may have crossed ethical line' in growing human brains

The Guardian. Oct 21, 2019
 Neuroscientists may have crossed an “ethical rubicon” by growing lumps of human
brain in the lab, and in some cases transplanting the tissue into animals, researchers warn.
 The creation of mini-brains or brain “organoids” has become one of the hottest fields in
modern neuroscience. The blobs of tissue are made from stem cells and, while they are
only the size of a pea, some have developed spontaneous brain waves, similar to those
seen in premature babies.
 Many scientists believe that organoids have the potential to transform medicine by
allowing them to probe the living brain like never before. But the work is controversial
because it is unclear where it may cross the line into human experimentation.
His Cat’s Death Left Him Heartbroken. So He Cloned It.

 China’s first cloned cat, Garlic. The feat, by a Beijing-based commercial pet-cloning
company called Sinogene, marks the country’s emergence as a global power in genetics
and in the lucrative and unregulated pet-cloning market.
 China’s genetics know-how is growing rapidly. Ever since Chinese scientists cloned a
female goat in 2000, they have succeeded in producing the world’s first primate clones,
editing the embryos of monkeys to insert genes associated with autism and mental illness,
and creating superstrong dogs by tinkering with their genes. Last year, the country
stunned the world after a Chinese scientist announced that he had created the world’s first
genetically edited babies.
 Pet cloning is largely unregulated and controversial where it is done, but in China the
barriers are especially low. There are also no laws against animal cruelty.
 Critics contend that pet cloning is inefficient and inhumane. It is not clear what will
happen to the resulting animals, or the impact when they mix with the broader gene
pool. The money could be better spent on caring for existing animals, the critics say.
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Scientists restore some brain cell functions in pigs four hours after death
The Straits Times. Apr 18, 2019
 Researchers have restored some cellular function in pig brains from animals
decapitated four hours earlier.
 This startling research provides the latest reminder that science and medicine
continuously create innovations that offer hope for treating dreaded diseases (such as
Alzheimer's or other brain disorders) while simultaneously raising head-scratching issues
about how to apply transformative technologies and procedures.
 Ethicists say this research can blur the line between life and death, and could
complicate the protocols for organ donation.
Baby with DNA from 3 people born in medical 'revolution'

 The birth of a baby using DNA from three people was announced after a controversial
fertility treatment that has provoked intense ethical debate.
 The team used an egg from the infertile mother, the father's sperm and another
woman's egg to conceive the baby boy. It would allow a mother otherwise unable to
conceive to have a child.
Gene editing should be met with an ethical response and penalties

South China Morning Post. Feb 8, 2019
 The shocking revelation two months ago by Chinese scientist He Jiankui that he had
created the world’s first gene-edited babies has stoked international fears.
 He, who was found to have “seriously violated” Chinese laws in the pursuit of his work,
likely changed the cognitive functions of twin girls when he used the gene-editing tool
CRISPR to disable the CCR5 gene that allows HIV to infect human cells.
Rogue Chinese Scientist Regrets Not Being Transparent, Peer Says

Daniela Wei. Bloomberg. Jan 11, 2019
 Dr He's claim that he altered the genes of recently born twin girls while they were
embryos in a bid to make them HIV-resistant ignited a global backlash. His university
disavowed his work and fellow researchers including Dr Hurlbut rebuked the scientist.
 The government halted work at his lab and is carrying out an investigation, saying it
would take a "zero tolerance attitude in dealing with dishonourable behaviour" in
research. It also asked universities last month to inspect all research work on gene editing
and confirm there were no ethical breaches.
 The scientist, criticised for being surreptitious about his gene-editing project, was defiant
in November, saying he was "proud" of his work and was moved to pursue it out of
compassion for those stigmatised and afflicted with HIV.
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 Even as Dr He waits for the siege to lift, his research has sparked a broader global debate
on where the scientific community and governments draw the line on pushing the
boundaries of genetics science. "This is not just about J.K.," said Dr Hurlbut. "It's about
the whole meaning of how we govern and guide international science."
Scientist Who Shocked World Drew Backing From China Biotech Push
Rebecca Spalding. Bloomberg. Nov 28, 2018
 The researcher who shocked the world with claims that he was the first to genetically
modify human embryos drew early support from Chinese government initiatives designed
to build up the country’s nascent biotechnology industry.
 Scientist He Jiankui, who said he edited the genes of twin girls to shield them from HIV,
had participated in a program designed to capitalize on training Chinese nationals get at
Western universities. Additionally, a company that He founded has received government
funding.
 The unfolding controversy over He’s research could heighten a battle for global
technological dominance between the world’s two largest economies.
 The “Thousand Talents” initiative was designed to lure foreign-educated researchers
back to China to fulfill Beijing’s broader desire to become a global leader in high-tech
fields.
 China’s biotechnology industry, which lags well behind the U.S. in terms of approved
drugs and global market power, has been one of the beneficiaries of Beijing’s generous
funding policies and recruitment efforts. A recent regulatory overhaul also has made it
much easier to get drugs onto the market in China.
 Researchers in China have also become adept at using Crispr, the gene-editing technology
He is reported to have used to alter human embryos. It has many potential applications
from agriculture to basic medical research. China is “particularly competitive” in
Crispr, said a November report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission, which oversees national-security risks posed by trade with China.
 China has made no secret of its ambitions to become a technological superpower in the
21st century. Its “Made in China 2025” blueprint outlines its plans to become a global
player in artificial intelligence, robotics, and biomedical research, among other areas.
Those ambitions have set off alarms in Washington.
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6.5 Technology and Healthcare
We have seen an explosion of tech-driven gains and innovations that have the potential to
reshape many aspects of health and medicine. All around us, technologies from artificial
intelligence (AI) to personal genomics and robotics are advancing exponentially, giving form
to the future of medicine. These innovations enable the shift away from our traditional
compartmentalized health care toward a model of “connected health.” We have the
opportunity now to connect the dots—to move beyond institutions delivering episodic and
reactive care, primarily after disease has developed, into an era of continuous and proactive
care designed to get ahead of disease. Think of it: ever present, analytics-enabled, real-time,
individualized attention to our health and well-being. Not just to treat disease, but
increasingly, to prevent it.
Creative Disruption in Health Care and Education

Stephanie von Friedeburg. Project Syndicate. Apr 29, 2019
 Many individuals in developed countries have taken to wearing watches and bracelets that
measure their activity, heart rate, and sleep quality. By fostering a greater awareness of
their physical condition, such devices spur people to adopt healthier habits, potentially
reducing their risk of chronic disease, a major contributor to health-care costs worldwide.
 Unlike traditional patient records, the data collected by such “wearables” are
aggregated and analyzed. This can improve diagnostics, while helping to compensate
for skills shortages in medical labor markets.
 The Singapore-based company Tricog, for example, has developed algorithms to read
electrocardiograms, flagging problem cases for doctors. This efficiency-boosting
technology is already proving useful in India, where hospitals often suffer from a lack
of trained cardiologists.
 Big Data analytics and machine learning also enable greater personalization of health
services. Among other things, these technologies can help in treating noncommunicable
diseases like diabetes and cancer, which are fast becoming the biggest health-care
challenge facing emerging economies.

 Predicting preemies: Roughly one in 10 babies are born prematurely, and it is the
leading cause of death for children under age five. A simple blood test can predict if a
pregnant woman is at risk of giving birth prematurely, by sequencing the free-floating
RNA in the mother’s blood. The technology behind the blood test is quick, easy, and less
than $10 a measurement.
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 Gut probe in a pill: Small, swallowable capsules that contain miniature microscopes
can capture detailed images of the gut without anesthesia. The device makes it easier to
screen for and study gut diseases, including environmental enteric dysfunction (EED),
which causes malnourishment and developmental delays in millions of children in poor
countries.
 Custom cancer vaccines: Scientists are on the cusp of commercialising the first
personalised cancer vaccine. The treatment incites the body’s natural defenses to destroy
only cancer cells by identifying mutations unique to each tumour. Unlike conventional
chemotherapies, this limits damage to healthy cells.
 An ECG on your wrist: ECG-enabled smart watches, made possible by new regulations
and innovations in hardware and software, offer the convenience of a wearable device for
people to monitor their hearts. Last year, Apple released its own FDA-cleared ECG
feature.
 Sanitation without sewers: Energy-efficient toilets, designed by the University of South
Florida, Biomass Controls, Duke University and more, can operate without a sewer
system and treat waste on the spot. About 2.3 billion people lack safe sanitation, causing
spread of diseases and death.
12 innovations that will revolutionize the future of medicine

Daniel Kraft. National Geographic. Jan 2018
 In the old model of medicine, patients’ health data was collected only intermittently,
primarily in clinic visits, and scattered among paper files and siloed electronic medical
record systems. Today there’s a far better option: personal technology that can monitor
vital signs continuously and record health data comprehensively.
 Just a decade after the first Fitbit launched the “wearables” revolution, health tracking
devices are ubiquitous. In the future these sensing technologies will be central to disease
prevention, diagnosis, and therapy.
 Flexible, electronic medical tattoos and stick-on sensors can take an electrocardiogram,
measure respiratory rate, check blood sugar, and transmit results seamlessly via
Bluetooth.
 Smart hearing aids and earpieces with embedded sensors will not only amplify sound
but also track heart rate and movement.
 Smart contact lenses in the future will be packed with thousands of biosensors, and
engineered to pick up early indicators of cancer and other conditions. Lenses now in
development may someday measure blood sugar values in tears, to help diabetics manage
diet and medications.
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 Implantable devices may include a radio-frequency ID chip under the skin that holds a
patient’s medical records, or a subcutaneous sensor that could continuously monitor
blood chemistry. Ingestible devices in capsules will perform tasks from delivering
treatment to isolating foreign objects.
 A monitoring patch on a pregnant woman’s belly can detect uterine muscle movement,
the better to know when labor is progressing.
 Engineers at MIT have modified a WiFi-like box so it can capture vital signs and sleep
patterns of several people in the same residence.
 Private Skype-like interactions between patient and physician will take place through
web-based portals. Patients’ vital signs will be obtained and shared with the physician
via web-integrated wireless scales, blood pressure cuffs, and monitoring devices.
 Some digiceuticals are demonstrating effectiveness. At least two firms have developed
apps to reduce the relentless noise of tinnitus by retraining the brain to turn down the
volume. To manage heart failure patients, the Mayo Clinic prescribed the use of a
tracking app that resulted in a 40 percent reduction in hospital readmissions related to
cardiac issues.
 The conventional prescriptions in your future could be doled out by an ATM-like robot,
remotely controlled by a provider or algorithm to ensure the right doses at the right
times.
 Harvard and MIT scientists found a way to much more accurately forecast an
individual’s risk score for five deadly diseases, by looking at DNA changes at 6.6 million
locations in the human genome and applying a sophisticated algorithm.
 Consider the robotic phlebotomist, equipped to ultrasonically confirm which vein is the
best target. In countries short on human caregivers, caretaker robots may be employed
to lift and move patients, as well as interact socially. And robots programmed as physical
therapy coaches can help patients stick with their exercise regimes.
Artificial Intelligence Detects Heart Failure From One Heartbeat With 100% Accuracy
Forbes. Sep 12, 2019
 Doctors can detect heart failure from a single heartbeat with 100% accuracy using a new
artificial intelligence-driven neural network, according to a recent study.
The Government Wants Your DNA. Don’t Run Away

Max Nisen. Bloomberg. Aug 23, 2019
 An ambitious program from the National Institutes of Health aims to collect genetic
information from at least 1 million Americans, make the data broadly available to
researchers, and harness it to provide genetic counseling for participants.
 Such a large-scale project raises understandable privacy concerns and requires strict
safeguards, but the program’s potential to improve health across a wide swath of the
population makes it “an initiative worth rallying around.”
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3D printers will make better implants - Inside the body shop

 Stryker, an American medical-technology company, prints a special porous surface onto
implants that enhances bone growth. Align Technology prints plastic orthodontic
aligners; dental crowns and bridges are being churned out by 3D printers.
 Researchers are also coming up with new ways to print tiny scaffolds onto which
human cells are grown. These structures can be used for drug testing or, potentially, to
grow complete organs for transplant.
The medical potential of AI and metabolites

Leila Pirhaji. TED. Apr 2019
 Many diseases are driven by metabolites in the body. One example is fatty liver disease,
which is affecting over 20 percent of the population globally.
 Biotech entrepreneur Leila Pirhaji leveraged the growth of biological data and developed
an AI-based network to characterize metabolite patterns, better understand how disease
develops — and discover more effective treatments.
Drone used to deliver transplant kidney for first time

 A kidney needed for transplantation has been delivered by a drone for the first time
ever, a development that could herald faster and safer organ transport.
An Island Nation’s Health Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone

The New York Times. Dec 17, 2018
 Drones are delivering children’s vaccines in the remote South Pacific nation of Vanuatu,
part of a new government program supported by Unicef and Australia.
How AI is making it easier to diagnose disease

Pratik Shah. TED. Aug 2017
 Today's AI algorithms require tens of thousands of expensive medical images to detect a
patient's disease. What if we could drastically reduce the amount of data needed to train
an AI, making diagnoses low-cost and more effective?
 Using an unorthodox AI approach, medical technologist Pratik Shah has developed a
technology that requires as few as 50 images to develop a working algorithm — and can
even use photos taken on doctors' cell phones to provide a diagnosis.
 This new way to analyze medical information could lead to earlier detection of life-
threatening illnesses and bring AI-assisted diagnosis to more health care settings
worldwide.
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Putting the ‘app’ in appointment: More opting to teleconsult a doctor

The Straits Times. Sep 18, 2019
 If you are feeling under the weather, getting well again is as easy as picking up the phone
to teleconsult a doctor and having medication delivered straight to your doorstep. There
has been a rising trend of such services, with at least seven available in Singapore.
6.6 Technology and the Environment
Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling the Soil Once Meant Shame
The New York Times. May 27, 2019
 Africa’s “agripreneurs”: A growing number of young, college-educated entrepreneurs are
using apps and technology to increase yields and profits across a continent where most
agriculture is still subsistence.
6.6.1 Climate Change

The cow-free burger
 Livestock production causes catastrophic deforestation, water pollution, and
greenhouse gas emissions.
 Both lab-grown and plant-based alternatives approximate the taste and nutritional
value of real meat without the environmental devastation.
 One drawback of lab-grown meat is that the environmental benefits are still sketchy at
best—a recent World Economic Forum report says the emissions from lab-grown
meat would be only around 7% less than emissions from beef production.
 The better environmental case can be made for plant-based meats from companies
like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, which use pea proteins, soy, wheat,
potatoes, and plant oils to mimic the texture and taste of animal meat.
Carbon dioxide catcher
 Direct air capture might be one of the last viable ways to stop catastrophic climate
change. The question is how to get it done cheaply enough to make it worthwhile.
 A Canadian startup Carbon Engineering is working on taking carbon dioxide directly
from the atmosphere and then using it to produce fuel. Zurich-based Climeworks’s
direct air capture plant in Italy will produce methane from captured carbon dioxide
and hydrogen, while a second plant in Switzerland will sell carbon dioxide to the soft-
drinks industry.
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8 Crazy Innovations That Could Save the Planet From Climate Change
Global Citizen. Apr 20, 2018
Tree-planting Drones
 UK-based company BioCarbon is using drones to spray tree seeds throughout
ravaged forests and claim they can plant 1 billion trees per year.
 Speed is the most revolutionary aspect of this “precision planting” technology.
Current tree-planting programs are not fast enough; the technology is automated, so it
can be scaled up realistically and quickly.
 The drones can reach places that tractors and humans cannot.
Massive, ‘Palm Tree’ Wind Farms
 A group of engineers is trying to build wind turbines that are more than twice as large
as the biggest turbines in use today.
 Wind power is a largely underutilized resource. The technology could reduce the
cost of offshore wind power by 50 percent.
Satellites That Spot Methane Leaks
 A team of scientists is trying to send a satellite into space that can pinpoint when and
where methane leaks take place so they can be plugged sooner rather than later.
 If successful, the satellite will be able to reduce methane emissions from the oil and
gas industry by as much as 50%.
Plastic-Eating Enzymes
 A team of researchers in Japan inadvertently developed an enzyme that can break
down plastic in a matter of days; this is far faster than the hundreds of years that
plastic usually takes to decompose.
 The new research shows there is strong potential to use enzyme technology to help
with society’s growing waste problem.
Futuristic Solar Panels
 Recently developed solar panels in China harvest energy from raindrops.
 A team of researchers at Michigan State University believe that all windows and cell
phone screens could begin cultivating the sun’s energy. In future, they are exploring
integrating these into mobile and flexible devices, such as electronic clothes.
Solar Geoengineering
 Researchers at Harvard are proposing to send sun-blocking particles into the air to
cool the planet.
 An intentional strategy to block the sun could help to buy some more time for
countries to reduce their emissions — the only realistic way to avert climate change.
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5 tech innovations that could save us from climate change

Alex Gray. World Economic Forum. Jan 9, 2019
Power generation
 Canadian company General Fusion aims to be the first in the world to create a
commercially viable nuclear-fusion-energy power plant.
 Fusion produces zero greenhouse gas emissions, emitting only helium as exhaust. It
also requires less land than other renewable technologies.
Transport
 Researchers at the University of Surrey have discovered new materials offering an
alternative to battery power and proven to be between 1,000-10,000 times more
powerful than the existing battery alternative, a supercapacitor.
 The new technology is believed to have the potential for electric cars to travel to
similar distances as petrol cars without the need to stop for lengthy recharging
breaks of between 6 and 8 hours.
Food
 The company Beyond Meat, already supported by Bill Gates, has created the world’s
first meat burger that is entirely plant based.
Manufacturing
 Carbon Engineering is a Canadian start-up which is working on taking carbon dioxide
directly from the atmosphere and then using it to produce fuel.
Buildings
 Sidewalk Labs (which is part of Alphabet Inc) is harnessing digital technologies to
solve today’s pressing urban problems.
 One of their current projects involves looking at how traffic flows through a city
and how hotspots of congestion might be solved. This could dramatically reduce air
pollution in our cities.
5 Climate Change Innovations You'll Hear About in 2017

Inverse. Jan 5, 2017
Pay-As-You-Go Solar Power
 Azuri Technologies has figured out how to provide solar power to off-grid homes in
rural Africa. The company already has a presence in 11 sub-Saharan African
countries.
 For a small installation fee, a family can get a basic solar power unit; every week the
family purchases credits to keep the unit running. Off-grid households no longer have
to wait for the electricity grid to reach them — they can skip over it entirely and
access clean, safe, affordable power right now.
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Carbon Negative Cement

 A company CarbonCure is injecting carbon into cement so it can be sequestered
permanently.
 The cement industry accounts for an astonishing five percent of global carbon dioxide
emissions; even a small reduction in emissions from the construction industry could
make a huge difference worldwide.
6.6.2 E-waste
The World Has an E-Waste Problem

TIME. May 23, 2019
 The cycle of consumption has made electronics waste the world’s fastest-growing solid-
waste stream. That stream is expected to turn into a torrent as the world upgrades to 5G,
the next big step in wireless technology.
 One solution is to make electronics last as long as they once did. “Our products today
don’t last as long as they used to, and it’s a strategy by manufacturers to force us into
shorter and shorter upgrade cycles.”
 Some environmental groups say multibillion-dollar companies like Apple and Samsung
should pick up the cost of recycling the devices they sell.
 Lawmakers in parts of Europe and Canada and in some U.S. states have passed so-called
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, which require manufacturers to establish
and fund systems to recycle or collect obsolete products.
 Apple in 2018 introduced Daisy, a smartphone-recycling robot that can take apart 200
iPhones every hour, and says it diverted 48,000 metric tons of electronic waste from
landfills that year.
The world’s e-waste is a huge problem. It’s also a golden opportunity

Guy Ryder and Houlin Zhao. World Economic Forum. Jan 24, 2019
 Humankind’s insatiable demand for electronic devices is creating the world’s fastest-
growing waste stream. Some forms are growing exponentially. The United Nations calls
it a tsunami of e-waste.
 There is $62.5 billion-worth of value in our discarded electronic items worldwide. More
than 120 countries have an annual GDP lower than the value of our growing pile of global
e-waste. 50 million tonnes of e-waste are produced each year, and left unchecked this
could more than double to 120 million tonnes by 2050.
 The situation is not helped by the fact that only 20% of global e-waste is formally
recycled. The remaining 80% is often incinerated or dumped in landfill.
 Already 67 countries have enacted legislation to deal with the e-waste they generate.
Apple, Google, Samsung and many other brands have set ambitious targets for recycling
and for the use of recycled and renewable materials.
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6.7 Technology and Education
Creative Disruption in Health Care and Education

Stephanie von Friedeburg. Project Syndicate. Apr 29, 2019
 Innovators in online learning – a $165 billion sector that is growing by 5% per year – are
using disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence to develop advanced tutoring tools
and improve personalization.
 For example, BYJU’S, a learning app has taken advantage of new technologies to make
high-quality math and science tutoring available to K-12 students who would otherwise
be excluded because they live in remote areas or have limited mobility.
 In higher education, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platforms offer the
flexibility workers need to pursue the lifelong learning required by the twenty-first-
century labor market. One such platform is Coursera, which works with universities and
other organizations to offer online courses.
6.8 Technology and Retail
Amazon’s empire rests on its low-key approach to AI - The learning machine

The Economist. Apr 11, 2019
 Whereas its fellow tech titans flaunt their AI prowess at every opportunity—Facebook’s
facial-recognition software, Apple’s Siri digital assistant or Alphabet’s self-driving cars
and master go player—Amazon has adopted a lower-key approach to machine learning.
The algorithms most critical to the company’s success are those it uses to constantly
streamline its own operations.
 Amazon’s fulfilment centres, vast warehouses that store and dispatch the goods Amazon
sells, have human workers manning stations in a “robot field”. Amazon Web Services
(AWS) underpins Amazon’s $26bn cloud-computing business. The firm’s latest
algorithmic venture is Amazon Go, a cashierless grocery. AI body-tracking is also
popping up inside fulfilment centres, maximising the rate at which products flow.
Convenience stores going high-tech to stave off competition

 The convenience store landscape is set to change, with retailers making greater use of
cutting-edge technology to pilot unmanned kiosks.
 Singapore brands are planning to use palm scanners, radio-frequency identification
(RFID) to track items taken off the shelves and artificial intelligence (AI) systems to track
shoppers' movements.
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Beauty goes high-tech: AI and AR are being used to spot imperfections on your face
The Straits Times. Jul 9, 2019
 A growing number of companies are tapping technologies such as artificial
intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) to stay ahead in the lucrative but
competitive beauty market.
 Beauty companies have launched apps and online tools to help customers analyse their
faces to spot issues and experiment virtually with beauty products.
Hate lining up for the fitting room? Stores turn to tech to address gripes about queues
and more
The Straits Times. Jun 17, 2019
 Clothing stores are turning to tech to address gripes about queues and more. Retailers are
using mobile apps and image recognition so shoppers can hunt for items and avoid long
queues.
6.9 Technology and Security
Tech initiative to help boost port navigational safety

 Fujitsu, Singapore Management University (SMU) and the Institute of High Performance
Computing at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) announced that
they are collaborating on innovative new technologies for vessel traffic management.
 The technologies will utilise artificial intelligence and big data analysis to better manage
Singapore's port and its surrounding waters in the Singapore Strait and the Malacca Strait.
6.10 Technology and Empowerment
The online platform that empowers survivors of campus sexual assaults

TED. Mar 23, 2018
 In the US, on average, it’s estimated that one in five women is assaulted during her
college years. Most assaults go unreported, and when people do go to the authorities, too
often they’re subjected to a series of traumatic experiences.
 In 2016, activist Jessica Ladd — who is an assault survivor herself — launched Callisto,
an online platform that provides a secure, encrypted and comprehensive way to notify
authorities about a campus assault or record a description of what happened.
 It has been rolled out to 13 college campuses in the US. In the wake of the #MeToo
movement, Ladd hopes to pilot a system that detects repeat perpetrators in the
professional world as well.
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Technology offers freedom of mobility

Korea JoongAng Daily. Mar 12, 2018
 Last year, Muui, a nonprofit that provides transit information for people with physical
impairments, released a service that gives passengers the easiest transfer routes in select
subway stations. The app can tell users which subway car is closest to the elevator and
which corridors have more ramps.
 Todo Works is a Korean start-up that provides kits to turn manual wheelchairs into
electric ones. The motor, called Todo Drive, represents a “midway technology” that
resolves an immediate inconvenience until a more complete solution is developed.
 Hyundai Motor Group, the nation’s largest automaker, set up a social enterprise called
Easy Move in 2010 to develop products catered toward people with limited mobility. The
company remodelled its vehicles with a ramp in the trunk so that wheelchair-bound
people can easily get in and out of the car.
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Robert J. Shiller, 2013 Nobel laureate in Economics

Pierre Nanterme, CEO of Accenture

Max Tegmark, President of the Future of Life Institute

Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

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Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple

Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft

Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist

Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

Isaac Asimov, American science fiction writer

Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., American historian

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1 The Fourth Industrial Revolution

1.1 Trends in Science and Technology

Tech Trends 2019: Executive summary

Emerging Science and Technology Trends: 2017-2047

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1.2 Automation and Employment

The Future of Jobs Report 2016

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OECD Employment Outlook 2019

Digitalisation will leave an impact on the future of work

Using AI to Make Knowledge Workers More Effective

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A.I. Expert Says Automation Could Replace 40% of Jobs in 15 Years

5 things to know about the future of jobs

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 Skills growing in prominence include analytical thinking and active learning as

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2 Ethics of Science and Technology

2.1 Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

How Big Tech is struggling with the ethics of AI

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Can we make artificial intelligence ethical?

Ethics and the pursuit of artificial intelligence

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2.2 Digital Authoritarianism

China’s Cryptocurrency Plan Has a Powerful Partner: Big Brother

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Hong Kong Takes Symbolic Stand Against China’s High-Tech Controls

Exporting digital authoritarianism

2.3 Ethics of Scientific Research

Recent events highlight an unpleasant scientific practice: ethics dumping

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3 Privacy and Regulation of Technology

3.1 Big Tech

How to Tame Big Tech

Dissent Erupts at Facebook Over Hands-Off Stance on Political Ads

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Defiant Zuckerberg Says Facebook Won’t Police Political Speech

Google Antitrust Investigation Outlined by State Attorneys General

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Google Is Fined $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube

Justice Department Opens Antitrust Review of Big Tech Companies

Big brother in big tech

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Chris Hughes’s Call to Break Up Facebook: 5 Takeaways