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    UK Avalon Member sunwings's Avatar
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    Default Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)



    A new documentary looks into Silicon Valley and it´s disruptive influence on society and our future society.

    *Airbnb is disrupting rent / sale prices in most cities around the world
    * Uber is disrupting jobs all around the world.
    * Truck Automation is getting closer to disrupting 3.5m jobs just in U.S.A.
    * Twitter is disrupting politics and creating tension
    *Facebook is disrupting families and friends



    Jamie Bartlett uncovers the dark reality behind Silicon Valley's glittering promise to build a better world?

    Massive Social Unrest. Silicon valley´s mantra is to disrupt society and build a new world. Silicon valley does not wait for legislation. It uses it´s power to start a new Paradigm and the rest of the world has to play catch up.

    It is Technologists Vs Politics. And Technology is winning.

    Jamie meets an AI engineer who has created a self learning programme to read Cancer scans and bone scans in just 0.2 seconds rather than 15 minutes taken by a Doctor or Radiologist. His software is intuitive and after 2 months was up there with the top Doctors within the US.

    However the inventor is brutally honest. It is the march of the machines.

    Utopian Vs Dystopian society.



    The engineer paints a future picture where a tiny fraction of society own all the capital and all the data. The bottom of the pyramid will have no economic value. Ultimately causing displacement and social unrest.

    Silicon Valley is already working on guaranteed income societies.



    Finally he meets an ex goldman sachs and facebook executive.

    "I´m from the future, I have seen what is coming, Massive social unrest!"

    He is building a new home in Oregan which is off the grid. He jokes "...in Goldman Sachs we used to joke what do you have....Hope...well hope is a ****ty hedge."
    Last edited by sunwings; 12th November 2017 at 11:12.

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    UK Avalon Founder Bill Ryan's Avatar
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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    In the Avalon Library:
    1. The Disruptors
    2. The Persuasion Machine

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    United States Avalon Member Whiskey_Mystic's Avatar
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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    I'm feeling talky. Brace yourself.

    I am intimately familiar with the real Silicon Valley. I worked in valley tech companies for 25 years. I've repeatedly met some of the major players and been long-term colleagues and friends with a few household names. I worked in startups and fortune 500 companies developing everything from games and social networks to special effects and middleware companies. I was even almost part of a reality TV show that would have filmed a small company I worked at above a bar in San Carlos. (Kinda glad that did not happen).

    Anyway, as far as I have been able to tell, all this talk of revolution, paradigm-shifting, and remaking the world is pure hogwash. Oh, the Techerati believe their own hype, but that's just a story they tell themselves. The real engine of Silicon Valley is greed, greed, and a little bit of greed.

    There are certainly some people with sincerely altruistic motivations, but that's the exception, not the rule. I also know a few very well-off folks who do generously try to make change, but that's not what motivated them on the way up the ladder. It's just a kind of hobby now that they have more money than they know what to do with.

    BTW, I predict that Uber and Lyft will both eventually collapse. It's just math. They have no sustainable business model. They are almost a massive pyramid scam. That collapse WILL disrupt the market as much as their rise. It's gonna be a big smoking crater in the economy and a mess to clean up.

    Oh, one more thing. Yes, the first thing people seem to do after their IPO makes them rich is buy an escape plan for the collapse. I try not to mention Vilcabamba.
    Last edited by Whiskey_Mystic; 13th November 2017 at 07:41.
    "We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains." -Li Po

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Thanks Bill for saving those.

    I do agree with parts of what you are saying Whiskey M. Uber is losing Billions still, while Airbnb has just started to turn a profit.

    However they are causing massive problems around the world. My city Barcelona even features in the documentary as a clear example of the rent situation becoming unrealistic due to Airbnb.

    My godfather is an old school London cabbie. If I mention Uber to him, he explodes. The real time effects are real.

    I forgot to mention Automation which appears strongly in episode one putting millions of driving jobs in jeopardy in the future.

    Automation will start to effect us all very shortly, I am certain of it. Especially the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Vilacamba does start looking like a good option.

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    Canada Avalon Member Bruno's Avatar
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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    I am mostly focused on the big driverless car push at the moment. Day after day there are news pieces on this. (at least in my area of the world) It is freaking me out that people think this is a good idea. As it is I feel our children don't know where they are a block away from home because their faces are glued to their smartphones. Silicon valley and the other tech centres around the world are happily herding us into smaller and smaller boxes with less and less autonomy.

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    I had a friend whose father was a cabbie and worked very hard. He put her and her brother through college. My father also had an unskilled type job and we had a big family and we were raised fine, nothing fancy but a nice enough upbringing. What will happen to people like this? Not everyone will be able to write programming for robots and AI functionalities. How will people live as more and more jobs are lost?

    Is this where the government 'Guaranteed Income' comes into play that we've been reading about here and there? wow, talk about loss of autonomy...

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Here are just a few new stories I have come across this week!

    Uber has struck a deal to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from Volvo.

    The agreement envisages that the pick-up service will purchase the vehicles over the course of three years beginning in 2019.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42055841

    Tesla has unveiled its first electric articulated lorry, designed to challenge diesel trucks as king of the road.

    The long-anticipated Tesla Semi has a range of 500 miles on a single charge.

    Tesla says the vehicle - known in the US as a semi-trailer truck - will go into production in 2019.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42021713

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Burger-flipping robot begins first shift

    Flippy, a burger-flipping robot, has begun work at a restaurant in Pasadena, Los Angeles.

    It is the first of dozens of locations for the system, which is destined to replace human fast-food workers.


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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    What in the world are we coming to. A 3D holographic spoon to start indoctrinating babies from 6 months.


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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Video of the first self-driving car crash that killed a pedestrian showed how the autonomous Uber failed to slow down as it fatally hit a 49-year-old woman walking her bike across the street.

    The newly released footage of the collision that killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday night has raised fresh questions about why the self-driving car did not stop when a human entered its path and has sparked scrutiny of regulations in the state, which has encouraged testing of the autonomous technology.

    “It’s just awful,” Tina Marie Herzberg White, a stepdaughter of the victim, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “There should be a criminal case.”

    Police have released two videos of the case – one outside and one showing the interior of the Volvo SUV. The four-second exterior video showed the car driving down a somewhat dark and largely empty street as it collided into the woman walking directly in its path.



    I doubt many human drivers would have been able to stop. However human error is acceptable while computer error is not in this situation. The Achilles heel of this driver less technology maybe?

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Even though this tragic happen, I doubt that they would stop developing automatic cars. Uber will find another reason to support this development, saying it's necessary for human life

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Quote Posted by integralpart (here)
    Even though this tragic happen, I doubt that they would stop developing automatic cars. Uber will find another reason to support this development, saying it's necessary for human life
    Agreed!

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Quote Posted by sunwings (here)
    Video of the first self-driving car crash that killed a pedestrian showed how the autonomous Uber failed to slow down as it fatally hit a 49-year-old woman walking her bike across the street.

    The newly released footage of the collision that killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday night has raised fresh questions about why the self-driving car did not stop when a human entered its path and has sparked scrutiny of regulations in the state, which has encouraged testing of the autonomous technology.

    “It’s just awful,” Tina Marie Herzberg White, a stepdaughter of the victim, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “There should be a criminal case.”

    Police have released two videos of the case – one outside and one showing the interior of the Volvo SUV. The four-second exterior video showed the car driving down a somewhat dark and largely empty street as it collided into the woman walking directly in its path.



    I doubt many human drivers would have been able to stop. However human error is acceptable while computer error is not in this situation. The Achilles heel of this driver less technology maybe?
    I hate to say it but the woman that got hit was completely in the wrong. Like you say, I very much doubt that the outcome would have been any different, had there been a human driver. The only difference is that you'd have a deeply traumatised driver, through no real fault of their own. That woman's idiocy cost her her life.

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Economists worry we aren’t prepared for the fallout from automation

    Are we focusing too much on analyzing exactly how many jobs could be destroyed by the coming wave of automation, and not enough on how to actually fix the problem? That’s one conclusion in a new paper on the potential effects of robotics and AI on global labor markets from US think tank, the Center for Global Development (CGD).

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/2/17...t-happens-next

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    Default Re: Secrets Of Silicon Valley (BBC2)

    Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras

    ZHENGZHOU, China — In the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, a police officer wearing facial recognition glasses spotted a heroin smuggler at a train station.

    In Qingdao, a city famous for its German colonial heritage, cameras powered by artificial intelligence helped the police snatch two dozen criminal suspects in the midst of a big annual beer festival.

    In Wuhu, a fugitive murder suspect was identified by a camera as he bought food from a street vendor.

    With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to identify and track 1.4 billion people. It wants to assemble a vast and unprecedented national surveillance system, with crucial help from its thriving technology industry.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/b...rds=IntlAudDev

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