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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Government Support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Government Support. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

'A coronavirus depression could be the great leveller'

Kyrill Hartog
The Guardian
Originally published 30 April 2020

Here is an excerpt:

So could the pandemic of our era, already considered the greatest global crisis since the second world war, turn out to be a great societal leveller?

Scheidel’s short answer is that the longer the pandemic wreaks havoc on the global economy, the greater the potential for radical equalising change. “It depends on how severe the crisis is going to be, how long it’s going to last and how much it’s ultimately going to interrupt supply chains.”

The pandemic has already exposed the limits of the market and highlighted the importance of effective state intervention and strong public healthcare provision. In the future this may well create a tolerance for higher and more progressive taxation. Governments have had to intervene to prop up businesses and jobs in ways that only months ago would have seemed unimaginable. The viability of a universal basic income — a dream for egalitarians worldwide — is once again part of the mainstream debate in many countries.

The response at EU level also shows a willingness for strong public intervention and an end to the fiscal restraint approach of the last decade — at least, temporarily.

As people start to believe in government intervention again, the post-corona political landscape may well provide fertile soil for reversing a situation where, since 1980, the richest 1% in the UK have tripled their share of household income and the wealth of the European top 1% grew twice as fast as the bottom 50%.

But Scheidel cautions that, while disasters are not uncommon, tectonic shifts are historical anomalies. In other words, it may take a disaster to usher in more equality, but not every disaster does.

The info is here.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

China's Plan for World Domination in AI Isn't So Crazy After All

Mark Bergen and David Ramli
Bloomberg.com
First published August 14, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Xu runs SenseTime Group Ltd., which makes artificial intelligence software that recognizes objects and faces, and counts China’s biggest smartphone brands as customers. In July, SenseTime raised $410 million, a sum it said was the largest single round for an AI company to date. That feat may soon be topped, probably by another startup in China.

The nation is betting heavily on AI. Money is pouring in from China’s investors, big internet companies and its government, driven by a belief that the technology can remake entire sectors of the economy, as well as national security. A similar effort is underway in the U.S., but in this new global arms race, China has three advantages: A vast pool of engineers to write the software, a massive base of 751 million internet users to test it on, and most importantly staunch government support that includes handing over gobs of citizens’ data –- something that makes Western officials squirm.

Data is key because that’s how AI engineers train and test algorithms to adapt and learn new skills without human programmers intervening. SenseTime built its video analysis software using footage from the police force in Guangzhou, a southern city of 14 million. Most Chinese mega-cities have set up institutes for AI that include some data-sharing arrangements, according to Xu. "In China, the population is huge, so it’s much easier to collect the data for whatever use-scenarios you need," he said. "When we talk about data resources, really the largest data source is the government."

The article is here.