Mark Zuckerberg writes about his social network vision, an evolution of light rail holds great promise for public transport and Stanford bring together artificial intelligence and the humanities.
A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking: (15 min read) – link
Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is a significant shift for the Facebook system. End to end encryption and clarity between what you share amongst a small close group and what you make available to the world are key highlights in my view. The implications for Facebook seem to be significant – removing the ability to read messages and enabling small, controlled groups rather than wide open networks. I wonder at the impact on their business model – perhaps the transition can be managed to evolve the model with the service?
Is now the time to replace light rail with trackless trams?: (8 min read + video) – link
What a brilliant evolution of existing transport modes using cutting edge – but available – technology. The economics make a very strong case due to not having to lay tracks coupled with faster and lower impact implementation compared to rail. I was excited by the benefits from a drivers ability to adapt to a blockage or incident – and in my view enable a move towards dynamic routing. This seems to be a practical step to improving travel for cities while fully autonomous vehicles continue to evolve. The article also links off to a number of discussions on funding options – essentially PPP – which is not unique to this mode of transport. Of course with this solution there is much less money that needs to be raised than comparable train or light rail options.
Opening the Gate – Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: (8 min read) – link
Stanford is creating an amazing cross discipline institute to bring together AI and the humanities (HAI) – in their words, completing the feedback loop where humanities and social sciences feed back into technology. We’ve seen the stories where AI has found to be discriminatory, sometimes well after it has been put to use. The multi-disciplinary aspect is so important to realising and being ahead of these types of challenges. Like the recent transition from STEM to STEAM with the addition of (A)rts we are gradually realising the value of bring diverse people together. The story of how the HAI came about is great too 🙂
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You X Ventures