WILL DEMOCRACY SURVIVE BIG DATA AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? (Scientific American) "The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. It is estimated that in 10 years’ time...the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms. News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. 40% of today's top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade. We must be clear that a super-intelligence could also make mistakes, lie, pursue selfish interests or be manipulated. Above all, it could not be compared with the distributed, collective intelligence of the entire population. In a rapidly changing world a super-intelligence can never make perfect decisions: systemic complexity is increasing faster than data volumes, which are growing faster than the ability to process them, and data transfer rates are limited."

HEALTH CARE:

- Trumpcare vs. Obamacare: Apocalypse Foretold (NYT) "Or to put it differently, Obamacare is actually an intelligently designed system, and Republican claims that they could do much better even while slashing funding so they could cut taxes on the rich were always obvious nonsense. Trumpcare is a slapdash, incompetent piece of legislation; but even a much more competent set of people couldn’t have done better given the constraints of Republican Party ideology."

- The GOP’s dramatic change in strategy to pass its health-care law (WaPo) "Ultimately, the biggest threat in a bill that is opposed by the major industry players is the possibility it will create a system that isn’t viable for businesses or patients."

NEWS:

- How South Korea Innovated the Social Movement (Ozy) "Observers say it marked a new kind of sustained social action — hyperorganized, laser-focused and buttressed by new networks. One key takeaway from the Korean example: persistence. In all, one in five South Koreans participated in the president-must-go rallies over the past five months. Another key takeaway from the Korean experience that some experts note: focus.

- Justice Dept. seeks more time after Congress requests proof of Trump wiretap (WaPo) "Jack Langer, a spokesman for the Intelligence Committee, said Monday that the legislators now want a response by March 20, when a hearing is scheduled, and 'may resort to a compulsory process if our questions continue to go unanswered.'"

READ THIS:

- The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 (Joseph Ellis) "Joseph Ellis tells the unexpected story of America’s second great founding and of the men most responsible—Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and James Madison: why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- Vibrator maker ordered to pay out C$4m for tracking users' sexual activity (Guardian) "...data is collected and sent back to Standard Innovation, letting the company know about the temperature of the device and the vibration intensity – which, combined, reveal intimate information about the user’s sexual habits."

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