On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about artificial intelligence (AI) and Juvet Agenda. In September of this year, a group of designers, innovators, and futurists gathered at the Juvet nature retreat in Norway to discuss AI, its trajectory and potential outcomes. The group explored making AI human centric, the big and small problems to solve using AI, and dealing with unintended consequences of the technology. The Juvet Agenda, an online publication that came out of the conference, highlights four major areas of discussion, including: power and control; bias, transparency, and authenticity; human and societal well-being; and perspectives for action. How do we understand and prepare for the opportunities brought about by AI? How do we consider AI within the toolset of emerging technologies? Join us as we discuss.

Resources
The Juvet Agenda
Clearleft

In this episode of The Digital Life we chat about about digital automation, innovation, and its effects on the economics of the American middle class.

Is the growing contractor economy, as typified by Uber, another signal that the middle class is in real trouble? As a part of her campaign rhetoric, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, is making some hay of the topic. But the concern is very much a real one. The need for meaningful work is an essential one for humanity, and one that increasingly is falling prey to technological change.

Resources

Hillary Clinton vs. The Uber Economy

A Sneak Preview of Hillarynomics

Uber

Today’s democratic system in the United States is largely the same as that instituted in 1789 under our first president, George Washington. This much-celebrated system is based on the original democracy from ancient Athens, established almost 2,000 years earlier. Fast forward to 2014. Congressional approval is at a record low, hovering around 10%. Partisanship seems to permeate every crevice of our government. Examples of government waste and questionable policies far outnumber examples of government being good and effective. OK, so that perception might have something to do with the media, but the bottom line is our federal government is operating in a way that very few of us are satisfied with.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss how we might find a better way. Combining common, everyday technologies with a new concept of who should represent us, Dirk Knemeyer provides a vision to redesign democracy into a system more appropriate for the realities of 2014 while moving closer to its philosophical origins.