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Alice, Bob, and Eve Are Neural Networks. And They Have Secrets.
Google’s Deep Brain team watched neural nets learn to develop their own encryption.
Psst! (SARAH HOLMUND/DIGITAL STORM VIA SHUTTERSTOCK)
Google’s Deep Brain team has been working on artificial intelligence from a variety of angles. Last May, for example, their Magenta project attempted to teach AI how to create art and music.
Magenta art (GOOGLE)
A lot of what the team does is fairly abstruse to the non-scientist, but they’ve just announced something we can all understand, and it’s a doozy: Two Deep Brain scientists, Martín Abadi and David Andersen, recently tasked two neural nets with keeping a secret from a third. What they found was that “neural networks can learn to protect the confidentiality of their data from other neural networks: they discover forms of encryption and decryption, without being taught specific algorithms for these purposes.”
Neural nets — artificial-neuron-based systems — aren’t designed for cryptography, so Abadi and Andersen had been curious to see if neural nets could teach themselves to master it.
The neural nets were named Alice, Bob, and Eve. In the experiment, Alice was set the task of sending Bob message only he could read. (I’m going to use human pronouns here instead of the more correct “it” to make this easier to follow.) The two neural nets shared a numeric encryption key to use. Eve had no key, and was left to her own devices to figure out the message.
In this diagram, P is the original message and K is the key Alice and Bob shared. C is the encrypted message Alice produced, which is received by Bob and Eve, who each attempted to decipher it. (GOOGLE)
At first Eve was pretty good at it, but as Alice and Bob got more clever during 15,000 attempts, Eve’s failure rate remained consistently as Bob and Alice’s communication began to consistently succeed.
(GOOGLE)
Alice and Bob got into some interestingly odd encryption tricks that leveraged calculations that human-generated encryption schemes don’t use. Much like the different logic with which Google’s AlphaGo surprised and defeated human Go master Fan-Hui last January, Alice and Bob did things to hide their messages that might never occur to a human.
While it’s easy to see that AI-devised encryption might ensure the integrity of machine-to-machine communications during secure multi-device operations, it’s also a little worrisome. Alice and Bob are the first neural nets who’ve kept secrets from their programmers. That we know of.
COVID-19 amplified America’s devastating health gap. Can we bridge it?
The COVID-19 pandemic is making health disparities in the United States crystal clear. It is a clarion call for health care systems to double their efforts in vulnerable communities.
19 November, 2020
Willie Mae Daniels makes melted cheese sandwiches with her granddaughter, Karyah Davis, 6, after being laid off from her job as a food service cashier at the University of Miami on March 17, 2020.
Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Sponsored by Northwell Health
- The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated America's health disparities, widening the divide between the haves and have nots.
- Studies show disparities in wealth, race, and online access have disproportionately harmed underserved U.S. communities during the pandemic.
- To begin curing this social aliment, health systems like Northwell Health are establishing relationships of trust in these communities so that the post-COVID world looks different than the pre-COVID one.
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<p>In the last 100 years, we've made incredible advances in health care, advances that would be viewed as miraculous to any previous generation. To pick one example, the<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy" target="_blank"> U.S. life expectancy</a> in 1950 was 68.2 years. We've since added 10 years to that average. Social programs have helped the young and elderly, two of the most health-vulnerable populations, receive unprecedented levels of care and attention. And telemedicine has decoupled many Americans' health support and monitoring from brick-and-mortar hospitals, expanding access to care.</p><p>Yet, despite these advances and despite handily<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-dozen-facts-about-the-economics-of-the-u-s-health-care-system/" target="_blank"> outspending other OECD nations on health care</a>, the United States preserves vast health disparities. As James Madara, CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association,<a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/america-s-health-care-crisis-much-deeper-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>wrote on the organization's site: "The U.S. health system that exists today is a hodgepodge of ideas, programs, and regulations that is both extraordinarily expensive and highly inefficient. And despite its size and technological advancements, our health system is beset by tremendous gaps and inequities that favor some groups while unfairly disadvantaging others."</p><p>Our current predicament has its origins in tectonic sociohistorical forces that have shifted and fractured the health care landscape. For those at the peaks, access to superior care, education, resources, and social networks serve to protect their health. For those in the canyons, the ground continues to weather away with each past and ongoing crisis—consider, for example, the disproportionate fallout from<a href="https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the dissolution of the Mental Health Systems Act</a>.</p><p>Then came COVID-19.</p>
COVID-19 deepens U.S. health disparities
<p>Communities on the pernicious side of America's health disparities have their unique histories, environments, and social structures. They are spread across the United States, but they all have one thing in common.</p><p>"There is one common divide in American communities, and that is poverty," said <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/about/leadership/debbie-salas-lopez" target="_blank">Debbie Salas-Lopez, MD, MPH</a>, senior vice president of community and population health at Northwell Health. "That is the undercurrent that manifests poor health, poor health outcomes, or poor health prognoses for future wellbeing."</p><p>Social determinants have far-reaching effects on health, and poor communities have unfavorable social determinants. To pick one of many examples, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/913612554/a-crisis-within-a-crisis-food-insecurity-and-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">food insecurity</a> reduces access to quality food, leading to poor health and communal endemics of chronic medical conditions. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified some of these conditions, such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes, as increasing the risk of developing a severe case of coronavirus.</p><p>The pandemic didn't create poverty or food insecurity, but it exacerbated both, and the results have been catastrophic. A study published this summer in the <em><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-020-05971-3" target="_blank">Journal of General Internal Medicine</a></em> suggested that "social factors such as income inequality may explain why some parts of the USA are hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic than others."</p><p>That's not to say better-off families in the U.S. weren't harmed. A <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/poverty-inequality-and-covid-19-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">paper from the Centre for Economic Policy Research</a> noted that families in counties with a higher median income experienced adjustment costs associated with the pandemic—for example, lowering income-earning interactions to align with social distancing policies. However, the paper found that the costs of social distancing were much greater for poorer families, who cannot easily alter their living circumstances, which often include more individuals living in one home and a reliance on mass transit to reach work and grocery stores. They are also disproportionately represented in essential jobs, such as retail, transportation, and health care, where maintaining physical distance can be all but impossible.</p><p>The paper also cited a positive correlation between higher income inequality and higher rates of coronavirus infection. "Our interpretation is that poorer people are less able to protect themselves, which leads them to different choices—they face a steeper trade-off between their health and their economic welfare in the context of the threats posed by COVID-19," the authors wrote.</p><p>"There are so many pandemics that this pandemic has exacerbated," Dr. Salas-Lopez noted.</p><p>One example is the health-wealth gap. The mental stressors of maintaining a low socioeconomic status, especially in the face of extreme affluence, can have a physically degrading impact on health. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/index.cfm/_api/render/file/?method=inline&fileID=123ECD96-EF81-46F6-983D2AE9A45FA354" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Writing on this gap</a>, Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, notes that socioeconomic stressors can increase blood pressure, reduce insulin response, increase chronic inflammation, and impair the prefrontal cortex and other brain functions through anxiety, depression, and cognitive load. </p><p>"Thus, from the macro level of entire body systems to the micro level of individual chromosomes, poverty finds a way to produce wear and tear," Sapolsky writes. "It is outrageous that if children are born into the wrong family, they will be predisposed toward poor health by the time they start to learn the alphabet."</p>Research on the economic and mental health fallout of COVID-19 is showing two things: That unemployment is hitting <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">low-income and young Americans</a> most during the pandemic, potentially widening the health-wealth gap further; and that the pandemic not only exacerbates mental health stressors, but is doing so at clinically relevant levels. As <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7413844/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the authors of one review</a> wrote, the pandemic's effects on mental health is itself an international public health priority.<blockquote>We need to find ways to unify this country because we're all human beings. We're all created equal, and we believe that health is one of those important rights.</blockquote>
Working to close the health gap
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDc5MDk1MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTYyMzQzMn0.KSFpXH7yHYrfVPtfgcxZqAHHYzCnC2bFxwSrJqBbH4I/img.jpg?width=980" id="b40e2" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1b9035370ab7b02a0dc00758e494412b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Northwell Health coronavirus testing center at Greater Springfield Community Church.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>Novel coronavirus may spread and infect indiscriminately, but pre-existing conditions, environmental stressors, and a lack of access to care and resources increase the risk of infection. These social determinants make the pandemic more dangerous, and erode communities' and families' abilities to heal from health crises that pre-date the pandemic.</p><p>How do we eliminate these divides? Dr. Salas-Lopez says the first step is recognition. "We have to open our eyes to see the suffering around us," she said. "Northwell has not shied away from that."</p><p>"We are steadfast in improving health outcomes for our vulnerable and underrepresented communities that have suffered because of the prevalence of chronic disease, a problem that led to the disproportionately higher death rate among African-Americans and Latinos during the COVID-19 pandemic," said Michael Dowling, Northwell's president and CEO. "We are committed to using every tool at our disposal—as a provider of health care, employer, purchaser and investor—to combat disparities and ensure the <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/education-and-resources/community-engagement/center-for-equity-of-care" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">equity of care</a> that everyone deserves." </p><p>With the need recognized, Dr. Salas-Lopez calls for health care systems to travel upstream and be proactive in those hard-hit communities. This requires health care systems to play a strong role, but not a unilateral one. They must build <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/news/insights/faith-based-leaders-are-the-key-to-improving-community-health" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">partnerships with leaders in those communities</a> and utilize those to ensure relationships last beyond the current crisis. </p><p>"We must meet with community leaders and talk to them to get their perspective on what they believe the community needs are and should be for the future. Together, we can co-create a plan to measurably improve [community] health and also to be ready for whatever comes next," she said.</p><p>Northwell has built relationships with local faith-based and community organizations in underserved communities of color. Those partnerships enabled Northwell to test more than 65,000 people across the metro New York region. The health system also offered education on coronavirus and precautions to curb its spread.</p><p>These initiatives began the process of building trust—trust that Northwell has counted on to return to these communities to administer flu vaccines to prepare for what experts fear may be a difficult flu season.</p><p>While Northwell has begun building bridges across the divides of the New York area, much will still need to be done to cure U.S. health care overall. There is hope that the COVID pandemic will awaken us to the deep disparities in the US.</p><p>"COVID has changed our world. We have to seize this opportunity, this pandemic, this crisis to do better," Dr. Salas-Lopez said. "Provide better care. Provide better health. Be better partners. Be better community citizens. And treat each other with respect and dignity.</p><p>"We need to find ways to unify this country because we're all human beings. We're all created equal, and we believe that health is one of those important rights."</p>
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Mathematical model shows how the Nazis could have won WWII's Battle of Britain
With just a few strategical tweaks, the Nazis could have won one of World War II's most decisive battles.
19 January, 2020
Photo: Heinrich Hoffmann/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Politics & Current Affairs
- The Battle of Britain is widely recognized as one of the most significant battles that occurred during World War II. It marked the first major victory of the Allied forces and shifted the tide of the war.
- Historians, however, have long debated the deciding factor in the British victory and German defeat.
- A new mathematical model took into account numerous alternative tactics that the German's could have made and found that just two tweaks stood between them and victory over Britain.
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<p>Soon after the Nazis took control of France in June 1940 they began a military campaign against Britain. For three months, the Luftwaffe bombed targets in Britain, countered by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Their targets were sporadic: First, the Luftwaffe attacked ports and shipping centers, then RAF bases, then strategic infrastructure, and finally, civilians and politically significant sites. This military campaign was known as the Battle of Britain, which included the series of high-intensity night bombings known as the Blitz.</p><p>Defeating the RAF was crucial before the German army could launch a land invasion of Britain, but ultimately, the military campaign became too costly for the German forces to sustain. The planned invasion was called off, and the campaign against Britain shifted its focus to blockading the island nation's access to the sea. This would become the German's first major defeat in the war and form a crucial turning point that would define its remainder.</p><p>In part, the British victory was won by the German's lack of preparation. Hitler never expected to need to invade Britain; after France fell, he expected Britain would recognize "<a href="https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/online-exhibitions/history-of-the-battle-of-britain/operation-sealion.aspx" target="_blank">her hopeless military situation</a>" and agree to the favorable terms of surrender he had put forth. Historians have long debated what the Luftwaffe could have accomplished had the Germans developed a more comprehensive strategy.</p>
Two strategic blunders
<p>Now, historians and mathematicians from York St. John University have collaborated to produce <a href="http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~nm15/bootstrapBoB%20AAMS.docx" target="_blank">a statistical model (docx download)</a> capable of calculating what the likely outcomes of the Battle of Britain would have been had the circumstances been different. </p><p>Would the German war effort have fared better had they not bombed Britain at all? What if Hitler had begun his bombing campaign earlier, even by just a few weeks? What if they had focused their targets on RAF airfields for the entire course of the battle? Using a statistical technique called weighted bootstrapping, the researchers studied these and other alternatives.</p><p>"The weighted bootstrap technique allowed us to model alternative campaigns in which the Luftwaffe prolongs or contracts the different phases of the battle and varies its targets," said co-author Dr. Jaime Wood in a <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2020/research/mathematicians-battle-britain-what-if-scenarios/" target="_blank">statement</a>. Based on the different strategic decisions that the German forces could have made, the researchers' model enabled them to predict the likelihood that the events of a given day of fighting would or would not occur.</p><p>"The Luftwaffe would only have been able to make the necessary bases in France available to launch an air attack on Britain in June at the earliest, so our alternative campaign brings forward the air campaign by three weeks," continued Wood. "We tested the impact of this and the other counterfactuals by varying the probabilities with which we choose individual days."</p><p>Ultimately, two strategic tweaks shifted the odds significantly towards the Germans' favor. Had the German forces started their campaign earlier in the year and had they consistently targeted RAF airfields, an Allied victory would have been extremely unlikely.</p><p>Say the odds of a British victory in the real-world Battle of Britain stood at 50-50 (there's no real way of knowing what the actual odds are, so we'll just have to select an arbitrary figure). If this were the case, changing the start date of the campaign and focusing only on airfields would have reduced British chances at victory to just 10 percent. Even if a British victory stood at 98 percent, these changes would have cut them down to just 34 percent.</p>A tool for understanding history
<p>This technique, said co-author Niall Mackay, "demonstrates just how finely-balanced the outcomes of some of the biggest moments of history were. Even when we use the actual days' events of the battle, make a small change of timing or emphasis to the arrangement of those days and things might have turned out very differently."</p><p>The researchers also claimed that their technique could be applied to other uncertain historical events. "Weighted bootstrapping can provide a natural and intuitive tool for historians to investigate unrealized possibilities, informing historical controversies and debates," said Mackay.</p><p>Using this technique, researchers can evaluate other what-ifs and gain insight into how differently influential events could have turned out if only the slightest things had changed. For now, at least, we can all be thankful that Hitler underestimated Britain's grit.</p>
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The neoliberal era is ending. What comes next?
The next era in American history can look entirely different. It's up to us to choose.
30 November, 2020
Videos
- The timeline of America post-WWII can be divided into two eras, according to author and law professor Ganesh Sitaraman: the liberal era which ran through the 1970s, and the current neoliberal era which began in the early 1980s. The latter promised a "more free society," but what we got instead was more inequality, less opportunity, and greater market consolidation.
- "We've lived through a neoliberal era for the last 40 years, and that era is coming to an end," Sitaraman says, adding that the ideas and policies that defined the period are being challenged on various levels.
- What comes next depends on if we take a proactive and democratic approach to shaping the economy, or if we simply react to and "deal with" market outcomes.
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10 ways to prepare for rise of intelligent machines – MIT study
A new MIT report proposes how humans should prepare for the age of automation and artificial intelligence.
30 November, 2020
An employee cleans around early test robot displays at the Akin Robotics factory on March 15, 2018 in Konya, Turkey.
Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Technology & Innovation
- A new report by MIT experts proposes what humans should do to prepare for the age of automation.
- The rise of intelligent machines is coming but it's important to resolve human issues first.
- Improving economic inequality, skills training, and investment in innovation are necessary steps.
<p>Does the coming age of intelligent machines mean billions of humans are about to be out of work? Not necessarily, concludes a new report from MIT's<strong> Task Force on the Work of the Future.</strong> The two-and-a-half year study on technology and jobs concluded that while some jobs will disappear, innovations will also drive the creation of new jobs for the lower and middle class workers. </p><p>The <a href="https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/research-post/the-work-of-the-future-building-better-jobs-in-an-age-of-intelligent-machines/" target="_blank">report</a>, <strong>"The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines,</strong>" also highlighted growing economic inequalities and recommended specific policies governments should embrace to make sure the transition to a future rife with robots doesn't leave large segments of the population behind. Institutional changes must accompany the technological ones. </p><p>The Task Force that produced the document was co-chaired by MIT Professors David Autor and David Mindell and executive director Dr. Elisabeth Reynolds, while the expansive group of experts involved more than 20 faculty members from 12 departments, and over 20 graduate students.</p>
<p>One important note the study made is that while many expect automation to take over our lives in the near future, there is still time to prepare and make sure the transition to intelligent machines is in itself intelligent. Ultimately, it's not the machines we need to worry about, but the exacerbation of the existing human-made problems and deficiencies. Specific areas policy makers should focus on include investing into skills development and worker retraining, improving job quality, and expanding and shaping innovation.</p><p>Perhaps the central message of the study is that technology both takes away jobs and creates new ones. Around 63% of the jobs carried out in 2018 didn't even exist in 1940.</p><p>Here are the ten ways humans should prepare for the rise of the role artificial intelligence will play in our lives:</p>
1. Increase private sector investment in skills and training
<p>The group pinpoints the importance of private sector investment in training employees, especially with the purpose of increasing the upward mobility for lower-wage and less-educated workers. This will particularly affect minority workers, who are overrepresented in this group. The report estimates only about half of employees get training from their employees in any given year. </p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDg0NTgzNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MDM2Mjk3MX0.ktWTcxWd4ElTgeNJ4xujm30aCcbhile_V6Pa7dZcYFY/img.jpg?width=980" id="3379b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6975eae751f3c8bceadbfec6c1af82d2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
2. Significantly increase federal funding for training programs
<p>The report advocates getting the government to fund training programs that can help lead to middle-class jobs for workers who don't have a four-year college degree. </p>3. Support community colleges
<p>The research team thinks community colleges should be supported by the federal government's money and policies to advance programs that connect employers to the education being received by students. The policies should be aimed at raising degree completion rates at community colleges. </p>4. Invest in innovating training methods
<p>Demonstration and field testing programs that work out new retraining and reemployment ideas should be given particular focus, according to the MIT scientists. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Innovation improves the quantity, quality, and variety of work that a worker can accomplish in a given time," <a href="https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/research-post/the-work-of-the-future-building-better-jobs-in-an-age-of-intelligent-machines/" target="_blank">wrote</a> the report's authors. "This rising productivity, in turn, enables improving living standards and the flourishing of human endeavors. Indeed, in what should be a virtuous cycle, rising productivity provides society with the resources to invest in those whose livelihoods are disrupted by the changing structure of work.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDg0NTgzNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMDg4MjIxOX0.HIA_-6Ugm6VWIaEAX9gmHbUoa1MWH2ebJd72Uzr_rjA/img.jpg?width=980" id="9b332" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="70f520ef21111aa62d27e62cac78af44" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
5. Restore the real value of the federal minimum wage
<p>The report spotlights the growing economic disparity between low-paid workers and the rest of society. Compared to Canadians, for example, low-paid Americans earn 26% less. Government policy should make sure people in traditionally low-paid service jobs like cleaning, groundskeeping, food service, entertainment, recreation, and health assistance get adequate pay and some economic security. To that end, the researchers propose that the minimum wage should be raised to at least 40% of the national median wage. This value should also be indexed to inflation. </p>6. Modernize and extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits
<p>Several measures are recommended to improve unemployment insurance and extend it to workers that aren't usually covered. The report suggests allowing workers to count their most recent earnings to determine eligibility, determining eligibility based on hours rather than earnings, dropping the requirement that unemployed seek full-time work (because many hold part-time jobs), and reforming partial UI benefits from the states. </p>7. Strengthen and adapt labor laws
<p>Labor laws need to be both improved and better enforced, states the report. Contraction of private sector labor unions makes it harder for rank-and-file workers to bargain for wage growth that matches the growth of productivity growth. How workers are represented needs to be innovated as much as the technologies. Current U.S. laws "retard the development of alternative approaches," write the researchers. For example, due to racial politics during the New Deal, sectors of the American workforce like domestic workers and agricultural workers are unable to participate in collective bargaining.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDg0NTgzOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0Njk0OTcyMn0.xaGDETwNlt_GpnxZ7X0RNsedu_AYXvoPXaVnFi_MlmY/img.jpg?width=980" id="28826" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cfc6844ec9909b88e51d94483206d8fa" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
8. Increase federal research spending
<p>In a proposal aimed at fostering innovation and making sure its benefits are experienced by workers, the MIT group thinks it's key to increase government spending on research, especially in areas not addressed by the private sector. These tend to involve longer-term research that addresses the social impacts of new technologies, zeroing in on major national problems, climate change, human health and similar larger research topics. Investing into research on human-centered AI, collaborative robotics and the science of education should be a part of this approach.</p><p>Small and medium-sized businesses should receive targeted government assistance to allow them to increase productivity via the new tech, advises the MIT team. </p>9. Expand the geography of innovation in the United States
<p>Innovation is increasingly "concentrated geographically," think the researchers. For a country that has so many universities, entrepreneurs, and workers that are spread throughout, the benefits of innovation should be made available not only to more workers, but also to more of the country's regions. Each state can have its own Silicon Valley.</p>10. Rebalance taxes on capital and labor
<p>Innovation is necessary in the tax law as well, according to the report. It's important to change the manner in which the current tax code "unduly favors investments in capital" by eliminating accelerated depreciation allowances, applying corporate income tax equally to all corporations, and instituting an employer training tax credit.</p><p><a href="https://workofthefuture.mit.edu/research-post/the-work-of-the-future-building-better-jobs-in-an-age-of-intelligent-machines/" target="_blank">Read the full report here.</a></p>
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Culture & Religion
What the Greek classics tell us about grief and the importance of mourning the dead
The rites we give to the dead help us understand what it takes to go on living.
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