October 05, 2015

The reality of android soldiers and why laws for robots are doomed to failure

"Every decade, within 20 years we are going to have sentient robots and there is always somebody saying it, but if you look at the people on the ground working [on AI] they don't say this. They get on with the work. AI is mostly a practical subject developing things that you don't even know are AI — in your phone, in your car, that's the way we work." And even if, at some point in the far future, AI matures to the point at which a computer system can abide by the rules of war, the fundamental moral questions will still apply. Sharkey said, "You've still got the problems of accountability and people will have to decide is this morally what we want to have, a machine making that decision to kill a human."


What ‘digital’ really means

It’s tempting to look for simple definitions, but to be meaningful and sustainable, we believe that digital should be seen less as a thing and more a way of doing things. To help make this definition more concrete, we’ve broken it down into three attributes: creating value at the new frontiers of the business world, creating value in the processes that execute a vision of customer experiences, and building foundational capabilities that support the entire structure. Being digital requires being open to reexamining your entire way of doing business and understanding where the new frontiers of value are. For some companies, capturing new frontiers may be about developing entirely new businesses in adjacent categories; for others, it may be about identifying and going after new value pools in existing sectors.


How to identify and thwart insider threats

Though least privilege, zero trust approaches can limit damage from insiders, these are not fool proof. There are cases where data requires additional protections. An entitled employee for example might have full and unrestrained access to his work product in order to do his job. Likewise, an imposter can retrieve data in a very stealthy manner, avoiding the use of readily detected system scans and brute force dictionary attacks on login screens. Organizations should consider detection methods from the User Behavior Analytics space to deal with insiders, says Tierney. These methods apply behavioral baselines to identify attacks based on employee actions that deviate from normal, established behavior patterns.


Have it Your Way! You Pick the Cloud Model

Ask yourself how important performance and availability are to your company? Is 100 percent availability essential to your company’s survival? Do you have a highly available architecture? Is robust performance critical to your operational success? With by-the-instance cloud you will create both scale and availability by distributing content across multiple instances and geographies. Alternatively, resource pool-based clouds are ideal for environments with large transactional systems that have an underlying HA infrastructure and scale, at a granular level, to fine-tune your compute, network, or storage independent of one another. By-the-instance clouds tend to be less expensive on the front end since they do not include HA redundancy in the infrastructure.


Fifteen Trends Safeguarding Government

Every employee at every level of government is charged with protecting our information from for - eign and domestic hackers, who might use that information to harm or demoralize American sys - tems. Furthermore, this protection only becomes more important each day as more people, places, and things are connected to the Internet. As American government becomes increasingly connected, a question looms: How will our inter - ests and information be safeguarded as cyber - threats mount and evolve? Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to cyberse - curity. Instead, government will have to adopt mul - tiple tactics that work in concert and evolve with new threat environments. In this guide, we explore the tools and strategies that public servants are using to safeguard our information systems.


Psychology Of Color To Improve Site Conversion

It’s important to understand that the psychology of color plays a big role in persuasion. Keep in mind that persuasion is different from coercion, manipulation, or simply being pushy. Instead, it’s about bringing the change in attitude necessary to encourage customers to take action. In this case, the action would be a conversion or purchase. Of course, an essential aspect of the psychology of color is value. If devoid of value, your products or services won’t sell regardless of the color scheme. For the psychology of color to work in your website’s favor, the content, design, loading speed, call for action, and other landing page factors must work in tandem.


Is The CIO The Next VP Of Electricity?

So, are CIOs on their way out? The answer depends on the scope of the CIO role. The new role is responsible for the full digital strategy of the organization. Companies that feel they have a weakness in their digital strategy tend to hire a CDO (Chief Digital Officer). When the CDO comes in to define a digital strategy, they spend a lot of time thinking about the customer needs and the full customer journey to find ways to enhance the company’s offering and better engage with customers across all devices. They think beyond the standard website and internal software to more creative ways to improve the customer experience. CIOs should embrace the CDO role. They should be open to reinventing their roles, positioning themselves as versatile experts capable of leveraging technology to empower the entire organization.


IoT: Can It Bridge The Digital Divide To Fulfill Its Promise?

Internet access and digital skills are key to unlocking the potential of the IoT, which can help with those challenges. Applications such as telecommuting, virtual meetings, app-based public transport, smart cars, smart logistics, smart buildings, and smart appliances can help curb emissions and provide more sustainable urban growth. "As of 2014, 60 percent of the global population did not have access to internet, and 56 percent out of this 60 percent belonged to emerging countries," according to the Frost & Sullivan website. "Given the benefits that developed economies derive from proliferation of internet, bridging this digital divide is a pressing global challenge necessitating enhanced public-private collaboration."


Finding your digital sweet spot

Of course, not all industries face the same opportunities or the same threats. Hotels and airlines, for instance, are greatly exposed to the disruptive potential of digital, with our research showing that over the next five years their share of sales via digital channels will rise to 50 percent in mature markets. This will clearly disadvantage digital laggards. Large grocery chains, on the other hand, could be less affected. Their share of sales via digital channels is expected to rise to just 10 percent. With an expense base dominated by the cost of goods sold, the potential for digital to radically transform their economics is somewhat constrained. To capture the value available, organizations will need to assess the value at stake, invest proportionally to that value, and align their business and operating models accordingly.


The Art of Dealing With Disaster

Unless you’ve not been involved in planning and implementing one, the complexity of a disaster recovery system may come as a surprise. I cannot provide a complete picture in a single blog post, but I can at least explain why such systems are complex. First of all there’s the expense. While it is technically feasible to completely replicate a data center somewhere a good distance away, so that computer systems are proof against a geographically widespread disaster, its also very expensive. Large businesses do that and some may still do, but nowadays the preferred and less expensive option is to use the cloud – Disaster Recovery as a Service, as it is called. There are several advantages, including the fact that you can choose a cloud disaster recovery site that is thousands of miles from your data center.



Quote for the day:

"The first task of a leader is to keep hope alive." -- Joe Batten

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