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After long consideration, Johnson decided to hold detainees for ICE rather than join the full 287(g) program, which did not pacify opponents in groups like Siembra, Down Home N.C. and Alamance NAACP. |
As world leaders wrap up talks in Davos, PCMag looks ahead to a Star Trek Federation-style body investigating 'The Transformation of the Human' in LA. |
The human race is entering a new era. We merge with machines to restore damaged senses and organs through implants and sensory prostheses, and sequence DNA to sculpt personalized clinical care for molecular variants. AI advises us on matters of the heart, and soothes panic attacks at 4 a.m. NASA's new robots are ready ... |
But all these big ideas have moral considerations that should not fall prey to partisan politics. To put this in geek speak, we need a (Star Trek) Federation—a council of benign, wise governance—and the sooner, the better. |
A suitable contender is headquartered in Los Angeles with several outposts, including one in Beijing. The Berggruen Institute was founded by Nicolas Berggruen, who made headlines in 2010, when he was dubbed "the homeless billionaire" for ditching his dwellings and possessions to travel the world (in a Gulfstream IV). H... |
PCMag talked with Berggruen on the phone, while his team packed up the organization's current HQ to move into the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, where Ridley Scott shot the original Blade Runner (pictured above). Here are edited and condensed excerpts from our conversation. |
Nicolas, your institute put out a call to find five fellows to spend 2018 and 2019 investigating 'The Transformation of the Human.' You'll be announcing their names in March; can you tell us more? |
Yes, in partnership with USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at University of Southern California, we want these individuals to examine how we now understand ourselves as humans, in the light of new technologies which are changing our material realities. |
They will be researching cultural shifts and emerging technology innovations such as A.I. and CRISPR/cas9? |
A.I., definitely, as well as developments in bioengineering, neuroscience, genomics and the human microbiome. |
And as part of your sponsorship, they'll have a space to reflect on the future of humanity inside the glorious Bradbury Building? |
We wanted to have a presence in downtown L.A. and the Bradbury Building is just iconic. I find it a very inspiring place. I couldn't resist the idea of being there, ever since I saw Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The way the light filters down through into the atrium. Extraordinary. |
In fact, the Bradbury is just one of the Institute's locales. |
I purchased 450 acres, high up in the Santa Monica Mountains, and commissioned Herzog & De Meuron, the architects behind Beijing's "Bird's Nest" National Stadium, to design a grand futuristic edifice which will open by 2022. I'm calling it a 21st Century secular monastery, where a cohort of global thinkers will gather ... |
This might be a bit geeky as a reference for you, but, when examining the architectural renderings, it appears to resemble something out of Star Trek. |
(Laughs) If you say so. |
But, for now, all the participants will be citizens of this planet. |
The Berggruen Institute brings very influential Earthlings to the table. |
We want to mix up different disciplines and cultures, get people from government, industry, technology and the worlds of philosophy, morals and ethics, across all cultures. For example, our 21st Century Council, which is tasked with helping shape the agenda for the annual G20 summits, has many members including Elon Mu... |
Arati Prabhakar, former head of DARPA, is one of our current fellows, and we are supporting her investigative research within the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. It's important, for me, to represent all points of view. We are nonpartisan. |
Just like the Star Trek Foundation. |
(Laughs) Well, from a grand perspective, one might say the Berggruen Institute is based on a triangulation of classical values, drawing on the Platonic idea of philosopher kings leading city states; the European Enlightenment thinkers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, author of The Social Contract who spoke of government... |
It all sounds very utopian. |
I believe in the power of ideas. What makes us human is that we generate ideas. Other species live and procreate but what makes us special and self-transform is that we come up with ideas and then those drive us to do something. Our ideas create our culture. I believe in the design and implementation of new ideas of go... |
Talking of globalization 2.0, do you believe that technology is outpacing politicians' ability to not just regulate, but even comprehend its implications? |
Governments by their very nature are bureaucratic, and not exactly agile. So there's a disconnect between society and government, especially in terms of emerging technology. That's one of the purposes behind our work, we want to provide a way for governments to be more in touch with what's happening. |
Can you explain how you'll do this on a practical level? For example, will you be a source of contemporary experts so it's not just the same boring people talking on the same dull panels? |
Definitely. I see that as our function to offer our own staff, or fellows we're supporting within institutions, or just exciting thinkers that we know, and can introduce into more traditional arenas. |
Won't this bring you into competition with other think tanks? For example, in interviews you've expressed concern that there's no global code around cyber warfare (PCMag visited US Army Cyber Command in 2016). Is this what Berggruen Institute wants to pioneer? Develop codes and plans? |
All well-intentioned think tanks or places of ideas are great. What we do complements what others are doing. We may have a different way of doing our research. After all, we're very long-term in our thinking and approach. We don't have to write a paper for tomorrow. We don't have any clients, per se. We are competitive... |
Talking of potential hazards to humanity, do you agree with Elon Musk that A.I. is a threat? |
Elon is a personal friend, as well as on our 21st Century Council, but I cannot speak for him. However, I do agree with the view that A.I will, in essence, create a new species, and therefore be friendly or not so friendly. Therefore, once it exists, we've already lost control of it. It'll be powerful. If a force for g... |
Will the Berggruen Institute draw up ideas on how to regulate A.I.? |
Not regulation, per se, but we will look at how to understand and prepare for it, on a global basis, not just here in America, but in China and across Europe. |
Finally, why are you doing all this in Los Angeles? |
I've lived in many places and, while New York is a dynamic and exciting city, in California one feels it's all about the future. It's a place of possibilities. L.A. especially. It's so vast, open, and diverse. When I moved here I started spending time with professors at USC and UCLA, and out of that ideas started to fo... |
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's children really are growing up before our eyes! |
Jaden Smith, the A-list couple's 14-year-old son, is allegedly seeking emancipation from his parents, Will said — which he later told Ellen Degeneres was a joke. He told a British newspaper The Sun, "I know if we do this, he can be an emancipated minor." The After Earth star adds, "because he really wants to have his o... |
The blockbuster actor seemed to be taking Jaden's request in stride, but admitted, "That's the backlash. On the other side, if kids just want to have command of their lives, I understand." |
Will and Jada have said that they prefer to treat their children as individuals and not impose harsh rules or strict discipline on them. Jada even recently penned an open letter on Facebook talking about having a blended family, which includes Will's ex, Sheree Fletcher, and their son, Trey. |
However, Jaden told Ellen Degeneres this week that his not getting emancipated and "I'm not going anywhere!" Plus, he is still happy to share the screen with his old man. Father and son star in After Earth, hitting theaters on May 31. |
Health insurer Humana is leaving the Affordable Care Act’s public insurance exchanges for next year as it regroups after ending its proposed combination with rival insurer Aetna. |
Humana Inc. covers about 150,000 people on exchanges in 11 states. |
The insurer said Tuesday it had taken several actions to improve that business, but it was still seeing signs of unbalanced risk in that customer population. Health insurers have struggled to attract enough healthy people to their risk pools to balance the claims they incur from people with expensive medical conditions... |
Humana and Aetna said earlier Tuesday that they were calling off Aetna’s roughly $34 billion acquisition of Humana. That deal already had been rejected by a federal judge who was worried about its impact on competition. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) has been upgraded by TheStreet Ratings from a sell to hold. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) has been downgraded by TheStreet Ratings from from a hold to sell. |
Orion Marine Group Inc was a leading decliner within the materials & construction industry, falling 7 cents (-1.1%) to $6.45 on light volume. |
Shares of Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) were gapping down Thursday morning with an open price 12.3% lower than Wednesday's closing price. The stock closed at $7.97 yesterday and opened today's trading at $6.99. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) hit a new 52-week low Monday as it is currently trading at $9.15, below its previous 52-week low of $9.16 with 150,365 shares traded as of 3:32 p.m. ET. Average volume has been 262,500 shares over the past 30 days. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) hit a new 52-week low Friday as it is currently trading at $9.35, below its previous 52-week high of $16.51 with 44,362 shares traded as of 11:31 a.m. ET. Average volume has been 278,800 shares over the past 30 days. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) is trading at unusually high volume Thursday with 1.2 million shares changing hands. It is currently at four times its average daily volume and trading down 75 cents (-7.2%). |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) hit a new 52-week low Wednesday as it is currently trading at $9.47, below its previous 52-week high of $19.80 with 186,836 shares traded as of 1:17 p.m. ET. Average volume has been 280,200 shares over the past 30 days. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) hit a new 52-week low Tuesday as it is currently trading at $10.29, below its previous 52-week high of $19.80 with 394,122 shares traded as of 12:12 p.m. ET. Average volume has been 263,400 shares over the past 30 days. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) hit a new 52-week low Thursday as it changed hands at $10.60 compared with its previous 52-week low of $10.75. Orion Marine Group is currently trading at $10.69 with 48,981 shares changing hands as of 10:22 a.m. as compared to the average daily trading volume of 348,500. |
Orion Marine Group (NYSE:ORN) is trading at unusually high volume Thursday with 1.3 million shares changing hands. It is currently at 4.1 times its average daily volume and trading down 56 cents (-4.8%). |
A study from MIT neuroscientists reveals that high-functioning autistic adults appear to have trouble using theory of mind to make moral judgments in certain situations. |
Specifically, the researchers found that autistic adults were more likely than non-autistic subjects to blame someone for accidentally causing harm to another person. This shows that their judgments rely more on the outcome of the incident than on an understanding of the person's intentions, says Liane Young, an MIT po... |
For example, in one scenario, "Janet" and a friend are kayaking in a part of ocean with many jellyfish. The friend asks Janet if she should go for a swim. Janet has just read that the jellyfish in the area are harmless, and tells her friend to go for a swim. The friend is stung by a jellyfish and dies. |
In this scenario, the researchers found that people with autism are more likely than non-autistic people to blame Janet for her friend's death, even though she believed the jellyfish were harmless. |
Young notes that such scenarios tend to elicit a broad range of responses even among non-autistic people. "There's no normative truth as to whether accidents should be forgiven. The pattern with autistic patients is that they are at one end of the spectrum," she says. Young's co-lead author on the paper is former MIT p... |
Most children develop theory-of-mind ability around age 4 or 5, which can be demonstrated experimentally with "false-belief" tests. In the classic example, a child is shown two dolls, "Sally" and "Anne." The experimenter puts on a skit in which Sally puts a marble in a basket and then leaves the scene. While Sally is a... |
Previous studies have shown that autistic children develop this ability later than non-autistic children, if ever, depending on the severity of the autism, says MIT Professor John Gabrieli, senior author of the study. |
"High-functioning" autistic people - for example, those with a milder form of autism such as Asperger's syndrome, often develop compensatory mechanisms to deal with their difficulties in understanding other people's thoughts. The details of these mechanisms are unknown, says Young, but they allow autistic people to fun... |
However, the scenarios used in the new MIT study were constructed in a way that there is no easy way to compensate for impaired theory of mind. The researchers tested 13 autistic adults and 13 non-autistic adults on about 50 scenarios similar to the jellyfish example. |
In a 2010 study, Young used the same hypothetical scenarios to test the moral judgments of a group of patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a part of the prefrontal cortex (where planning, decision-making and other complex cognitive tasks occur). |
Those patients understand other people's intentions, but they lack the emotional outrage that usually occurs in cases where someone tries (but fails) to harm someone else. For example, they would more easily forgive someone who offers mushrooms he believes to be poisonous to an acquaintance, if the mushrooms turn out t... |
"While autistic individuals are unable to process mental state information and understand that individuals can have innocent intentions, the issue with VMPC patients is that they could understand information but did not respond emotionally to that information," says Young. |
Putting these two pieces together could help neuroscientists come up with a more thorough picture of how the brain constructs morality. Previous studies by MIT assistant professor Rebecca Saxe (also an author of the new PNAS paper) have shown that theory of mind appears to be seated in a brain region called the right t... |
Source: "Impaired theory of mind for moral judgment in high-functioning autism," by Joseph M. Moran, Liane L. Young, Rebecca Saxe, Su Mei Lee, Daniel O'Young, Penelope L. Mavros, and John D. Gabrieli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 31, January, 2011. |
Epping, Janet. "Understanding The Autistic Mind." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 1 Feb. 2011. Web. |
The last time we spoke with T-Minus, the discussion was producing DJ Khaled's monster hit, "I'm On One." He didn't reveal much on what else he was working on but now we have an idea. The Toronto-based beatsmith lent his hand executive producing local hometown rap duo A-Game's newest project, Since 1... |
In October 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stood on the Universal Studios set of Desperate Housewives and revealed to a crowd that the roof tiles on the “Wisteria Lane” houses were actually solar panels, showcasing a future in which Tesla installs attractive, solar tiles that power homes across the the country. |
But it’s taken a while for Telsa solar roofs to move beyond fictional homes. The company started taking pre-orders last May, requiring a $1,000 deposit. Last month, Tesla told Ars Technica that it had completed a pilot installation program and that only Tesla employees had been able to install the tiles up until that t... |
Yesterday, a Bloomberg report revealed that Tesla is about to make a big push into the mainstream market, by putting Tesla-branded selling stations in 800 Home Depot locations. With 2,200 locations in total, Home Depot is the largest home improvement chain in the country. The Tesla kiosks are set to start going up some... |
At the selling stations, Tesla employees will demonstrate the photovoltaic panels and batteries, presumably explaining how they work and what the benefits are. That way, any customer looking to replace a fuse or searching for someone to help them figure out if they can install a light dimmer could get swept up into a s... |
Tesla’s solar power system generally costs between $10,000 and $25,000, with batteries costing an extra $7,000. According to Bloomberg, it will cost about $52,000 for the average homeowner to install solar tiles on their roof. |
This Home Depot venture will help determine if the average consumer is ready to spend that much to embrace solar power, or if solar mass appeal is still science fiction. |
A 20-year-old Norton man has been charged with leaving the scene of a pedestrian crash on Route 24 in Randolph that killed Adam T. Trudeau of Needham, 29, a former Easton resident, early Sunday morning, state police said. |
A 20-year-old Norton man has been charged with leaving the scene of a pedestrian crash on Route 24 that killed a former Easton resident early Sunday morning. |
Shane Wilson was charged with leaving the scene after causing personal injury resulting in death, said David Traub, spokesman for Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey. |
Wilson called state police on Sunday, hours after Adam T. Trudeau, 29, of Needham and formerly of Easton, was struck and killed at approximately 1:15 a.m. Sunday in the northbound lane of Route 24 near Exit 21. |
Wilson has since turned over his 2008 Hyundai Elantra to authorities, who are investigating. Traub would not comment Monday on whether Wilson was the only person in the Hyundai at the time of the accident. |
State police said the red car initially stopped, but the driver left the scene before speaking with police. Wilson later called state police Sunday after seeing news reports about the Route 24 fatality. |
He told state police he was aware that he had struck something – but he thought he hit a deer in the roadway, state police said. |
State police said evidence suggested that Trudeau exited his vehicle and faced oncoming traffic in the center lane, when he was struck by a red car, state police said. His remains were brought to the medical examiner’s office for examination, Traub said. |
The circumstances surrounding Trudeau’s death are being investigated by State Police assigned to the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office with assistance from troopers from the Milton barracks, State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction and the State Police Crime Scene Services Section. |
State Police closed Route 24 northbound for about four hours after the crash. Wilson will be summoned to Quincy District Court at a future date to be determined by the court, Traub said. |
Sunday’s crash occurred days after State Police on Thursday announced they are nearly tripling patrols on Route 24 and I-195 on Friday and Saturday nights through September, after a string of recent fatal crashes on Route 24. |
Locally, two horrific accidents – one in Avon on July 12 and the other in West Bridgewater on July 15 – claimed three lives, including a 12-year-old girl from Norton. |
State Police said Thursday they’ll be on the lookout for speeders, drunken drivers, wrong-way drivers, as was the case in the West Bridgewater accident earlier this month, and distracted drivers. |
The first thing most folks do upon entering a hotel room is pull aside the shades to check out the view. Photographer Gray Malin got lucky on a visit to Las Vegas–overlooking the pool from a top floor–and was so taken with the sight of sun worshippers from above that he decided to pursue a project capturing similar sce... |
The next stop for Malin after Sin City was Miami during Art Basel but unfortunately, there was no vacancy for the same kind of set-up. “So, I did the next best thing–rented a helicopter!” Malin tells Co.Design. From there, he was completely hooked (and who could blame him). Rio de Janeiro and Kauai soon followed, with ... |
Oftentimes the trips themselves took place over the course of a short weekend jaunt, scheduled at the last minute due to the whims of the weather; an unexpectedly cloudy season in Sydney kept him at bay until the forecast finally called for sun, so he booked a ticket to fly out the very next day in order to catch the c... |
Former minister for justice Alan Shatter has won his legal challenge to the findings of the 2014 Guerin Report examining the handling of claims made by a garda whistleblower. |
Mr Shatter appealed against the High Court's dismissal of his challenge. |
The Court of Appeal found in Mr Shatter's favour this morning. |
Mr Shatter claimed Senior Counsel Sean Guerin should have interviewed him before reaching adverse conclusions against him or should have allowed him to respond to draft conclusions. |
He said Mr Guerin's report had caused him to resign from office the day after it was published in May 2014, and his good name and reputation had been destroyed. |
In his ruling, President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice Sean Ryan said in his view Mr Guerin was obliged to observe the rules of natural justice and of letting the other side be heard. |
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