By now, it’s likely that hundreds of millions of people around the globe have seen the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The pictures are impressive, yet the science behind the technology as well as the science involving the observations is incredible.
The first picture that NASA showed the world at large is titled Webb’s First Deep Field.
An article by Pamela Wood in the Baltimore Sun discusses fifth-generation wireless, or 5G, the latest and perhaps the greatest innovation for wireless devices. The technology will deliver data and video faster to consumers’ phones and also enable broader Internet of Things (IoT) technology usage like smart street lights, self-driving vehicles, etc. Our current cell technology utilizes tall towers located every mile or two in large metropolitan areas and further away in rural ones. The 5G technology will incorporate smaller antennas located much closer together, say every few blocks in a large city.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Why Skills Training Can’t Replace Higher Education,” Dr. George Kuh posits that “much of the current media-reported posturing by policy makers and pundits about the failure of U.S. colleges and universities to adequately prepare people for the 21st-century workplace is either ill-informed or misguided.” Dr. Kuh, chancellor’s professor emeritus of higher education at Indiana University, describes today’s media narrative as one focused on the need for vocational skills versus “useless liberal arts programs.” Multiple badges and certificates will be issued to indicate proficiency in certain skills and in the future, a trusted entity will “rack and stack” a combination of them to issue the equivalent of a college degree. He acknowledges that “short-term vocational skills-based programs are critically important and well-suited for many.” However, he also questions why this should be the desired policy for addressing the needs of the 21st-century workplace.
Dr. Kuh notes that “workplaces, societal institutions, and the world order are only going to get more complicated and challenging to navigate and manage, increasing the need for people with accumulated wisdom, interpersonal and practical competence, and more than a splash of critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and altruism.” He also notes that there are “no short cuts” to enabling people to deepen learning, develop resilience, and convert information into action. Shortening education in order to bolster productivity is shortsighted for many reasons, and he expects that many learners from traditionally underrepresented groups will likely gravitate toward these shorter and less expensive training programs at the risk of delaying or denying themselves a foundational baccalaureate degree. He calls on business leaders to speak about what the country needs from our postsecondary system and for a re-balancing to occur based on their experience leading their corporations through this era of rapid, technology-driven change.
Last year was undoubtedly a whirlwind in the world of technology—both good and bad. Taking effect a little over a year ago, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) changed the way tech giants such as Google, Facebook, AWS, Apple, and others collect and use their consumers' personal data. To date, 89,271 data breaches have been reported by the GDPR Data Protection Authorities. Although GDPR appears to be an important move to increase security around personal data, there have been a growing number of tech companies, where data are key components to core functionality of their technology offerings/products, who have been negatively affected.
Let’s take a look at Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, for example. In circumstances where AI is used by a financial institution as an automated decision-making system — say, in offering a home loan — a GDPR data privacy policy does not adequately address a subject’s “right to an explanation” to the “how” or “why” the subject was accepted or rejected for the loan. Because AI works through continually changing algorithmic logic and models, it will be difficult for these institutions to develop clear-cut language for compliance. Companies that use other trending technologies such as machine learning, data & analytics, virtual reality (VR) & augmented reality (AR), and cloud computing may also have similar issues regarding the accuracy of their explanations for GDPR compliance.
