I don’t really want to write this blogpost. Or rather I do, but I want people to tell me all the reasons I’m wrong. I’ve been reading ‘The Wall’ by John Lanchester, a dystopian, yet all too real-seeming novel. Following ‘the change’, a catastrophic climate-related event, much of the world has become uninhabitable, leading to […]
The left behind?
Tag Archives: artificial intelligence
Uni wins £1.25m funding to design transformative exoskeleton suit for disabled young people
The University of Liverpool has been awarded more than one million pounds in funding to design a “revolutionary” assistive device to support and enhance upper body movement in children and young people living with progressive neuromuscular diseases. The university was awarded £1.25 million from the People’s Postcode Lottery Dream Fund to design the first-of-its-kind exoskeleton […]
Uni wins £1.25m funding to design transformative exoskeleton suit for disabled young people
Ethics Alive! The Ethics of SocBots: Imagining Siri and Alexa as the Next Generation of Social Workers
Can Siri and Alexa be programmed with social work values, knowledge, critical thinking, and communication skills? Is this the “new” social worker of the future? Can SocBots learn and adapt to provide better, more ethical services?
The Social Care Graph of Boon
Vic Citarella plots the longevity dividend
Two new words entered my lexicon today. Firstly the word \”methuselarity\” which was coined by Aubrey de Grey to mean a future point in time when all of the medical conditions that cause human death would be eliminated and death would occur only by accident or homicide. Secondly “singularity”, as a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization, and perhaps human nature.
 |
| Aubrey de Grey |
As Wikipedia kindly advises me the concepts behind these words are difficult to grasp, unfathomable and take us into unpredictable territory. What I have gleaned is that these moments in time, these future points and watersheds are not far away. According to experts as soon as 10 years away and certainly before I reach 100.
It seems therefore important that we elders turn our remaining energies and limited brain power to two things: preserving our bodies for the glorious day when computers take over and ensuring their processing power is caring power. Rather than the Barnet Graph of Doom – a three minute video – that shows how all spending in that council will be consumed by adult social care and children’s services in the same timeframe as the aforementioned phenomena, rather we should devise A Graph of Boon.
I am exhausted just thinking about all this but will return to it. There is a bonanza coming up and I want to be there. Now if I can just map the exponential growth of healthy older people on one axis and the processing power of computers on the other. With some good fortune I might be able to share in the bonus of a new and vibrant gerontocracy.
Cpeanose 