Starting points 1. Natural disasters 2. Fitness/Health 3. New technology 4. Artificial Intelligence
List of Natural Disasters • Hurricanes, tornadoes and storms • Floods • Tsunamis • Avalanches and landslides • Forest fires and wild fires • Drought • Earthquakes • Volcanoes • Disease – famine, bacteria, ecoli, Zika • Nuclear explosion • Oil spills (Exxon) • Corporate pollution (gas leaks. oil spills, water contamination) • Climate change/global warming (rising sea levels, rising temperatures, financial costs) • Poverty/under-development • Unplanned urbanisation (too many people moving to cities to avoid disasters/lack of opportunities) slums, sanitation, discrimination. • Wars and conflicts
What causes Natural Disasters ? Three broad groups Movements of the earth • earth quakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. • They are difficult to predict and impossible to stop. Weather related disasters • Hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme heat and cold weather • Some advanced warning but nothing can be done to stop them. Floods, mud slides, land slides and famine • These are usually as result of extreme weather events and are unforseen
Human – caused disasters • Shootings • Acts of terrorism • Industrial accidents (oil spills).
Negative Effects of Natural Disasters • Gas and oil prices are affected • Taxpayers and governments have to spend billions to rebuild cities • Infrastructure such as public transport and business are closed • Mental health of survivors, first responders and recovery workers • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder • Emotional distress, grief, anxiety and constant worrying • Disease • Bacteria spread from contaminated water and bad sewage
How much do they cost the world? • Natural Disasters cost a total of $1.5 trillion in damage world-wide between 2003 and 2013. • They caused more than 1.1 million deaths and effected the lives of 2 billion people. • There have been 15 “weather and climate disaster events” in the US in 2017 to date where financial loses exceeded $1 billion each.
Fitness/Health • I like the gym and keeping fit • This directed me towards a healthy lifestyle as a starting point • Researched exercise, healthy eating and mental health
Benefit of exercise • Can reduce your risk of major illnesses, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer by up to 50% and lower your risk of early death by up to 30%. • Improves sleep • Makes you feel more relaxed and more positive about yourself
Obsession or excess exercise is bad for you • Becomes addictive and you over train, miss social and family events or worry if you miss a day of exercise • Body dysmorphic disorder – if you are excessively concerned with your physical features and defects • Damages joints and your heart and causes inflammation
Your mind can’t function if your body isn’t working properly. Your mind affects your body
Impact of exercise and on mental health Studies show that exercise can help depression: • Promotes changes to the brain including neural growth, reduced inflammation and new activity patterns that promote feelings of calm and well-being. • Releases endorphins, chemicals in your brain that make you feel good • Acts as a distraction allowing you to break out of a cycle of negative thoughts
Benefits of healthy eating A well-balanced diet provides: • The energy you need throughout the day • Nutrients you need for growth and repair helping to prevent poor diet-related illness
What is a balance diet? • Five a day – fruit and vegetable • Base meals on starchy food such as potatoes, pasta, rice and bread (should make up a third of what we eat)– • Have some dairy such as cheese and yogurt or dairy alternatives such as soya milk • Fish, eggs, meat, beans and pulses are good sources of protein • Choose unsaturated oils and spreads and eat in small amounts • Drink plenty of fluids It is recommended that men have around 2,500 calories a day (10,500 kilojoules). Women should have around 2,000 calories a day (8,400 kilojoules). Most adults are eating more calories than they need, and should eat fewer calories.
Other general research issues • Creativity and mental health is there a link? Munch, Van Gogh etc. • Overdoing it – body dysmorphia and anorexia • Physical and mental exercise and the positive affects on dementia and aging
Quotes • Quotes • “To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” – Buddha • “A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.” – A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh • Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it. ~Plato • “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” - John F. Kennedy • “The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it.” - Joan Rivers
New Technology • The wheel • The nail • The compass • The printing press • The internal combustion engine • The telephone • The light bulb • Penicillin • Contraceptives
Even newer technology • DNA finger printing • The Internet • Wireless electricity
Now • Virtual Reality head set • The 360-Degree Selfie • Gene Therapy 2.0 • Paying with your Face • Botnets of Things • Reinforcement Learning
Coming soon • Reversing Paralysis • Self Driving Trucks • Practical Quantum Computers • Hot Solar Cells • The Cell Atlas • Paper Diagnostics • Ingestible robots • Carbon –breathing batteries
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZliZdAn Kl8
Artificial Intelligence What is it? “The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision- making, and translation between languages.”
Artificial intelligence has the potential to be more intelligent than humans. People now control the planet because we are the smartest. Will be still in control if we are no longer the smartest?
AI products • Facial recognition • SIRI • Self-driving cars • Google’s search algorithms • IBM’s Watson • Autonomous weapons
AI safety is important to: • To prevent an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons. • To prevent an AI system becoming better than humans at all cognitive tasks • Whereas it may be little more than a minor nuisance if your laptop crashes or gets hacked, it becomes all the more important that an AI system does what you want it to do if it controls your car, your airplane, your pacemaker, your automated trading system or your power grid.
What about the ethics of AI? “trolley problem” • What kind of ethics we should programme into the car. • Would you buy a car that would sacrifice the driver to save the pedestrians? • Who makes these programming decisions the government, manufacturer or consumer?
AlphaGo Zero • Google’s DeepMind has made another big advance in artificial intelligence by getting a machine AlpahaGo Zero to master the Chinese game of Go without help from humans. • The Chinese game of Go dates back to ancient China. Players move black and white stones on a grid, surrounding their opponents’ stones with their own. While the rules are simpler than chess a player typically has a choice of 200 moves at most point in the game, compared with about 20 in chess. • The AlphaGo programm has already beaten two of the world’s best players at the Chinese game of Go. It had learned from thousands of games played by humans and lots of computer-processing power. • The new AlphaGo Zero began with no knowledge of Go and no data apart from the rules and a blank Go board, and played itself. Within 72 hours it went on to beat the original program by 100 games to zero. • AlphaGo took months to learn how to play well but AlphaGo Zero learnt in 3 days. • David Silver, who led Google’s AI team, is excited that a machine learnt in days what it took humanity over a thousand years. He also says it shows that it’s the “novel algorithms that count, not the compute power of the data.”
Autonomous weapons In an open letter AI and Robotics Researchers said that starting a military AI arms race was a bad idea and should be prevented by a ban putting offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human controls. US, China, Russia and Israel are hoping to develop autonomous weapons. Elon Musk, head of Tesla, asked the UN to take action against the use of AI in weapons sometimes called “killer robots” • Pros • Reduces causalities of war – less people can be killed • Easy to obtain unlike nuclear weapons so cost of war less • Cons • Makes the decision to go war easier • Not beneficial for humanity because they could fall into the wrong hands and be used for assassinations and ethnic cleansing
An opinion which cannot be ignored Prof Stephen Hawking told the BBC: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." He says that it could go off on its own and re-design itself and supersede humans. He is worried that it could be “either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity.”
Recommend
More recommend
