Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Eight Management Ideas to Embrace in the 2020s – MIT Sloan

Our experts reveal where leaders should focus their efforts in 2020 and beyond.

At the beginning of a new year (and a new decade), its natural to wonder whats ahead. As technology and society continue to rapidly transform, it can also be overwhelming for managers and organizations to think about what to tackle next.

With that in mind, we turned to recent authors at MIT Sloan Management Review and asked them: As we enter the 2020s, what is one critical area where leaders and organizations should focus their efforts? The research and diverse expertise of our surveyed experts provides useful insights into the specific skills, investments, and processes that will help companies compete, thrive, and provide value for stakeholders in the years to come.

Create more agile cultures that enable speed, efficiency, and high employee engagement in work. This will require very different conceptions of culture away from broad characterizations to recognizing that culture is experienced locally in networks, is variable throughout organizations in ways that can be both positive and negative, and is not effectively shaped by traditional top-down communication or cascading change processes today.

We are finding in my consortium that far more effective approaches to cultural change can be enacted through networks by targeting different kinds of opinion leaders, cocreating desired future states, and more active targeting of points where misalignment in values or priorities exists.

Rob Cross, coauthor of A Noble Purpose Alone Wont Transform Your Company

The issue that will dominate the 2020s is climate change. All leaders will need to develop strategies for aggressively managing their carbon footprints; working with their value chains to slash energy, emissions, and waste; supporting pro-climate policies at global, state, and local levels; and communicating their progress and approach to employees, customers, investors, and many more. Well need innovation across many sectors to shift our economy to clean technologies quickly.

Andrew Winston, MIT SMR columnist and author of Should Businesses Stop Flying to Fight Climate Change?

By ignoring our feelings at work, we overlook important data and risk preventable mistakes. We send emails that cause unnecessary anxiety, we fail to make work meaningful, and we are more likely to burn out.

Embracing emotions at work means learning how to give more useful, less hurtful feedback (make it specific and actionable), help remote workers feel a sense of belonging (set up virtual social time), and better communicate important decisions (explain your reasoning and host a Q&A).

And for those skeptical about the ROI on doing all this? At Humu, a company that uses behavioral science to make work better (where I lead content), we find that employees who are nudged on themes related to meaning, trust, and empowerment become much happier and almost 10% more productive. Its time we learn how to bring emotion into the workplace without letting it run wild.

Liz Fosslien, coauthor of How to Create Belonging for Remote Workers

Managers at all levels need to have a good understanding of how AI will augment and enhance the work they are doing. AI has the potential to make virtually all jobs more efficient and more satisfying by automating tedious tasks, processing large amounts of data, predicting human behavior, and producing work that a human can review and approve. Once managers understand this potential, they can encourage their team members to experiment with new ways of doing things.

For example, today in customer service you will see human agents handling complex conversations with consumers while AI assists them seamlessly in the background. Over time, the AI becomes smarter and suggests responses to customers questions. Agents train the AI, and AI-powered bots support agents by automating tedious tasks. This improves agent productivity and satisfaction while dramatically improving the customer experience.

P.V. Kannan, coauthor of The Future of Customer Service Is AI-Human Collaboration

The single most important thing leaders and organizations must do going forward is investing to make their customers more valuable. If you take customer lifetime seriously, the strategic challenge isnt how best or how frequently to shear the sheep; its how we invest in our customers and clients so that they become measurably more valuable in their own eyes and ours.

Michael Schrage, author of Dont Let Metrics Critics Undermine Your Business

In the U.S., our understanding of demographic differences especially as they relate to race and gender has become at once more salient and difficult to talk about. People generally approach discussions of such differences with caution at best, brazen ignorance at worst, but most often, silence. This tactic in 2020, however, will likely prove unsuitable due to the changing nature of our workplaces.

To move past our collective notion that race and gender are third-rail topics that should be sidestepped or avoided, a new approach is needed. This approach should be centered on acknowledging differences and notably, acknowledging that each of us has more to learn about what specific differences mean across our work contexts, life roles, and social structures.

One place to start is the new terminology developed to reflect the reality many live. Consider, for instance, they as a singular pronoun, or the term cisgender, and the distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity. A second place is to explore your and others experiences of marginalization, harassment, and privilege. By adopting a learning approach to understanding individual and group differences, each of us can gain valuable insight into myriad, distinct facets of social life.

Morela Hernandez, MIT SMR columnist and coauthor of How Algorithms Can Diversify the Startup Pool

In todays fast-paced, technology-facilitated world with increasing emphasis on AI, its important to prevent a potential slide toward the devaluation of the human interface. This is a pitfall that might be particularly relevant for businesses that integrate advanced technologies with enthusiasm at the expense of investment in the human capital but recent research suggests they do so at their peril.

Business leaders who invest in their employees while keeping pace with technological adoption will see their businesses thrive. Activities and tasks performed by employees continue to evolve toward higher value added and skill levels. In a technology-driven world, human capital will become more rather than less critical in driving superior business performance.

Sharmila C. Chatterjee, coauthor of How AI Is Helping Companies Break Silos

A recent MIT SMR-BCG survey of thousands of companies globally shows that AI investments and applications are now widespread, but only 30% currently generate value. To succeed, leaders will need to focus on the larger strategic goal of building algorithmically powered organizations that can compete on the rate of learning in a rapidly shifting business environment.

In order to achieve these goals, companies will need to reconceive as synergistic combinations of algorithms and people and effectively partition tasks between those where humans, machines, or combinations of the two are the most advantageous. They also need to take measures to create rapid, autonomous learning loops for technology-driven tasks and think critically about algorithmic governance and ethics to ensure both effectiveness and social acceptability. The companies that win the 2020s will be hybrid extended learning organizations (HELOs), and 2020 will be the year where pioneers begin to establish the blueprint for these in earnest.

Martin Reeves, coauthor of Fighting the Gravity of Average Performance

Ally MacDonald (@allymacdonald) is senior associate editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

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Eight Management Ideas to Embrace in the 2020s - MIT Sloan

Human Behavior

Road safety: We need all hands on deck (opinion) – ThisisReno

Submitted by Kurt Thigpen

I wrote a previous op-ed on pedestrian safety in December, plainly advocating that we as a community need to behave better when walking, driving, and cycling to ensure one anothers safety.

Did I think this would change much? No. But one can hope to change mindsets one person at a time. I have started policing myself when driving and crossing the street, heeding my own advice.

However, I am incredibly devastated and deeply concerned that the pedestrian hit and runs, as well as fatalities, have only increased. After the student at Wooster High School was hit and killed, we had an outpouring of statements from city officials, as well as healthcare organizations like Renown, pleading for folks to slow down.

Let me just say this: we can all agree that the human behavior is something that needs to change to prevent these accidents. I also dont doubt the best intentions of our local officials and the agencies that have been created to reduce accidents and fatalities.

However, relying on people to behave themselves isnt going to get us to zero fatalities. Humans are fallible. Im afraid that that way of thinking just isnt going to cut it anymore. The system is not working.

I also need to emphasize that I am no expert on this subject. I am merely a concerned citizen. The incident at Wooster High hit close to home for me, as I have a family member that goes there. There are a lot of kids at that school and others that walk to and from school, as well as to other places during breaks. The Washoe County School District reported last week that there have been 25 incidents of students getting hit by cars, 23 of them happening when students were going to and from school. They also mentioned that theyre mapping the data but dont have a reason as to why this is happening.

These fatalities could easily have been you or me. Things are only getting worse. So, I have to ask myself, why hasnt there been more urgency in terms of response from agencies like RTC, NDOT and the City of Reno and City of Sparks? Weve seen statements of course, but where are the solutions? This crisis is a complex issue and my thought is that all key stakeholders need to get in one room to get our arms around this.

If changing human behavior on the road isnt going to cut it, its time we looked at changing our system. Perhaps we look outside our own borders for a solution? For example, Sweden implemented a Vision Zero initiative in the 90s that helped reduce fatalities dramatically over the years.

The approach that they took was not to treat the people as the problem, but the way the system has been engineered. This interview with a Swedish traffic safety strategist outlines perfectly solutions they implemented to change the system and local culture so that the system was safe for people to be in.

They include:

Will this cost money? Sure, but if it saves even one life these changes are more than necessary. These are long-term solutions that we need to be talking about now. We as a community must be proactive to prevent future fatalities and accidents.

Our city and county is growing rapidly, and we must work together to solve this public health crisis. I urge each of you to call your local council person to advocate for change. Every one of us deserves to be safe.

Submitted opinions do not represent the views of ThisisReno. Have something to say? Submit an opinion article here.

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Road safety: We need all hands on deck (opinion) - ThisisReno

Human Behavior

Think Twice before Shouting Your Virtues Online Moral Grandstanding Is Toxic – GovExec.com

In an era of bitter partisanship, political infighting and ostracization of those with unpopular views, Americans actually agree on one thing: 85% say political discourse has gotten worse over the last several years, according to Pew Research.

The polarization plays out everywhere in society, from private holiday gatherings to very public conversations on social media, where debate is particularly toxic and aggressive.

For psychologists like myself, who study human behavior, this widespread nastiness is both a social problem and a research opportunity. My colleagues and I have zeroed in on one specific aspect that might help explain Americas dysfunctional discourse: moral grandstanding.

Moral grandstanding

The term may be unfamiliar, but most people have experienced moral grandstanding.

Examples of moral grandstanding include when a friend makes grand and extreme proclamations on Twitter about their deepest held values regarding climate change, for instance, and when a campaigning politician makes bold but clearly untrue ideological claims about immigration.

Philosophers coined the phrase to describe the abuse of so-called moral talk an umbrella term encompassing all conversations humans have about our politics, beliefs, values and morals.

Usually, people engage in moral talk to learn from, connect with or persuade someone else. They might say of their decision not to eat any animal products, for example, I am vegan for environmental and animal rights reasons.

Moral grandstanding occurs when people use moral talk, instead, to promote themselves or seek status. So a moral grandstander might say, I am vegan because it is the only moral decision. If you care about the planet, you cant eat animal products.

For moral grandstanders, conversation is a means to an end not a free exchange of ideas.

A desire for respect from our peers is normal in humans, as are the desires for safety, love and belonging. Social scientists have traced the evolutionary origins of status seeking to prehistoric times.

Moral grandstanding, however, is a special kind of status seeking. It implies that someone is using conversations about important or controversial topics solely to get attention or impress others.

Severed ties and broken relationships

Just because someone touts their virtues whether on Twitter or in conversation does not mean they are morally superior to everyone else.

In a recently published study conducted with a team of other psychologists and philosophers, we asked 6,000 Americans a series of questions about who and why they share their deepest moral and political beliefs with. People who reported sharing beliefs to gain respect, admiration or status were identified as grandstanders.

Almost everyone indicated they had some history of grandstanding, but only a few 2% to 5% indicated they primarily used their moral talk to promote themselves.

We found that moral grandstanders were more likely to experience discord in their personal lives. People who reported grandstanding more often also reported more experiences arguing with loved ones and severing ties with friends or family members over political or moral disagreements.

People who indicated using their deepest held beliefs to boost their own status in real life also reported more toxic social media behaviors, picking fights over politics on Facebook, for example, and berating strangers on Twitter for having the wrong opinions.

Philosophical accounts of grandstanding strongly suggest that moral grandstanders behave less morally than other people in other ways, too. They are more likely to rudely call others out for not being virtuous enough, systematically disparage entire groups of people and hijack important conversations to serve their own purposes.

When the natural human desire for respect leads people to seek status in situations when they would be better served by listening, it seems, this behavior can drive friends, family and communities apart.

Other reasons for discord

The rise of moral grandstanding isnt the only reason discourse in the United States has taken a turn for the worse.

Politics have grown extraordinarily polarized, which is both a cause and effect of social polarization. Politically active people feel more animosity and less trust toward the other side than they have in generations.

Social media itself seems to accelerate conflict, creating echo chambers of likeminded people that are galvanized against others and driving cycles of outrage that quickly escalate and stifle public participation in important conversations.

So ending moral grandstanding wont magically fix the public debate in the United States. But tamping it down would lead the country in a more productive direction.

How to handle moral grandstanding

Consider assessing your own conversation style, reflecting about what you say to others and why. When you enter into contentious territory with someone who differs in opinion, ask whether youre doing so because youre genuinely interested in communicating and connecting with your fellow human or are you just trying to score points?

Thinking honestly about your engagement on social media ground zero for moral grandstanding is particularly important.

Do you post controversial material just for likes and retweets? Do you share social media posts of people you disagree with just to publicly mock them? Do you find yourself trying to one-up the good deeds of someone else to make yourself look good to people whose respect you crave?

If so, then you may be a moral grandstander.

If not, you can still fight moral grandstanding by recognizing and dissuading these behaviors in others. Given that moral grandstanders crave status, respect and esteem from others, depriving them of the attention they seek is probably the best deterrent.

This post originally appeared atThe Conversation. Follow@ConversationUSon Twitter.

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Think Twice before Shouting Your Virtues Online Moral Grandstanding Is Toxic - GovExec.com

Human Behavior

Global Eye Tracking Market Expected to Generate USD 1, 786 Million by 2025 with a CAGR of 26.1% – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Yahoo Finance

The "Eye Tracking Market by Offering (Hardware, Software, and Services), Tracking Type (Remote and Mobile), Application (Assistive Communication, Human Behavior & Market Research), Vertical, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The eye tracking market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26.1% from 2020 to 2025, to reach USD 1,786 million by 2025 from USD 560 million in 2020.

Rising adoption of eye tracking technology for personalized advertisements and consumer research and surging demand for eye tracking-based assistive communication devices drive market growth

The rising adoption of eye tracking technology for personalized advertisements and consumer research and surging demand for eye tracking-based assistive communication devices are key driving factors for the eye tracking market growth. However, the lack of technological standardization and the high cost of equipment are a few of the factors hindering the growth of the eye tracking market.

Assistive Communication application to dominate eye tracking market, in terms of size, during the forecast period

The eye tracking market, by application, is segmented into assistive communication, human behavior & market research, and others. The eye tracking market for the assistive communication application is expected to hold a dominant position during the forecast period. The need for effective assistive communication devices for physically impaired people and improvements in eye tracking technology drive the market for this segment.

Remote eye tracking segment to hold the largest share of eye tracking market from 2020 to 2025

In terms of market size, the remote eye tracking segment is expected to dominate the eye tracking market during the forecast period and is likely to witness significant growth in the said market during the forecast period. Remote eye tracking devices are easily configurable and are usually cheaper than mobile eye tracking devices. This is one of the key factors that has led to the dominating position of this segment in the eye tracking market. Healthcare & research labs, retail & advertisement, and automotive & transportation are a few of the major verticals, which are generating high demand for remote eye tracking devices.

APAC to witness the highest growth in the market during the forecast period

APAC is expected to witness the highest growth in the eye tracking market during the forecast period. Several untapped verticals and applications; and growing awareness about eye tracking technology are expected to contribute to the fast growth of the eye tracking market in the region. Consumer electronics and automotive verticals are expected to demonstrate higher growth compared with other verticals in the region.

Reasons to Buy This Report

Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction

1.1 Study Objectives

1.2 Definition

1.3 Study Scope

1.4 Currency

1.5 Limitations

1.6 Stakeholders

2 Research Methodology

2.1 Research Data

2.2 Market Size Estimation

2.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation

2.4 Assumptions for Research Study

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights

4.1 Attractive Growth Opportunities in Eye Tracking Market

4.2 Market, By Tracking Type

4.3 Market in North America, By Country and Vertical

4.4 Market, By Application

4.5 Market, By Country (2020)

5 Market Overview

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Market Dynamics

5.3 Value Chain Analysis

5.4 Use Cases

6 Eye Tracking Market, By Offering

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Hardware

6.3 Software

6.4 Research and Consulting Services

7 Eye Tracking Market, By Tracking Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Remote Tracking

7.3 Mobile Tracking

8 Eye Tracking Market, By Mounting Type

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Head Mounted

8.3 Wheelchair Mounted

8.4 Table/Device Mounted

9 Eye Tracking Market, By Application

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Assistive Communication

9.3 Human Behaviour and Research

9.4 Other Applications

10 Eye Tracking Market, By Vertical

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Retail and Advertisement

10.3 Consumer Electronics

10.4 Healthcare and Research Labs

10.5 Government, Defense, and Aerospace

10.6 Automotive and Transportation

10.7 Other Verticals

11 Geographic Analysis

11.1 Introduction

11.2 North America

11.3 Europe

11.4 Automotive & Transportation Vertical isa Significant Contributor Towards Growth of Market in Germany

Story continues

11.5 APAC

11.6 RoW

12 Competitive Landscape

12.1 Overview

12.2 Market Ranking Analysis: Eye Tracking Market

12.3 Competitive Leadership Mapping

12.4 Competitive Benchmarking: Eye Tracking Market

12.5 Competitive Situations and Trends

13 Company Profiles

13.1 Key Players

13.1.1 Tobii

13.1.2 Seeing Machines

13.1.2.1 Business Overview

13.1.3 SR Research

13.1.4 EyeTech Digital Systems

13.1.5 Smart Eye

13.1.6 Eyetracking

13.1.7 PRS IN VIVO

13.1.8 LC Technologies

13.1.9 Ergoneers

13.1.10 ISCAN

13.2 Right-To-Win

13.3 Other Companies

13.3.1 Pupil Labs

13.3.2 Imotions

13.3.3 Gazepoint

13.3.4 Eyesee

13.3.5 Converus

13.3.6 Mirametrix

13.3.7 Alea Technologies

13.3.8 Lumen

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Global Eye Tracking Market Expected to Generate USD 1, 786 Million by 2025 with a CAGR of 26.1% - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Yahoo Finance

Human Behavior

Who’s Liable? The AV or the human driver? – Columbia University

New York, NYJanuary 14, 2020A recent decision by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on the March 2018 Uber crash that killed a pedestrian in Arizona split the blame among Uber, the companys autonomous vehicle (AV), the safety driver in the vehicle, the victim, and the state of Arizona. With the advent of self-driving cars, the NTSB findings raise a number of questions about the uncertainty in todays legal liability system. In an accident involving an AV and a human driver, who is liable? If both are liable, how should the accident loss be apportioned between them?

AVs remove people from the hands-on task of driving and thus pose a complex challenge to todays accident tort law, which primarily punishes humans. Legal experts anticipate that, by programming driving algorithms, self-driving car manufacturers, including car designers, sensor vendors, software developers, car producers, and related parties who contribute to the design, manufacturing, and testing, will have a direct influence on traffic. While these algorithms make manufacturers indispensable actors, with their products liability potentially playing a critical role, policy makers have not yet devised a quantitative method to assign the loss between the self-driving car and the human driver.

To tackle this problem, researchers at Columbia Engineering and Columbia Law School have developed a joint fault-based liability rule that can be used to regulate both self-driving car manufacturers and human drivers. They propose a game-theoretic model that describes the strategic interactions among the law maker, the self-driving car manufacturer, the self-driving car, and human drivers, and examine how, as the market penetration of AVs increases, the liability rule should evolve.

Their findings are outlined in a new study to be presented on January 14 by Sharon Di, assistant professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, and Eric Talley, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, at the Transportation Research Boards 99th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

While most current studies have focused on designing AVs driving algorithms in various scenarios to ensure traffic efficiency and safety, they have not explored human drivers behavioral adaptation to AVs. Di and Talley wondered about the moral hazard effect on humans, whether with exposure to more and more traffic encounters with AVs, people might be less inclined to exercise due care when faced with AVs on the road and drive in a more risky fashion.

Human drivers perceive AVs as intelligent agents with the ability to adapt to more aggressive and potentially dangerous human driving behavior, says Di, who is a member of Columbias Data Science Institute. We found that human drivers may take advantage of this technology by driving carelessly and taking more risks, because they know that self-driving cars would be designed to drive more conservatively.

The researchers used game theory to model a world with interacting players who try to select their own actions to optimize their own goals. The playerslaw makers, AV manufacturers, AVs, and human drivershave different goals in the transportation ecosystem. Law makers want to regulate traffic with improved efficiency and safety, self-driving car manufacturers are profit-driven, and both self-driving cars and human drivers interact on public roads and seek to select the best driving strategies. To capture the complex interaction among all the players, the researchers applied game theory methods to see which strategy each player settles on, so that others will not take advantage of his or her decisions.

The hierarchical game helped the team to understand the human drivers moral hazard (how much risk drivers might decide to take on), the AV manufacturers impact on traffic safety, and the law makers adaptation to the new transportation ecosystem. They tested the game and its algorithm on a set of numerical examples, offering insights into behavioral evolution of AVs and HVs as the AV penetration rate increases and as cost or environment parameters vary.

The team found that an optimally designed liability policy is critical to help prevent human drivers from developing moral hazard and to assist the AV manufacturer with a tradeoff between traffic safety and production costs. Government subsidies to AV manufacturers for the reduction of production costs would greatly encourage manufacturers to produce AVs that outperform human drivers substantially and improve overall traffic safety and efficiency. Moreover, if AV manufacturers are not regulated in terms of AV technology specifications or are not properly subsidized, AV manufacturers tend to be purely profit-oriented and destructive to the overall traffic system.

The tragic fatality in Arizona involving a self-driving automobile elicited tremendous attention from the public and policy makers about how to draw the lines of legal liability when AVs interact with human drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, Talley adds. The emergence of AVs introduces a particularly thorny type of uncertainty into the status quo, and one that feeds back onto AV manufacturing and design. Legal liability for accidents between automobiles and pedestrians typically involves a complex calculus of comparative fault assessments for each of the aforementioned groups. The introduction of an autonomous vehicle can complicate matters further by adding other parties to the mix, such as the manufacturers of hardware and programmers of software. And insurance coverage distorts matters further by including third party stakeholders. We hope our analytical tools will assist AV policy-makers with their regulatory decisions, and in doing so, will help mitigate uncertainty in the existing regulatory environment around AV technologies.

Di and Talley are now looking at multiple AV manufacturers that target different global markets with different technological specifications, making the development of legal rules even more complex.

We know that human drivers will take more risks and develop moral hazard if they think their road environment has become safer, Di notes. Its clear that an optimal liability rule design is crucial to improve social welfare and road safety with advanced transportation technologies.

###

Columbia EngineeringColumbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The Schools faculty are at the center of the Universitys cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, Columbia Engineering for Humanity, the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.

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Who's Liable? The AV or the human driver? - Columbia University

Human Behavior

BlackRock’s Larry Fink: Risks from climate change are bigger than the 2008 financial crisis with no Fed to save us – CNBC

BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink is warning that the financial risks of climate change are bigger than any crisis he's experienced in his career on Wall Street.

"We don't have a Federal Reserve to stabilize the world like in the five or six financial crises that occurred during my 40 years in finance," the head of the world's biggest money manager told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview that aired Tuesday. Sorkin also wrote about the interview in Tuesday's New York Times.

"This is bigger," he argued, calling on investors and corporate America to help combat climate change. "It requires more planning. It requires more public-private connections together to solve these problems. And I do believe many of these problems could be solved, but the actions have to begin now."

Fink, whose BlackRock has nearly $7 trillion in assets under management, used his annual letter to the world's biggest companies to sound the alarm. "Climate change has become a defining factor in companies' long-term prospects. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance."

BlackRock will put "sustainability at the center of our investment approach," he wrote from portfolio construction to launching new investment products that screen fossil fuels.

"For now over eight years, I've been writing CEO letters about 'long-termism,'" Fink told CNBC. "Nothing could be more 'long-termism' than climate change."

"I believe in the science. But I did not write it as an environmentalist. I wrote the letter as a capitalist," he said. "My job is, as a capitalist, to help prepare our clients for the redistribution of capital. And more importantly, through that is to provide them with an investment portfolio that will outperform."

Fink's comments come as business leaders, policymakers and investors prepare to travel to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum next week. President Donald Trump, a skeptic that human behavior causes climate change, plans to attend this year after canceling last year because of the government shutdown.

"We need to have a conversation with every government in the world, including our government, to be better prepared for this," Fink told CNBC. "We need to be spending large sums of money on infrastructure to be more prepared for this."

However, Fink acknowledged, "If we are going to be fair and just, we need to also focus on this transition. Many people are going be left behind." He said governments need to have long-term plans to deal with the shift. "The climate change is going to require a huge energy transition. It's going be 40 or 50 years."

Fink, a Democrat, has a history of addressing social issues in his annual CEO letters. Two years ago, he called on companies to have a purpose beyond profits.

WATCH: The full interview of Fink

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BlackRock's Larry Fink: Risks from climate change are bigger than the 2008 financial crisis with no Fed to save us - CNBC

Human Behavior

Americans trust Amazon and Google more than Oprah (and Trump) – ZDNet

Seriously?

I've heard it muttered that we're living in the era of America's last hurrah.

"Hurrah," I hear some of you cry.

I tend, though, to be sanguine about such prognostications. After all, in historical terms, the US is barely out of elementary school.

Yet I confess to wondering about some of my fellow citizens, especially their unseemly embrace of technology.

They worship it in decidedly unbiblical ways. They allow themselves to be blinded by its vacuous appeal to instant entertainment. They trust it to tell them what to buy, whom to vote for and even what to think. Isn't this a recipe for self-immolation?

As my latest evidence, may I point to a new survey from market research company Morning Consult. It decided to examine which brands Americans trust the most.

The company was rather committed to its task, claiming it conducted an average of 16,700 interviews on the subject of 2,000 brands. To be exact, that's 16,700 interviews per brand.

Within this morass of data, my eyes fell upon one particular table. It's a table that may make you finally, finally emigrate to Canada. You see, these were the responses to the question of how Americans' trust of prominent brands compares to their trust of institutions, public figures, and ideas.

I'm not sure about you, but there aren't many people I trust "a lot." There certainly aren't too many brands either. As for institutions, public figures, and ideas, well, I still hold out hope for cancer research, Justin Bieber and mockery. But certainly not for the tech industry.

Hark, then, at the almost complete vanquishing of the American mind by the tech industry. Thirty-nine percent of these surveyed Americans said they trusted Amazon "a lot" to do the right thing.

Might this be the time to ask if they're bonkers? If there's one thing Amazon is renowned for it's a penchant for the amoral quadrant of human behavior. These are the people who own Ring, the company that does deals with police forces in order to help those police forces get people's home surveillance footage for free.

Yet here are Americans saying they trust Amazon "a lot" more than, good grief, teachers. Or, sacrilege this, Oprah. Or, sound the apocalyptic bells, Tom Hanks.

Worse, they trust Google more than these icons of decency. 38 percent said they trusted Google "a lot" to do the same. Yes, the same Google which is being ordered to pay $1.49 billion by the EU for allegedly illegal advertising contracts.

America, what is wrong with you? (That was rhetorical, America. Please don't reply. The answer would be painful.)

In this survey, there were, indeed, only two institutions, public figures or ideas that were trusted "a lot" to do the right thing more than Amazon and Google: your primary doctor and the military.

That's another fine M*A*S*H you've gotten us into, America.

The state of the nation.

To give you even more (depressing) perspective, Oprah trailed Amazon by 12 points -- and Google by 11. Even the police are apparently more trustworthy than Oprah.

What about the president, I hear you chant? What about the government? What about religious leaders?

Well, while Amazon enjoyed a 39 percent score, Donald Trump managed a mere 20. Or a fulsome 20, depending on your political bent. Religious leaders mustered but a 15. The US government scored a piffling 7. (I cannot confirm it was seven for the House and zero for the Senate.)

We are here, though, to promulgate hope. May I tell you, then, that Donald Trump is trusted more than labels on food packaging. And that the US government is trusted more than Wall Street or Hollywood. Oh, and the media is trusted more than the US government. (Just.)

Reeling from this data, I lay down and turned to the full list of consumer brands. There was but one that was trusted ahead of Amazon and Google: the United States Postal Service.

Isn't that quaintly analog?

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Americans trust Amazon and Google more than Oprah (and Trump) - ZDNet

Human Behavior

Rent the Runway COO: ‘You can’t promise perfection’ – Business Insider

In 2019, Rent the Runway was given a $1 billion valuation after raising $125 million in its Series F funding round.And, the company is still hungry for growth.

Anushka Salinas, chief operating officer at Rent the Runway, spoke at Business Insider's IGNITION: Redefining Retail conference Tuesday about the rental company's ambitions to disrupt people's ideas around ownership.

"We have fundamentally disrupted a core human behavior," Salinas said. "We are one of the only companies out there that is telling you, telling our consumers, 'Buy less stuff' versus 'Consume more.' Twenty percent of what the global fashion industry produces every year gets thrown away."

Salinas addressed the supply-chain crisis the company faced in 2019, during which a shift to a new warehouse software system resulted in late deliveries and furious customers.

"It's only been 10 years," Salinas said. "When you're a disruptor like us, you're not going to get it right 100% of the time. You can't promise perfection if you're disrupting at the level that we are."

CEO Jennifer Hyman explained some of the changes the company was making to its systems in an email to customers. The company had told Business Insider in early July that it was doubling the size of its customer service team and making other updates to its customer experience following a flood of complaints.

"If we're going to get it wrong, which we have in the past, we always want to make sure we're always doing right by our customers, and sometimes that just means telling them exactly what's going on," Salinas said.

Watch IGNITION: Redefining Retail here.

Link:
Rent the Runway COO: 'You can't promise perfection' - Business Insider

Human Behavior

2020: The year of seeing clearly on AI and machine learning – ZDNet

Tom Foremski

Late last year, I complained toRichard Socher, chief scientist at Salesforce and head of its AI projects, about the term "artificial intelligence" and that we should use more accurate terms such as machine learning or smart machine systems, because "AI" creates unreasonably high expectations when the vast majority of applications are essentially extremely specialized machine learning systems that do specific tasks -- such as image analysis -- very well but do nothing else.

Socher said that when he was a post-graduate it rankled him also, and he preferred other descriptions such as statistical machine learning. He agrees that the "AI" systems that we talk about today are very limited in scope and misidentified, but these days he thinks of AI as being "Aspirational Intelligence." He likes the potential for the technology even if it isn't true today.

I like Socher's designation of AI as Aspirational Intelligence but I'd prefer not to further confuse the public, politicians and even philosophers about what AI is today: It is nothing more than software in a box -- a smart machine system that has no human qualities or understanding of what it does. It's a specialized machine that is nothing to do with systems that these days are called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Before ML systems co-opted it, the term AI was used to describe what AGI is used to describe today: computer systems that try to mimic humans, their rational and logical thinking, and their understanding of language and cultural meanings to eventually become some sort of digital superhuman, which is incredibly wise and always able to make the right decisions.

There has been a lot of progress in developing ML systems but very little progress on AGI. Yet the advances in ML are being attributed to advances in AGI. And that leads to confusion and misunderstanding of these technologies.

Machine learning systems unlike AGI, do not try to mimic human thinking -- they use very different methods to train themselves on large amounts of specialist data and then apply their training to the task at hand. In many cases, ML systems make decisions without any explanation and it's difficult to determine the value of their black box decisions. But if those results are presented as artificial intelligence then they get far higher respect from people than they likely deserve.

For example, when ML systems are being used in applications such as recommending prison sentences but are described as artificial intelligence systems -- they gain higher regard from the people using them. It implies that the system is smarter than any judge. But if the term machine learning is used it would underline that these are fallible machines and allow people to treat the results with some skepticism in key applications.

Even if we do develop future advanced AGI systems we should continue to encourage skepticism and we should lower our expectations for their abilities to augment human decision making. It is difficult enough to find and apply human intelligence effectively -- how will artificial intelligence be any easier to identify and apply? Dumb and dumber do not add up to a genius. You cannot aggregate IQ.

As things stand today, the mislabeled AI systems are being discussed as if they were well on their way of jumping from highly specialized non-human tasks to becoming full AGI systems that can mimic human thinking and logic. This has resulted in warnings from billionaires and philosophers that those future AI systems will likely kill us all -- as if a sentient AI would conclude that genocide is rational and logical. It certainly might appear to be a winning strategy if the AI system was trained on human behavior across recorded history but that would never happen.

There is no rational logic for genocide. Future AI systems would be designed to love humanity and be programmed to protect and avoid human injury. They would likely operate very much in the vein of Richard Brautigan's 1967 poemAll Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace--the last stanza:

I like to think(it has to be!)of a cybernetic ecologywhere we are free of our laborsand joined back to nature,returned to our mammalbrothers and sisters,and all watched overby machines of loving grace.

Let us not fear AI systems and in 2020, let's be clear and call them machine learning systems -- because words matter.

Link:
2020: The year of seeing clearly on AI and machine learning - ZDNet

Human Behavior

Tackling todays violence requires Dr. Kings philosophy of love – WHYY

This essay is part of a series of reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s lesser-known speech, Keep Moving From This Mountain. The April 10, 1960, address to students at Spelman College will be the focus of a Community Conversation at WHYY on Friday, Jan. 17 from 6 8 p.m. Click here to RSVP.

While standing in Sisters Chapel at Spelman College the private, womens liberal arts institution in Atlanta Dr. King identified and addressed four symbolic mountains that America must move away from if civilization is to survive and reach a state of justice, peace, respect and honor.

His speech, Keep Moving From This Mountain, is eerily relevant to 2020.

The first mountain identified by the southern minister was moral and ethical relativism. On this point, Dr. King called upon us to acknowledge that the right and honorable thing is not a point of negotiation and that the view of morality as a matter of group consensus is incorrect.

Said another way: We must always choose the side of right and just.

Practical materialism, which Dr. King explained as living as if there were nothing else that had reality but fame and material objects, was the second mountain. The reverend called for us to stop seeking out work that improves our lives and adds to our personal wealth, and instead pursue a life of purpose and concern for humanity.

Upon the third mountain, racial segregation was a call for universal freedom and human dignity for all of Gods children.

Segregation is wrong because it assumes that God made a mistake, Dr. King declared.

The fourth and final mountain is, to me, the most important of all: violence.

America must move from this mountain with, as Dr. King once put it, a fierce urgency of now.

Rumors of war. Police brutality. The deaths of immigrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border. The sustained oppression of people of color. This moment in history should compel us to follow Dr. Kings mandate of love, if we are to survive and combat the violence that permeates our society.

Dr. King suggested fighting violence with an attitude of shared humanity and the strength that comes with love.

The Atlanta-born minister, then in his early 30s, said he lives every day amidst the threat of death. But Dr. King chose love in the face of hate.

Battered by the winds of adversity, Dr. King kept moving.

He had faith in the future that existed on the other side of the mountain. But more importantly, Dr. King had risen to a level where he could look in the eyes of an opponent and love him in spite of his evil deeds.

The people who resort to violence and hate are in need of love.

Author Marianne Williamson once wrote, The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one of two things: either love, or a call for love.

To fight with love requires two things: a long stare at the good in humanity, and the understanding that nothing and no one can move you towards weapons of hate and violence.

On April 10, 1960, Dr. King described his audience, the Spelman women, as the heirs of a legacy of goodwill and sacrifice.

In 2020, my question to you is: What will the future generations inherit through your legacy?

As a Spelman woman, I am reminded that my life must be aligned with the legacy of the institution that nurtured me to womanhood.

As an American citizen, and an inhabitant of this planet, I seek to unite with principled people to create a legacy of love, hope and dogged determination. My vision is the same one Dr. King had: to create a just world for all of Gods children.

When reflecting on Dr. Kings nearly sixty-year-old speech, the biblical story of Queen Esther comes to mind. Queen Esther was challenged with understanding that she might have become royalty because she was needed as a voice for the voiceless.

What if you and I are alive now, at this moment in history, to show love and strength during a time such as this?

In 2020, showing up with love and strength means transforming our corner of the universe with visions of a loving and humane world. Our thoughts and actions should align with the vision of the world we wish to create.

This could mean buying a meal for someone in need, joining a community advocacy group, writing a letter to your legislator or organizing rallies.

In addition to showing the world love, its important that we, particularly those of us who identify with traditionally oppressed groups, show ourselves love every day and in every moment.

The incomparable Audre Lorde, a Black feminist and civil rights activist, once said, Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

In a country where violence against women, children, and people of color are normal occurrences, show up with so much love for yourself that even when external forces seek to tear you down, youll have the power to rise

Imani Hester is a 2014 alumna of Spelman College. Hester went on to earn a masters in teaching from Relay Graduate School of Education and a masters in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently uses her skills in the education field and will be publishing a childrens book in August 2020. She plans to pursue a career in writing and public speaking and to continue her education work.

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Tackling todays violence requires Dr. Kings philosophy of love - WHYY