Artificial Intelligence/Robotics: Have we opened a Pandora's Box? As AI/robotics eliminates jobs across the spectrum, governmental revenues will plummet while the debt increases dramatically. This crisis of limited resources on all levels—underfunded or non-existent pensions, health problems, lack of savings, and job destruction without comparable job creation—will drive many into homelessness and produce a dramatic rise in violence as we fight over shrinking resources. “Ambitious, deeply researched, and far reaching in its scope and conclusions, Contagion is actually several books in one. Its summary of what AI is and will likely become is a standalone revelation. It also offers a critique of socio-economic ripple effects that verge on dystopian, and essays and “case studies” of specific sectors or regions, notably a chapter on China’s fusion of AI and social control.” JEFF LONG, New York Times Best-selling Author “A sobering look at the far-reaching impact that artificial intelligence may have on the economy, the workforce, democracy and all of humanity. The Artificial Intelligence Contagion is a bellwether for anyone seeking to comprehend the global disruption coming our way.” —DAVID COOPER, President and Technologist , Massive Designs “We see in the rush to develop AI the arrogance of the human species. Often buried by the exuberance over what AI might do is the massive dislocation it can cause. David and Daniel Barnhizer masterfully lead us through the societal challenges AI poses and offer possible solutions that will enable us to survive the AI contagion.” —KENNETH A. GRADY, Member, Advisory Boards, Elevate Services, Inc., MDR Lab, and LARI Ltd. This may be "the scariest book ever".

With astonishing speed, we have been projected into a new reality where interactions with drones, robotic bodies, and high-level surveillance are increasingly mainstream. In this age of groundbreaking developments in robotic technologies, synthetic biology is merging with artificial intelligence, forming a newly blended reality of machines, bodies, and affect. Technologies of the New Real draws from critical intersections of technology and society – including drones, surveillance, DIY bodies, and innovations in robotic technology – to explore what these advances can tell us about our present reality, or what authors Arthur and Marilouise Kroker deem the "new real" of digital culture in the twenty-first century. Technologies of the New Real explores the many technologies of our present reality as they infiltrate the social, political, and economic static of our everyday lives, seemingly eroding traditionally conceived boundaries between humans and machines, and rendering fully ambivalent borders between the human mind and simulated data.

He woke to a dying world. AI's failing. Datastreams withering. The Verse crumbling. Populations shattered. Civilizations lost. And his thoughts were on his lost love. He had every right to be selfish. His self was all he had left. The nanoswarms had taken everything else. Tags/Related Terms: science fiction, sf, sci-fi, nanotechnology, nanomachines, sff, biology, hard sf, genetic engineering, genetics, apocalypse, horror, action, speculative fiction, biotechnology, cyberpunk, 20th century, bailey, joseph bailey, joseph j bailey, joseph j. bailey, singularity, american, transhumanism, evolution, apocalyptic, quest, disaster, near future, science, ai, blood, science fiction, disease, end of the world, fantasy, future, hard science, nano, plague, sf/f/h, aliens, american fiction, american literature, anthropology, artificial intelligence, bioengineering, biological, biopunk, catastrophe, constructivism, contemporary science fiction, earth, english, experiments, germs, information architecture, medical, mutations, nanobots, pc, post-apocalyptic, postcyberpunk, post-holocaust, prehistory, pulp, science thriller, short stories, short story, novella, technology, transcendence, high tech, love story, action adventure, adventure, neural network, grey goo, gray goo, cyborg, computers, suspense, technothriller, nano, robots, swarm, nanoswarm, computer science, weapons, techno, scary, terror, 21st century, algorithms, cautionary, cautionary tale, collective intelligence, computer simulation, emergence, engineering, relationships, machine learning, microbiology, mimicry, virus, viral, molecular biology, romance, predators, scientific thriller, armageddon, survival, microbiome, tech, distributed intelligence, terraform, terraforming, coevolution, bots

An argument that contagion is the most significant risk facing the financial system and that Dodd¬Frank has reduced the government's ability to respond effectively. The Dodd–Frank Act of 2010 was intended to reform financial policies in order to prevent another massive crisis such as the financial meltdown of 2008. Dodd–Frank is largely premised on the diagnosis that connectedness was the major problem in that crisis—that is, that financial institutions were overexposed to one another, resulting in a possible chain reaction of failures. In this book, Hal Scott argues that it is not connectedness but contagion that is the most significant element of systemic risk facing the financial system. Contagion is an indiscriminate run by short-term creditors of financial institutions that can render otherwise solvent institutions insolvent. It poses a serious risk because, as Scott explains, our financial system still depends on approximately $7.4 to $8.2 trillion of runnable and uninsured short-term liabilities, 60 percent of which are held by nonbanks. Scott argues that efforts by the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and the Treasury to stop the contagion that exploded after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers lessened the economic damage. And yet Congress, spurred by the public's aversion to bailouts, has dramatically weakened the power of the government to respond to contagion, including limitations on the Fed's powers as a lender of last resort. Offering uniquely detailed forensic analyses of the Lehman Brothers and AIG failures, and suggesting alternative regulatory approaches, Scott makes the case that we need to restore and strengthen our weapons for fighting contagion.

A new, counterintuitive theory for how social networks influence the spread of behavior New social movements, technologies, and public-health initiatives often struggle to take off, yet many diseases disperse rapidly without issue. Can the lessons learned from the viral diffusion of diseases improve the spread of beneficial behaviors and innovations? How Behavior Spreads presents over a decade of original research examining how changes in societal behavior—in voting, health, technology, and finance—occur and the ways social networks can be used to influence how they propagate. Damon Centola's startling findings show that the same conditions that accelerate the viral expansion of an epidemic unexpectedly inhibit the spread of behaviors. How Behavior Spreads is a must-read for anyone interested in how the theory of social networks can transform our world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the global at a colossal scale. With worldwide reported cases of 5.34 million it has led to severe impact on humanity. Being a highly contagious disease, it has given global health services their most severe challenge. Various countries are fighting to minimize the losses due to the outbreak, however a common trait is enforcing lockdown, which has become the main defence mechanism. Researchers are working around the clock to find a breakthrough in the diagnostics and treatment of the pandemic. AI technology is useful for fast drug development and treatment. In the starting phase of COVID-19 pandemic, the medical fraternity in China diagnosed the virus using computed tomography (CT) and X-ray images due to the limitation of testing kits. Deep learning neural network model have also been used for COVID-19 diagnosis. AI assisted intelligent humanoid robots can be used to reduce the human contact and spread of COVID-19. In Italy robots have been used for measuring blood pressure, oxygen saturation and temperature of patients. Robots have also found applications in disinfecting and sterilizing of public places, COVID-19 testing, food and medicine delivery as well as entertaining patients in hospitals and quarantine centers, thereby reducing the workload of doctors and nurses. Prediction of the spread of virus and providing the guidelines or prevention measures is another AI application in COVID-19. Kaggle and GitHub are the two websites where the real-time data of COVID-19 is aggregated. This includes confirmed cases, active cases, cured cases and deaths in each country. This data set can be used for predicting the active cases across different regions of the world so that appropriate amount of health infrastructure can be made available to these places.

In the age of HIV, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the Ebola Virus and BSE, metaphors and experience of contagion are a central concern of government, biomedicine and popular culture. Contagion explores cultural responses of infectious diseases and their biomedical management over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also investigates the use of 'contagion' as a concept in postmodern reconceptualisations of embodied subjectivity. The essays are written from within the fields of cultural studies, biomedical history and critical sociology. The contributors examine the geographies, policies and identities which have been produced in the massive social effort to contain diseases. They explore both social responses to infectious diseases in the past, and contemporary theoretical and biomedical sites for the study of contagion.