By Najia Houssari — arabnews.com –-BEIRUT: Bassam Mawlawi, Lebanon’s caretaker interior minister, said on Wednesday that his country “will not allow the random Syrian presence.” He claimed that “a large percentage, exceeding 30 percent, of various and major crimes are committed by Syrians in Lebanon” and “cooperation” is required “to preserve our environment and our country’s identity.” His comments came against the backdrop of growing concern in Lebanon about the increasing numbers of Syrian refugees crossing the border. “Lebanon cannot carry on with the same leniency toward the Syrian presence,” Mawlawi said. “We must limit the number of Syrians present in each apartment and we will not allow more than one family to reside in it.” The aim “is not to regulate the Syrian presence but rather to limit it,” he added.

The number of Syrian refugees officially registered with the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, had fallen to 805,326 by the end of March, but officials believes the true figure is double that. Lebanese authorities, who asked the UN agency to stop registering new refugees in 2015, estimate the total number of Syrians in the country now exceeds 2 million. They fear the presence of so many refugees will cause a shift in the demographic balance along sectarian lines. During meetings with governors and mayors, Mawlawi asked authorities not to sign any contracts for Syrians who do not possess proper, legal documentation, and called for Lebanese laws to be applied in full to Syrians just as they are to Lebanese citizens. “We will not accept the exploitation of our country and changing its demographics in exchange for money,” Mawlawi said. “Lebanon is not for sale and we are working as a permanent beehive to address the crisis and stand against the immense harm inflicted on Lebanon, the Lebanese people, and Lebanese demographics as a result of the chaos and unacceptable behavior due to the Syrian displacement.” Syrians are said to run about 4,000 businesses in central and western Bekaa. In the town of Bar Elias alone, about 1,700 out of a total of 2,000 are run by Syrians. In Taalabaya, there are 450, and in Qab Elias, 350. As part of the tightening of controls on refugees, the Ministry of Industry on Wednesday renewed a warning to factory owners that they must not hire Syrians who do not possess the required legal documents and permits, otherwise they could lose their licenses to operate.

By Fortune.com — Paolo Confino — The CEO of IBM, who has taken heat for suggesting many back-office tasks could be automated, maintains that the technology will create far more jobs that it will eliminate. During an appearance at Fortune’s CEO Initiative conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said it was a misconception that increases in productivity have to lead to job losses. “People mistake productivity with job displacement,” Krishna said onstage. He noted that, as IBM phased out a few hundred back-office HR roles over three to four years, as it added headcount in software engineering and sales roles. “The increase was like 8,000,” Krishna said. “The decrease was like 800.” Krishna specified that employees weren’t let go as a result of this transition—rather, certain roles were not backfilled when they opened up. But there’s no question that “repetitive white-collar jobs” will be affected by the technology, Krishna said, echoing a point he has raised in the past. “The first thing you can automate is a repetitive, white-collar job,” he said on Tuesday. But while AI could take over 10% to 20% of “lower level tasks,” he predicted it wouldn’t take a person’s job altogether, because no one’s job is composed entirely of these sorts of tasks, he says. He expects his programmers to get 30% more productive thanks to the technology. “I don’t intend to get rid of a single one,” he said. “I’ll get more.”

All of which is a boon for developed countries, where Krishna sees an ongoing labor shortage in the coming years. During his onstage interview at the CEO Initiative, Krishna drew a contrast between the scarce labor market in the developed world, which will be in dire need of supercharging productivity, and the developing world, which will have lots of ready and willing workers to fill open jobs. That’s similar to a point he made in a May interview with CNBC, saying successful implementation of AI was critical to maintaining the current quality of life the developing world enjoys. “Population is flat or, in the worst case, declining,” Krishna said at the time. “So you need to get productivity, otherwise, quality of life is going to fall. And AI is the only answer we got.”

by venturebeat — Dean Takahashi –– Jetson made a splash unveiling its drone-like electric flying vehicle before and now the company has raised a $15 million seed round to help launch the Jetson One in 2024. The vehicle is an electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft that will cost $98,000 and won’t require a pilot’s license to fly, said Rikard Steiber, an investor and senior board adviser in an interview with VentureBeat. That’s still expensive, but it’s another example of science fiction — notably from The Jetsons show in the 1960s — coming to life. “Humanity’s oldest dream has been to fly, and we dreamt about having superpowers and flying out and save the world,” Steiber said. We had the Wright Brothers more than 100 years ago, and Leonard da Vinci and even the myth of Icarus.” Other investors include rapper Will.i.am, who has ordered the first Jetson One off the assembly line, as well as board member Luca Spada.

The investment further positions Jetson as a frontrunner in the emerging field of urban air mobility. This kind of vehicle operates under a Class G license in unregulated air space. It is allowed to go no faster than 63 miles per hour and no higher than 1,500 feet off the ground, Steiber said. It has a flying time of about 20 minutes, which means it might be able to fly a range of 21 miles. Jetson One is categorized in the U.S. as an ultralight aircraft, which can only be flown during daylight in unregulated space. There are various applications, from emergency services to military uses, but the company is focuses on those who want to take the vehicle for short flights. It takes off vertically like a helicopter and lands the same way. It’s one meter wide and so you can fit it in the back of a truck. Other flying cars are more like air taxis and those require pilot’s licenses to fly. Tomasz Patan and Peter Ternström started Jetson in 2017 with the intention of making everyone a pilot. They scored huge hits on social media, garnering more than 48 million views on YouTube with help from comedian Stephen Colbert.

Flying a Jetson One.

Opinion by Douglas MacKinnon, opinion contributor — theHill.com — Back when I worked in the Pentagon, a colonel in my office would often ask, “How can so many people miss this blinding flash of the obvious?” That question now applies to a rising Saudi Arabia, but some choose to look away from the illuminating flash […]

By Dan Falk — scientificamerican.com — — More than 400 years ago, Galileo showed that many everyday phenomena—such as a ball rolling down an incline or a chandelier gently swinging from a church ceiling—obey precise mathematical laws. For this insight, he is often hailed as the founder of modern science. But Galileo recognized that not everything was amenable to a quantitative approach. Such things as colors, tastes and smells “are no more than mere names,” Galileo declared, for “they reside only in consciousness.” These qualities aren’t really out there in the world, he asserted, but exist only in the minds of creatures that perceive them. “Hence if the living creature were removed,” he wrote, “all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.” Since Galileo’s time the physical sciences have leaped forward, explaining the workings of the tiniest quarks to the largest galaxy clusters. But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness”—the red of a sunset, say, or the bitter taste of a lemon—has proven far more difficult. Neuroscientists have identified a number of neural correlates of consciousness—brain states associated with specific mental states—but have not explained how matter forms minds in the first place. As philosopher David Chalmers asked: “How does the water of the brain turn into the wine of consciousness?” He famously dubbed this quandary the “hard problem” of consciousness.

Scholars recently gathered to debate the problem at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., during a two-day workshop focused on an idea known as panpsychism. The concept proposes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, like mass or electrical charge. The idea goes back to antiquity—Plato took it seriously—and has had some prominent supporters over the years, including psychologist William James and philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. Lately it is seeing renewed interest, especially following the 2019 publication of philosopher Philip Goff’s book Galileo’s Error, which argues forcefully for the idea.

Artificial wombs for premature babies — by Cassandra Willyard MIT Technology Review — US Food and Drug Administration advisors met to discuss how to move research on artificial wombs from animals into humans. These medical devices are designed to give extremely premature infants a bit more time to develop in a womblike environment before entering the outside world. They have been tested with hundreds of lambs (and some piglets), but animal models can’t fully predict how the technology will work for humans. “The most challenging question to answer is how much unknown is acceptable,” said An Massaro, FDA’s lead neonatologist in the Office of Pediatric Therapeutics, at the committee meeting. That’s a question regulators will have to grapple with as this research moves out of the lab and into first-in-human trials.

What is an artificial womb?

An artificial womb is an experimental medical device intended to provide a womblike environment for extremely premature infants. In most of the technologies, the infant would float in a clear “biobag,” surrounded by fluid. The idea is that preemies could spend a few weeks continuing to develop in this device after birth, so that “when they’re transitioned from the device, they’re more capable of surviving and having fewer complications with conventional treatment,” says George Mychaliska, a pediatric surgeon at the University of Michigan. One of the main limiting factors for survival in extremely premature babies is lung development. Rather than breathing air, babies in an artificial womb would have their lungs filled with lab-made amniotic fluid, that mimics the amniotic fluid they would have hadjust like they would in utero. Neonatologists would insert tubes into blood vessels in the umbilical cord so that the infant’s blood could cycle through an artificial lung to pick up oxygen. The device closest to being ready to be tested in humans, called the EXTrauterine Environment for Newborn Development, or EXTEND, encases the baby in a container filled with lab-made amniotic fluid. It was invented by Alan Flake and Marcus Davey at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is being developed by Vitara Biomedical.

By Cate Chapman, Editor at LinkedIn News — The income of Americans with advanced degrees hasn’t kept pace with the price of obtaining the credentials. The difference between starting salaries for those with undergraduate and graduate degrees shrank to 22.5% in 2021 from 31.8% in 2017, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. […]

By AFP — The French-Lebanese writer, 74, becomes only the 33rd person to occupy the post of “perpetual secretary” since the body’s founding under King Louis XIII in 1635. He takes over from Helene Carrere d’Encausse, who died last month having held the post since 1999. She did not designate a clear successor but Maalouf, who won France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 1993 for “The Rock of Tanios”, was considered the obvious choice due to his highly active engagement in the institution since being elected in 2011. There was one other candidate, his close friend Jean-Christophe Rufin, though he only threw his hat in the ring at the last minute, fearing there was not enough of a democratic process, joking to one magazine this weekend that it was “like North Korea”.

The academy is charged with setting the rules of the language to ensure it remains “pure, eloquent and capable of dealing with the arts and sciences”. Lately, it most often gains notice as the bulwark against the entry of English words into French usage. Last year it railed against the common practice of using English-sounding terms in French ads and branding — such as train operator SNCF’s low-cost “Ouigo” (pronounced “we go”) service — or simple imports from English like “big data” and “drive-in”. It became more assertive under Carrere d’Encausse, even threatening legal action against the government for including English translations on national identity cards. There are currently 35 members of the Academy — known as “Immortals” in reference to their motto “A l’immortalite” (“To immortality”). Past members include such luminaries as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Victor Hugo.

Fortune.com — OpenAI continues to plan for the AI future it ushered in when it released its wildly popular ChatGPT chatbot last November, according to a blockbuster report in The Information. The company’s founder, emerging AI mogul Sam Altman, met with Jony Ive, the renowned designer of Apple products, to discuss building an AI hardware device, according to two people familiar with the conversations. The implications are massive: A next-generation consumer electronic that would ostensibly integrate AI into daily life? Even talks between the two point to a tech future dominated by artificial intelligence. The new technology has for now mostly been limited to software programs and machine learning algorithms. A successful collaboration, should it come to pass, would be one of the first mass market consumer devices featuring AI. Details on what this product might look like are limited. However, Ive’s presence alone instills confidence. “Jony Ive is one of the genius minds of this generation,” Dan Ives, managing partner of Wedbush Securities, told Fortune.

Ives (no relation to Ive) is an influential voice on Wall Street and has been forecasting a bright future for AI for months. In June, he wrote that the investing climate around AI is akin to a “1995 internet moment,” not, as some skeptics would argue, like 1999 just before the dotcom crash. The second, third, and fourth derivatives of this AI gold rush are just starting to evolve for the tech landscape,” Ives wrote at the time. “As we have covered the tech sector for decades and saw the dotcom bubble and burst firsthand, [we believe] this is the start of a fourth industrial revolution playing out across tech over the coming years that is still being underestimated by the Street in our opinion.”

by Mary Ann Azevedo — techcrunch — OpenAI is in discussions to possibly sell shares in a move that would boost the company’s valuation from $29 billion to somewhere between $80 billion and $90 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing people familiar with the talks. Employees would be allowed to sell their […]