Tech Trend 247

Losing jobs to technology is nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of automated machinery. Even in cases where the human worker is not completely replaced by a machine, humans have learned to rely on a battery of machinery to be more efficient and accurate.

A report from the Oxford Martin School’s Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology said that 47 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are likely to be replaced by automated systems. Among the jobs soon to be replaced by machines are real estate brokers, animal breeders, tax advisers, data entry workers, receptionists and various personal assistants.

47% of all jobs in the U.S. are likely to be replaced by automated systems.

But you won’t need to pack up your desk and hand over to a computer just yet, and in fact jobs that require a certain level of social intelligence and creativity such as in education, healthcare, the arts and media are likely to remain in demand from humans, because such tasks remain difficult to be computerized.

Like it or not, we now live in an era dominated by artificial intelligence(A.I.). A.I. can be seen as a collection of technologies that can be used to imitate or even to outperform tasks performed by humans using machines.

We might not first see it but we cannot avoid running into one or more systems that use some form of an A.I. algorithm in our day-to-day activities — such as searching for some information using Google, purchasing a recommended product on Amazon, or recognizing faces in an image uploaded to Facebook.

Deep learning

Recent breakthroughs in A.I. are largely attributable to a technique called deep learning. Often known as machine learning or neural networking, deep learning involves “training” a computer model so it can recognize objects from images. The power of deep learning-based A.I. systems lies in their ability to automatically detect noticeable features and use them to solve hard recognition problems.

It is often difficult for a human to explain the exact procedure at a sufficiently detailed level.

Although humans could easily perform such recognition tasks almost unconsciously, it is often difficult for a human to explain the exact procedure at a sufficiently detailed level so that it could be programmed into a computer.

With deep learning all this has changed. Now, deep learning-based A.I. systems can figure out the important features for solving difficult problems that were once thought to be solvable exclusively by humans.

And as a result, humans will have to mentally prepare for the fact that some of our jobs will be lost to A.I. systems. We might even have to call A.I. systems our colleagues or bosses in the near future.

But despite the deeper level of knowledge that our computers will soon acquire, losing our jobs to machines doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Letting machines do the bulk of the work means that humans will be freed from routine tasks that computers are better at performing with higher accuracy rates, such as driving cars.

This should enable humans to think like humans instead of machines. It will also free up time and energy for humans to engage in more creative and intellectually stimulating activities, possibly assisted by A.I.

Emotional intelligence

A.I. systems have already become far too complicated for the average person to understand, let alone repair, so there will be new roles created which will require people who can act as intermediaries between computers and humans.

Similar to professions such as medicine or law, where professionals with specialized skills are required to interpret technical details for everyday folk, we will need professionals who speak the language of A.I.

Ethical issues arising from human and AI co-working environments is a real concern.

These professionals may vary in their skills and are likely to consist of software developers, computer scientists and data scientists.

But ethical issues arising from human and A.I. co-working environments is a real concern. It is one thing getting a face incorrectly recognized in an image uploaded to Facebook, but a totally different matter if cancer is misdiagnosed by an A.I., which could very easily happen. After all, computers make mistakes, just as people do

Although A.I.-based systems are becoming smarter than humans in many fields, these systems are far from perfect and are unlikely to ever be perfect considering the unpredictable learning mechanisms they use.

That said, it is likely to be the social and cultural changes that will be the real challenge, rather than the technical challenge of A.I. itself. So while robots taking over our jobs can be a good thing, only time will tell if we are ready to accept them as our co-workers.

Danushka Bollegala is a senior lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at University of Liverpool.

In honor of Mother's Day on Sunday, Apple has created a site that allows anyone to add a photo of their own mother to a rolling slideshow of mothers from around the world.

The site is MomsShotOniPhone and using it is as simple as most iApps. You simply visit the site, enter your first name and last initial and then add a photo of you and your mother.

Despite the sweet sentiment, as with all corporate moves, it pays to read the fine print

When you're done, you're given a one-click option to post the slideshow to your Facebook account. Once it's posted to your Facebook feed, watch as a soft music bed plays and mothers from various Apple fans fade in and out of the frame just before ending with the image you uploaded and a Happy Mother's Day greeting from you to your mother.

Of course, despite the sweet sentiment, as with all corporate moves, it pays to read the fine print. On the site's Terms and Conditions, the company states:

By submitting a photograph or video (“Content”), you grant Apple Inc. the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to incorporate such Content and your name into a video produced by Apple and to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt, and promote this Content, in whole or in part, on Facebook.

So before you submit a photo of dear old mom, best to make sure you're ready to surrender those rights to your cherished family photograph. 

Apple kicked off its celebration of Mother's Day last week with a heartwarming video that also emphasized using the iPhone to take photos of your family. 

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In the age of mobile everything, a sexy, new PC graphics card struggles to find the proper acknowledgement from mainstream users. But even if you haven't installed a graphics card in years (or ever), Nvidia's latest, the GeForce GTX 1080, is worth paying attention to.

Why? Because it promises to deliver a huge performance boost to one of the hottest new areas of computing: virtual reality.

"Our first Pascal gaming GPU, the GeForce GTX 1080, enables incredible realism in gaming and deeply immersive VR experiences, with dramatically improved performance and efficiency," Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of Nvidia's PC business, said in a statement released on the company's website on Friday. "It's the most powerful gaming GPU ever built, and some of our finest work."

It offers two times the performance in virtual reality

Part of the reason the graphics card has so many insiders excited is that it offers two times the performance in virtual reality at hundreds of dollars less than the previous top tier option — just $599 versus the GeForce GTX Titan X at $999. 

The card even got a ringing endorsement from the company behind VR gaming favorite EVE: Valkyrie. "GeForce GTX 1080 promises to be the ultimate graphics card for experiencing EVE: Valkyrie," Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games, said in a statement provided by Nvidia.  

"We took scenes from our Paragon game cinematics that were designed to be rendered offline, and rendered them in real time on GTX 1080," Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games, said in a statement. "It's mind-blowing and we can't wait to see what developers create ... in the world of games, automotive design, or architectural visualization — for both 2D screens and for VR."

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be available May 27.

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When he was 10 years old, Alex Jason got his hands on his first Macintosh computer by trading a minibike and a snowblower for it. He couldn't help but tinker with his new iMac G5, upgrading it as much as he could.

After reaching the G5's limit, he had an itch to do more.

"I decided I really loved working on these computers and fixing them," Alex told Mashable. "I went on Craigslist and bought one or two from the early 2000s, and I realized how cool they were because they were, to me, retro."

Cut to five years later: Alex now has a collection of more than 250 "significant" Apple products, dubbed the Apple Orchard, and the majority of it is located in his family's basement. If you add up the mice, keyboards, wires and everything, Alex said the number reaches about 500.

Sitting in the basement are rows of Macintosh and Apple II computers, PowerBooks, iMacs, iPods and more. Alex even has an impressive number of "extremely rare" prototype computers, keyboards and mice that never made it to store shelves. 

Building the collection

Alex has obtained all the pieces from different places, starting with Craigslist and Uncle Henry's — a classifieds website that's like a Craigslist for Maine. He avoids Ebay because it's often too pricey.

"From Craigslist I met a guy who owned a collection right here near my town, and I used some of my lawn-mowing money to pay for that," he said. "I think I got 50 or 60 computers from that."

Not everything in the collection is a computer or computer part though. Along the basement walls hang posters from throughout Apple's history, and there's even an original copy of Woz Pak, Steve Wozniak's own coding notes for the Apple II.

One of Alex's most prized pieces, the Apple I, sits offsite for security reasons, but it's not the only computer he loves.

"I have a really soft spot for the Lisa 2/5," Alex said. He received a restored and refurbished Lisa 2/5 from a friend, which Alex built a special acrylic case for.

Making a museum

Alex isn't going to just keep his Apple Orchard to himself — Alex's dad, Bill Jason, said they are in the process of fundraising to run their own museum, the Maine Technology Museum. 

"[Alex's] Apple Orchard collection will have a small wing in 15% of the space and the other 85% of the museum will be cool, interactive and engaging technology exhibits for renewable energy, engineering, computers, space exploration and everything else related to technology to inspire everyone to invent, create and innovate," Bill said. 

The museum will be located in the Good Will-Hinckley Carnegie Library in Fairfield, Maine. Bill said it will require some renovation before the space will be ready to use.

In the meantime, Alex is still looking for a Lisa 1, which is an extremely rare computer. Alex said they're so rare because they came with Apple's custom "Twiggy" drives, which weren't very good, and Apple offered a free upgrade to the Lisa 2 for customers, taking most Lisa 1 computers out of circulation.

That kind of knowledge just comes with the territory.

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If you've ever wanted to try messing around with a theremin, there's a virtual one you can try out online or on your phone, aptly called Theremin.

Theremins are strange early electronic instruments that typically look like a box with a metal rod sticking up out of it and another bent rod sticking out the side. You don't touch theremins; instead, theremin players wave their hands around both rods, which sense the relative position of their hands. One rod controls the volume and the other rod controls the pitch.

Here's a popular example of someone playing a theremin:

The virtual theremin doesn't mimic the structure of a physical theremin, instead translating the two rods into a rectangular sound board. As you click or tap from left to right on the X axis, the pitch increases. The Y axis doesn't exactly scale the volume like expected — as you move up the Y axis, the strength of the sound increases. If you have a touch screen, Theremin supports multitouch.

There are settings at the bottom of Theremin too, which control the amount of delay, feedback and "scuzz" (distortion). There are also different settings in the top right that change the overall sound.

Once you start getting a hang of the virtual theremin, you can purchase the app for Chrome or iOS, which allows you to record the sounds you create and save them. 

The web version is free to use, but doesn't allow you to record. The app is available for $3.99 on iOS and $5.99 on Chrome.

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A drone, or quadcopter as it's technically called, typically has four propellers to generate enough thrust to let it hover in the air. The propellers are arranged in such a way to counterbalance the weight of the drone itself.

Researchers at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich have created a new kind of flying machine (technically, not a drone) that only needs one blade to fly.

The flying machine is called the Monospinner and is billed as the "simplest, controllable, flying machine in existence" since it lacks actuators and aerodynamic surfaces. It only has one moving part: the rotating propeller.

The three-person research team (Weixuan Zhang, Mark Mueller and Raffaello D'Andrea) said the Monospinner was born after they asked "what is the minimum number of moving parts necessary for controlled flight?"

The researchers have provided an in-depth look at the math and science that went into getting its flying machine into the air here. The gist: "An unconventional equilibrium is found by analyzing the vehicle’s dynamics. For a certain constant angular speed and propeller force, the Monospinner is able to remain substantially in one position. Feedback control keeps the vehicle near this equilibrium."

To fly it, just throw it into the air like a frisbee:

Needless to say, you probably want to stay away from one of these guys. Just look at how it's spinning at an angle. It could easily take your eye out.

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Whether you're looking for parenting tips or the best new restaurants in your neighborhood, Facebook Groups is useful for finding virtual communities around various topics.

Now Facebook is testing a dedicated "Discover" feature within the Groups section, making it easier to join conversations.

A new tab will let you browse public and closed Facebook Groups by category, including Groups your friends are in and local Groups. You can see what's gaining traction in your circle, and in your city.

As a randomly-selected Facebook user in the test group, I can confirm the Discover feature is easy and intuitive to use. Indeed, it's a surprise it's taken this long to roll out something like this. 

But the effort makes sense: it's not unlike Twitter and Instagram's new discovery efforts.

Discover offers 25 different categories such as parenting, sports, food, buy & sell, networking, animals & pets, hobby & leisure, support & comfort and travel. Each topic page highlights the top suggested Groups based on popularity and who you may already know that's a member. 

Previously, you'd have to type keywords into the search bar to find related Groups or wait until you were invited to join one by a friend.

While only a select group of people have the feature right now, Facebook told Mashable it will roll out more broadly in the near future.

Beyond Facebook's news feed, Groups is the most-used feature within the app. About one billion people use Groups each month.

Bonus: Here's how you unlock the secret emoticon keyboard on your iPhone

In an emotional 1,100-word Facebook post published Friday, Sheryl Sandberg reflected on her first year as a widow and single mother. 

The Facebook COO, who lost her husband Dave Goldberg in May 2015, describes a "new and unfamiliar world" of trying to succeed at work without a partner at home, struggling to comfort her grieving children and regularly encountering reminders, like father-daughter dances, that her family will never be the same.

"Before, I did not quite get it. I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home," Sandberg writes in her post. "I did not understand how often I would look at my son’s or daughter’s crying face and not know how to stop the tears. How often situations would come up that Dave and I had never talked about and that I did not know how to handle on my own."

While the post was deeply personal, Sandberg devoted much of it to honoring single mothers and describing the challenges they face. 

"For many single mothers, this is the only world they know," Sandberg writes. "Each and every day they make sacrifices, push through barriers, and nurture beautiful families despite the demands on their time and energy."

Sandberg, who authored the 2013 bestselling book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, even gave credit to critics who said she didn't fully understand or account for the choices single mothers must make when trying to tend to their children and excel at work. She writes: 

In Lean In, I emphasized how critical a loving and supportive partner can be for women both professionally and personally—and how important Dave was to my career and to our children’s development. I still believe this. Some people felt that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they have an unsupportive partner or no partner at all. They were right.

Sandberg, however, didn't stop there. She marshaled statistics to illustrate the tough odds single mothers labor against, including the fact that 35% of them experience food insecurity and 46% of families headed by black and Hispanic single mothers live in poverty. 

"Single moms have been leaning in for a long time." 

Sandberg highlights the story of one San Jose, California, mother who works two jobs and must choose between groceries and paying her cell phone bill. Both are essential, she writes, because without the phone, her son won't be able to call his mother at her second job to say he's arrived home after traveling through their unsafe neighborhood. 

"Single moms have been leaning in for a long time—out of necessity and a desire to provide the best possible opportunities for their children," Sandberg writes. 

She criticizes the American stance on issues like paid parental and sick leave as leaving families to "fend for themselves" and concludes the post with a call to "rethink our public and corporate workforce policies and broaden our understanding of what a family is and looks like." 

Sandberg's strong convictions and empathetic approach will likely quiet some of her critics, particularly if she continues to advocate for all single mothers and their families — and she seems poised to do just that.

"We need to understand that it takes a community to raise children and that so many of our single mothers need and deserve a much more supportive community than we give them," she writes. "We owe it to them and to their children to do better." 

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Summoning or parking your car with a tap on your phone is no longer cool. You know what's cool? Ordering a gadget to order your car to do your bidding. 

That's the result of a "weekend project" by Tesla Model S owner Jason Goecke, who managed to get Amazon Echo to summon his car out of the garage.

Goecke did the trick by using an unofficial API (Tesla hasn't released a public API at this point), Amazon Echo's voice assistant Alexa and the Go programming language. 

In practice, it looks like this: Goecke tells Alexa "Ask KITT to pull out of the garage," KITT being a reference to cult '80s TV series Knight Rider. As the garage door opens and the Model S slowly glides out, Alexa responds, "I will now pull your Tesla out of the garage; keep an eye on it."

Goecke admits that the system is too much of a security risk as is, and that additional security measures, such as voice biometrics, could be applied to make sure no unwanted third party can boss your Tesla around. 

This is not the first Summon-related hack we've seen. In February, iOS developer Allen Wong created an Apple Watch app which lets you summon or park a Tesla directly from your smartwatch. 

[H/T The Verge]

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This week on MashTalk, we sift through all the rumors to try to decide: Is the iPhone 7 going to have a damn headphone jack or not?

Plus, we discuss the exciting (and possibly unsettling) news that robots are becoming capable surgeons. Lastly, our longest Rapid Reactions round ever features a debate about sex in self-driving cars. Yep. 

Listen to the episode on iTunes or on Stitcher. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes, instantly. If you like MashTalk, please fill out our audience survey.

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GoPro's decision to delay its Karma drone until the holiday is sad news. But cheer up, the company's just released the first footage from its Omni VR camera. And it's absolutely stunning.

The VR camera, which consists of a chassis that holds six Hero4 cameras, launches in August for $4,999.99. 

In a new video introducing the Omni, Swedish freestyle skier Jesper Tjader, Icelandic snowboarder Halldor Helgason and few others use the Omni to film their snow run down the Suzuki Nine Queens course.

The 360-degree video is viewable in 4K (2160p) resolution and was shot over the course of three days.

Although GoPro says the video was shot using prototype Omni cameras and the consumer version will have significant quality improvements, the footage is damn good. You can hardly see any of the stitching seams between the six cameras.

"VR is a whole new experience that can fully transport someone into another experience," Woodman told Mashable last year. "The ability to promote empathy through VR, the better it is for people to have a human connection. It's gonna open up all kinds of viewing experiences and expand the lifespan of content."

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GoPro's decision to delay its Karma drone until the holiday is sad news. But cheer up, the company's just released the first footage from its Omni VR camera. And it's absolutely stunning.

The VR camera, which consists of a chassis that holds six Hero4 cameras, launches in August for $4,999.99. 

In a new video introducing the Omni, Swedish freestyle skier Jesper Tjader, Icelandic snowboarder Halldor Helgason and few others use the Omni to film their snow run down the Suzuki Nine Queens course.

The 360-degree video is viewable in 4K (2160p) resolution and was shot over the course of three days.

Although GoPro says the video was shot using prototype Omni cameras and the consumer version will have significant quality improvements, the footage is damn good. You can hardly see any of the stitching seams between the six cameras.

"VR is a whole new experience that can fully transport someone into another experience," Woodman told Mashable last year. "The ability to promote empathy through VR, the better it is for people to have a human connection. It's gonna open up all kinds of viewing experiences and expand the lifespan of content."

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Saying "there's no way I can pull this off" to lower expectations is the oldest trick in the book, but SpaceX just used it masterfully. The company managed to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea for the second time, despite previously saying a successful landing was "unlikely."

This is due to the rocket's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere being much faster (and, thus, hotter) than on the first successful attempt in April. 

The Falcon 9, which was launched at 1:21 a.m. ET Friday, carried a Japanese communications satellite called JCSAT-14 into Earth's orbit. That part of the mission was also a success, with the second stage of Falcon 9 delivering JCSAT-14 into orbit about an hour after launch. 

Prior to the landing, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the odds of making a successful landing are "maybe even." 

All in all, this is the sixth attempt by SpaceX to land the Falcon 9 on a drone ship in the ocean, the last two of which were successful. The landings are important as they give SpaceX the opportunity to reuse the Falcon 9 rockets, significantly reducing the cost of launching to space. 

On Twitter, Musk drops a hint on why this mission might be even more important than the first successful drone landing. 

This means that the rocket can safely slow down very quickly after a fast entry into the atmosphere. Though Musk does not explicitly mention this, the ability to slow down a spacecraft quickly would come in handy in a Mars landing, which is problematic as the planet's thin atmosphere would do a bad job slowing a spaceship down during a landing attempt. 

In April, Musk tweeted that the company plans to send its Red Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2018. Unlike earlier Mars landing missions, Red Dragon is designed to land without a parachute, instead using SpaceX's SuperDraco thrusters to slow the craft down during landing. 

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GoPro's decision to delay its Karma drone until the holiday is sad news. But cheer up, the company's just released the first footage from its Omni VR camera. And it's absolutely stunning.

The VR camera, which consists of a chassis that holds six Hero4 cameras, launches in August for $4,999.99. 

In a new video introducing the Omni, Swedish freestyle skier Jesper Tjader, Icelandic snowboarder Halldor Helgason and few others use the Omni to film their snow run down the Suzuki Nine Queens course.

The 360-degree video is viewable in 4K (2160p) resolution and was shot over the course of three days.

Although GoPro says the video was shot using prototype Omni cameras and the consumer version will have significant quality improvements, the footage is damn good. You can hardly see any of the stitching seams between the six cameras.

"VR is a whole new experience that can fully transport someone into another experience," Woodman told Mashable last year. "The ability to promote empathy through VR, the better it is for people to have a human connection. It's gonna open up all kinds of viewing experiences and expand the lifespan of content."

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Facebook is already getting ready for Mother's Day. 

The social network is rolling out a couple special features for Mother's Day, including an experimental flower reaction and a feature that lets you send flowers via Messenger. 

In Messenger, a flower button will appear near the text box for a limited time. Tapping the icon will animate your message, photo or GIF with flowers. There's also a new Mother's Day-themed sticker pack for Messenger in honor of the holiday, that you can find here. 

Messenger aside, Facebook is also testing a special reaction called "thankful" for Mother's Day that will symbolized as a flower. The reaction, which Facebook tells us will be tested in a few countries outside of the US, was first spotted by Twitter user Sreedev Sharma.

The "thankful" reaction is temporary and limited to Mother's Day (though you'll still be able to see flowers in the total like count after it goes away) but Facebook says it may experiment with more of these temporary reactions in the future. 

The company didn't elaborate on which countries would be able to see the new reaction but it's not surprising Facebook would opt to limit it to specific markets. Reactions were only tested in Ireland and Spain when they were first rolled out last fall and the company has spoken at length about the importance of making sure reactions will translate in each market (that's why "yay," one of the early reactions, was nixed from final lineup.)

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