A Biden administration will give the US an edge in science and artificial intelligence but lessons learnt from this campaign cycle mean Americans must get comfortable with uncertainty and update antiquated voting systems, according to a half dozen futurists who spoke to The National.
“Compared to four years of the Trump administration, [Biden] will be a massive breath of fresh air for science and technology,” Thomas A. Campbell, founder and chief executive of FutureGrasp, said.
President-elect Joe Biden will enter office confronting multiple crises – the Covid-19 pandemic, an economic recession and climate change – that are expected to be addressed through massive investments in science and skilled labour under the new administration.
The virus has killed more than 235,000 Americans and wiped out 20 million jobs, according to a report by former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers. Meanwhile, Mr Biden’s campaign pledge is to invest as much as $5 trillion to make the US carbon neutral by 2050.
This approach is in contrast to his predecessor, according to Mr Campbell, who was the first national intelligence officer for technology under former president Barack Obama and president Trump.
“In all my years both outside and inside the US government, I have never seen an administration so dismissive of science and technology” as the Trump administration, he said.
He said a national plan for AI was drafted under Mr Trump, but this was delayed for two years despite "the major reports laying out the need for it at the end of the Obama administration”. The plan was implemented last year.
Mr Campbell expects the Biden White House “will look much more like the earlier Obama administration's eight years – supportive of science, technology and policies that will seek to maintain US leadership”.
Mr Biden is expected to include artificial intelligence in any kind of recovery programme, said Katie King, a board adviser and a member of the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) task force for the enterprise adoption of AI.
His approach will differ from his predecessor’s "America first" strategy, she added.
“Mr Biden is more likely to collaborate with other nations to further the global development of AI and develop global AI regulations,” she said.
The incoming administration is also likely to take a more nuanced policymaking approach to “other pieces of the puzzle” when it comes to implementing AI, such as privacy, surveillance, misinformation, robotics and developing talent, Ms King said.
But Scott Smith, a managing partner of Changeist, a future foresight consultancy based in the Hague, Netherlands, cautioned that given a Republican majority in the Senate and slimmer Democratic House advantage, “any substantial increase in education investment for competitiveness is likely to be stymied”.
Visas, too, like the H1-B visa for non-immigrant technical workers, may be a sticking point for Republican lawmakers, he said.
“Especially with an electorate that’s shown itself to be possibly more nativist”, Mr Biden may come up short on a campaign promise to lift limits on such visas and remove caps on green cards, he said.
Still, he expects that US competitiveness against other AI global leaders such as China or Israel “is unlikely to change dramatically in the next four years” because the foundations for investment and development were laid a decade ago.
Quantitative futurist Amy Webb is also grappling with the implications of a less decisive victory for Democrats, and what that means for voter surveys.
"The massive 'blue wave' being talked about was in no way guaranteed," Ms Webb, the founder and chief executive of the Future Today Institute, said in an email to The National.
Getting comfortable with uncertainty would upend the American opinion polling process, she said, but that is not necessarily a bad thing since polls are fundamentally flawed.
“There is currently no way to design a poll that reveals someone's deeply held beliefs. Fifty thousand simulations don't reveal truths when you start with bad data," she said.
Either way, the party divide “will force people to confront their cherished beliefs in a way that will be extremely difficult. That's true on both sides.”
Mark Minevich, president of Going Global Ventures and an AI expert, said now is the time to leverage AI to do things like predict election outcomes rather than rely on faulty polling. He also wants to use AI to gauge voter sentiment on social media and weed out disinformation or foreign bots attempting to undermine the democratic process.
"We have to ask ourselves why we continue to rely on antiquated systems, paper ballots and inadequate machines to handle the most important day of our democracy," he wrote in Forbes.
He highlighted the work of Democracy Live, an electronic voting company that has been used in more than 2,000 US jurisdictions since 2008, delivering online and polling place balloting technologies to more than 10 million voters.
In January this year they were used by King County in Washington state to conduct a mobile-only election that recorded and counted more than one million votes.
Once security concerns are addressed, Mr Minevich would like to see tools like Democracy Live more widely used.
"Apps would have to be governmentally designed, regulated, monitored and hosted. How will this cascade from federal all the way to local municipalities? Many questions still need to be answered."
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
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Auron Mein Kahan Dum Tha
Starring: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Shantanu Maheshwari, Jimmy Shergill, Saiee Manjrekar
Director: Neeraj Pandey
Rating: 2.5/5
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Race 3
Produced: Salman Khan Films and Tips Films
Director: Remo D’Souza
Cast: Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, Bobby Deol, Daisy Shah, Saqib Salem
Rating: 2.5 stars
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How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE
When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.
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ASHES SCHEDULE
First Test
November 23-27 (The Gabba, Brisbane)
Second Test
December 2-6 (Adelaide Oval, Adelaide)
Third Test
December 14-18 (Waca Ground, Perth)
Fourth Test
December 26-30 (Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne)
Fifth Test
January 4-8, 2018 (Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney)
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Notable groups (UAE time)
Jordan Spieth, Si Woo Kim, Henrik Stenson (12.47pm)
Justin Thomas, Justin Rose, Louis Oosthuizen (12.58pm)
Hideki Matsuyama, Brooks Koepka, Tommy Fleetwood (1.09pm)
Sergio Garcia, Jason Day, Zach Johnson (4.04pm)
Rickie Fowler, Paul Casey, Adam Scott (4.26pm)
Dustin Johnson, Charl Schwartzel, Rory McIlroy (5.48pm)
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
The five pillars of Islam
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
New Zealand 21 British & Irish Lions 24
New Zealand
Penalties: Barrett (7)
British & Irish Lions
Tries: Faletau, Murray
Penalties: Farrell (4)
Conversions: Farrell
Afghanistan fixtures
- v Australia, today
- v Sri Lanka, Tuesday
- v New Zealand, Saturday,
- v South Africa, June 15
- v England, June 18
- v India, June 22
- v Bangladesh, June 24
- v Pakistan, June 29
- v West Indies, July 4
The biog
Age: 23
Occupation: Founder of the Studio, formerly an analyst at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi
Education: Bachelor of science in industrial engineering
Favourite hobby: playing the piano
Favourite quote: "There is a key to every door and a dawn to every dark night"
Family: Married and with a daughter
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more from Janine di Giovanni
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the most popular virtual currency in the world. It was created in 2009 as a new way of paying for things that would not be subject to central banks that are capable of devaluing currency. A Bitcoin itself is essentially a line of computer code. It's signed digitally when it goes from one owner to another. There are sustainability concerns around the cryptocurrency, which stem from the process of "mining" that is central to its existence.
The "miners" use computers to make complex calculations that verify transactions in Bitcoin. This uses a tremendous amount of energy via computers and server farms all over the world, which has given rise to concerns about the amount of fossil fuel-dependent electricity used to power the computers.
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
