Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Are People Losing Control Over Robots? Tatiana Fedorova Feb 27, 2019 Humans have long been fascinated with the idea of robots — human-like robots. It’s been 50 years since Isaac Asimov, an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, devised his famous Three Laws of Robotics* — a set of rules designed to ensure friendly robot behavior. Isaac Asimov imagined a futuristic world in which humanoid robots were commonplace and, famously, programmed with the Three Laws of Robotics to help — and not harm — their human counterparts. We’re accustomed to the idea of machines acting like people. We’re even accustomed to the idea of machines thinking in ways that remind us of humans. For example, Octavia, a humanoid robot designed to fight fires on Navy ships, has mastered an impressive range of facial expressions. Sophia, a social humanoid of Hanson Robotics, led by AI developer David Hanson, has a “human-skin” look and more than 50 facial expressions. Yes,...

Buyer beware: Scourge of fake reviews hitting Amazon, Walmart and other major retailers Fake reviews are increasingly prevalent across many top retailer websites, according to a study from Fakespot, which analyzes online customer reviews for fake or unreliable reviews. ·         52 percent of reviews posted on Walmart.com are "inauthentic and unreliable," Fakespot estimates ·         30 percent of Amazon reviews are fake or unreliable, the study found ·         About a third of reviews on makeup retailer Sephora and video-game service Steam are also unreliable or fake, the analysis discovered ·         "My advice is to be very skeptical" when reading online reviews, said Saoud Khalifah, CEO of Fakespot By AIMEE PICCHI FEBRUARY 27, 2019 / 9:00 AM The fake reviews threaten to undermine the credibility of retailers struggling wi...

You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook. Wall Street Journal testing reveals how the social-media giant collects a wide range of private data from developers; ‘This is a big mess’   By   Sam Schechner Feb. 22, 2019 11:07 a.m. ET Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook   Inc.   The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing sho...

Andrew Yang: the 2020 candidate warning of the rise of robots   The entrepreneur says Trump won the 2016 election because the US automated away jobs – so he wants to become president to do something about it David Smith  in Washington Sun 24 Feb 2019  03.16 EST D onald Trump won 2,584 counties in the 2016 presidential election; Hillary Clinton carried only 472. But the Democratic nominee’s accounted for nearly two-thirds of America’s economic output,  according to a study by the Brookings Institution . This is one vivid illustration of America’s great divide. Glittering coastal cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington  are becoming  richer and more influential , attracting more jobs, better hospitals and schools, and technology. Small towns and rural communities are falling further behind, feeding a sense that, to paraphrase LP Hartley, the coasts are a foreign country – they do things differently there. Andrew Y...

Is Silicon Valley's quest for immortality a fate worse than death?   Funded by elites, researchers believe they’re closer than ever to tweaking the human body so we can live forever (or quite a bit longer) Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on a range of techniques, from attempting to stop cells aging, to the practice of injecting young blood into old people. Adam Gabbatt Sat 23 Feb 2019  13.54 EST C hina’s first emperor  ordered  his subjects to search for the elixir of life in a quest for immortality. In 16th century France, nobles would  drink gold  in a bid to extend their lifespans. Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king at the heart of humanity’s earliest epic poem, found a magic herb, but a snake ate it. In 2015, a woman on the MTV series True Life: I’m Obsessed With Staying Young  bathed  in pig blood. In 2019, the quest for everlasting life is, largely, though not always, more scientific. Funded by  Silicon Valley ...