martes, 19 de noviembre de 2013

¿Que son los Bitcoins?

Programmer Robert McNally Put Together An Awesome Presentation On What Bitcoin Really Is

Is Bitcoin the new gold?
Some former gold bugs certainly think so.
And its value has skyrocketedin recent months.
But many readers at this point are probably wondering ... what exactly is Bitcoin?
Robert McNally, an iOS developer at parking payment startup QuickPay, gave the following presentation to last year's Hackers' Conference in Santa Cruz, answering exactly that question
With his kind permission, we have republished it here. 

Let's begin ...

And start with basics.

In 2013, Bitcoin *is* money — at least for some — and that population grows each day.

In this community, it has developed the same properties as regular cash.

Though some prefer to think of it as more akin to gold, due to its durability and limited supply.

But technically, it is a cryptocurrency.

That means there are no records or files on the transactees.

This is Bitcoin's principal benefit for many currency hawks or central bank doubters.

There have been previous attempts at cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin is unique.

In theory, no one controls it. And you can also take it anywhere, since it's just code.

Here's how Bitcoins are made ...

Computers "mine" for it by cracking a predetermined encrypted program. This is a quite difficult task, which is what gives Bitcoin its inherent value.

As Boromir would say ...

Does this look familiar? Plotted over millennia, it represents the arc of known gold stocks. Plotted over decades, it's also, in theory, true for Bitcoin.

Here's what "miners" look like in real life.

One "block" of Bitcoins is created about every 10 minutes these days. We'll see how much one block is in a moment.

Again, mining for Bitcoins requires a heck of a lot of dedicated computer memory.

Do Bitcoins look like anything?

As previously stated, they're basically just code.

So how much is a "block"? It's been changing every day. This chart is now very outdated — Bitcoins traded as high as $94 last week.

So who's actually accepting Bitcoins? When they first came on the scene, pretty much only programmers or gamers were.

But as its popularity — and value — grows ...

So does the range of things you can buy with it.

And now, chances are your card shark buddy would allow you to pay off your debt in it.

And now, chances are your card shark buddy would allow you to pay off your debt in it.


Business Insider

lunes, 18 de noviembre de 2013

Personalidad y salarios

This is how much money people with your personality make




It’s important whenever presented with a theory like Carl Jung’s theory of personality types (which Myers and Briggs formalized into apersonality test) to remember that you are in possession of a unique set of neurons whose synapses fire in unique patterns that cannot easily be slotted into one of sixteen “types” from which one can draw conclusions about your destiny.

That said, tests are fun! As an INTP (or so the Internet just told me) it appears that I need to get better at talking to people and planning if I am to have any hope of making the Big Bucks. Of course that’s only true if Myers-Briggs types have causal income effects which they very well might not but whatever, tests are fun!

Hat-tip to Jessica Roy for the chart; here’s the full infographic. Click “Know More” to read a psychologist’s summary of the Myers-Briggs test’s many shortcomings. Among other problems, peoples’ types tend to vary based on test-taking sessions (which they shouldn’t if the test measures an immutable personality type) and the explanatory power of personality types as determined by the test is limited.

domingo, 17 de noviembre de 2013

La contaminación viene con la industrialización en China

8 Appalling Instagram Photos Of The Chinese City That Was Shut Down By Smog
Adam Tayor

One of the big stories out of China today is the smog disaster in Harbin, the capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province, home to around 11 million people.

According to Reuters, an index measuring PM2.5, or particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), reached a reading of 1,000 in some parts of Harbin. More than 300 is considered "hazardous," and the city has been forced to shut down schools, airports and buses because of the air.

One way to check out the daily life of people living in Harbin is through the Instagram tag "Harbin," which shows images and videos of life in a city shut down by smog.

Here's a small selection:
While Weibo may be a more popular sharing tool in China, Instagram is gaining popularity in the country, despite the fact that its parent company, Facebook, is blocked.

Business Insider

sábado, 16 de noviembre de 2013

¿Qué dispara nuestra conducta moral?

Just Thinking about Science Triggers Moral Behavior

Psychologists find deep connection between scientific method and morality




With science in mind, morality increases.Image: iStock/Imagez
Public opinion towards science has made headlines over the past several years for a variety of reasons — mostly negative. High profile cases of academic dishonesty and disputes over funding have left many questioning the integrity and societal value of basic science, while accusations of politically motivated research fly from left and right. There is little doubt that science is value-laden. Allegiances to theories and ideologies can skew the kinds of hypotheses tested and the methods used to test them. These, however, are errors in theapplication of the method, not the method itself. In other words, it’s possible that public opinion towards science more generally might be relatively unaffected by the misdeeds and biases of individual scientists.  In fact, given the undeniable benefits scientific progress yielded, associations with the process of scientific inquiry may be quite positive.
Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara set out to test this possibility. They hypothesized that there is a deep-seated perception of science as a moral pursuit — its emphasis on truth-seeking, impartiality and rationality privileges collective well-being above all else. Their new study, published in the journal PLOSOne, argues that the association between science and morality is so ingrained that merely thinking about it can trigger more moral behavior.
The researchers conducted four separate studies to test this. The first sought to establish a simple correlation between the degree to which individuals believed in science and their likelihood of enforcing moral norms when presented with a hypothetical violation. Participants read a vignette of a date-rape and were asked to rate the “wrongness” of the offense before answering a questionnaire measuring their belief in science. Indeed, those reporting greater belief in science condemned the act more harshly.
Of course, a simple correlation is susceptible to multiple alternative explanations. To rule out these possibilities, Studies 2-4 used experimental manipulations to test whether inducing thoughts about science could influence both reported, as well as actual, moral behavior. All made use of a technique called “priming” in which participants are exposed to words relevant to a particular category in order to increase its cognitive accessibility. In other words, showing you words like “logical,” “hypothesis,” “laboratory” and “theory” should make you think about science and any effect the presentation of these words has on subsequent behavior can be attributed to the associations you have with that category.
Participants first completed a word scramble task during which they either had to unscramble some of these science-related words or words that had nothing to do with science. They then either read the date-rape vignette and answered the same questions regarding the severity of that transgression (Study 2), reported the degree to which they intended to perform a variety of altruistic actions over the next month (Study 3), or engaged in a behavioral economics task known as the dictator game (Study 4). In the dictator game the participant is given a sum of money (in this case $5) and told to divide that sum however they please between themselves and an anonymous other participant.  The amount that participants give to the other is taken to be an index of their altruistic motivation.
Across all these different measures, the researchers found consistent results. Simply being primed with science-related thoughts increased a) adherence to moral norms, b) real-life future altruistic intentions, and c) altruistic behavior towards an anonymous other. The conceptual association between science and morality appears strong.
Though this finding replicates across different measures and methods, there’s one variable that might limit the generalizability of the effect. There is some evidence suggesting that attitudes towards science vary across political parties with conservatives having become decreasingly trustworthy of science over the past several decades. Though the researchers did include measures of religiosity in their studies, which did not affect the relationship between science and morality, ideally they would have also controlled for political affiliation. It’s not a stretch to imagine that undergraduate students at the University of Santa Barbara disproportionately represent liberals. If so, the relationship between science and morality found here might be stronger in self-described liberals.
That said, there’s also reason to believe that the general public, liberal or conservative, can draw a distinction between the scientific process and its practitioners. In the same way that people might mistrust politicians but still see nobility in the general organizing principles of our political structure, we could hold charitable views of science independent of how it might be conducted.
These results might seem encouraging, particularly to fans of science. But one possible cost of assigning moral weight to science is the degree to which it distorts the way we respond to research conclusions. When faced with a finding that contradicts a cherished belief (e.g. a new study suggesting that humans have, or have not, contributed to global warming), we are more likely to question the integrity of the practitioner. If science is fundamentally moral, then how could it have arrived at such an offensive conclusion? Blame the messenger.
How can we correct this thought process?  A greater emphasis on, and better understanding of, the method might do the trick. It’s significantly harder to deny the import of challenging findings when you have the tools necessary to evaluate the process by which scientists arrived at their results. That new study on global warming is tougher to dismiss when you know (and care enough to check) that the methods used are sound, regardless of what you think the authors’ motivations might be. In the absence of such knowledge, the virtue assigned to “science” might also be a motivational force for ideological distortion, the precise opposite of impartial truth-seeking.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and regular contributor to NewYorker.com. Gareth is also the series editor of Best American Infographics, and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Piercarlo Valdesolo is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College and co-author of the book Out of Character. You can follow him on Twitter @pvaldesolo.


viernes, 15 de noviembre de 2013

Preguntas sobre el FED que uno desearía saber

The 14 Questions About The Fed You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask
STEVEN PERLBERG



REUTERS/Jim Young

Newly sworn-in Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Ben Bernanke (R) delivers remarks as U.S. President George W. Bush listens during a ceremony in Washington, February 6, 2006.


As market-watchers, nothing gives us heart palpitations quite like a meeting of the Federal Open Market Commission (this week!).
But for most people, the Federal Reserve invokes confusion, derision, or nausea.
Picking up on other great "explainers" we've seen lately, here's the definitive Federal Reserve Q&A, answering all your questions shame free.
Let's get started.
What is the Federal Reserve?
The Federal Reserve — or "the Fed" — is the central bank of the United States. Let's just start with what a central bank is, since plenty of countries have them. Actually, the U.S. was pretty late to the central banking game, as Americans' spirit of individualism generally inspires disdain for large, centrally-coordinated government authorities. Central banks are tasked controlling interest rates, the money supply, and overseeing the banking system.
How is the Fed set up?
In a stranger way than most central banks. There are four tiers: The Board of Governors, the Federal Open Market Commission (FOMC), 12 regional banks, and smaller member banks.
We'll start from the top. The Board of Governors is responsible for much of the monetary policy we'll describe later. These seven people are nominated by the President, pass Senate approval, and sit in Washington making decisions. Ben Bernanke is the current chairman. His term will end in January, and people have been speculating and endorsing like crazy about who his replacement will be.
Next we have the FOMC, a commission of seven Board of Governors members and five regional bank presidents. The FOMC runs open market operations, which we'll also get to later.
Then there are the 12 regional banks, responsible for much of the nitty gritty banking stuff (like check clearing). They are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco. Each regional bank has a president and oversees the thousands of member banks in its region.
Those are very random cities.
Yeah, it's weird. You can actually chalk that up to 1913 American politics. There were a lot of holdouts when Congress was voting on the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. The senator from Missouri, for example, could only be swayed if his home state became the only one to house two regional banks.
This seems complicated and arbitrary. Why do we even have a Federal Reserve?
As we mentioned, the U.S. didn't have a Federal Reserve bank for a long time. This meant that the late 19th Century was basically a series of uncontrollable economic panics. It wasn't until 1907, when the New York Stock Exchange fell 50% and depositors "ran on the bank" to recoup their money, that people warmed to the idea of a central bank and legislation passed.
Bank run
Archives
So the point of the Fed is to control economic panics? How?
Well, yes (at first).
We all know that when you deposit a check, the money doesn't just stay in your bank's vault until you need to hit the ATM because this bar is cash-only. No, banks move around and invest most of what they take in. This is how banks make money, among other ways. There are, of course, rules now about how much banks have to hold in "reserves," but the problem before the Federal Reserve was this: What happens when all the depositors want their cash back at once, a la the bank run scene in It's A Wonderful Life. As you'll recall, Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey tells the townspeople of Bedford Falls, "You're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house... and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others."
George Bailey was actually talking about fractional-reserve banking. Today the Federal Reserve might say, "George, if all else fails, we can step in and be the lender of last resort." The Fed kind of did say that in 2008, albeit not to George Bailey, but to nine highly-paid bank CEOs.
How can the Fed be the lender of last resort?
We're not sure you want to ask that because the answer may scare you. We know the Federal Reserve has power to print money. Theoretically, though, it could print enough money to bail out anyone or anything in any situation. How? As a fiat currency, the dollar is not tied to anything. It was once tied to gold, but Richard Nixon got rid of that in 1971.
Debt hawks are wrong when they say things like, "The U.S. is becoming the next Greece." Greece doesn't have its own state currency, and needs to be periodically bailed out by Europe's central bank. But the United States as a whole can always just print more money!
That doesn't seem sustainable.
It's not. To be fair, it's not exactly like we're just sitting here sending truckloads of $100 dollar bills into the economy. Plenty of governments have tried to do that and bad things have happened. The good news is that the Fed keeps a watchful eye on inflation to make sure that, as the balance sheet expands, we're not seeing runaway figures.
Still, as originally intended, the Federal Reserve exists to extend credit to banks or other institutions in emergency circumstances like a bank run.
Of course, we've come a long way in 100 years, and new circumstances like the financial crisis has inspired the Fed to do a lot of new things. They admit as much in their mission statement: "To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role in banking and the economy has expanded."
Expanded? What does the Fed do now?
The Fed sets what's known as "monetary policy" in order to promote the economic health of the country. Monetary policy impacts interest rates, which obviously impact the economy. Via monetary policy, the Fed intervenes in a few key ways.
1. The discount rate: "The discount rate is the interest rate charged to commercial banks and other depository institutions on loans they receive from their regional Federal Reserve Bank's lending facility — the discount window," according to the Fed. Don't worry too much about this one for our purposes.
2. Reserve requirements: How much a bank has to hold in reserves. The Fed uses the tool to control how much banks can lend out.
3. Open Market Operations (OMO): Listen up because this one is important. You might have heard how the Fed is buying assets in a program known as Quantitative Easing, and we'll get to that later. OMOs are similar, and have been the longstanding program by which the Fed implements monetary policy. The Fed has used OMOs, the purchase of government bonds on the open market, as a means to adjust the federal funds rate to a specified Fed target. The federal funds rate is a metric that controls "interbank loans." 
When the Fed reduces the federal funds rate, as it has done since the crisis, it encourages banks to take out interbank loans. That incentivizes them to lend more freely, which theoretically speeds up the economy. Conversely, the Fed would raise the federal funds rate if it thought the system was too loose and could create a bubble.
With the economy in recovery mode, the Federal Reserve wants to keep the federal funds rate as low as possible. The only problem now is that it has been at 0% since 2009.
In fact, the Federal Reserve has been operating under ZIRP — zero-interest rate policy. Simply put, nominal interest rates are as low as they can go. We've reached the boundary of conventional monetary policy wisdom.
So what monetary measure can the Federal Reserve take if rates are at zero?
We told you we'd get to Quantitative Easing (QE) later. It's later. QE is what's known as "unconventional monetary policy," which is a nicer way of saying "Sure, I guess we'll try this now."
In the wake of the financial crisis, and with rates at the "zero lower bound," the bank introduced a spate of new monetary policy options. Chief among them was "quantitative easing," a program in which the Fed purchases assets in order to increase the money supply. Since 2008, the Fed has purchased billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities (those bad things that helped cause the financial crisis) and billions of dollars worth of Treasury notes. Along the way since then, the Fed introduced two new "rounds" of QE.
QE has kept interest rates low, some would argue artificially and "uneconomically" low. Either way, the upshot has been a rebounding stock and bond market in the years since the crisis.
Now, critics of QE (who like to call the third round "QE-Infinity" due to the program's endurance) have warned that this kind of asset purchasing will lead to higher inflation. Controlling inflation, as it happens, is one of the Fed's chief concerns.
So far, we haven't seen the kind of inflation people were worried about, and economist Paul Krugman gained a lot of notoriety for basically calling QE critics wrong over and over again. That doesn't mean the program isn't problematic. The Fed's balance sheet has grown immensely, to $3.6 trillion.
Will QE ever stop?
In June, the Fed sent markets in a tizzy by announcing it would look at "tapering" QE. Now, tapering doesn't mean ceasing the purchase of assets. It means buying them at a slower rate. Markets still freaked out and interest rates shot up.
Even with a taper, it looks like QE will go on for a while longer. And even when it finishes, people are unsure how exactly a central bank can unwind $3.6 trillion.
So what the Fed says or does really impacts the market?
You said it. The Fed has tried to be pretty direct by offering what's known as "forward guidance— meaning clear communication about future interest rates. Having exhausted its normal monetary policy tools, the Federal Reserve has said it will tether policy changes to observed economic indicators. Better communication will help market actors "price in" economic changes.
Think of it this way, the Fed right now is saying, "Look, we're going to keep rates low for a very long time." Normally, the Fed only controls the short-term interest rate, but by telling Wall Street that they can borrow at low rates for a long time, firms will presumably be more eager to lend money out to the American people (at a lower interest rate too).
Central banks usually act in a shroud of mystery, but Chairman Bernanke clearly wants to uproot that. Other central bankers, like Mark Carney in England, have followed suit.
The Fed says that it will keep the federal funds rate unchanged until we hit 6-6.5% unemployment. We're currently at 7.3%. Seems clear enough, but market still get roiled every time the Fed opens its mouth or people think it just did. Central banks will always make waves in markets because what they do or say is clearly so intrinsic to the future of economy. Guessing on the future of the economy remains how traders make money, so you can imagine how angry some of them get when the they think the Fed isn't being clear about its intentions.
greenspan fed
Pictured center: Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (1987-2006)
Hold on, let's go back a second. You never said anything about the unemployment rate.
Ah sorry, yes, the Fed does concern itself with employment figures. As a 100-year old institution, the Fed's responsibilities have been revised by legislation through the years.
There was the 1946 Employment Act which called upon the government to pursue maximum employment. Then in 1977, Congress got more specific and passed the Federal Reserve Reform Act, which instructs the Fed to use monetary policy to promote employment and control inflation. That law didn't happen by accident. You might recall that the late 1970s was a terrible time for employment and inflation.
But why do people hate the Fed?
Surely you're talking about Ron Paul's campaign battle cry to "End the Fed." Or perhaps Rick Perry's veiled threat to murder Ben Bernanke for high treason.
The Fed today has what is known as a "dual mandate" to keep an eye inflation and employment at the same time. And this is one of the chief critiques that Fed haters cite.
Critics stress that the original intention of the Fed was to avoid banking panics. If the Fed has to concern itself with employment, it has an incentive to keep interest rates low to juice the economy. But if you keep interest rates low, especially during good times, bubbles can and will appear. In 2001, we saw a stock bubble. In 2007, an asset (housing) bubble. Bubbles, as history has shown us, lead to the kinds of banking crises the Fed was originally tasked with preventing.
So what's the likelihood of another crisis?
If you can answer that, you should be a central banker. This is hard stuff. The people at the Fed are genuinely trying to ensure the health and stability of the American economy. In retrospect, it's easy to see clear central banking mistakes. During his tenure as Fed Chair in the 1990s, Alan Greenspan was hailed as a demigod for having "figured out" monetary policy. It wasn't until the housing market crashed years later that people realized his policy of ultra-low interest rates and deregulation fostered an economic powder keg.
Monetary policy can have reverberations years — perhaps decades — later, so it's best to pay attention. It's not easy work, but hopefully now you understand it a little better.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-does-the-federal-reserve-do-2013-9#ixzz2exroQQ13

jueves, 14 de noviembre de 2013

Robot desplaza mano de obra en USA

Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots

By Carl Frey and Michael Osborne


The new nine-to-fiver. Reuters/Gleb Garanich
Computers have been an important part of many industries for decades already and have replaced humans in many jobs. But a new wave of technological development means that even positions that we once saw as immune to computerization are now under threat.
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In 1930, as the Great Depression spread across the Atlantic, John Maynard Keynes famously predicted that the discovery of technological means would outrun the pace at which we can find new uses for labor, resulting in widespread technological unemployment. Keynes, however, was optimistic and predicted that this would only be a temporary phase. In the long-run, he argued, technological progress will solve mankind’s “economic problem,” that is our need to work, and release us from our traditional purpose of subsistence.
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Commentators today are less optimistic. “How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class,” a recent New York Times Column by David Autor and David Dorn, captures an observation made by several commentators: technology has turned on labor.
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In the modern world of work, low-income service jobs have expanded sharply at the expense of middle-income manufacturing and production jobs. There are many more security guards and pharmacy aides while the rate of growth has slowed in professions such as chemical plant operators and fabric pattern makers. Meanwhile, computers have increased the productivity of high-income workers, such as professional managers, engineers and consultants. The result has been a polarized labor market with surging wage inequality. Research has shown that this polarization between “lousy” and “lovely” jobs is happening in Britain as well as in the US, implying that there has been a hollowing-out of the middle class.
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The threat of computerization has historically been largely confined to routine manufacturing tasks involving explicit rule-based activities such as part construction and assembly. But a look at 700 occupation types (pdf) in the US suggests that 47% are at risk from a threat that once only loomed for a small proportion of workers.
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The likelihood of a job being vulnerable to computerization is based on the types of tasks workers perform and the engineering obstacles that currently prevent machines from taking over the role.
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These technological breakthroughs are, in large part, due to efforts to turn non-routine tasks into well-defined problems. The automation of these occupations is made possible by big data and advanced sensors, giving robots enhanced senses and dexterity, allowing them to perform a broader scope of non-routine manual tasks. For the first time, jobs in transportation and logistics are at risk. Take the autonomous driverless cars being developed by Google. They are the perfect example of a new way in which a human worker, such as a long-haul truck driver, could be replaced by a machine in the modern age.
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Desk dwellers are no longer immune either. Algorithms for big data are now rapidly entering domains reliant upon pattern recognition and can readily substitute for labor in a wide range of non-routine cognitive tasks. Those working in fields such as administration could once feel comfortable that a computer would never be able to do their job but that will no longer be the case for many.
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More surprisingly, the bulk of service occupations, from fast food counter attendants to medical transcriptionists, where the most job growth has occurred over the past decades, are also to be found in the high risk category. This reflects technological development too. The market for personal and household service robots is already growing by about 20% annually. As the comparative advantage of human labor in tasks involving mobility and dexterity will diminish over time, the pace of labor substitution in service occupations is likely to increase even further.
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This first wave of computerization in the big data era marks a turning point. Nineteenth century manufacturing technologies largely substituted for skilled labor in jobs, such as weaving and the production of tools, by simplifying the tasks involved. Next, the computer revolution of the 20th century caused a hollowing-out of middle-income jobs. The next generation of computers will mainly substitute low-income, low-skill workers over the next decades.
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So, if a computer can drive as well as you, serve customers as well as you and track down information as well as you, just who is safe in their job these days?
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Careers at low risk of computerization are generally those that require knowledge of human heuristics and specialist occupations involving the development of novel ideas and artifacts. Most management, business, and finance occupations, which are intensive in generalist tasks requiring social intelligence, are still largely confined to the low-risk category. The same is true of most occupations in education and health care, as well as arts and media jobs.
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Engineering and science occupations are also less susceptible to the phenomenon, largely due to the high degree of creative intelligence they require. It is, however, possible that computers will fully substitute for workers in these occupations over the long-run.
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This means that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will need to train in tasks that are less susceptible to computerization—that is, tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. If you want to stop a computer taking your job, you’ll have to hone your creative and social skills. Mercifully, it will be quite a while before the machines outpace us in that respect.
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This article was originally published at The Conversation.