scholarly journals Visions of Automation: A Comparative Discussion of Two Approaches

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Philipp Frey

In recent years, fears of technological unemployment have (re-)emerged strongly in public discourse. In response, policymakers and researchers have tried to gain a more nuanced understanding of the future of work in an age of automation. In these debates, it has become common practice to signal expertise on automation by referencing a plethora of studies, rather than limiting oneself to the careful discussion of a small number of selected papers whose epistemic limitations one might actually be able to grasp comprehensively. This paper addresses this shortcoming. I will first give a very general introduction to the state of the art of research on potentials for automation, using the German case as an example. I will then provide an in-depth analysis of two studies of the field that exemplify two competing approaches to the question of automatability: studies that limit themselves to discussing technological potentials for automation on the one hand, and macroeconomic scenario methods that claim to provide more concrete assessments of the connection between job losses (or job creation) and technological innovation in the future on the other. Finally, I will provide insight into the epistemic limitations and the specific vices and virtues of these two approaches from the perspective of critical social theory, thereby contributing to a more enlightened and reflexive debate on the future of automation.

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Kruger

Business ethics in business training: Oratory or the actuality. This article is the culmination of an in-depth literature study. On the one hand an attempt is made to incorporate the views of different authors, while on the other hand an attempt is made to take part in the debate which is initiated by the current renewal of interest in the subject Business Ethics. Within this framework attention is paid to the question of whether business ethics can be taught and if so, to what extent it's influence will be felt. Secondly, an insight into the teaching of business ethics in the future is provided. Within this context the approach to the teaching, the content, the role of the student and the responsibility of the educator in particular are addressed. Opsomming Hierdie artikel is die resultaat van 'n indringende literatuurstudie. Daar word gepoog om enersyds verskillende skrywers se standpunte saam te vat, maar andersyds ook kritiese kommentaar te lower en deel te neem aan die debat wat deur die huidige opiewing in die belangstelling in Bestuursetiek bestaan. Binne die raamwerk sal aandag aan die volgende geskenk word: Die beantwoording van die vraag of Bestuursetiek onderrig kan word en indien wel die trefwydte daarvan. Tweedens 'n toekomsblik op die onderrig van Bestuursetiek. Binne die konteks word die benadering tot die onderrig/ die inhoud en die rol van die student en die verantwoordelikheid van die dosent bekvk.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-311
Author(s):  
Giorgio (Georg) Orlandi

Abstract The book under review serves as a significant contribution to the field of Trans-Himalayan linguistics. Designed as a vade mecum for readers with little linguistic background in these three languages, Nathan W. Hill’s work attempts, on the one hand, a systematic exploration of the shared history of Burmese, Tibetan and Chinese, and, on the other, a general introduction to the reader interested in obtaining an overall understanding of the state of the art of the historical phonology of these three languages. Whilst it is acknowledged that the book in question has the potential to be a solid contribution to the field, it is also felt that few minor issues can be also addressed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-55
Author(s):  
Jasna Podreka

The author addresses the question of why, after more than half a century of feminist heritage in the field of conceptualisation and understanding of violence against women, its importance should be re-established and re-examined within a scientific context. The author starts from the premise that the definition of what actually constitutes violence is no longer at the forefront of public discussions. There is also a lack of contextual examination of violent events through the lens of power relations in the existing gender order. Public discourse, which is characterised by quick and superficial reflections on individual events that are taken out of context is completely devoid of any insight into the problem of violence against women, due to the continued gender inequality in society. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of understanding violence against women through the prism of gender or gender inequality, which is the key contribution of feminist structuralist theory. In light of this, a critique of feminist structuralist theory is presented, as it is the one that has laid down the foundation for understanding violence against women, while not providing all the tools needed for a complex understanding of the problem in its entirety. The author uses the example of the Harvey Weinstein scandal to attempt to illuminate the issue.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lensen ◽  
Bing Xue ◽  
Mengjie Zhang

Data visualization is a key tool in data mining for understanding big datasets. Many visualization methods have been proposed, including the well-regarded state-of-the-art method t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. However, the most powerful visualization methods have a significant limitation: the manner in which they create their visualization from the original features of the dataset is completely opaque. Many domains require an understanding of the data in terms of the original features; there is hence a need for powerful visualization methods which use understandable models. In this article, we propose a genetic programming (GP) approach called GP-tSNE for evolving interpretable mappings from the dataset to high-quality visualizations. A multiobjective approach is designed that produces a variety of visualizations in a single run which gives different tradeoffs between visual quality and model complexity. Testing against baseline methods on a variety of datasets shows the clear potential of GP-tSNE to allow deeper insight into data than that provided by existing visualization methods. We further highlight the benefits of a multiobjective approach through an in-depth analysis of a candidate front, which shows how multiple models can be analyzed jointly to give increased insight into the dataset.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lensen ◽  
Bing Xue ◽  
Mengjie Zhang

Data visualization is a key tool in data mining for understanding big datasets. Many visualization methods have been proposed, including the well-regarded state-of-the-art method t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. However, the most powerful visualization methods have a significant limitation: the manner in which they create their visualization from the original features of the dataset is completely opaque. Many domains require an understanding of the data in terms of the original features; there is hence a need for powerful visualization methods which use understandable models. In this article, we propose a genetic programming (GP) approach called GP-tSNE for evolving interpretable mappings from the dataset to high-quality visualizations. A multiobjective approach is designed that produces a variety of visualizations in a single run which gives different tradeoffs between visual quality and model complexity. Testing against baseline methods on a variety of datasets shows the clear potential of GP-tSNE to allow deeper insight into data than that provided by existing visualization methods. We further highlight the benefits of a multiobjective approach through an in-depth analysis of a candidate front, which shows how multiple models can be analyzed jointly to give increased insight into the dataset.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lensen ◽  
Bing Xue ◽  
Mengjie Zhang

Data visualization is a key tool in data mining for understanding big datasets. Many visualization methods have been proposed, including the well-regarded state-of-the-art method t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. However, the most powerful visualization methods have a significant limitation: the manner in which they create their visualization from the original features of the dataset is completely opaque. Many domains require an understanding of the data in terms of the original features; there is hence a need for powerful visualization methods which use understandable models. In this article, we propose a genetic programming (GP) approach called GP-tSNE for evolving interpretable mappings from the dataset to high-quality visualizations. A multiobjective approach is designed that produces a variety of visualizations in a single run which gives different tradeoffs between visual quality and model complexity. Testing against baseline methods on a variety of datasets shows the clear potential of GP-tSNE to allow deeper insight into data than that provided by existing visualization methods. We further highlight the benefits of a multiobjective approach through an in-depth analysis of a candidate front, which shows how multiple models can be analyzed jointly to give increased insight into the dataset.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Lensen ◽  
Bing Xue ◽  
Mengjie Zhang

Data visualization is a key tool in data mining for understanding big datasets. Many visualization methods have been proposed, including the well-regarded state-of-the-art method t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. However, the most powerful visualization methods have a significant limitation: the manner in which they create their visualization from the original features of the dataset is completely opaque. Many domains require an understanding of the data in terms of the original features; there is hence a need for powerful visualization methods which use understandable models. In this article, we propose a genetic programming (GP) approach called GP-tSNE for evolving interpretable mappings from the dataset to high-quality visualizations. A multiobjective approach is designed that produces a variety of visualizations in a single run which gives different tradeoffs between visual quality and model complexity. Testing against baseline methods on a variety of datasets shows the clear potential of GP-tSNE to allow deeper insight into data than that provided by existing visualization methods. We further highlight the benefits of a multiobjective approach through an in-depth analysis of a candidate front, which shows how multiple models can be analyzed jointly to give increased insight into the dataset.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Sandro Serpa ◽  
Ana Isabel Santos ◽  
Carlos Miguel Ferreira

Ivan Illich was a heavy critic of traditional schooling. His proposals were disregarded, perhaps too quickly, for various reasons. This paper, based on review research, aims to add to a current (re)reading of Illich, seeking to answer the following question: what is the relevance of Illich’s proposal for a successful education in an increasingly digitalised society? The results of this research allow concluding, on the one hand, that Illich’s proposal to replace strict schooling with (self)training networks in a society that is increasingly digitalised and linked by the internet may offer potential benefits, and it is worth, at least, of an in-depth analysis. On the other hand, provocative scholars that allow us to get out of any ideologically and socially delimited system have the merit of helping to provide instruments that enable a better understanding of the present and, consequently, a rationale for the options for the future. Ivan Illich is one of these scholars.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-55
Author(s):  
Jasna Podreka

The author addresses the question of why, after more than half a century of feminist heritage in the field of conceptualisation and understanding of violence against women, its importance should be re-established and re-examined within a scientific context. The author starts from the premise that the definition of what actually constitutes violence is no longer at the forefront of public discussions. There is also a lack of contextual examination of violent events through the lens of power relations in the existing gender order. Public discourse, which is characterised by quick and superficial reflections on individual events that are taken out of context is completely devoid of any insight into the problem of violence against women, due to the continued gender inequality in society. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of understanding violence against women through the prism of gender or gender inequality, which is the key contribution of feminist structuralist theory. In light of this, a critique of feminist structuralist theory is presented, as it is the one that has laid down the foundation for understanding violence against women, while not providing all the tools needed for a complex understanding of the problem in its entirety. The author uses the example of the Harvey Weinstein scandal to attempt to illuminate the issue.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Kerschke ◽  
Lars Kotthoff ◽  
Jakob Bossek ◽  
Holger H. Hoos ◽  
Heike Trautmann

The Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP) is one of the best-studied NP-hard problems. Over the years, many different solution approaches and solvers have been developed. For the first time, we directly compare five state-of-the-art inexact solvers—namely, LKH, EAX, restart variants of those, and MAOS—on a large set of well-known benchmark instances and demonstrate complementary performance, in that different instances may be solved most effectively by different algorithms. We leverage this complementarity to build an algorithm selector, which selects the best TSP solver on a per-instance basis and thus achieves significantly improved performance compared to the single best solver, representing an advance in the state of the art in solving the Euclidean TSP. Our in-depth analysis of the selectors provides insight into what drives this performance improvement.


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