Self­-Driving Tesla Was Involved in Fatal Crash, U.S. Says

Self­-Driving Tesla Was Involved in Fatal Crash, U.S. Says

By BILL VLASIC and NEAL BOUDETTE JUNE 30, 2016 DETROIT —

The race by automakers and technology firms to develop self­-driving cars has been fueled by the belief that computers can operate a vehicle more safely than human drivers. But that view is now in question after the revelation on Thursday that the driver of a Tesla Model S electric sedan was killed in an accident when the car was in self­-driving mode.

Federal regulators, who are in the early stages of setting guidelines for autonomous vehicles, have opened a formal investigation into the incident, which occurred on May 7 in Williston, Fla. In a statement, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said preliminary reports indicated that the crash occurred when a tractor­-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla, and the car failed to apply the brakes. It is the first known fatal accident involving a vehicle being driven by itself by means of sophisticated computer software, sensors, cameras and radar.

The safety agency did not identify the Tesla driver who was killed. But the Florida Highway Patrol identified him as Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio. He was a Navy veteran who owned a technology consulting firm. In a news release, Tesla on Thursday described him as a man “who spent his life focused on innovation and the promise of technology and who believed strongly in Tesla’s mission.”

Mr. Brown posted videos of himself riding in autopilot mode. “The car’s doing it all itself,’’ he said in one, smiling as he took his hands from the steering wheel. In another, he praised the system for saving his car from an accident. A May obituary of Mr. Brown in The Greensburg Tribune Review in Westmoreland County, Pa., where he had formerly lived, said he had spent 11 years in the Navy and then founded a technology consulting company, Nexu Innovations. He is survived by his parents, Warren and Sueanne Brown, of Stow, Ohio, and his sister, Amanda Lee, the obituary said.

The Nexu Innovations website, describing Mr. Brown as founder and owner, said that in the Navy he had been on active duty as a “master explosive ordnance disposal technician,” including a stint with the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, which is commonly known as SEAL Team 6. Ricky Hammer, a retired Navy master chief who worked with Mr. Brown at the development group, said Mr. Brown had strong computer skills and “was the equivalent of an electrical engineer even though he didn’t have the degree.” In Iraq in 2006, he said, Mr. Brown played a crucial role in preparing captured explosive projectiles for shipment to the United States to support efforts to improve the armor on military vehicles. “He did it by being very aggressive,” Mr. Hammer said, noting that Mr. Brown helped to collect the projectiles after raids on bomb-­making shops and would X­ray them to determine their contents.

The traffic safety agency said it was working with the Florida Highway Patrol in the inquiry into Mr. Brown’s fatal accident. The agency cautioned that the opening of an investigation did not mean it thought there was a defect in the vehicle being examined. But the accident is a blow to Tesla at a time when the company is pushing to expand its product lineup from expensive electric vehicles to more mainstream models. The company on Thursday declined to say whether the technology or the driver or either were at fault in the accident.

In its news release it said, “Neither autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor-­trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.” The crash casts doubt on whether autonomous vehicles in general can consistently make split­-second, life­-or-­death driving decisions on the highway.

And other companies are increasing investments in self­-driving technology. Google, for example, recently announced plans to adapt 100 Chrysler minivans for autonomous driving. Earlier this year, G.M. acquired the software firm Cruise Automation to accelerate its own self­-driving applications.

Even as the companies conduct many tests on autonomous vehicles at both private facilities and on public highways, there is skepticism that the technology has progressed far enough for the government to approve cars that totally drive themselves.

The federal traffic safety agency is nearing the release of a new set of guidelines and regulations regarding the testing of self­-driving vehicles on public roads. They are expected to be released in July.

At a recent technology conference in Novi, Mich., the agency’s leader, Mark Rosekind, said self­-driving cars should at least be twice as safe as human drivers to result in a significant reduction in roadway deaths. “We need to start with two times better,’’ Mr. Rosekind said. “We need to set a higher bar if we expect safety to actually be a benefit here.”

Karl Brauer, an analyst with the auto research firm Kelley Blue Book, said the accident served as a signal that the technology might not be as advanced and ready for the market as some proponents have suggested. “This is a bit of a wake­up call,” Mr. Brauer said. “People who were maybe too aggressive in taking the position that we’re almost there, this technology is going to be in the market very soon, maybe need to reassess that.”

Tesla said in its news release that it had informed the traffic safety agency about the accident “immediately after it occurred.” But the company reported it publicly only on Thursday, after learning that the agency had begun to investigate. In the past, Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, has praised the company’s self­driving feature, introduced in the Model S last fall, as “probably better than a person right now.”

But in its statement on Thursday, the company cautioned that it was still only a test feature and noted that its use ‘‘requires explicit acknowledgment that the system is new technology.’’ It noted that when a driver activated the system, an acknowledgment box popped up, explaining that the autopilot mode “is an assist feature that requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times.”

Correction: June 30, 2016 An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Williston, Fla. It is about 100 miles northwest of Orlando, not 100 miles northeast of it.

You Break It, You Own It

You Break It, You Own It

Thomas L. Friedman JUNE 29, 2016

The British vote by a narrow majority to leave the European Union is not the end of the world — but it does show us how we can get there.

A major European power, a longtime defender of liberal democracy, pluralism and free markets, falls under the sway of a few cynical politicians who see a chance to exploit public fears of immigration to advance their careers. They create a stark binary choice on an incredibly complex issue, of which few people understand the full scope — stay in or quit the E.U.

These politicians assume that the dog will never catch the car and they will have the best of all worlds — opposing something unpopular but not having to deal with the implications of the public actually voting to get rid of it. But they so dumb down the debate with lies, fear­mongering and misdirection, and with only a simple majority required to win, that the leave­-the-­E.U. crowd carries the day by a small margin. Presto: the dog catches the car.

And, of course, it has no idea now what to do with this car. There is no plan. There is just barking.

Like I said, not the end of the world yet, but if a few more E.U. countries try this trick we’ll have quite a little mess on our hands. Attention Donald Trump voters: this is what happens to a country that falls for hucksters who think that life can just imitate Twitter — that there are simple answers to hard questions — and that small men can rearrange big complex systems by just erecting a wall and everything will be peachy.

But I digress. Because although withdrawing from the E.U. is not the right answer for Britain, the fact that this argument won, albeit with lies, tells you that people are feeling deeply anxious about something.

It’s the story of our time: the pace of change in technology, globalization and climate have started to outrun the ability of our political systems to build the social, educational, community, workplace and political innovations needed for some citizens to keep up.

We have globalized trade and manufacturing, and we have introduced robots and artificial intelligent systems, far faster than we have designed the social safety nets, trade surge protectors and educational advancement options that would allow people caught in this transition to have the time, space and tools to thrive.

It’s left a lot of people dizzy and dislocated. At the same time, we have opened borders deliberately — or experienced the influx of illegal migration from failing states at an unprecedented scale — and this too has left some people feeling culturally unanchored, that they are losing their “home” in the deepest sense of that word.

The physical reality of immigration, particularly in Europe, has run ahead of not only the host countries’ ability to integrate people but also of the immigrants’ ability to integrate themselves — and both are necessary for social stability.

And these rapid changes are taking place when our politics has never been more gridlocked and unable to respond with just common sense — like governments borrowing money at near zero interest to invest in much-­needed infrastructure that creates jobs and enables us to better exploit these technologies.

“Political power in the West has been failing its own test of legitimacy and accountability since 2008 — and in its desperation has chosen to erode it further by unforgivably abdicating responsibility through the use of a referendum on the E.U.,” said Nader Mousavizadeh, who co-­leads the London­-based global consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners.

But we need to understand that “the issue before us is ‘integration’ not ‘immigration,’” Mousavizadeh added. The lived experience in most cities in Europe today, is the fact that “a pluralistic, multiethnic society has grown up here, actually rather peacefully, and it has brought enormous benefits and prosperity. We need to change the focus of the problem — and the solution — from the physical reality of immigration to the political and economic challenge of integration.” Schools, hospitals and public institutions generally will not rise to the challenge of the 21st century “if social integration is failing.”

Indeed, in my view, the countries that nurture pluralism the best will be the ones that thrive the most in the 21st century. They will have the most political stability, attract the most talent and be able to collaborate with the most people. But it’s hard work. Yet in an age when technology is integrating us more tightly together and delivering tremendous flows of innovation, knowledge, connectivity and commerce, the future belongs to those who build webs not walls, who can integrate not separate, to get the most out of these flows.

Britain leaving the E.U. is a lose-­lose proposition. I hope the “Regrexit” campaign can reverse Brexit and that Americans will dump Trump. Never forget, after the destruction of World War II, the E.U. project “emerged as a force for peace, prosperity, democracy and freedom in the world,” noted Eric Beinhocker, the executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford. “This is one of humankind’s great achievements. Rather than let it be destroyed we must use the shock of the Brexit vote to reimagine, reform, and rebuild a new Europe.” 

Democrats Need to Wake Up

Democrats Need to Wake Up

By BERNIE SANDERS JUNE 28, 2016 Surprise, surprise.

Workers in Britain, many of whom have seen a decline in their standard of living while the very rich in their country have become much richer, have turned their backs on the European Union and a globalized economy that is failing them and their children.

And it’s not just the British who are suffering. That increasingly globalized economy, established and maintained by the world’s economic elite, is failing people everywhere.

Incredibly, the wealthiest 62 people on this planet own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population — around 3.6 billion people. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the whole of the bottom 99 percent. The very, very rich enjoy unimaginable luxury while billions of people endure abject poverty, unemployment, and inadequate health care, education, housing and drinking water. Could this rejection of the current form of the global economy happen in the United States? You bet it could.

During my campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, I’ve visited 46 states. What I saw and heard on too many occasions were painful realities that the political and media establishment fail even to recognize. In the last 15 years, nearly 60,000 factories in this country have closed, and more than 4.8 million well­-paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Much of this is related to disastrous trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-­wage countries.

Despite major increases in productivity, the median male worker in America today is making $726 dollars less than he did in 1973, while the median female worker is making $1,154 less than she did in 2007, after adjusting for inflation. Nearly 47 million Americans live in poverty. An estimated 28 million have no health insurance, while many others are underinsured. Millions of people are struggling with outrageous levels of student debt. For perhaps the first time in modern history, our younger generation will probably have a lower standard of living than their parents.

Frighteningly, millions of poorly educated Americans will have a shorter life span than the previous generation as they succumb to despair, drugs and alcohol. Meanwhile, in our country the top one­-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Fifty­-eight percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. Wall Street and billionaires, through their “super PACs,” are able to buy elections.

On my campaign, I’ve talked to workers unable to make it on $8 or $9 an hour; retirees struggling to purchase the medicine they need on $9,000 a year of Social Security; young people unable to afford college. I also visited the American citizens of Puerto Rico, where some 58 percent of the children live in poverty and only a little more than 40 percent of the adult population has a job or is seeking one.

Let’s be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change. But we do not need change based on the demagogy, bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment that punctuated so much of the Leave campaign’s rhetoric — and is central to Donald J. Trump’s message.

We need a president who will vigorously support international cooperation that brings the people of the world closer together, reduces hyper-nationalism and decreases the possibility of war. We also need a president who respects the democratic rights of the people, and who will fight for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies and other powerful special interests. We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade. Americans should not have to compete against workers in low­-wage countries who earn pennies an hour.

We must defeat the Trans­-Pacific Partnership. We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models. We need to end the international scandal in which large corporations and the wealthy avoid paying trillions of dollars in taxes to their national governments. We need to create tens of millions of jobs worldwide by combating global climate change and by transforming the world’s energy system away from fossil fuels. We need international efforts to cut military spending around the globe and address the causes of war: poverty, hatred, hopelessness and ignorance.

The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States.

Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class. In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.

Britain’s Brexit Leap in the Dark

Britain’s Brexit Leap in the Dark

Roger Cohen JUNE 24, 2016 LONDON —

The British have given the world’s political, financial and business establishment a massive kick in the teeth by voting to leave the European Union, a historic decision that will plunge Britain into uncertainty for years to come and reverses the integration on which the Continent’s stability has been based.

Warnings about the dire consequences of a British exit from President Barack Obama, Britain’s political leaders, major corporations based in Britain and the International Monetary Fund proved useless. If anything, they goaded a mood of defiant anger against those very elites.

This resentment has its roots in many things but may be summed up as a revolt against global capitalism. To heck with the experts and political correctness was the predominant mood in the end.

A majority of Britons had no time for the politicians that brought the world a disastrous war in Iraq, the 2008 financial meltdown, European austerity, stagnant working-­class wages, high immigration and tax havens for the super­rich.

That some of these issues have no direct link to the European Union or its much­maligned Brussels bureaucrats did not matter. It was a convenient target in this restive moment that has also made Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee — and may now take him further still on a similar wave of nativism and anti­-establishment rage.

David Cameron, the British prime minister prodded into holding the referendum by the right of his Conservative Party, said he would resign, staying on in a caretaker capacity for a few months. This was the right call, and an inevitable one.

He has led the country into a debacle. The pound duly plunged some 10 percent to its lowest level since 1985. Global markets were rattled. Mainstream European politicians lamented a sad day for Europe and Britain; rightists like Marine Le Pen in France exulted. The world has entered a period of grave volatility.

Ever­-greater unity was a foundation stone since the 1950s not only of peace in Europe, putting an end to the repetitive wars that had ravaged generations of Europeans, but also of the global political order. Now all bets are off. A process of European unraveling may have begun.

A core assumption of American foreign policy — that a united Europe had overcomes its divisions — has been undermined. Geert Wilders, the right­wing anti­-immigrant Dutch politician, promptly tweeted: “Hurrah for the British! Now it is our turn. Time for a Dutch referendum!” The European Union is more vulnerable than at any point since its inception.

The sacred images of old — like French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl hand­in­hand at Verdun — have lost their resonance. The travails of the euro, the tide of immigration (both within the European Union from poorer to richer members and from outside), and high unemployment have led to an eerie collective loss of patience, prudence and memory. Anything but this has become a widespread sentiment; irrationality is in the air.

The colossal leap in the dark that a traditionally cautious people — the British — were prepared to take has to be taken seriously. It suggests that other such leaps could occur elsewhere, perhaps in Trump’s America. A Trump victory in November is more plausible now because it has an immediate precedent in a developed democracy ready to trash the status quo for the high-­risk unknown.

Fifty­two percent of the British population was ready to face higher unemployment, a weaker currency, possible recession, political turbulence, the loss of access to a market of a half-­billion people, a messy divorce that may take as long as two years to complete, a very long subsequent negotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe, and the tortuous redrafting of laws and trade treaties and environmental regulations — all for what the right­wing leader Nigel Farage daftly called “Independence Day.”

Britain was a sovereign nation before this vote in every significant sense. It remains so. Estrangement Day would be more apt.

The English were also prepared to risk something else: the break­up of the United Kingdom. Scotland voted to remain in the European Union by a margin of 62 percent to 38 percent. Northern Ireland voted to remain by 56 percent to 44 percent. The Scots will now likely seek a second referendum on independence. Divisions were not only national. London voted overwhelmingly to remain. But the countryside, small towns and hard­-hit industrial provincial industrial centers voted overwhelmingly to leave and carried the day. A Britain fissured between a liberal, metropolitan class centered in London and the rest was revealed.

Europe’s failings — and they have been conspicuous over the past decade — are simply not sufficient to explain what Britain has done to itself. This was a vote against the global economic and social order that the first 16 years of the 21st century have produced. Where it leads is unclear. The worst is not inevitable but it is plausible.

 Britain will remain an important power. But it will punch beneath its weight. It faces serious, long-­term political and economic risk. Anger was most focused on the hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming into Britain each year, most from other European Union nations like Poland. Farage’s U.K. Independence Party, abetted by much of the press, was able to whip up a storm that conflated E.U. immigration with the trickle from the Middle East.

Wild myths, like imminent Turkish membership of the European Union, were cultivated. Violence entered the campaign on a wave of xenophobia and take­our-country back rhetoric. In this light, it is not surprising that Trump supporters were delighted. Sarah Palin welcomed the “good news.” One tweet from a supporter read: “I’m thrilled with U.K. 1st step — time 4 all the dominoes 2 fall, every country to leave & end the E.U.”

Trump arrived in Britain on Friday, a timely visit. He said the vote to quit the E.U. was “a great thing” and the British “took back their country.” He did not say from whom, but the specter of our times is a dark, controlling global force stealing national identity. It is quite likely that Cameron’s successor will be Boris Johnson, the bombastic, mercurial and sometimes fact­-lite former London mayor with his trademark mop of blond hair. Johnson was a leader of the campaign for “Brexit”; he may now reap his political reward. The Era of the Hair looms.

Timothy Garton Ash, the historian, paraphrasing Churchill on democracy, wrote before the referendum that: “The Europe we have today is the worst possible Europe, apart from all the other Europes that have been tried from time to time.” It was a wise call to prudence in the imperfect real world. Now, driven by myths about sovereignty and invading hordes, Britain has ushered in another time of treacherous trial for the European Continent and for itself. My nephew wrote on Facebook that he had never been less proud of his country. I feel the same way about the country I grew up in and left.

Brexit’s Stunning Coup

Brexit’s Stunning Coup By TONY BLAIR JUNE 24, 2016 London

— THE decision of British voters in Thursday’s referendum to leave the European Union will have vast consequences for Britain, for Europe and for the world. For a day, the British people were the government, and by 52 percent to 48 percent, they took the decision to go.

I was a British prime minister who believed completely that Britain’s future lay in Europe. I was the prime minister responsible for legislating substantial selfrule in Scotland so that it would remain part of the United Kingdom. I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement so that Northern Ireland could be at peace within Britain. Because the result of the referendum has put so much of this at risk, Friday became a day of great personal, as well as political, sadness.

The immediate impact of the Brexit vote is economic. The fallout has been as swift as it was predictable. At one point on Friday, the pound hit a 30­year low against the dollar, and a leading British stock index had dropped more than 8 percent. The nation’s credit rating is under threat. The lasting effect, however, may be political, and with global implications. If the economic shocks continue, then the British experiment will serve as a warning. But if they abate, then populist movements in other countries will gain momentum. How did this happen?

The right in British politics found an issue that’s causing palpitations in the body politic the world over: immigration. Part of the Conservative Party, allied with the far­right U.K. Independence Party, took this issue and focused its campaign to leave Europe on it. This strategy could not have succeeded, though, without finding common cause with a significant segment of Labour voters. These Labour supporters did not get a clear message from their own party, whose leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was lukewarm about remaining in the union. They were drawn by the Leavers’ promise that Brexit would bring an end to the country’s perceived immigration problems. And, worried about their flatlining incomes and cuts in public spending, these Labour voters saw this vote as an opportunity to register an anti­government protest. The strains within Britain that led to this referendum result are universal, at least in the West. Insurgent movements of left and right, posing as standardbearers of a popular revolt against the political establishment, can spread and grow at scale and speed.

Today’s polarized and fragmented news coverage only encourages such insurgencies — an effect magnified many times by the social media revolution. It was already clear before the Brexit vote that modern populist movements could take control of political parties. What wasn’t clear was whether they could take over a country like Britain. Now we know they can.

Those in the political center were demonized as out­-of-­touch elites, as though the people leading the insurgency were ordinary folks — which, in the case of the Brexit campaign, is a laughable proposition. The campaign made the word “expert” virtually a term of abuse, and when experts warned of the economic harm that would follow Brexit, they were castigated as “scaremongers.” Immigrants were described as a bunch of scroungers coming to grab Britons’ jobs and benefits when, in reality, the recent migrants from Eastern Europe contribute far more in taxes than they take in welfare payments. And besides, immigration to Britain from outside the European Union will not be affected by the referendum decision.

The political center has lost its power to persuade and its essential means of connection to the people it seeks to represent. Instead, we are seeing a convergence of the far left and far right. The right attacks immigrants while the left rails at bankers, but the spirit of insurgency, the venting of anger at those in power and the addiction to simple, demagogic answers to complex problems are the same for both extremes. Underlying it all is a shared hostility to globalization.

Britain and Europe now face a protracted period of economic and political uncertainty, as the British government tries to negotiate a future outside the single market where half of Britain’s goods and services are traded. These new arrangements — to be clear about the scale of the challenge — must be negotiated with all the other 27 countries, their individual parliaments and the European Parliament. Some governments may be cooperative; others won’t want to make leaving easy for Britain, in order to discourage similar movements. Britain is a strong country, with a resilient people and energy and creativity in abundance. I don’t doubt Britons’ capacity to come through, whatever the cost. But the stress on the United Kingdom is already apparent. Voters in Scotland chose by a large margin to remain in Europe, with the result that there are renewed calls for another referendum on Scottish independence. Northern Ireland has benefited from virtually open borders with the Republic of Ireland. That freedom is at risk because the North’s border with the South now becomes the European Union’s border, a potential threat to the Northern Ireland peace process.

If the people — usually a repository of common sense and practicality — do something that appears neither sensible nor practical, then it forces a period of long and hard reflection.

My own politics is waking to this new political landscape. The same dangerous impulses are visible, too, in American politics, but the challenges of globalization cannot be met by isolationism or shutting borders. The center must regain its political traction, rediscover its capacity to analyze the problems we all face and find solutions that rise above the populist anger. If we do not succeed in beating back the far left and far right before they take the nations of Europe on this reckless experiment, it will end the way such rash action always does in history: at best, in disillusion; at worst, in rancorous division. The center must hold. Tony Blair was the prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007.

人本，金融資本主義下的真實彼岸

人本，金融資本主義下的真實彼岸

2016-06-25

聯合報 陳立恆 （亞太文化創意產業協會創會理事長）

現實版的鋼鐵俠埃隆．馬斯克（Elon Musk）之前大發驚人之語，表示人類只有十億分之一的機會活在真實世界，姑且不論你我對於人工智能與虛擬現實的發展觀點為何，在我看來，廿一世紀的人類千真萬確地活在金融資本主義控制下的娑婆世界，一個苦多樂少、貧富天壤的五濁空間，困惑著全世界七十億人口不得出離。

所謂金融資本主義，是指金融資本主導著國家或世界的社會、政治與經濟，並藉由金融系統操作的貨幣財富積累，凌駕於產品生產或是服務輸出之上的一種經濟制度，如同五月英國衛報上拉娜．弗魯哈（Rana Foroohar）關於美國資本主義潰敗的專欄所示，現在的全球經濟已不是靠實體市場支撐，過去在傳統資本主義制度中，金融機構的存在原本是為了將勞動者的儲蓄，匯集到需要擴張的企業手中，目前只有十五％金融機構資產服務於這一項目，其餘的資本則落入到一個相對封閉的投機交易循環當中，也就是我們自二○○八年來所熟知的、充滿槓桿與債務的虛擬數字世界，就連一些如同蘋果一樣的世界五百強企業，都加入了發行公司債再回購公司股票、支撐股價這樣的金融操作，只消某家企業或某個政府一步之差，這個危如累卵的虛擬數字世界，又會如金融海嘯一樣，再次劫水漫世。

誠然，身處在金融資本主義裡，最駭人聽聞不是天文數字虛假，而是只有少數投機者可優游於虛假堆積出的美好幻影，大部分勞動者卻要忍受虛假崩落後的醜陋絕望，這就是金融資本主義帶給我們這時代最巨大的黑洞：「樂即是空、苦竟是真」，如此的人間黑洞，但憑人工智能與虛擬現實恐怕也不能填補。

按照佛家說法，即使五濁惡苦的娑婆世界亦有星星善火，我相信這個逐漸沉淪的時代，依然有機會逃離金融資本主義的黑洞，除了幾個在金融主義裡浮沉的強勢經濟體，特別是英、美、歐盟等，應當同心協力出手系列金融改革政策，也為金融以外的實體產業復興挹注資源，更重要的是，那些已被金融資本化的企業與其經營者們，必須經歷一場回歸人本的思想覺醒。

「以人為本」，乍聽之下並不商業，但其實最在商言商，因為「人」是組成市場的最小單位，所有脫離「人」的需求或是供給的市場，諸如十七世紀的荷蘭鬱金香，或上世紀九○年代的日本房地產，注定成為後繼無力的泡沫。

因此，我們需要各國政府遏止金融資本主義的虛無擴張，同時鼓勵企業家聯合科學家、設計師與勞動者，進行「以人為本」的創意發想與勞動生產，才可能在金融泡沫氾濫的今天，登上市場經濟的真實彼岸；否則無論英國脫歐與否、美國總統是男是女、台灣未來朝西朝南，全世界都將困坐在一個假性成長、隨時傾頹的全球經濟裡等待下一場幻滅。

（作者為亞太文化創意產業協會創會理事長）

‘Brexit’ Revolt Casts a Shadow Over Hillary Clinton’s Cautious Path

‘Brexit’ Revolt Casts a Shadow Over Hillary Clinton’s Cautious Path

By PATRICK HEALY JUNE 25, 2016

For Hillary Clinton, Britain’s emotionally charged uprising against the European Union is the sort of populist victory over establishment politics that she fears in the coming presidential election.

Mrs. Clinton shares more with the defeated “Remain” campaign than just their common slogan, “Stronger Together.” Her fundamental argument, much akin to Prime Minister David Cameron’s against British withdrawal from the European Union, is that Americans should value stability and incremental change over the risks entailed in radical change and the possibility of chaos if Donald J. Trump wins the presidency.

She offers reasonableness instead of resentment, urging voters to see the big picture and promising to manage economic and immigration upheaval, just as Mr. Cameron did. She, too, is a pragmatic internationalist battling against nationalist anger, cautioning that the turmoil after the so­-called Brexit vote underscores a need for “calm, steady, experienced leadership in the White House.”

But prudence is cold comfort to people fed up with more-­of-­the-­same. According to their friends and advisers, Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have worried for months that she was out of sync with the mood of the electorate, and that her politically safe messages — like “I’m a progressive who gets results” — were far less compelling to frustrated voters than the “political revolution” of Senator Bernie Sanders or Mr. Trump’s grievance-­driven promise to “Make America Great Again.”

 Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump won a combined 25 million votes during the primary season, compared with 16 million for Mrs. Clinton. And while many of Mr. Sanders’s supporters are expected to support her in November, she has not recalibrated her message to try to tap into the anger that he and Mr. Trump channeled. Nor does Mrs. Clinton have any plans, advisers say, to take cues from the Brexit campaign and start soft­pedaling her support for globalized markets, or denouncing porous borders, illegal immigrants and the lack of job protections in free­trade agreements. Much distinguishes the presidential contest from the British fight, of course, including a head-­to­-head matchup between well­-known candidates, a sharply different economic context, and a long and proud history of immigration.

Yet in addition to worrying that she is out of step, Mrs. Clinton is somewhat hemmed in by her record: She supported her husband’s North American Free Trade Agreement, which caused significant economic pain in the industrial Midwest after it went into effect in 1994. And her nuanced views about free trade are a harder sell to many voters than Mr. Trump’s fire­-breathing vows to trash bad trade deals and use tariffs as economic weapons of national defense.

While Mrs. Clinton is counting on Mr. Trump’s history of racist and sexist remarks to doom his candidacy, Thursday’s Brexit referendum was an unnerving reminder that voter anger is deeper and broader than many elite politicians and veteran pollsters realize.

In swing states like Ohio, many Democrats and Republicans yearn for an economic comeback and are not confident that Mrs. Clinton understands their frustrations or has the ideas and wherewithal to deliver the sort of change that could satisfy them.

“Brexit is clearly a cautionary tale for the Clinton campaign not to get too complacent with a potential victory,” said David B. Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Akron. “Trump, Sanders and those in Great Britain who ran the Leave campaign are tapping into an anger and anxiety that is clearly festering. Working­-class folks in the United States are similar to working­-class folks in Europe. And a lot of those working­-class people feel as if the international economic system is not working for them and strangling the middle class.”

Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist, said the British vote was the clearest sign yet that “the intensity against the status quo is far more real than many are still willing to acknowledge.” “If the Trump victory in the primary wasn’t enough of one, the Brexit vote serves as a major wake­up call indicating just how frustrated average voters are with those in power,” Mr. DuHaime said.

Several Democrats cautioned against drawing too many lessons from the Brexit vote, saying mass immigration and economic malaise were bigger problems in Britain and the European Union than in the United States. They also said many British voters were revolting against a bureaucracy in Brussels that they regarded as bloated, overpaid and prone to interfering in the affairs of sovereign countries.

Yet the Democrats acknowledged that the worldview held by Mrs. Clinton and many of the party’s elites was not as attractive to many voters as it once was. “Liberal internationalism seems to have been dying for a while,” said Mark S. Mellman, a Democratic pollster who is not involved with the Clinton campaign. “But while that may be the animating philosophy of foreign policy intellectuals the world over, it is not the animating philosophy of America, nor of our domestic politics.”

For Sean Harrington, a husband and father of three who owns the Town Pump Tavern in downtown Detroit, the support for free-­trade deals and international markets cannot die fast enough. Taking a break from his bookkeeping duties on Friday, he said President Clinton’s economic policies were still “ruining the economy” by giving benefits to large corporations that move jobs overseas, while in states like Michigan, “the average work force loses.” “If my fellow Americans were doing better, there would be more money around and traded in and out of my pockets,” said Mr. Harrington, a registered independent who is undecided between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump.

On the campaign trail, Mrs. Clinton regularly pledges to “make sure our economy works for everyone, not just those at the top,” as she put it on Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C., where she also promised to reject “bad trade deals and unfair trade practices.” She also argued in favor of Britain’s remaining in the European Union.

But she was not surprised that the “Leave” campaign won, her advisers said Friday, because she understands the extent of voter anger. Her advisers said they were confident the referendum in Britain did not mirror the presidential election in the United States. “These are two different countries, with very different circumstances and demographics, facing different choices,” said Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director. “We believe American voters are looking for concrete solutions to address their economic frustrations and unlikely to find the turmoil, economic uncertainty and roiling of markets caused by the Brexit vote particularly appealing.”

Frank Luntz, a Republican expert on political messaging, said Mr. Cameron and the “Remain” camp had failed to “personalize, individualize or humanize their campaign.” The “Stronger Together” slogan shared by the “Remain” campaign and Mrs. Clinton feels bloodless and overly intellectual compared with the more emotional, country­-first appeals of Mr. Trump and the “Leave” movement, he said. “The problem with the concept of ‘together’ is that it promotes groupthink rather than individual pursuits,” Mr. Luntz said. “We are in an age of individual action, not collective responsibility.”

Mrs. Clinton’s arguments against Mr. Trump often require a great deal of explanation to voters, which can sometimes turn them off. While Mr. Trump thrills his audiences with big promises — without saying much about how he would fulfill them — Mrs. Clinton can get caught in the gears of policy. One recent exception was a foreign policy speech in early June, when she hit a rhythm and ripped into Mr. Trump with memorable lines like “He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.” But when Mrs. Clinton takes pains to explain why Mr. Trump’s promises and policies do not add up, or are too risky, she runs a risk of her own: that she will sound as though she is instructing or talking down to her audience.

Not many voters want a lecturer as president. “A slogan and a message must be aspirational — either give people hope things will get better or that the bad stuff will stop — both,” said Ruth Sherman, a political communications analyst who is not affiliated with any campaign. Referring to one of Mrs. Clinton’s taglines, she said: “Hillary’s ‘I’m with her’ — I remember thinking when I first saw it, ‘Really?’ It’s not my job to be with her. She should be with me.”

If Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” is resonant — “by far the best slogan of all the candidates,” Ms. Sherman said — Mrs. Clinton is counting on voters to appreciate policy ideas that are more strategic than feel­-good. She argued in Raleigh, for instance, that markets like the European Union “work best when all the stakeholders share in the benefits.” While that statement was hardly in the aspirational vein that Ms. Sherman recommends, it set a clear goal and was less divisive than Mr. Trump’s comments on the British referendum.

The American electorate has tilted this year toward presidential candidates who make them feel as much as think, but Mrs. Clinton and her allies hope that voters will reflect on the vote in Britain and opt for the steadiness and predictability that she promises. “I don’t think the average American who has a retirement account right now is thrilled about Donald Trump’s support of Brexit,” said Thomas R. Nides, who was a deputy secretary of state under Mrs. Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton understands we always need to change — but change that doesn’t cause unintended consequences for the average American.” 

Brexit and Europe’s Angry Old Men

Brexit and Europe’s Angry Old Men

Jochen Bittner JUNE 24, 2016 Hamburg, Germany —

I WAS born in 1973, the year Britain entered the European Economic Community. And like Britain, I have always been skeptical about the quasi­religious, ever­closer­union ideology that gripped so many proponents of the European Union, especially the anxious old men of my parents’ generation, who swore that the only alternative to unification was a relapse into nationalism.

And now this. Just as Europeans of my generation were being relieved of those anxious old men, another type stepped onstage: the angry old men.

These politicians — men and women, to be sure — are young enough not to have experienced world war, but they are old enough to idealize the pre­1989 era and a simpler, pre­globalization world. At the same time, they are obviously too sclerotic to imagine how democratic institutions can adjust to the new realities. With their aggressive posturing, these Nigel Farages, Marine Le Pens, Geert Wilderses and Donald J. Trumps are driving the debate — and possibly driving the West off a cliff. “It’s a victory for ordinary, decent people who have taken on the establishment,” declared Nigel Farage, the head of the U.K. Independence Party.

Rubbish. It was a victory for people who have neither the guts nor the imagination to take on the downsides of globalization. Yes, globalization and Europeanization have taken their tolls, both on traditional forms of democracy and on traditional job security. But instead of tackling these problems, the Farages of the world have started the next ideological war. There was a time when I thought the pro­European ideologues were the ones who were out of touch.

I remember, not too long ago, watching one of them in full flight. It was Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, giving a speech at a German university. He started by asking the students in the lecture hall to imagine how many of them would actually be sitting there if this were the year 1945. About half of you would be dead, Mr. Schulz said, as his index finger drew a line across our heads, and many others would be crippled and wounded. Wow, I thought, what a splendid opening for a debate on the shortcomings of the European Union.

Even though Europeans of my age do believe in Europe, the righteous theatrics of the integrationists were hard to endure. But now our future is in danger of being taken away by the other extreme, by the maniacs of disintegration.

A YouGov poll conducted in the run­up to the British referendum showed that the vote for Brexit was very much one of the old against the young. The older the voter, the more he or she was inclined to leave. Some 64 percent of the age group from 18 to 24 said they would vote for Remain; just 35 percent of those between 50 and 64 wanted to stay.

We — the young, optimistic millions across Europe — cannot lose the West to Mr. Farage and his ilk, to demagogues who have actually much more in common with the scapegoating culture of the Arab world they so despise than with the enlightened, rational tradition of Europe.

 We can still repair the damage done to democracy in our rush to move beyond national borders by admitting to the problems. If, for instance, European internal migrants really have lowered the wages in Britain, this is a serious problem. But it can be dealt with through, say, stricter control of the labor market — not abandonment of the entire framework for European cooperation. Instead, migrants and refugees have become the vessel for the charge that the mighty at the top have unleashed a form of uncontrolled globalization whose effects will hit the people at the bottom hardest.

Predictably, the German chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome­mat policy to refugees, and her insistence that Europe follow her lead, will be blamed for much of the momentum behind the Leave vote. And that’s fair. As principally right as her message was, the chancellor did little to correct the impression that Europe was suddenly welcoming everyone, and that elites like her didn’t understand the consequences of their actions.

Yet it is dangerously foolish to believe that, with or without Ms. Merkel’s policies, Europe can somehow shut its doors and ignore the pressing weight of the developing world on its borders — or that European countries are better positioned to respond individually, rather than as a unified whole. The British vote feels momentous, but we will most likely look back at it as merely the first in a series of fights for the soul of Europe.

The outpouring of anger and anti­establishment aggression in Europe has only begun. The next countries where the political bulldozers see their chances to act out their long-kept lust for demolition are the Netherlands and France. We can no longer think of reconciliation between the opposing views of destruction and progress. The angry old men will not be mollified, their xenophobia cannot be controlled or channeled into constructive cooperation. We, the young, the future of Europe, must push back. Too much time has been lost already.

Should Your Driverless Car Hit a Pedestrian to Save Your Life?

Should Your Driverless Car Hit a Pedestrian to Save Your Life?

By JOHN MARKOFF JUNE 23, 2016

People say that one day, perhaps in the not­-so-­distant future, they’d like to be passengers in self­driving cars that are mindful machines doing their best for the common good. Merge politely. Watch for pedestrians in the crosswalk. Keep a safe space.

A new research study, however, indicates that what people really want to ride in is an autonomous vehicle that puts its passengers first. If its machine brain has to choose between slamming into a wall or running someone over, well, sorry, pedestrian.

In this week’s Science magazine, a group of computer scientists and psychologists explain how they conducted six online surveys of United States residents last year between June and November that asked people how they believed autonomous vehicles should behave.

The researchers found that respondents generally thought self­-driving cars should be programmed to make decisions for the greatest good. Sort of. Through a series of quizzes that present unpalatable options that amount to saving or sacrificing yourself — and the lives of fellow passengers who may be family members — to spare others, the researchers, not surprisingly, found that people would rather stay alive.

This particular dilemma of robotic morality has long been chewed on in science fiction books and movies. But in recent years it has become a serious question for researchers working on autonomous vehicles who must, in essence, program moral decisions into a machine.

As autonomous vehicles edge closer to reality, it has also become a philosophical question with business implications. Should manufacturers create vehicles with various degrees of morality programmed into them, depending on what a consumer wants? Should the government mandate that all self­-driving cars share the same value of protecting the greatest good, even if that’s not so good for a car’s passengers? And what exactly is the greatest good?

“Is it acceptable for an A.V. (autonomous vehicle) to avoid a motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the passenger of the A.V., than for the rider of the motorcycle? Should A.V.s take the ages of the passengers and pedestrians into account?” wrote Jean­François Bonnefon, of the Toulouse School of Economics in France; Azim Shariff, of the University of Oregon; and Iyad Rahwan, of the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the heart of this discussion is the “trolley problem.” First introduced in 1967 by Philippa Foot, a British philosopher, the trolley problem is a simple if unpleasant ethical thought puzzle. Imagine a runaway trolley is barreling toward five workmen on the tracks. Their lives can be saved by a lever that would switch the trolley to another line. But there is one worker on those tracks as well. What is the correct thing to do? The research published in Science tries to quantify that philosophical quandary.

“One missing component has been the empirical component: What do people actually want?” said Dr. Rahwan, who is a computational social scientist. Each survey presented different situations, like varying the number of pedestrian lives that could be saved or adding a family member to the problem. In one survey they discovered that participants were generally reluctant to accept government regulation of artificial intelligence algorithms, even if that would be one way to solve or at least settle on an answer to this trolley problem. The number of respondents on the six surveys varied from 182 to 451.

The new research could take autonomous vehicle manufacturers down a philosophical and legal rabbit hole. And since the autonomous vehicle concept is so new, it could take years to find answers. For example, the authors write, “If a manufacturer offers different versions of its moral algorithm, and a buyer knowingly chose one of them, is the buyer to blame for the harmful consequences of the algorithm’s decisions?” The United States military is also trying to come to terms with the fact that advanced technology is on the cusp of making it possible for machines like armed drones to make killing decisions.

In 2012, the Pentagon released a directive that tried to draw a line between semiautonomous and completely autonomous weapons. They are not outlawed, but they must be designed to allow “appropriate levels” of human judgment over their use. In a companion article in Science magazine, the Harvard psychologist Joshua D. Greene suggested that the thorniest challenges in machine decision­-making may be “more philosophical than technical. Before we can put our values into machines, we have to figure out how to make our values clear and consistent.”

Some researchers argue that teaching machines ethics may not be the right approach. “If you assume that the purpose of A.I. is to replace people, then you will need to teach the car ethics,” said Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George Washington University. “It should rather be a partnership between the human and the tool, and the person should be the one who provides ethical guidance.”

全民基本所得豈是無理取鬧

全民基本所得豈是無理取鬧

2016­06­19

聯合報 陳冲（東吳大學法商講座教授）

一如原先預期，瑞士公投是否提供公民每月二千五百瑞郎（約台幣八萬元）的全民基本所得（ＵＢＩ），因七成八票數的反對並未通過。這個新聞有兩層意義：前者為全世界最酷愛公投的瑞士，又再出手，也又再表現超乎想像的理性。後者則為全民基本所得的觀念，乍聽之下，所有公民，不論有無工作，國家每月發給台幣八萬？會不會造成全民怠於工作、遊手好閒？有媒體甚至認係無理取鬧，其實這問題並不似表面單純。

首先是貧窮陷阱（poverty trap）問題。在國際社會中，國家有所謂「富者愈富，

貧者愈貧」現象，尤其許多低度開發國家，因無力投資於基本建設，改善經濟，故陷入「貧窮陷阱」，不得翻身。而人類社會中，民眾也有貧者愈貧的貧窮陷阱，原因不外是貧窮家庭生存已不易，根本無餘力追求良好教育，或進行任何脫貧的努力。

長期以來，為解決特定階層可能的「貧窮陷阱」，特別是經濟快速成長時，整體ＧＤＰ成長與基層勞工收入間，所出現的嚴重缺口，經濟學家開始思考各種不同方式。尤其在近代，包括台灣在內，許多國家都存有一種抱怨，即經濟成長卻薪資停滯，換言之，經濟成長果實，眾人無法雨露均霑，雖然這是勞力密集產業轉向資本密集或技術密集的自然結果，但各界仍期待對國家的成長，能分派「國家紅利」。

四十四年前美國總統大選，當時民主黨候選人麥高文，在政見中提出「人口津

貼」，每人發給一千元美金，不過這不是隨興喊出的口號，背後操刀人是重量級經濟學家托賓（James Tobin）。麥高文雖然慘敗，但所提出消減貧窮動力仍在，一九七五年美國國會通過著名的ＥＩＴＣ（earned income tax credit, 勤勞所得租稅減免）法律，不少國家仿效，馬英九二○○八年競選政見也曾納入，俗稱「負所得稅」，也就是對工作所得不高的就業家庭，予以補助。

這個ＥＩＴＣ策劃者，更非等閒之輩，是被譽為「廿世紀下半世紀最偉大經濟學

家」也是人口津貼原創者傅利曼（Milton Friedman）。但不論是人口津貼（demogrant）或ＥＩＴＣ，其實都與全民基本所得目的相同，希望經濟成長的

果實，全民均能共享，也是一種財富重分配的努力。其中ＥＩＴＣ因支出較少又能同時鼓勵就業，被認為較可行，但有一好沒兩好，ＥＩＴＣ的受補助者由於薪資成長至某一水準，必須由此機制「畢業」，因此影響基層勞工自我提升或追求較佳工作的意願，尤其在此「顛覆性科技」快速成長年代，許多底層或不需複雜技能的工作漸被機器人取代，民眾欲覓工作無門，削減適用ＥＩＴＣ的機會，因此托賓式全民基本所得又再崛起。

綜上說明，全民基本所得有長遠的發展歷史（甚至三百年前已有類似想法），不是直覺反應所顯示的「無理取鬧」，其原意在對抗貧窮，而不是鼓勵好吃懶做，這也是整體經濟成長後，應思考有無必要發給國家紅利（national dividend）？這也類似一般公司在薪水外另給紅利的道理。

支持全民基本所得的言論認為，這種措施不僅是薪資偏低的基層勞工受惠，許多在家庭工作卻無收入者（例如家庭主婦）、許多默默奉獻社會卻無薪水者（例如志工），就這些對社會付出有價值的勞力卻未獲得財務的報償，社會仍應提供「購買力」，以示公平。當然全民基本所得倡議者的理由不止於此，民眾有基本所得後，因為後有退路，就會勇於創業、勇於追求理想生活方式、自由學習，有助於經濟發展及生活品質，只是應如何訂出適當金額，既能有重分配的脫貧效果，也不會誤導一般民眾怠於工作，才是重點。

在瑞士公投新聞世人看熱鬧之餘，為避免貧富差距擴大，促進社會和諧，台灣應再思考本身的方向。有人主張再提高基本工資，但這種政客邀宴、企業埋單的方式，終將影響就業機會（尤其是機器人／自助機器當紅時代），而且基本工資決策所依據的統計資料，也應該提升其精確度。人人有獎的全民基本所得，雖非無據，但從媒體對瑞士公投評價可知，尚不易取得共識。看來台灣可能比較適合採用ＥＩＴＣ，成本相對較低，又較能鼓勵就業，而對收入較低的的受薪家庭言，也有掙脫貧窮陷阱的機會。

（作者為東吳大學法商講座教授）