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Even though the Federal Reserve has been raising its benchmark interest rate somewhat consistently – it at small increments – most accounts are still not earning meaningful interest. In fact, as the chart below from Bloomberg  shows, accounts at traditional money centers banks are earning next to nothing: Citigroup is paying 0.04% and JP Morgan is paying just 0.01% interest, despite rates rising.

This is mostly a result of clients not caring about getting paid more – they continue to deposit new money, so banks haven’t felt pressure to raise rates. It goes to show how attitude on yield for your money in this country has shifted significantly from a focus on interest-bearing accounts to deploying capital in investments like stocks and bonds. It’s almost as if, due to insane low rate Fed policy, the country has forgotten that depositors are supposed to be “rewarded” for saving and putting their capital in a bank’s hands.

But we digress. Because while the big banks, drowning in trillions of excess reserves don’t care about the incremental liquidity provided by deposits, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a rising number of banks out there, hungry for new cash, that are eager to lure depositors with higher rates. Online “banks” at American Express and Goldman’s new Marcus consumer unit, are offering savings account rates of 2% or more.

Historically, this isn’t a lot, but when compared to the Fed’s benchmark rate, which is now at 2.5%, and the 2.4% you would get on a US 10 year treasury, it isn’t bad, especially in a “low inflation” economy. As a result, some investors are taking notice and deposit growth at many of these online banks is accelerating.

The flows into these new banks aren’t of such a significant magnitude that they are having a tangible effect on the nation’s largest banks, but some regional banks are feeling pressure as a result. For example, Citizen’s Financial Group and US Bancorp have both said in recent weeks that they’re finding it harder to attract deposits due to the rates that competitors are offering (maybe Citizen’s and USB should consider raising their own deposit rates).

Allen Tischler, an analyst at Moody’s said that “First-quarter results probably will show a continued rise in deposit costs. Even if the Fed’s on pause and rates aren’t necessarily rising, not all depositors have taken advantage of rates that are higher today than they were a year ago. So there probably will be continued catch-up, particularly on the consumer side.”

Across all depositor institutions, the average rate on a checking account is just 0.29%, up from just 0.24% or year ago. Ray Montague, Informa’s director of deposit-product research told Bloomberg: “It went from really, really bad rates to just really bad rates.”

But ultimately, rates haven’t been high enough for consumers to want to move their cash. Somebody with $1000 in savings would see a difference of about $22 between a bank offering 0.05% and 2.25% for the year. Then the question becomes whether or not it is worth it to move the money.

RBC Capital analyst Gerard Cassidy said: “Is it worth it for $20 to move your money? The answer is no. If you have $100,000, it’s worth it. I think what you’re finding with Marcus and these other products is the average deposit is quite large because it is that money that is moving to higher rates.”

Meanwhile, banks continue to be the beneficiary of the Fed’s rate hikes, which allows them to capture the spread between what they charge on loans and what they give out on deposits, also known as the net interest margin. Deposits at banks like JPMorgan continue to rise, despite the low rates. That said, after the latest curve inversion, it is generally expected that bank interest income is about to take a major hit.

Thasunda Duckett, who leads consumer banking at JPMorgan, said: “The incremental deposits we acquired in this time alone would be enough to create the seventh largest U.S. bank. We’ve been successful because we’ve won at both acquiring new relationships and satisfying existing ones.”

Ironically, this perhaps best indicates that despite Americans’ ongoing complaints about low interest rates, when rates do go up, few savers actually take advantage. And now, that more are finally starting to take advantage of better deposit conditions the Fed is preparing to start cutting rates again.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2U2js41 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Priceonomics

With the recent second verdict where a jury ruled that Roundup weedkiller contributed to a man’s cancer, controversial pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are once again in the news.

These chemicals, particularly the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) have long played a role in American agriculture, but their health risks are only now being understood. As a result, thousands of cancer lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto, the company that invented Roundup, and Monsanto’s new parent company, Bayer AG.

Along with Priceonomics customer WeedKillerCrisis We decided to analyze data to uncover which states in the United States had the most and least exposure to pesticides, herbicides and other agricultural chemicals, with a particular focus on glyphosate, the active ingredient that is in the news right now. We looked at data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to see which compounds were most popular and which locations had the highest usage levels of these chemicals.

By a significant margin, the most popular herbicide in the United States is glyphosate, which is four times more popular than the second most popular chemical. Not surprisingly, large agricultural states like California, Washington, and Illinois use the most pesticides.

However, some states that use a lot of these chemicals see very little glyphosate usage, while others nearly exclusively use the compound. In California for example, only 6 percent of pesticide usage is glyphosate, while in Montana, 52 percent of such usage is from glyphosate

Methodology

Before diving into the results, it’s worth spending a moment on the methodology and data source. We looked at data from the Pesticide National Synthesis Project published by the USGS, a division of the Department of the Interior that estimates pesticide, herbicide, and fungicide usage in agricultural operations throughout the 48 continental states. Some of these compounds (like glyphosate) are technically herbicides, but for the purposes of this article, we’re using the term pesticide to cover all such chemicals, as the USGS data does. We looked at the most recent data that was available for all states (2016) and used the high-end estimates provided.

The USGS counts over 400 pesticides as part of its survey, but the top 20 pesticides make up 80 percent of all pesticide usage. The chart below shows the estimated usage of these pesticides by kilogram:

By a significant margin, glyphosate is the most popular pesticide used in American agriculture. Over 130 million kilograms were used in 2016, which was approximately four times more than the second-place pesticide, Atrazine.

In total, just over 544 million kilograms of pesticides were used in the U.S. in 2016, and 24 percent of that was glyphosate. It’s hard to overestimate just how pervasive Roundup and glyphosate are this country.

In general, where are pesticides most common in the United States? The next chart shows kilograms of all pesticides used in each state measured by the USGS data.

Agricultural states with large swaths of land use the most pesticides, and as a result, California uses the most pesticides by far. California makes up 11.6 percent of all pesticide usage nationally and uses nearly twice as much as the second-ranking state, Washington. As would be expected, states with smaller land masses and less agriculture, such as much of New England, use the least pesticides.

Which states use the most and least glyphosate, the compound that’s currently making headlines for causing cancer? The next chart shows kilograms of glyphosate used in each state.

Interestingly, the states that use a lot of glyphosate are not necessarily the ones that use a lot of pesticides in general. The states with the highest volume of glyphosate are Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas, which weren’t the ones that use the most pesticides overall. Neither California nor Washington (the two largest users of pesticides in general) make the top 10 states for glyphosate usage.

It’s worth noting that just because a state has a lot of agriculture or uses a lot of pesticides, that doesn’t necessarily mean that glyphosate is the favored pesticide in farming throughout the state. The chart below shows the percentage of pesticide usage by state for glyphosate versus all pesticides:

For states like Montana and South Dakota, approximately 50 percent of pesticide usage is for glyphosate. In general, states in the Great Plains and Midwest dominate the list of areas that are most reliant on glyphosate-based treatments, which can largely be traced to what is grown in those regions.

According to the USGS, corn and soybeans are the crops that are most frequently treated with glyphosate, and these crops are more common in these geographies. For instance, Illinois and Iowa are the top two glyphosate-using states, and they’re also the top-producing states for both corn and soybeans. On the other hand, California sees than 6 percent of pesticide usage from glyphosate-based products, while in Maine and Nevada less than 2 percent of pesticide usage is for glyphosate.

Where Is Glyphosate Banned in America?

Lastly, a number of places in America have banned glyphosate or are making efforts to severely limit the use of pesticides, herbicides and other similar chemicals. The chart below, via the Texas Organic Research Center, shows a list of some bans currently underway or being considered:

With the recent Roundup verdicts, it’s likely that the number of glyphosate-related legal cases will only continue to increase. Pesticide usage is most common in large agricultural states like California, but that doesn’t mean those states use a lot of glyphosate-based products. For example, in California only 6 percent of its pesticide usage is glyphosate, where as in Montana that number is 52%.

States in the Great Plains and Midwest tend to use glyphosate at the highest rate, while a number of locations (mostly on the coasts) are starting to ban the chemical. As glyphosate continues to dominate the news and the health effects are better understood, it’s likely these bans may keep accelerating.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YGDArg Tyler Durden

Brunei will begin stoning gays and adulterers to death starting next week, after the tiny nation on the island of Borneo converted to sharia law in 2014. 

While the new laws were announced five years ago and gradually phased in by the country’s sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah – who is also the prime minister, the death penalty for homsexual sex and adultery will begin on April 3, according to CNN. Brunei’s roughly 450,000 residents were notified of the April 3 start date after the country’s attorney general posted a December 29 notification on his website. 

Human rights groups are horrified.

“Brunei must immediately halt its plans to implement these vicious punishments, and revise its Penal Code in compliance with its human rights obligations. The international community must urgently condemn Brunei’s move to put these cruel penalties into practice,” said Amnesty International Brunei specialist Rachel Chhoa-Howard in a statement. 

Brunei became the first country in the region to adopt sharia law, and Islamic legal system known for its strict corporal punishments. 

Here’s a map of mostly Islamic republics where homosexual acts are illegal and/or punishable by death. 

Via the Washington Post:

Places where homosexual acts can be punished by death

Afghanistan

The Afghan Penal Code does not refer to homosexual acts, but Article 130 of the Constitution allows recourse to be made to Sharia law, which prohibits same-sex sexual activity in general. Afghanistan’s Sharia law criminalizes same-sex sexual acts with a maximum of the death penalty. No known cases of death sentences have been meted out since the end of Taliban rule.

Iran

In accordance with sharia law, homosexual intercourse between men can be punished by death, and men can be flogged for lesser acts such as kissing. Women may be flogged.

Nigeria

Federal law classifies homosexual behavior as a felony punishable by imprisonment, but several states have adopted sharia law and imposed a death penalty for men. A law signed in early January makes it illegal for gay people countrywide to hold a meeting or form clubs.

Qatar

Sharia law in Qatar applies only to Muslims, who can be put to death for extramarital sex, regardless of sexual orientation.

Saudi Arabia

Under the country’s interpretation of sharia law, a married man engaging in sodomy or any non-Muslim who commits sodomy with a Muslim can be stoned to death. All sex outside of marriage is illegal.

Somalia

The penal code stipulates prison, but in some southern regions, Islamic courts have imposed Sharia law and the death penalty.

Sudan

Three-time offenders under the sodomy law can be put to death; first and second convictions result in flogging and imprisonment. Southern parts of the country have adopted more lenient laws.

Yemen

According to 1994 penal code, married men can be sentenced to death by stoning for homosexual intercourse. Unmarried men face whipping or one year in prison. Women face up to seven years in prison.

Mauritania

Muslim men engaging in homosexual sex can be stoned to death, according to a 1984 law, though none have been executed so far. Women face prison.

United Arab Emirates

Lawyers in the country and other experts disagree on whether federal law prescribes the death penalty for consensual homosexual sex or only for rape. In a recent Amnesty International report, the organization said it was not aware of any death sentences for homosexual acts. All sexual acts outside of marriage are banned.

And now we can add Brunei. 

—

There are 65 countries where homosexual acts are illegal

Noteworthy laws:

Pakistan

Death penalty laws exist but are unlikely to be implemented, according to the 2016 IGLA report.

Chad

A 2014 law makes same-sex relations a crime punishable by 15 to 20 years in prison.

India

A ban on same-sex relationships was tossed by the legal system in 2009 but reinstated in 2013. The supreme court said the government, not the courts, would have to change the law.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HZaLjD Tyler Durden

Back on January 1, we showed what was arguably the strangest move that took place on the last trading day of 2018, when the overnight general collateral repo rate shot up from 2.5% to as high as 6.125%, the biggest one day move on record, bringing overnight GC repo to the highest level since January 2001.

While violent quarter and especially year-end moves are well-known in the overnight funding markets, the magnitude of the Dec 31 surge was simply unprecedented, and commenting on the GC Repo surge, Scott Skyrm, EVP at Curvature Securities said that “the cash never came in,” noting that while “funding pressure should be about 50 basis points” and yet what we got was “350 basis points.”

What he is referring to is the odd predicament the US financial system finds itself in, whereby in complete opposite from 2015 when there was a shortage of safe assets, there is now a glut, largely thanks to the flood of T-bills and coupon Treasurys required to fund the soaring US budget deficit coupled with what appears to be a shortage of excess reserves, which as recent events in the market demonstrated are not nearly enough, and is the reason why the Fed ended its balance sheet rolloff prematurely (it is now expected to end around September, well ahead of its previous summer of tentative 2020 due date).

Now, as we have discussed on prior occasions, one means to address this collateral mismatch is the proposed and speculated Fed overnight fixed-priced, full allotment overnight repo facility, which would eliminate such year-end general collateral repo spikes which are the result of too many securities chasing too little cash. However, in the biggest surprise from the most recent FOMC meeting, the Fed did not indicate that it was preparing to rollout such a facility, which means that until there actually is an operating Fed-backed O/N repo facility, we will continue to see collateral spikes like the one shown above.

Which brings us to tomorrow’s quarter-end, which will likely result in more general collateral repo fireworks.

Commenting on what to expect, we go back to Curvature Securities’ repo-market expert Scott Skyrm, who in his daily note writes that “quarter-end is everything in the Repo market right now and how it trades tomorrow will impact not just on financing P&L, but future quarter-ends, and potentially Fed policy tools in the future (an RP facility?).”

As noted above, last year-end, so many banks had cut their balance sheets so that there was insufficient cash to fund the Repo market and overnight rates spiked to over 7.00%, and as Skyrm writes, “the Repo market is worried that the same scenario could occur tomorrow. As a result,  the Repo market is “on edge.”

Case in point, on Thursday – one day before the end of the month and the quarter – the quarter-end General Collateral moved from 3.50% this morning up to 3.85%, then down to 3.45% and now back up to 3.65%, just in the space of several hours.

And while Skyrm is not sure the direction of rates tomorrow, he is sure that “there will be volatility” and predicts that “rates will trade anywhere between 5.00% and 2.00% during the day.” In short, it is very possible that in addition to the now familiar pension rebalancing, the market may experience a severe, if brief, liquidity shortage as banks scramble to soak up the repo flood with increasingly scarce dollars.

Incidentally, an interesting proposal that was floated this week by former Fed analyst and current Credit Suisse repo-wizard Zoltan Pozsar, arguably the most erudite voice when it comes to repo-market recommendations, when it comes to releasing much of the dollar liquidity currently stuck in various shadow markets, Pozsar called on the Fed to “use the exorbitant privilege” of the reserve currency state and to cap the foreign Reverse Repo facility, a step that would release as much as $200 billion in new liquidity and would likely make its way into the bill market where there is a growing glut of paper chasing not enough dollar funds:

$200 billion hitting the FX swap market indirectly or directly is a lot, especially when cross-currency bases are barely negative (on a Libor-Libor basis). Barely negative bases mean that the €/$ and $/¥ markets are pretty much clearing through matched books, and so a marginal $200 billion of new lending could tip the basis quite positive, quite fast – that’s the scenario where Libor-OIS goes negative (re-read page 13 here, s-l-o-w-l-y).

Sometimes, when you come in to work, weird stuff just happens. The SNB ending the Swiss franc’s peg to the € was one of those days. It sent spot FX flying (see Figure 3). If the Fed re-caps the foreign RRP facility, we could have another one of those days: a  day when the FX swap market realizes the amount of flow that’s about to hit directly or indirectly and traders re-price forward dollars to discount an abundance of dollar supply.

Figure 4 shows what that day could look like on your screens…

…similar to the day when the franc’s peg ended, but different in that the big move was in the spot FX rate back then, whereas the big move would be in forward FX rates today.

For more, please see “Global Money Notes #21 It’s Time to Use the Exorbitant Privilege”, authored by Zoltan Pozsar and published by Credit Suisse on March 25.

Which brings us to the TL/DR version: keep a close eye on repo GC tomorrow – if the financial system liquidity shortage has gotten worse since Dec 31, and it likely has as the Fed’s balance sheet has shrunk by over $100 billion since then, then expect fireworks. Just how big those fireworks will be will indicate how bad the overall liquidity shortage in the system is, which provides a critical glimpse into the overall systemic weakness that exists on US bank balance sheets if one eliminates the roughly $1.5 trillion in Fed-created excess reserves.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JO1iyt Tyler Durden

Authored by Rob Urie via Counterpunch.org,

Two years ago authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote in their book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign that within 24 hours of her 2016 electoral loss, Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign staff decided to blame the loss on Russian interference. Given the apparent source of the charge in opposition researchfunded by the Clinton campaign, the move seemed both desperate and pathetic— a thread for Clinton’s true believers to hang onto, an effort to keep campaign contributions rolling in and a ploy to cleave liberals from the left through red-baiting.

For perspective, from the time leading up to the 2016 election through today, I chose to live amongst poor and working-class people of color, with occasional forays into the rural working and middle classes and the urban bourgeois. What became apparent early on is that the audience for the Russian interference story was the urban and suburban bourgeois who had seen their lots by-and-large restored by Barack Obama’s bank bailouts and who had no knowledge of, or interaction with, the 90% of the country that is living, by degree, hand-to-mouth.

What this implies is that the received wisdom amongst bourgeois Democrats— the bosses, bank managers, academics, realtors and administrative class, looks to be what it is: a combination of class loathing that their ‘lessors’ didn’t perceive the munificent blessing of their electoral choice; mass delusion on the part of self-styled ‘high-information voters’ about who really controls American ‘democracy;’ and studied ignorance of the consequences of the last half-century of bi-partisan neoliberal governance.

As I wrote in early 2018:

“Prior to the 2016 presidential election, if one were to ask what single act could seal a new Cold War with Russia, align liberals and progressives with the operational core of the American military-industrial-surveillance complex, expose the preponderance of left-activism as an offshoot of Democratic Party operations and consign most of what remained to personal invective against an empirically dangerous leader, consensus would likely have it that doing so wouldn’t be easy.”

The Clinton campaign’s decision to blame her electoral loss on Russian interference demonstrates why she was, and still is, unqualified to hold elected office. In the first, the U.S. – Russian rivalry is backed-up by hair-trigger nuclear arsenals that could end the world in a matter of minutes. Inciting tensions based on self-serving lies is stunningly reckless. In the second, the claim demonstrates utter contempt for her most loyal followers by feeding them purposely misleading explanations of the loss. And most damagingly for political opponents of Donald Trump, these actions give credence to the insurgent status of his retro-Republicanism against liberal and left defenders of the political establishment.

Most damaging to the burgeoning left in the U.S. is the deeply ugly character assassination of poor and working-class voters carried out by the urban bourgeois, many from the self-described radical left. People I know and like, but with whom I disagree politically but am working hard to convert, have spent the last three years being derided as traitorous, marginally literate hicks too stupid to know they are pawns of the Kremlin. The irony, if you care to call it that, is that they knew the Russian interference story was cynical bullshit all along while the graduate degree crowd was following every twist and turn as if it were true knowledge.

The Democratic Party ‘leadership’ that pursued this story is as stupid as it is corrupt. The purpose of Russia-gate was apparently to keep the Party faithful, faithful. But as was demonstrated in 2016, the faithful alone can’t win an election. This leadership turned what could have been an effective ‘give ‘em enough rope’ strategy against arrogant jackass Trump back on itself. The establishment-left had been in the process of giving self-described socialists someone to vote for in 2020. Too-clever-by-half liberal twaddle about ‘post-truth’ now has liberals— universally conflated with the left, perceived as both idiots and liars. And rightly so.

Democrats who spent the last three years making less than plausible (and politically retrograde) accusations against Mr. Trump likely still don’t understand their current position. Their call for an exhaustive investigation carried out by people they trust was honored. While the investigation was underway, the mainstream press put one ludicrous fantasy after another forward as news. This while a host of real issues affecting real people’s lives were studiously ignored. As incredulous as I am that it could be done, liberal Democrats have made corrupt oligarch Trump appear to be righteously aggrieved. Who says these people have no talent?

The New York Times and Washington Post have been publishing politically motivated ‘fake news’ in support of establishment interests since their inceptions. Their service to powerful interests is why they are still around. The FBI, CIA and NSA have been putting out politically motivated bullshit since their respective inceptions. They exist to serve the rich and powerful against all comers. To claim these as bastions of integrity was always a tough sell. To continue to claim it is the stuff from which revolutions are made. In this case, right-wing revolutions.

While the urban bourgeois have long been dismissive of the ‘burn it down’ contingent of Trump voters, they seem incapable of seeing their own roles as defenders of the establishment as corrupt and ultimately, politically suicidal. I voted for a woman for president and a black man for vice president in 2016. But they weren’t Democrats. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she is a corrupt, neoliberal, militaristic piece of shit. Ironically, or not, most of Trump voters I’ve spoken with know more about the Democrats’ actual record than the highly educated urban bourgeois pontificating on NPR or in the New York Times.

A quick bet is that the 2020 presidential election is now Donald Trump’s to lose.

Lying sacks of shit like James Clapper and John Brennan will tie their lots to whomever will fund their adventures in mal-governance as the world burns and species become extinct. The tragedy here is that there are real issues in need of resolution. The Democrats’ three-year adventure in red-baiting served to legitimate a financial-military-industrial complex that apparently intends to end the planet as it makes as many people miserable in the process as is possible. Congratulations assholes.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2U2R6GU Tyler Durden

Insecure parents across the country have been gifted a new scapegoat they can blame their child’s shortcomings on: the admissions scandal cheaters. And this Thursday, they may need it – that marks the day that tens of thousands of prospective new students will hear from Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton about admission, according to Bloomberg. 

On Friday, one day later, many of the 33 parents charged in the scandal will wind up in federal court in Boston for their first appearance related to the scandal. They should be able to avoid serving jail time if they plead guilty, according to lawyers. 

Liz Pleshette, a former Columbia University admissions officer and director of college counseling at the private Latin School of Chicago said: “Families have been overvaluing some smoke and mirrors. The wizard has been revealed behind the curtain.”

Kyle Schoeneborn, an 18-year-old senior awaiting word from the University of Pennsylvania said: “It might end up being an excuse for a lot of people to say, ‘Oh, I didn’t get into my dream school because this is going on or my parents didn’t pay $50 million to get recruited to a certain sports team.’’’ And in light of recent events, his hyperbole is not that far off…

It is becoming more difficult to get into Ivy League schools like Yale. Data shows that the university accepted 22% of applicants in the early 1980s versus 6.3% last year. This has been a result of students being able to apply electronically, which has increased the number of applications per student. Students who submitted seven or more applications increased to 35% in 2016, compared to 10% in 1995.

Ivy League schools are also targeted because they provide the most financial aid, and the cost of college has risen “far faster than inflation”. Parents also see the Ivy League as a way to preserve the prestige of their family’s name and financial position “at the top”. Ten years after leaving college, Harvard students had a median annual income of $89,700 compared to the State University of New York, where it was $61,600.

This leg-up has led parents to push their children into activities and sports in a race to get an edge for admissions.

Meanwhile, Lisa Damour, a psychologist in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood, said that the admissions scandal is actually psychologically healthy for students. It helps them see that rejection isn’t their fault. “It’s not all bad for the curtain to be pulled back,’’ she said. The mother of one student, Cailee Olitt, who finished in the top 5% of her class, has played soccer for 4 years, edits the school’s newspaper and scored a 1570 out of 1600 on her SATs, was aghast when her daughter was still deferred from Duke.

“Sadly there’s not much we can do when people are accepting bribes. You just hope for the best for our kids and they’ll get seen for all their hard work and rewarded for doing it the right way,’’ her mom, Dari, said. 

Cailee is still waiting to hear from Brown and has been accepted to Tulane, Emory and the University of Virginia.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HWHg21 Tyler Durden

Authored by Dagny Taggart via The Organic Prepper blog,

What if a robot decides it hates you?

That might seem like a silly question, but according to research, developing prejudice towards others does not require a high level of cognitive ability and could easily be exhibited by robots and other artificially intelligent machines.

The study, conducted by computer science and psychology experts from Cardiff University and MIT, revealed that groups of autonomous machines could demonstrate prejudice by simply identifying, copying, and learning the behavior from each other. The findings were published in the journal Nature.

Robots are capable of forming prejudices much like humans.

In a press release, the research team explained that while it may seem that human cognition would be required to form opinions and stereotype others, it appears that is not the case. Prejudice does not seem to a human-specific phenomenon.

Some types of computer algorithms have already exhibited prejudices like racism and sexism which the machines learning from public records and other data generated by humans. In two previous instance of AI exhibiting such prejudice, Microsoft chatbots Tay and Zo were shut down after people taught them to spout racist and sexist remarks on social media.

This means that robots could be just as hateful as human beings can be. And since they’re thousands of times smarter than us, can you imagine the future if they developed a bias against humanity?

No human input is required.

Guidance from humans is not needed for robots to learn to dislike certain people.

However, this study showed that AI doesn’t need provocation and inspiration from trolls to get it to exhibit prejudices: it is capable of forming them all by itself.

To conduct the research, the team set up computer simulations of how prejudiced individuals can form a group and interact with each other. They created a game of “give and take,” in which each AI bot made a decision whether or not to donate to another individual inside their own working group or another group. The decisions were made based on each individual’s reputation and their donating strategy, including their levels of prejudice towards individuals in outside groups.

As the game progressed and a supercomputer racked up thousands of simulations, each individual began to learn new strategies by copying others either within their own group or the entire population.

Co-author of the study Professor Roger Whitaker, from Cardiff University’s Crime and Security Research Institute and the School of Computer Science and Informatics, said of the findings:

By running these simulations thousands and thousands of times over, we begin to get an understanding of how prejudice evolves and the conditions that promote or impede it.

The findings involve individuals updating their prejudice levels by preferentially copying those that gain a higher short term payoff, meaning that these decisions do not necessarily require advanced cognitive abilities.

It is feasible that autonomous machines with the ability to identify with discrimination and copy others could in future be susceptible to prejudicial phenomena that we see in the human population.

Many of the AI developments that we are seeing involve autonomy and self-control, meaning that the behaviour of devices is also influenced by others around them. Vehicles and the Internet of Things are two recent examples. Our study gives a theoretical insight where simulated agents periodically call upon others for some kind of resource. (source)

Autonomy and self-control. Isn’t that what happened in the Terminator franchise?

What if scientists can’t keep AI unbiased?

What will happen if developers and computer scientists can’t figure out a way to keep AI unbiased?

Last year, when Twitter was accused of “shadow banning” approximately 600,000 accounts, CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the challenges AI developers have in reducing accidental bias.

This new research adds to a growing body of disturbing information on artificial intelligence. We know AI has mind-reading capabilities and can do many jobs just as well as humans (and in many cases, it can do a much better job, making us redundant). And, at least one robot has already said she wants to destroy humanity.

Last year, a scientist deliberately created a robot with mental illness and Elon Musk warned us of the dangers of AI.

The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most. Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand.

The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast — it is growing at a pace close to exponential.

I am not alone in thinking we should be worried.

The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognize the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen… (source)

Musk added, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

What do you think?

A robot apocalypse straight out of the movie theaters seems to be approaching. What if robots form biases against certain groups of people – or humanity overall?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HYBNb0 Tyler Durden

A large and fast-melting glacier in Greenland is growing again, according to a new NASA study. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier on Greenland’s west coast had reportedly been retreating by around 1.8 miles and thinning by nearly 130 feet annually in 2012. 

According to a study published in Monday’s peer-reviewed Nature Geoscience, however, the glacier began growing at about the same rate over the past two years. That said, the authors of the study swear it’s temporary. 

“At first we didn’t believe it,” said lead author Ala Khazendar who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “We had pretty much assumed that Jakobshavn would just keep going on as it had over the last 20 years.”

Co-author Josh Willis said that while this is “good news” on a temporary basis, it’s still “bad news” over the long term because it means that ocean temperatures are a larger factor in the growth and melting of glaciers than previously thought. 

“In the long run we’ll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,” says Willis, pointing to inevitable doom from man-made global warming. 

“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Jason Box, a Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist who was not involved in the study. 

Think of the ocean temperatures near Greenland like an escalator that’s rising slowly from global warming, Khazendar said. But the natural North Atlantic Oscillation sometimes is like jumping down a few steps or jumping up a few steps. The water can get cooler and have effects, but in the long run it is getting warmer and the melting will be worse, he said.

Four outside scientists said the study and results make sense.

University of Washington ice scientist Ian Joughin, who wasn’t part of the study and predicted such a change seven years ago, said it would be a “grave mistake” to interpret the latest data as contradicting climate change science.

What’s happening, Joughin said, is “to a large extent, a temporary blip. Downturns do occur in the stock market, but overall the long term trajectory is up. This is really the same thing.” –AP

Of course, what will they say if and when the sun enters a Maunder Minimum in 2020? The last time there was a prolonged solar minimum, it lead to a mini ice-age which was scientifically known as the Maunder minimum

SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo wrote last November that sunspots have been absent for most of 2018 and Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding, says Phillips, the editor of spaceweather.com. 

Data from NASA’s TIMED (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite shows that the thermosphere (the uppermost layer of air around our planet) is cooling and shrinking, literally decreasing the radius of the atmosphere. This reduction of solar activity could result in a global cooling phase. 

“The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet,” said Mlynczak, according to The New American. 

The new NASA findings are in line with studies released by UC-San Diego and Northumbria University in Great Britain last year, both of which predict a Grand Solar Minimum in coming decades due to low sunspot activity.

Both studies predicted sun activity similar to the Maunder Minimum of the mid-17th to early 18th centuries, which coincided to a time known as the Little Ice Age, during which temperatures were much lower than those of today.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2WxhKEO Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

A new alarming parallel between today’s eviction crisis and the sub-prime mortgage crisis which helped spur the Great Recession has surfaced. The economy is sending warning signs to those who choose to take heed.

The eviction crisis is worsening to the point that Georgia State University authors feel that protections should be put in place to safeguard renters, such as longer eviction notices and legal protection, according to Market Watch. However, that could make the crisis much worse by homeowners simply refusing to rent their properties out at all. More government intervention (whether it’s designed to protect people or not) will only make a very bad situation worse.

Evictions have become a real visible effect of the volatility in today’s economy. Stable housing is increasingly out of reach for many Americans, as both rentals and homes to own grow more expensive, options dwindle, and wages remain stagnant. But some scholars at Georgia State University, in conjunction with a ProPublica journalist, completed a new study which shows that not all evictions are created equal.

The researchers who conducted the study examined “serial” eviction filings (those done repeatedly by a landlord against a tenant). By comparing serial evictions to ordinary ones, the researchers found patterns of landlord “behavior and intentions”, some of which are reminiscent of the worst of the housing crisis a decade ago.

As of right now, nearly half of Americans are “rent-burdened,” (0ften known as “house poor”) which means that they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, according to Market Watch‘s statistics. Homelessness is also on the rise and has been for quite some time. When it comes to children who have experienced eviction in the last decade in the United States, the numbers could be as high as one in seven.

Similarly to the foreclosure crisis that foreshadowed the Great Recession in 2009, there appears to be a race element that needs to be discussed. Evictions are currentlydisproportionately hitting African-Americans. Black women in Milwaukee, for example, were evicted at a rate three times their share of the population, and black renters in metro Seattle were evicted four times as frequently as whites there, according to earlier research. This data bears mentioning, but keep in mind, that there’s no reasoning behind the whys of these evictions.  If people aren’t paying rent, they will and should be evicted especially if a contract is signed.

“Filings can be the beginning of a forced removal process, but they are also frequently a tool used to enforce the collection of rent and fees,” the researchers noted. Which is incredibly fair, when taking emotion out of the equation. A contract is a contract, but this eviction crisis is a symptom of the larger problems with the economy rather than the media hyped narrative of “the rich are keeping the poor down” which was basically the conclusion of the Georgia State University study.

Protecting oneself and one’s family against eviction is usually as simple as having an emergency fund.  If you can, save up three to six months worth of expenses so that in the event of an emergency or decrease in income, you will not be breaking your contract (which is your word you signed off on) with a homeowner who has agreed to let you live in a home they own in exchange for a monthly fee (called rent.)

Saving can seem like a daunting task, but if you buckle down when times are good, a catastrophic emergency becomes nothing more than an inconvenience.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UkqRLp Tyler Durden