Nine dangerous ideas we discovered at the Sydney Opera House

Climate change will produce the next wave of refugees, China is censoring us all, and, beware, even your white collar job is not safe from automation. Here’s some of the best talking points from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Those familiar with activist and writer Naomi Klein’s work may also be familiar with her fascination with Pope Francis and his encyclical, Laudato Si. Perhaps lessknown is Klein’s interest in how the “throwaway culture” Francis describes is epitomised by the tiny island of Nauru. The Canadian spoke of how Nauru was “mined from the outside” – both literally, by phosphate mining companies, and figuratively by banks of dubious credibility, leading to what Klein called the threat of a “double bankruptcy”. Add to that list of troubles a kind of moral hollowing out when the island began hosting Australia’s immigration detention centre, and the risk that the remaining inhabitable coastal strip will be engulfed by climate change. Klein said it was a case of the climate change refugees of tomorrow playing prison warden to the war refugees of today.

Related: Aylan Kurdi should not have died, Naomi Klein tells Sydney festival

The Chinese government is strong enough to have an impact on your lives

Some of the best minds of the 14th century

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via Nine dangerous ideas we discovered at the Sydney Opera House

Will robots create more jobs than they destroy?

As advancing technology changes the face of employment in the 21st century, is the human workforce being made obsolete?

Martin Ford is the founder of a Silicon Valley software firm and the author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. Geoff Colvin is senior editor at large at Fortune magazine and author of Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will.

Martin Ford To understand why today’s information technology could have a much more dramatic impact on employment than anything we’ve seen before, it’s best to begin by considering the nature of work performed by most of our population. The reality is that a very large fraction of our workforce is engaged in activities that are on some level routine, repetitive and predictable. This is not to say that most people have jobs that are rote-repetitive, but rather that most workers face the same types of challenge again and again and that most of their actions and decisions can be predicted, based on what they have done in the past.

A great many traditional occupations that employ millions of workers are going to be highly susceptible to automation

It's possible that skills of deep human interaction will become far more valuable

Related: Artificial intelligence: how clever do we want our machines to be?

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Poison-Injecting Robot Submarine Assassinates Sea Stars to Save Coral Reefs



Crown-of-thorns sea stars can wipe out coral reefs, but an autonomous stabby poison robot is on the case
via Poison-Injecting Robot Submarine Assassinates Sea Stars to Save Coral Reefs

Star Wars droid BB-8 is real and you can take him home

Robotics company Sphero partners with Disney to make a pint-sized version of the new Star Wars droid kids and big kids can now own

Since its debut in the first trailer for Episode VII, cute little BB-8 - which looks an upturned bowl balancing on a football - has become the unofficial droid mascot of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Unlike the much-loved robotic pal from the original trilogy, R2-D2, BB-8 is a droid with intelligence that you can actually buy - albeit in a tennis ball sized-version.

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via Star Wars droid BB-8 is real and you can take him home
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