How the Minimum Wage Can Cost More Than Money A $16 meal now costs $20 at a Hollywood Chick-fil-A. The reason is California’s minimum wage hike. Starting April 1st, 2024, California’s fast-food workers were paid a new $20 minimum wage. According to the California FAQ page, their fast-food worker wage hike applies to restaurants with limited service that are a part of a chain with at least 60 establishments. Traditional economic theory suggests that employers respond to an increase in wages with fewer jobs and work hours. Instead, California’s fast-food establishments increased prices. Looking ..read more

Your face alone reveals which way you lean politically In a world where our every move seems to be tracked, analyzed, and categorized, it might feel like there’s little about ourselves that remains truly private. But what if even our most basic physical features, like the shape of our face or the size of our nose, could reveal intimate details about who we are and what we believe? A groundbreaking new study suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to do just that – predict our political orientation from nothing more than an expressionless photograph. The research, led by Michal K ..read more

The Evolution of Stupidity (and Octopus Intelligence) At 2:47pm on January 6, 1995, Clifton Johnson and McArthur Wheeler walked into the Mellon Bank branch in Swissvale, a small suburb of Pittsburgh. One of them pointed a handgun at the teller, demanding cash. The teller, shaking with fear, handed over some money. The robbers ran out. Unlike most bank robbers, Johnson and Wheeler made no attempt to disguise themselves, nor to obscure their faces with masks. They looked straight into security cameras. This was particularly puzzling because Wheeler, five foot six and 270 pounds, had an easily id ..read more

Where Female Entrepreneurs Get Less Funding Women receive a small section of the U.S. venture capital pie. Some say it is as little as 2 percent while others point out that the number is closer to 20 percent if we count teams that include women. Still though, however you slice it, women get less. In every category, we have the dollar scales tilted toward men. For AI funding in the UK, just .7% went to female founders since 2010. Correspondingly, all male teams got 80 percent of the VC funding from 2012 to 2022. And, even when women got the money, at six times less capital per deal than their U ..read more

AI Can Vanquish Bias Insurance is the business of assessing risks and pricing policies to match. As no two people are entirely alike, that means treating different people differently. But how to segment people without discriminating unfairly? Thankfully, no insurer will ever use membership in a ‘protected class’ (race, gender, religion…) as a pricing factor. It’s illegal, unethical, and unprofitable. But while that sounds like the end of the matter, it’s not. Take your garden-variety ‘credit score.’ Credit scores are derived from objective data that don’t include race, and are highly predictiv ..read more

Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies Daniel C. Dennett, one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers, whose prolific works explored consciousness, free will, religion and evolutionary biology, died on Friday in Portland, Maine. He was 82. His death, at Maine Medical Center, was caused by complications of interstitial lung disease, his wife, Susan Bell Dennett, said. He lived in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Mr. Dennett combined a wide range of knowledge with an easy, often playful writing style to reach a lay public, avoiding the impenetrable conc ..read more

The Emotional Lives of Animals and Why They Matter We like to see ourselves as special, but whatever the difference between humans and animals may be, it is unlikely to be found in the emotional domain. — Frans de Waal, “Your Dog Feels as Guilty as She Looks”. I have learned that anthropomorphism is a deeply suspect word, used to defend cruelty to creatures unable to speak and defend themselves against human exploitation. — Sir Brian May, founding member of Queen and the Save Me Trust. In the past two decades there has been an explosion of comparative studies centering on the emotional lives a ..read more

Teen Emotions Deciphered by AI and Head-cam Researchers developed a method using wearable headcams and AI to analyze teenagers’ facial expressions, revealing subtle emotional nuances. This technology has shown potential in identifying emotions such as worry and happiness, even when they are masked. The findings suggest that this approach could significantly enhance understanding and communication between teens and their parents, potentially serving as a valuable tool in therapy sessions to address mental health issues. By recording real interactions, the project has captured authentic emotiona ..read more

Compassion is making a comeback in America Think back to the United States as it was a year ago, a decade ago, a generation ago. Is the US a more caring or less caring nation now than it was back then? If you think Americans have lost their compassion, the data would be on your side — until recently. Since the late 1970s, psychologists have measured empathy by asking millions of people how much they agreed with statements such as “I feel tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys ..read more

Is It All a Fluke? Lessons From Playing God in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment Or understanding of human history is a battle between contingency and convergence. Do stable, long-term trends drive change? Or does history pivot on the tiniest details? We’re left to speculate between the two worldviews because we can’t experimentally test the past. But what if you could create multiple worlds? And what if, within them, you could not just control what happens inside but also control time? Imagine the ability to play God, pressing pause at will, even rewinding and replaying key moments. That wou ..read more