The Robots Are Coming...

Hi, Robot What's Inside the New Issue By Gideon Rose From the cotton gin and the steam engine to electricity and the transistor, new technologies have been revolutionizing the world for centuries, transforming life and labor and enabling an extraordinary flourishing of human development. Now some argue that advances in automation and artificial intelligence are causing us to take yet another world-historical leap into the unknown. But is that really the case?

The Robots Are Coming How Technological Breakthroughs Will Transform Everyday Life By Daniela Rus Current research in robotics is pushing the boundaries of what robots can do, bringing closer the day when robots will become as integrated into everyday life as computers are now.

Will Humans Go the Way of Horses? Labor in the Second Machine Age By Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee In 1983, Wassily Leontief asked if technological progress would doom human labor to being swept out of the economy the way horses once were. His answer was yes. But humans are not horses, and can choose to prevent themselves from becoming economically irrelevant.

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Turkey's Anti-Imperial Agenda Turkish Foreign Policy, from Ataturk to Erdogan By Nick Danforth The Erdogan government’s sympathetic interest in Turkey’s Muslim and Arab neighbors, often a source of conflict with the United States, fits within a long-standing pattern of nationalist anti-imperialism that predates—and may well outlive—the AKP.

Leading From Everywhere The History of Centralized Islamic Religious Authority By H.A. Hellyer and Nathan J. Brown The rapid rise of the Islamic State or ISIS has triggered a debate about how “Islamic” the group actually is and whether an Islamic religious authority can counter its extreme ideology. The consensus among Muslim religious scholars is that ISIS' interpretations of Sunnism lie far outside an acceptable range. But when it comes to an authoritative figure or body that can counter ISIS, there is no formal institution like the Vatican or other ecclesiastical body for Muslims.