New subway turnstile redesign prototypes have been unveiled by the MTA, and if there’s one thing to say about them it’s that they’re pretty futuristic looking!
On display at Grand Central Terminal yesterday, Wednesday, May 17, the new prototype design is the first major redesign of the turnstiles, which was created in hopes to curb fare evasion.
MTA / Marc A. Hermann
The MTA released the Final Report of the Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare Evasion. This group, comprised of education, social justice, and law enforcement experts, first convened in May 2022 to get a better understanding of the causes of rising fare and toll evasion across the transit system and work to recommend actionable solutions.
The report shows that fare evasion has reached crisis levels, with the MTA losing an estimated $690 million in unpaid fares and tolls in 2022, which threatens the economics of mass transit.
And the prototypes are way more modernized than what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing.
MTA / Marc A. Hermann
Rather than a rolling turnstile entrance, the subway turnstile redesign prototypes use a pair of glass doors that slide open once a straphanger pays the fare.
According to MTA Construction and Development President Jamie Torres-Springer, the new turnstiles will “increase customer flow and accessibility while combating fare evasion by addressing the problems we see at turnstiles today.”
The new design will reduce the need for emergency fare gates which more than half of all subway fare evasion occurs through, causing them to become a “superhighway of fare evasion.”
MTA / Marc A. Hermann
In addition to the new subway turnstile redesign, the fare evasion report also suggests better supporting low-income transit riders and instituting enforcement that commits to policing and enforcement of penalties for evaders.
Earlier this year in February, the MTA also unveiled new wheelchair accessible“wide-aisle” turnstiles.
MTA / Marc A. Hermann
Two stations are set to see the new wide-aisle turnstiles beginning this spring, including Queens’ Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue station and Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station.
You can read more about the Final Report of the Blue-Ribbon Panel on Fare Evasion here.
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A prayer vigil was held Wednesday evening in Harlem for former New York State Senator and City Council Member Bill Perkins, who died Tuesday at age 74.
The vigil took place on in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building was officiated by Chaplin Robert Rice. The community come together to Perkins’ legacy and service to the community.
In honor of Perkins Mayor Eric Adams ordered all flags be lowered to half-staff until sunset Wednesday.
Perkins served in the City Council representing Harlem’s 9th District from 1998 to 2005 and again from 2017 to 2021. He represented the 30th District in Harlem in the State Senate from 2007 to 2017.
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As Democrats got to the mat with Republicans on the debt ceiling, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is insisting that his members unanimously get behind a vote to lift it. Only by maximizing the pressure on such legislation, Jeffries contends, will the measure get through before the June 1 date of default.
On Wednesday, the Democrats introduced a discharge petition, a procedural resolution, with the hope of forcing a vote on a debt limit hike no matter the Republicans’ objections.
“I am hopeful that a real pathway exists to find an acceptable, bipartisan resolution that prevents a default,” Jeffries stated in a letter to caucus members. “However, given the impending June 1
deadline and urgency of the moment, it is important that all legislative options be pursued in the event that no agreement is reached.”
It is still questionable where the caucus members stand on the petition, and Jeffries is calling on all 213 members to endorse it. Getting all aboard would include a number of moderate-budget hawks who have expressed opposition.
Another stumbling block, even with unanimity from the Democrats, is the need for at least five Republicans to join them on the petition. Time is running out and the Democrats hope that
market forces will assist them in getting the vote before the deadline, though at the moment such an outcome looks unlikely.
Given the urgency of the situation, President Biden has postponed his trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea, apparently caving into criticism about leaving at a time like this. Biden said he is hopeful that he and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can broker a deal by the end of the week. Then the Speaker will have to convince that coterie of Republicans to put him in charge by on the historic 15 ballots.
After a discussion between Biden and congressional leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer said it was “a good and productive meeting. There were honest, real discussions about the differences that we have on a whole variety of issues, but it was respectful.”
Microsoft, in its latest “Work Trend Index” report, promises that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at work is the technology that’s going to make all of our jobs easier.
The company says it has found that the constant inflow of data, emails, meetings, and
notifications workers must deal with daily has placed us all in a “digital debt.” Since humans can not physically and mentally keep up with such onslaughts of information, AI technology is at the ready to assist.
“Across the Microsoft 365 apps,” the report states, “the average employee spends 57% of their time communicating (in meetings, email, and chat) and 43% creating (in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations). The heaviest email users (top 25%) spend 8.8 hours a week on email, and the heaviest meeting users (top 25%) spend 7.5 hours a week in meetings.”
Microsoft proposes an “AI-employee alliance” which would provide workers more time to focus on important tasks and give them real opportunities to enhance their creativity.
The company says it believes the impact of AI will be evident by the year 2030. “When asked what changes they value most, people imagined producing high-quality work in half the time (33%), being able to understand the most valuable ways to spend their time (26%) and energy (25%), and never having to mentally absorb unnecessary or irrelevant information again (23%).”
But contrary to Microsoft’s rosy outlook on the promises of AI, many workers have been concerned about AI’s ability to imitate human-like intelligence. If the future means we will see AI-programmed robots who are capable of doing human jobs, workers are wondering where they will fit in.
During a May 16 hearing by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, OpenAI’s CEO Samuel Altman for the most part agreed that elements of AI will need to be regulated. Altman said, “regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.” The OpenAI CEO even suggested the U.S. government should create a new regulatory agency to monitor AI and its licensing and testing requirements. He said, “If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. We want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”
“The basic question we face is whether or not this issue of AI is a quantitative change in technology or a qualitative change. The suggestions that I’ve heard from experts in the field suggest it’s qualitative,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said during the hearing. “I’ve heard of the positive potential of AI, and it is enormous. You can go through lists of the deployment of technology that would say that an idea you sketch for a website on a napkin could create functioning code. Pharmaceutical companies could use the technology to identify new candidates to treat disease. The list goes on. And then, of course, the danger, and it’s profound as well.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) advised that “Perhaps the biggest nightmare is the looming new industrial revolution, the displacement of millions of workers, the loss of huge numbers of jobs.”
Yet, just a month prior to the senate hearing, Jessica O. Matthews, founder and CEO of the software company, Uncharted, told attendees at an AfroTech Executive event in Seattle, Wa that AI is nothing to be afraid of.
“You should not be afraid of AI, you should be afraid of the people who are building it,” Matthews declared. “AI, artificial intelligence, .. it’s kind of like a child; it’s like a robot baby. ChatGPT is at best a sassy 7-year-old, and we all know that 7-year-old … [who] recently grew up with all the social media platforms and be out here talking to you like they grown. And you’re like, well damn girl, you grown. No, they’re just online.
“Do not like have this 7-year-old do your taxes. It might go well sometimes––until it does not.”
Matthews said the problem with AI is that it needs to be demystified. It’s basically a code that has the ability to learn. It’s often explained as an algorithm, which can sound scary, but algorithms are basically processes, she clarified. “If you have a process for anything, that’s an algorithm … And all it actually comes down to is how are you teaching that [process] to an artificial intelligence? How are you teaching that to this robot baby so that it can start to do that for you?”
If the only people with access to teaching AI robot babies have intentional or unintentional biases, they are “framing the way that this child should observe and respond to the world,” Matthews said, and that is what we should fear.
