"Evil is when you treat people as things" ~ Granny Weatherwax A modern tragedy: Trust no one, do not be trusted. Treat people as things, get treated as a thing. We are all part of the problem. Or... we could focus on adding value and valuing each other as ends and not as means. Break … Continue reading grève du zèle
Category: artificial intelligence
Control the Narrative, Control the World
Jim Morrison once said, “whoever controls the media, controls the mind”. Today the media that moves our minds and markets is increasingly digital, and contagious. Viral memes, in particular, are emerging as a new source of both wealth and power. The rapid rise of both NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), and their values, have cemented the financial … Continue reading Control the Narrative, Control the World
We have been harmonised
We Have Been Harmonised by Kai Strittmatter makes for uncomfortable reading. The book details the seemingly unstoppable slide towards the total surveillance state (or the 360 degree, 4D WiFi curtain, as I like to call our emerging omniscient open air prison reality), not just in the Communist Party of China's China, but all over the … Continue reading We have been harmonised
5G Geopolitics (we’re way past Go!)
Geopolitics used to be a board game. Leaders defended and extended their physical territory in the terrestrial plane. Borders were defined by geography. Trade partners and military partnerships tended to fall in the same lines. We knew who our enemies and allies were, and where to find them. But things are no longer so simple. … Continue reading 5G Geopolitics (we’re way past Go!)
Paperclip minimiser dystopia
In the classic paperclip maximiser thought experiment; an AI is tasked with making paperclips. Innocent enough. However, the AI is also not told when to stop. Driven by the singular goal to make as many paperclips as possible, the AI eventually destroys not only our planet, and our selves, but the entire universe, as it … Continue reading Paperclip minimiser dystopia
The Future Starts Now
The choices we make today, as individuals, as businesses, and as societies ripple out all around us, amplifying over time. What will future generations – our children and our grandchildren (indeed, even our future selves, should we live long enough, as well we could)- make of the choices we are making on their behalf? The … Continue reading The Future Starts Now
Can we build a shared future without a shared past?
As deep fake technologies "improve", they now have the ability to manipulate the past as well as the future. We can no longer be sure that a historical document, photograph or even video footage has not been manipulated to change history (in ways not even Orwell's Big Brother could have imagined). Case in point, here … Continue reading Can we build a shared future without a shared past?
Never trust a machine to do a human’s job.
Many tasks could (and should) be automated to free humanity of drudgery and accelerate our prosperity. However, some things are still really best left to flesh and blood people. Love letters, for example. These neural network-generated candy-heart slogans are a wonderfully bad reminder of the value of human empathy and EQ - even in todays … Continue reading Never trust a machine to do a human’s job.
Robot Rights
Can robots have rights? Should robots have rights? These deceptively big questions regarding "roborights" are shaping up to be among the Big Issues debated by law makers, scientists, engineers, and philosophers in 2019 - and far into the future. I read David J. Gunkel's Robot Rights to get a handle on where academia is "at" … Continue reading Robot Rights
We
"Those two, in paradise were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no alternative." - We I'm really enjoying retro-science fiction at the moment. The ideas imagined in science fiction of years past planted seeds in more practical minds who went on to shape the future that we live in … Continue reading We