Messy relationships [living with AI]

Artificial Intelligence is all over the news these days, and now even the Big Boys are talking about how important it is to consider the social impact. Obviously I agree, but I think there’s still a big fat chunk of that impact that nobody’s really considering yet. Back in April, I helped facilitate a couple of workshops at the Royal …

Bring on the noise [post 44/100]

How many questions a day is the average human prepared to answer? When I was in school, days when we were asked loads of questions were scary – they were exam days, or worse, pop quiz days. Most questions were asked person to person, and were related to events that were shared between those people or the wider community. Maybe …

An idol by any other name… [post 43/100]

The rationalists have been gaining ground rapidly over the past couple of decades. Atheism is, increasingly, equated with intellectualism*. At the same time (and probably not unrelated) we are surrounded by and immersed in technology more than ever, and more every day. We are urged and encouraged to believe in the progress of science and technology as the route to …

Chicken Little goes to SXSW* [post 21/100]

Have you heard about the anti-robot protest at SXSW? I read about it this morning and it just made me sad. On the one hand, it’s great that people care about how technology is evolving; on the other hand it’s sad that the thinking is still so simplistic and binary. Down the centuries, every new technological breakthrough has been condemned, …