The End of Reality?
September 20, 2020
In 1888, the year before he went insane, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote the following in Twilight of the Idols: We have got rid of the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps…
Artificial Intelligence
Phrenology Is Back, Wrapped Up with Facial Recognition in a 21st Century Pre-Crime Package by University Researchers. Too Soon?
May 19, 2020
The focus of US policing is shifting from enforcement to prevention as mass incarceration falls out of favor. ‘Pre-crime’ detection is the hot new thing, accomplished through analysis of behavior and……
Computers, Artificial Intelligence and the All-Seeing Eye
May 12, 2020
As explained in Computer: A History of the Information Machine, the personal computer was in large part a product of the “computer liberation” movement that grew out of the counter-culture of Californ…
AI Arms Race: Future of Warfare
April 7, 2020
The truth about artificial intelligence (AI) and the process of machine learning (algorithms which learn on their own rather than perform tasks based on human programming) is somewhat less spectacular…
Is China Beating America to AI Supremacy?
December 27, 2019
Beijing is not just trying to master artificial intelligence—it is succeeding. AI will have as transformative an impact on commerce and national security over the next two decades as semiconductors, c…
Normal Intrusions: Globalising AI Surveillance
September 27, 2019
They all do it: corporations, regimes, authorities. They all have the same reasons: efficiency, serviceability, profitability, all under the umbrella term of “security”. Call it surveillance, or call …
Get Out of My Face! Facial Recognition Technology could Enslave Mankind Like Never Before
September 14, 2019
Advertised as the latest tool to give shoppers more convenience, facial recognition comes with deep costs to privacy and security. But can anyone remember Silicon Valley asking for permission to use y…
Will China win the Military AI Race on the Back of Commercial Technology?
June 14, 2019
The earliest weapons were dual-use technologies: rocks chipped into sharp edges and bound to arrows or spears or clubs that proved as useful for hunting as they did fighting. Modern life is millennia …