Artificial Intelligence

From Rossum’s Robots to Artificial Intelligence

February 7, 2021

25 January 2021 marked one hundred years since the première of Czech sci-fi writer Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). The short work anticipated subsequent books on the subject, as…

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, and the Trajectory of Human Civilization

December 7, 2020

Opinion

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradict…

The End of Reality?

September 20, 2020

Opinion

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…

Phrenology Is Back, Wrapped Up with Facial Recognition in a 21st Century Pre-Crime Package by University Researchers. Too Soon?

May 19, 2020

Opinion

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

Opinion

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

Opinion

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

Opinion

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

Opinion

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 …