Category: Critical Thinkers
New Podcast: riveting audio conversation with Futurists Calum Chace and Gerd Leonhard: AI, the Singularity, the Future of Humans and Machines
Calum Chace and me don’t agree on many issues – I’m a humanist and Calum is a science fiction writer and AI advocate. Having said that I really love talking to him, debating these replay mind-boggling issues with him. Listen to this podcast or download it for later. I think ...
Ein Podcast mit Tim Renner und Gerd Leonhard zum Thema Facebook und Politik – Podcast with Tim Renner (in German)
#deletefacebook – ist das wirklich die Lösung oder braucht es nicht vielmehr einen totalen Reset wie soziale Medien und andere globale Internet Plattformen unsere Daten nutzen dürfen…eine Art von “Statebook” der Bundesrepublik Deutschland? Hier diskutieren der Autor und Futurist Gerd Leonhard und der Musik Manager und ehemalige Berliner Kultur-Staatssekretär Tim Renner über Facebook. Renner Leonhard Podcast Facebooks ...
My latest contribution to The Next Web: connecting your brain to the Internet sounds great – but is it a good idea?
SOURCE “Brain implants or other types of neural links, such as Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) between the brain, the internet, and the cloud, are quickly entering the realm of science rather than science fiction. The Defense Advanced Research Agency is ready to run trials with closed-loop mood control chips linked to AI ...
Farhad Manjoo: For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers: real life is slow, technology is fast :)
“Real life is slow; it takes professionals time to figure out what happened, and how it fits into context. Technology is fast. Smartphones and social networks are giving us facts about the news much faster than we can make sense of them, letting speculation and misinformation fill the gap. It has ...
Great read about datamining, and nice animation (via Bloomberg)
The Brutal Fight to Mine Your Data and Sell It to Your Boss. Silicon Valley makes billions of dollars peddling personal information, supported by an ecosystem of bit players. One of them, an upstart called HiQ, is going up against LinkedIn in a battle for your lucrative professional identity. By Drake ...
The Real Problem With Voice Assistants Like Siri Is Your Brain
“The bad news is that dream of a virtual assistant that manages your digital life while you live your real one is probably a lie. The real problem with voice assistants isn’t that they’re underpowered, or that their neural nets aren’t sophisticated enough to intuit our requests. It’s that user ...
Matt Haig (The Guardian:) I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong (must read)
“Kurt Vonnegut said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.” This seems especially true now we have reached a new stage of marketing where we are not just consumers, but also the thing consumed. If you have friends you only ...
Meet Futurist Gerd Leonhard in London October 4: Keynote at BREAKOUT2017: Ethical codes for a digital age
I am delighted to be able to contribute to this unique event in London, on October 4 2017 (for more details and updates go here). My keynote will be on AI and other exponential technologies, in the context of digital ethics. Get your tickets. Digital technologies are disrupting the world around ...
We’re spending so much time trying to become robots that we’re forgetting how to be human (Scott Hartley via qz.com)
Totally my topic 😉 “The drumbeat of science, technology, engineering, and math has picked up tempo, but a crisis of culture has emerged from its cadence. As we embark ever more aggressively on the path to master machines, we are forgetting the very foundations of what it means to be human.” We’re ...
…the coming robot onslaught. Great read via Quartz
“Advances in supercomputers and the understanding of neural networks are combining to create a revolution in robotics, and companies eager for more profitability and cheaper production are ruthlessly grabbing the new technology to automate rote jobs. Blue-collar workers—forget about it. The robots will kill off the positions of half a million ...
