Made me think

Good read via The Economist: machine learning and government

Read: of prediction and policy (The Economist) Governments have much to ...

Aug 2016

The global brain is coming: Google launches new AI in the cloud (videos). Hellven is certain!

Watch this video to get a glimpse of what's coming: ...

May 2016

What does it mean to be human in the age of technology? (Tom Chatfield – The Guardian)

“This is an astonishing, disconcerting, delightful thing: the crowd in the cloud becoming a stream of shared consciousness.

We think of ourselves as individual, rational minds, and describe our relationships with technology on this basis”

What does it mean to be human in the age of technology?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/20/humans-machines-technology-digital-age
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

You’re Only Human, But Your Kids Could Be So Much More – says Paul Knoepfler (Wired)

“I mean a designer baby. You would be literally designing and producing a new type of baby via the same sort of technology that is used to make a GM tomato, mouse, or monkey. The baby would be a genetically modified human or, to phrase it in an edgier manner, a GM human.”

You’re Only Human, But Your Kids Could Be So Much More
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/youre-only-human-but-your-kids-could-be-so-much-more/
via Instapaper

Dec 2015

IBM’s global C-Suite Study 2015. Key message: form your own futures squad!

IBM just published their 2015 global C-Suite study – and it ...

Dec 2015

How websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Do we need regulation? M. Schulson via AEON (relates to my digital obesity meme)

Michael Schulson via the great Aeon site

https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it

"In the 2000s, users nicknamed the first mainstream smartphone the crackberry. In conversation, we describe basic tools and apps – Facebook, email, Netflix, Twitter – using terms otherwise reserved for methamphetamine and slot machines"

"So should individuals be blamed for having poor self-control? To a point, yes. Personal responsibility matters. But it’s important to realise that many websites and other digital tools have been engineered specifically to elicit compulsive behaviour"

"Major tech companies, Harris told me, ‘have 100 of the smartest statisticians and computer scientists, who went to top schools, whose job it is to break your willpower"

"As with the pigeons, uncertain reward can lead to obsessive behaviour. The gambling industry has been using these techniques for years, too: as Skinner himself recognised, the classic high-rep, variable-reward device is the slot machine"