We realised that the tools we have created to master the world are re-mastering us. But more importantly, it became evident, that the desire for mapping, tweaking and ultimately, controlling, deeply complex systems is hubristic. As Tega Brain writes in her exceptional essay “we must acknowledge how deeply entrenched we are within a computational wo... See more

We realised that the tools we have created to master the world are re-mastering us. But more importantly, it became evident, that the desire for mapping, tweaking and ultimately, controlling, deeply complex systems is hubristic. As Tega Brain writes in her exceptional essay “we must acknowledge how deeply entrenched we are within a computational wo... See more

The tendency to think of A.I. as a magical problem solver is indicative of a desire to avoid the hard work that building a better world requires. That hard work will involve things like addressing wealth inequality and taming capitalism. For technologists, the hardest work of all—the task that they most want to avoid—will be questioning the assumpt

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Of course, there are major ethical issues to work out—leaps forward in technology often walk a fine line between deeply-impactful and dystopian. Among the questions we need to figure out:

• Who is responsible for AI’s mistakes?


• Who is the creator of an AI work? Is it the AI? The developers? The person who wrote the prompt? The people whose work was use

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Software is essential for facing the challenge of climate change. We need to build a computational infrastructure for tracking carbon. The impact of humans on ecosystems has been so deep and so complex that digital monitoring and modeling are essential for ecological repair. But right now, we are headed towards a world of proprietary platforms... See more