Mary Martin

One problem is that consciousness means different things to different people. For example, some researchers focus on the subjective experience — what it is like to be you or me. Others study its function — cognitive processes and behaviours enabled by being conscious. These differences muddy attempts to compare ideas.

If we can learn about human cognition, behaviour and pathology by studying insects, how does this blur the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’?

if an animal

’

s life is worth

living without having a point and without being meaningful in any of the usual senses, then

perhaps a human life can also be worth living without that.

While it’s tempting to play with scenario planning and leave it at the implications, we must not hide behind the data, deck or titles of our roles, protecting us from the vulnerability of getting out there and doing the messy work: making the futures we wish to see.

This paper aims to dissect the phenomenon of AI hype in light of its core mechanisms, drawing comparisons between the current wave and historical episodes of AI hype, concluding that the current hype is historically unmatched in terms of magnitude, scale and planetary and social costs. We identify and discuss socio-technical mechanisms fueling AI h... See more

You can’t really be in favour of both democracy and billionaires, because democracy requires equal opportunity in order to participate, and extreme wealth gives its holders unfathomable advantages with little accountability.

Today’s values have allowed us to totally miss the point that the climate crisis is a moral failing. American values are strongly materialistic, anthropocentric, individualistic, and contempocentric. Consumerism and materialism seek to meet human needs, even non-material ones, through ever-increasing purchase of goods and services. Consumption is t... See more