LaMDA and the Limits of Sentience
In early June, Blake Lemoine, then an engineer at Google, claimed that LaMDA, a Machine Learning-based chatbot, was sentient and needed to be treated with respect. LaMDA stands…
Tag: AI
Ep #97: AI Art & Activist Anthropology Revisited: This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #97: AI Art & Activist Anthropology Revisited: This Month on TFS This week we’re joined by Familiar Strangers Kathy, Lachlan, Alex and Sean…
Ep#95: A Hex for My Ex: Witchcraft & AI Podmen: This Month of TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep#95: A Hex for My Ex: Witchcraft & AI Podmen: This Month of TFS Welcome back to the Familiar Strange! This week we welcome…
Emanuel Moss takes the Page 99 test
On the 99th page of my dissertation, “The Objective Function: Science and Society in the Age of Machine Intelligence”, the first full paragraph describes how machine learning researchers…
Techno-geographies of digital phenotyping in mental health research by Jessy Williams
Can your phone keep you mentally well? Developments in digital phenotyping have brought new attention to forms of behavioural data collection that capitalise on the apparent ubiquity of…
Entrepreneurship and Emergent Technologies: From Predicting to Creating the Future
“What is the motivator, what inspires us?” Stephen discusses with his teammate. “The reason is contribution, contribution to the world and to the future. It is about the…
Ted Chiang on Artificial Intelligence
Ted Chiang is a science fiction author who wrote the story that became Arrival (via Metafilter). Recently in The New Yorker: How much can you optimize for generality?…
GPT-Neo: An open source alternative to GPT-3
Access to GPT-3 remains limited, but “EleutherAI,” a “grassroots collective of researchers working to open source AI research,” has released GPT-Neo: GPT-Neo is the code …
The hype and hope of data for healthcare in Africa by Tom Neumark
Promotional materials from the global campaign to achieve Universal Health Coverage by the year 2030. Copyright UHC2030 – reproduced here under ‘fair use’ for academic purposes. …
Seeing like a state of exception | 例外状态的视角
In a bittersweet combination of personal achievement and global emergency, I moved to Norway and started working on a new research project right when the COVID-19 epidemic started…
AES 2020 Abstract: Mediating Multispecies Relations Through Western and Indigenous Conservation
Western notions of modernity have situated human society apart from nature, which encompasses those spaces and beings that are unmodified and unsullied by human activity. The Western conception…
AI and User Experience: As Always, the User Comes First
In this interview with my colleague Arun Shastri, we talk about the value and importance of bringing a UX perspective to our work in AI.
Gods, AIs, and Mormon Transhumanism
I’d like to start this post by juxtaposing two scenes. The first one is set about two years ago, and occurred on the third floor of the Provo,…
Japan’s Emerging Emotional Tech
Are we developing emotional machines with all-too-human capacities for care? An interactive scene from Gatebox Inc.’s promotional video. Gatebox Inc. There is a moment in Spike Jonze’s film…
An Anthropologist in Silicon Valley
Reflections on a career tackling some of the critical workplace challenges of our time. I could not have imagined when I entered the PhD program in anthropology at…
Rule of Law by Machine? Not so Fast!
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth post in our Law in Computation series. Back in the mid-1990s when I was a graduate student, I “interned” at a parole…
Living On Screen: Sondra Perry and Ian Cheng at the Serpentine Galleries
Like many other London institutions seeking to shore up against an ever-rising digital tide, the Serpentine Galleries have announced a new annual “Digital Seasons” initiative that will recognize…
The Desire and Fear of the Immortal
A phrase from the immensely popular series, A Song of Ice and Fire, valar morghulis is translated as “all men must die,” an idea prevalent in human culture. …
The Automation and Privatization of Community Knowledge
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community, who we are as a community, what keeps us connected and together, and how community knowledge is stored and distributed.…
The Automation and Privatization of Community Knowledge
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community, who we are as a community, what keeps us connected and together, and how community knowledge is stored and distributed.…
Paying with Our Faces: Apple’s FaceID
In early September, Apple Computer, Inc. launched their new iPhone and with it, FaceID, software that uses facial-recognition as an authentication for unlocking the iPhone. The mass global…
Paying with Our Faces: Apple’s FaceID
In early September, Apple Computer, Inc. launched their new iPhone and with it, FaceID, software that uses facial-recognition as an authentication for unlocking the iPhone. The mass global…
The future of designing autonomous systems will involve ethnographers
Note from the Editor, Tricia Wang: Next up in our Co-designing with machines edition is Madeleine Clare Elish, (@mcette), is an anthropologist and researcher at Data & Society, presents a…
The human-side of artificial intelligence and machine learning
Note from the Editor, Tricia Wang: Next up in our Co-designing with machines edition is Steven Gustafson (@stevengustafson), founder of the Knowledge Discovery Lab at the General Electric Gl…