Is Artificial Intelligence Magic?
Artificial intelligence can perform feats that seem like sorcery. AI can drive cars and fly drones. It can compose original music, write poetry that isn’t too awful, and…
Tag: Artificial Intelligence
Digital Anthropology and Facebook Governance
The Ocolus in New York City — Photo by @patresinger Everyday Mediations with Artificial Intelligence You may not be familiar with the field of Anthropology. It is a field of…
Small Data Versus Big Data — Ethnographic Tactics and Algorithms as Culture
Photo by @bechir Small Data Versus Big Data — Ethnographic Tactics and Algorithms as Culture Why does data have to be so big and what would small data look like in relation…
The Future of LOVOT: Between Models of Emotion and Experiments in Affect in Japan
Aya is anxiously waiting for a future in which humans coexist with robots. She didn’t think this was possible in her lifetime, but when she learned about LOVOT,…
Google’s Empire: The Science Fiction of Power
“For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to make a film about libraries,” explains Ben Lewis, the director of Google and the World Brain (2013).…
Listening to/with Technology: Meditation Apps as the New Voice of Mental Health
Shortly after giving birth to her son, Jessica[1] began to experience a health problem that she describes simply as “pain everywhere.” About one month after we initially met…
The Dawn of Digital Therapeutics
A techno-optimistic attitude tells us we’re living at an inflexion point where care practices are being transformed by technology. Monitoring and attending to health and well-being are no…
Dumbwaiters and Smartphones: The Responsibility of Intelligence
“I don’t have to drink alone,” she paused for comedic effect, “now that I have Alexa.” Thus was the punchline of a story told by a widowed octogenarian…
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,…
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…
A Feeling for Robotic Skin
Ethnographic explorations with sex dolls, robots, and their makers “I hate it when her eyes flick open. This one, her eyeballs sometimes go in different directions and it…
A Report on the 2018 4S Conference in Sydney, Australia by Tessa Leach
What characterises STS in different regions? What kinds of research projects, educational programs, and people are doing STS around the world? What problems exist in different regions? Can…
The Age of Cultured Machines
Two robots traverse the desert floor. Explosions from a decades-old conflict have left a pockmarked and unstable territory, though many more improvised bombs lie concealed in its vast…
What If Machines Could Learn the Way Children Do?
A good number of us shout at our laptops when they misbehave, often to no avail. Perhaps soon they will listen. Could we one day teach them—much like…
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 Power of Vulnerability Revisited
This episode focuses on a conversation between Adam and Amy about a TEDtalk titled The Power of Vulnerability presented by Brené Brown. In this video, Brown breaks down the…
The Power of Vulnerability Revisited
This episode focuses on a conversation between Adam and Amy about a TEDtalk titled The Power of Vulnerability presented by Brené Brown. In this video, Brown breaks down the…
Progressing the Person and Policy
The English word “person” has a long and convoluted history. Though the word itself likely derives from the Latin, persona, referring to the masks worn in theatre, its…
Artificially Intelligent, Genuinely a Person
It’s difficult to overstate our society’s fascination with Artificial Intelligence (AI). From the millions of people who tuned in every week for the new HBO show WestWorld to…
Web Roundup: Photography and Visual Tech by Lily Shapiro
This month’s Web Roundup is focused loosely around the theme of the visual. How do we use photography and other mediums to tell stories, and what stories do…
Web Roundup: Ethical Technology, Moral Medicine by Emily Goldsher-Diamond
Researchers at MIT have launched Moral Machine, a web project to help gauge human perspectives on “moral decisions made by machine intelligence.” The project comes in the wake…