This post is a bit more personal than most. One of the original readers of this blog, and its most committed commenter, passed away a year ago this month, from …
Could AI Alleviate Multiple Sclerosis?
Artificial Intelligence
Eminently Hackable Humans
One of the most persistent fears about turning over tasks to machines is their susceptibility to hacking. Although briefly mentioned in a previous post on neural implants, the topic comes …
Experiencing Art in a Digital World
The importance of the arts, especially in a world that will be increasingly digital, has been a recurring theme of this blog. (See previous posts on literature specifically and art …
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
I recently gave a talk to a group of young people at the Montana Learning Center, and a large part of the discussion centered on artificial intelligence and what that …
Every Breath You Take, They’ll Be Watching You
When the SEC used his own emails to build a case for fraud against Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre, a trader at Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis, the response from …
The New American Plutocrats
“Entitled.” It’s a pejorative term that we like to throw at people – or groups – who ask for more than (we think) they deserve. As a previous post explored, …
AI Could Help Us Eliminate Tribalism
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many people believed that we were at an inflection point in human history; democracy had putatively subjugated the worst of human nature. However, …
There’s a Chip for That…
In one of my performance reviews when I worked in the financial industry, my boss told me that I was too scary and unapproachable to advance farther in my career.* …
Will Android Shrinks Treat Digital Loneliness?
I recently had a discussion with an eight-year-old about the potential for the future of humanity to be entirely digital rather than biological. His first thought: “Wouldn’t it be really …
AI Is the Reason I Quit My Job
My outlook on the future changed irrevocably in January 2016. That month, it was announced that AlphaGo, an algorithm designed by Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) unit DeepMind, had beaten the …