Category Archives: surveillance

artificial intelligence, dystopia, ethics, forecasting, society, surveillance, technology, wearable technology, work

Your brain may not be private much longer

Neurotechnology is upon us. Your brain urgently needs new rights.

The risks are profound. And the gaps in our existing rights are deeply problematic. So, where do I come out on the balance? I’m a little bit of a tech inevitabilist. I think the idea that you can somehow stop the train and say, “On balance, maybe this isn’t better for humanity and therefore we shouldn’t introduce it” — I just don’t see it working.

Maybe people will say, “My brain is too sacred and the risks are so profound that I’m not willing to do it myself,” but with the ways that people unwittingly give up information all the time and the benefits that are promised to them, I think that’s unlikely. I think we’ve got to carve out a different approach.

Nita Farahany
artificial intelligence, dystopia, economics, ethics, society, surveillance, virtual reality

The Imminent Danger of A.I. Is One We’re Not Talking About (Ezra Klein)

“I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism,” Chiang told me. “And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too. Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us. And technology and capitalism have been so closely intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish the two.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/opinion/microsoft-bing-sydney-artificial-intelligence.html
dystopia, ethics, forecasting, history, innovation, internet of things, living room, society, surveillance, technology, the home

We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

The goal of consumer tech development used to be pretty simple: design and build something of value to people, giving them a reason to buy it. A new refrigerator is shiny, cuts down on my energy bills, makes cool-looking ice cubes. So I buy it. Done. A Roomba promises to vacuum the cat hair from under my sofa while I take a nap. Sold! But this vision of tech is increasingly outdated. It’s not enough for a refrigerator to keep food cold; today’s version offers cameras and sensors that can monitor how and what I’m eating, while the Roomba could soon be able to send a map of my house to Amazon.

https://www-technologyreview-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/21/1061260/innovation-technology-what-happened/amp/
artificial intelligence, dystopia, ethics, forecasting, health, politics, privacy, surveillance, technology, virtual reality, wearable technology, work

Ready for Brain Transparency? (Davos AM23)

The promise of neurotechnology to improve lives and to gain insight into the human brain is growing. How can we uphold data privacy and personal freedom as we make strides toward a world of brain transparency?

This session is moderated by Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, while Nita A. Farahany from Duke University School of Law, who is also a leading scholar on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies, throws light on what the world of brain transparency would look like.

https://www.weforum.org/videos/davos-am23-ready-for-brain-transparency-english
archetypes, dystopia, ethics, forecasting, generations, politics, privacy, social media, society, surveillance, technology

The Teenager Leading the Smartphone Liberation Movement

How many hours do you spend on your phone each day? Probably more than you’d like. In our technology-saturated world, we rely on our devices for what feels like an endless list of daily tasks — everything from staying up-to-date on Twitter to killing time at the post office. The idea of reclaiming any degree of independence from our smartphones can often feel impossible.

For the 17-year-old Logan Lane, the solution was to quit cold turkey. Lane grew up in Brooklyn and was a screen-addicted teenager who spent hours curating her social media presence on Instagram and TikTok. Then, a little over two years ago, Lane started questioning whether living a life of constant connection was actually a good thing and made the decision to ditch her smartphone altogether. She began assembling a “Luddite Club” — a group of teenagers who reject technology and its creeping hold on all our lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/opinion/teen-luddite-smartphones.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
artificial intelligence, education, ethics, forecasting, research, robots, society, surveillance, technology

How do we stop the robot takeover? As AI gets smarter, meet the academics on a mission to save humanity from the matrix

The dawning of AI’s golden age poses all manner of tricky questions. If we allow machine intelligence to do our jobs and clean our houses, pick our music and television, generate our art and essays, judge our legal cases and diagnose our illnesses, what will be left for us to do? What’s so special about being human in the age of advanced artificial intelligence? What’s so special about being human at all?

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-do-we-stop-the-robot-takeover-oxford-dons-have-a-plan-c39dzkkfw?shareToken=f96f5f0df5a961ea2486ac2d4e2e290d
artificial intelligence, dystopia, education, ethics, privacy, retail, society, surveillance

The rise of emotion recognition technology

In KFC China store, diners have new way to pay

Mastercard Begins Facial-Recognition Rollout With Retailers

Self-driving cars that measure your mood

Intel calls its AI that detects student emotions a teaching tool. Others call it ‘morally reprehensible.’

Microsoft stops selling emotion-reading tech, limits face recognition

Zoom’s A.I. tech to detect emotion during calls upsets critics

artificial intelligence, ethics, society, surveillance, technology, work

Emotional AI Is No Substitute for Empathy

In 2023, emotional AI—technology that can sense and interact with human emotions—will become one of the dominant applications of machine learning. For instance, Hume AI, founded by Alan Cowen, a former Google researcher, is developing tools to measure emotions from verbal, facial, and vocal expressions. Swedish company Smart Eyes recently acquired Affectiva, the MIT Media Lab spinoff that developed the SoundNet neural network, an algorithm that classifies emotions such as anger from audio samples in less than 1.2 seconds. Even the video platform Zoom is introducing Zoom IQ, a feature that will soon provide users with real-time analysis of emotions and engagement during a virtual meeting.  

https://www-wired-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-empathy/amp
artificial intelligence, dystopia, ethics, facial recognition, forecasting, government, internet of things, politics, privacy, research, surveillance, technology, work

𝘿𝙖𝙩𝙖 𝙅𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘼𝙡𝙜𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 Syllabus and Reading Lis