artificial intelligence

The Dangerous Delusion of the Big Data Utopia

by Jill Lepore

Why has "data" supplanted metaphysical inquiry, empirical observation, and even standard statistical analysis as the go-to source for understanding the world? Is data science the latest episode in a history of technological utopianism? 

ChatGPT Wants to Join SEIU in Breakthrough for Organized Labor

by Jim Castagnera

Business owners looking to replace workers with automation beware; ChatGPT is a union bot. 

O'Mara: Politics and Commercial Pressure, not ChatGPT, are the Threats

Historian of technology and Silicon Valley Margaret O'Mara says that the peril of artificial intelligence chatbots and artificial intellience will lie in how it is marketed; the rush to be first to the market creates conditions for sloppy tech and abusive applications. 

As the Progressive Era Ideal of Regulation Vanishes, What Will Stop the March of AI?

by Walter G. Moss

If capital decides that artificial intelligence is sufficiently profitable to put in charge of driving our cars, writing our essays, or even teaching our history classes, what is left to stop it, even if the products are terrible or even dangerous? 

Why I'm Not Afraid of ChatGPT

by Christopher Grobe

The limits of AI writing technology present writing teachers the opportunity to show students how to demand more of their writing than the bots can possibly provide. 

How Freaked Out Should Professors Be About Artificial Intelligence Language Tech?

by John Warner

ChatGPT can crank out essays full of plausible "content," but it can't engage in contextualization, analysis, or intuitive connection of ideas. The problem it reveals is an education system where outcomes have overtaken process and students are encouraged to write mechanically. 

Will Artificial Intelligence be the Agent of Capitalism's (and Humanity's) Creative Destruction?

by Jim Castagnera

Between science fiction and the political economy of the present, the author wonders if artificial intelligence will constitute humanity's successor species. 

Facial Surveillance Has Always Been Flawed

by Amanda Levendowski

Today, artificial intelligence startups are scraping the web to build massive face-recognition databases, without any pretense of consent by the public. The technology may be new, but the intrusive assertion of surveillance has a long history. 

Autonomous Robot Weapons Could be More Destabilizing than Nukes

by James Dawes

"Imagine a world in which militaries, insurgent groups and international and domestic terrorists can deploy theoretically unlimited lethal force at theoretically zero risk at times and places of their choosing, with no resulting legal accountability."

Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. 

The Promise and Risks of Artificial Intelligence: A Brief History

by Rebecca Slayton

Machines have been taking over tasks that otherwise require human intelligence for decades, if not centuries.

Analysing history using Artificial Intelligence

Queen Mary University of London is leading a major new research project, Living with Machines, which is set to be one of the biggest and most ambitious humanities and science research initiatives ever to launch in the UK.

Artificial intelligence has been used to recreate JFK's Dallas speech that he never gave

Is technology bringing history to life or distorting it?

Historians' Debate: Will Robots Rule the World?

by Dane Kennedy

Louis Hyman says the nature of the changes being wrought by innovation are unprecedented.

Stephen Hawking: AI could be 'worst event in the history of our civilization'

Elon Musk isn't the only high-profile figure concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence.

Yuval Noah Harari turns to fiction

In the novel, "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,” the historian warns that Artificial Intelligence will lead to a future class of useless humans.

Microsoft's latest AI experiment is refusing to look at photos of Adolf Hitler

After its last AI chatbot turned into a genocide-advocating, misogynistic, holocaust-denying racist, the company's latest project — a bot that tells you what's in photos — refuses to even look at photos of Adolf Hitler.