The Web Foundation ran an experiment in Argentina where six new FB profiles were set up, and then ran an experiment to see what information each profile received: The way we experience the web today is largely through algorithms. Search algorithms determine the results we see. Targeting algorithms decide which ads we are shown. Algorithms on soc...
Ivana Bartoletti, writing in advance of the launch of the Fabian Women's Network: And if robots are taking human jobs, we need to figure out how we would deal with a large jobless population. Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies' use of robots, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other typ...
This is a good, long read on the opportunities and challenges of Artificial Intelligence, by Berkeley Professor Michael Jordan. He believes that such is the power of AI that contemporary public discourse is simply ineffective in addressing and understanding its scope and diversity. Jordan also paints a picture of the future based on AI and h...
A Valediction for a Platform (in the Form of Two Epigraphs) "Language is neither reactionary nor progressive, it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech." - Roland Barthes, 1977 "A lot of attention alone creates value." - DT, 1987 1. Intro Twitter has been cleansed. The publicly available corpus, numbering ...
A cracking read on tacticality and surfaces: The tacticality of tactical goods is not an essential quality. It emerges from an assemblage of accidental qualities more atomic than itself. We've discussed three of those qualities. Alone, no one of them will make something "tactical". Together (and in concert with other qualities we've not discu...
This is a really good piece on the unpredictability of algorithms : Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be solved, and through trial-and-error t...
Lil Miquela is a 19-year old singer, model, and influencer. With around 900k followers on Instagram, you might wonder why she hasn't occupied the Mail Online sidebar of shame yet. The answer is simple: she doesn't exist . The space in which Miquela occupies is the hyperrealistic one predicted in many a famous SF novel over the past 40-or-so ye...
You're going to be bombarded with promoted tweets by companies offering GDPR advice over coming weeks, in advance of its enforcement from 25 May onwards. Thankfully, Mailchimp has published some advice on web form compliance with the legislation. Here are some things to know before you begin this process. Enabling GDPR fields on your signup forms ...
This is very good on how algorithms are creating a homogenous gloop of style and fashion, rather than diverse individualism: The threat of banality (or the lack of surprise) implicit in full machine curation reminds me of the seemingly random vocabulary meant to improve SEO on Craigslist posts. As one chair listing I encountered put it: "Goes with ...
"It's my change and when I get to define it, I can control it". Here's Marcus's first posting in his series of TubeNotes. It's clear, it's eloquent, and it's beautifully produced. The first few seconds take you in through their setting of the Bavarian countryside, and it just gets better and better from there.
This is a very good read, from Cedric Villani, mathematician and member of the French Parliament: Defining artificial intelligence is no easy matter. Since the mid-20th century when it was first recognized as a specific field of research, AI has always been envisioned as an evolving boundary, rather than a settled research field. Fundamentally, it ...
Think lawsuits involving humans are tricky? Try taking an intelligent robot to court. While autonomous robots with humanlike, all-encompassing capabilities are still decades away, European lawmakers, legal experts and manufacturers are already locked in a high-stakes debate about their legal status: whether it's these machines or human beings who s...
Sir Martin Sorrell has resigned from WPP. Here is his statement to employees of the group which he started in 1985, through its takeover of Wire & Plastic Products after Sorrell left his position as CFO at Saatchis. Here is his leaving letter to employees. Disappointingly, for as much as WPP companies talk about the 24/7 always-on reputation-le...
