Algocracy, Immortality, and Schoolkid Surveillance
Happy New Year from the team here at CognitionX!
January is often thought to be named for Janus, the Roman god of transition and change. Double faced, he gazes both upon the past and the future.
Though change is eternal to human affairs, perhaps we can see Janus as a particularly fitting deity for our own moment of technological, political, economic, social and even moral transition — or at least the accelerationists who celebrate it.
In the words of the 14th century Chinese classic, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, “Empires wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce.” As it always has, the world is changing all around us. Power is shifting to the east, as China’s moon landing ought to remind us. But what our era potentially brings is a deeper transition — a transformation in what it means to be human.
Read on for news and views on transhumanism and the meaning of death, politics and technological determinism, ‘algocracy’, school surveillance, and the nature of consciousness.
Keen to see our AI ethics primer, with lists relevant ethics frameworks and approaches? Email James Kingston on james.kingston@cognitionx.io
Moral Philosophy
As technology advances, so too does it challenge and shift ideas about humanity and morality. Read this article for an interesting screed against the values of contemporary transhumanist discourse.
Political discourse
Lets face it, technological determinism is terrible politics
The world may be changing, but the dynamic of change is no set in stone. A good reminder that as we humans make technology, we can also set the terms for how we interact with it.
Politics and accountability
The Welfare State is Committing Suicide by Artificial Intelligence
When pursued in the abscence of transparent and explainable AI systems, ‘algorithmic governance’ is rife with potential problems in accountability, which may prove to have corrosive effects on democracies. This article argues that left unchecked, “algocracy will otherwise involve the sacrifice of democracy.
Privacy
Chinese schools are using smart uniforms to track their student’s locations
Illustrating the creeping capacity of ‘smart’ devices to corrode privacy and notions of freedom, Chinese schools “are now tracking the exact location of their students using chip-equipped “smart uniforms” in order to encourage better attendance rates”. Remarkable.
Consciousness and VR
Modern technology is akin to the metaphysics of Vedanta
A Hindu philosopher’s reflections on technology, consciousness, and VR. Mind expanding stuff.
