In Defence of Tinkerers: Why We Need Open AI
The release of large language models like ChatGPT has led to a lot of speculation about a possible new technological revolution. Some regard these AIs as a deflationary cure for…
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Posts by tag
AI
14 posts
Artificial Intelligence, the Public and the Pope
According to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research report by Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, 50–70% of changes to wage structures in the US over the last four decades…
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Techno-Immortality
Technology has now made us immortal. Stored in the cloud, on smartphones, on YouTube channels and on social media accounts, there is an easily accessible record of everything we have…
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Dall∙E and the Creation of Art
My early years at high school were marked by a protracted disagreement with my art teacher. Given the evidence of several years of atrocious drawings, I had concluded that I…
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From Natural Selection to Machine Selection: Human Evolution in the Age of AI
Around 30,000 years ago, when some Asian grey wolves began to tolerate—and be tolerated by—humans, they set in motion one of evolution’s great marvels. Instead of competing with human hunters,…
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How Virtual Friends Can Influence People
It took Dale Carnegie less than three years of hard work to turn his languishing Nebraska sales territory into the national sales leader for his employer, Armour & Company meatpackers. In…
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Will This Article Kill You?
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. —John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (Meditation XVII). Can Just Seeing Something Kill You? There…
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How AI Can Change Your Mind
Last month, Microsoft made a move to license GPT-3, a powerful artificial intelligence model built by OpenAI, a company founded by Elon Musk. The move has focused renewed attention on…
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Karl Marx in the AI Age
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.—John F. Kennedy Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who…
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What Happens When Meaning Goes Away: A Review of Yuval Noah Harari’s “Homo Deus”
Humanity has made tremendous strides in reining in plague, famine and war in recent decades. Take just one example: poverty. Since 1990, on average, with each passing day, there are…
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In Defence Of Change
We are currently living through a phase transition in the West: economically, demographically, technologically, culturally and environmentally, inter alia. Economically, millions of traditional jobs have been wiped out by new…
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The Future of Democracy in the AI Era
The dark forces of global politics—illiberalism, populist nationalism and protectionism—have recently reasserted themselves and threaten to subvert liberal democracy and the rules-based world order. These fundamental sociopolitical currents pose challenges…
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Transhumanism and the Death of Human Exceptionalism
Every few decades, a new ism comes along that many people see as a threat to the bedrock principles of Western civilization. Communism was one of the big ones, and…
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The Algorithm Who Loved Me
One of the most fascinating episodes of House — “The Social Contract” (S05E17) — tells the story of Nick Greenwald, a well-respected editor at a prestigious press who suddenly loses the…
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