In June 2023 I wrote:
«Will consumers perhaps come to see the phrase "AI-Powered System" in the same light as "Diesel-Powered SUV".»
Well, not yet it would seem.
In The Elements of AI Ethics from June of last year I build on The Elements of Digital Ethics from 2021. Which itself was the output of reading about digital harms for many years.
Seeing all of the categories of harms just get worse year on year is disheartening.
What goal is worth all this? I tend to fall back on a sentiment I use in my talks and teaching:
When a privileged group benefits from a technology, the more inclined they will be to ignore the harms done unto others by the same technology. Because drawing attention to the harm would suggest they should give up their personal gain to help someone else.
This appears to be true for the short term. In the long term the beneficiaries of technology will happily also ignore harm done unto themselves, as long as they get the experience boost in the moment.
What hope is there?
In my June 11 session for Ambition Empower I will be talking about how to champion technologies of compassion, drawing on work related to nature connectedness by P. Wesley Schultz, Marianne E. Krasny, F. Stephan Mayer and Cynthia M Frantz.
Technologies of compassion work in unison with an acknowledgement of our connection not only to each other but also to nature. Technology tends to separate us from nature, making us value it less - and causing us to increasingly worsen our own living conditions, and the conditions of all other species, over time.
But we can choose to design technology that takes nature into account.. Technology that works with, not against, nature. I believe this is what all schools must start teaching. Now.
Expect me to write more about this over the next year.
https://per.ax/aie
#solarpunk
Tagged: Akkoma
@hundenrajna1 @wolfman Än så länge är det bara nya Copilot+ PC som har det. Så det är ingen ko på isen, ännu.
Alien historians:
For fifty years computers were used for their purpose: to compute exact, predictable and explainable responses to exact, interpretable queries and inputs.
Then, in what human timekeeping referred to as the early 21st century, the most exploitative classes of the human race decided that the best use of computers was to compute inexact - yet semantically believable - responses to inexact human phrasing. Each inexact response was different for multiple identical queries, and easily manipulated through more inexact phrasing.
And they chose to call those responses intelligence. We can only presume the decades prior, trusting computers for exact calculations, forced them into a delusional state of mind. Probabilistic word salad was treated as divine instruction. As further evidence of this delusion, we can refer to the sequence of events that followed.
To produce vast amounts of ’intelligence’ required extreme amounts of energy, causing consumption to skyrocket. This was during a time when it would appear that the human race were well aware that they actually needed to do the opposite: reduce energy consumption to minimise the effects of their climate crisis and save themselves.
Needless to say, much of human civilisation collapsed into a smoking pile of confusion. After their demise, Earth was again able to thrive, after we removed the heaps of harmful waste orbitting around it.
1. År 2020 sätter Microsoft som mål att nå negativa utsläpp år 2030.
2. De gasar på och kör i helt motsatt riktning från målet och ökar i stället sina utsläpp med mer än 30%.
3. År 2024 handlar allt om att bygga ut och bygga nya datacenter.
4. De accelerar alltså nu ännu snabbare bort från målet de satte.
5. Idag frågar en journalist ”Är det möjligt att nå målet när ni expanderar så kraftigt inom datacenter?”
6. Och får till svar ”I nuläget är det svårare än när vi satte det 2020. Men det är viktigare än någonsin att nå det, och det är vi fast beslutna att göra.”
7. Ingen följdfråga på det.
8. Ridå.
Just found the Solarpunk Futures storytelling game and now all I want to do is run a solarpunk workshop. 😊
https://thefuture.wtf
The free print-and-play version of the cards: https://per.ax/solarpunkcards
Heja Sverige. Vår statsminister går ut och gör gemensam sak med ett amerikanskt storföretag, och hyllar dem för att de gör en rekordinvestering i sina egna datacenter, bokar upp resurser på vårt elnät, gör åverkan på natur och miljö – och ger dem sannolikt rabatt på elpriset för besväret. Investeringen kan summa summarum bli en kostnad för civilsamhället.
Allt för något som kallas för AI, och som ingen har definierat vad det är för något. Ett marknadsföringsbegrepp som kan betyda allt och inget. Just det, vi får några timmar i deras webbutbildning – troligen utan lärare – om deras egen proprietära “AI”, en webbutbildning som sannolikt redan ligger färdigproducerad. Tack för det Microsoft.
Söker journalister som kan problematisera detta…
Det här var mitt första utbrott. Ska fördjupa mig i respektive ämne på bloggen sedan.
Just det… det råkar vara ett storföretag som kritiserats starkt på senaste tiden för sina bristande säkerhetsrutiner… bland annat av Trafikverket, och släpper en dator med en funktion (Recall) som är som att bjuda cyberkriminella på buffé.
@LeoR1010 Exakt så. Jag kokar här…
@ton Agree completely!
When you have a qr code on a presentation slide you are welcoming people to take out their phones and get distracted by any notifications that happen to have appeared on screen, or just by the habit of tapping a specific app to check messages.
I actually miss business cards. But yeah, I still have a business card variant (just a url) that I sometimes hand out.
@emilymbender Wow, this is a great report with so many useful references. Thank you for sharing!
@blogdiva Thank you for teaching me the word jingoistic, I'm not sure I had even seen that word before. 🙏
@kaffeeringe Thanks Steffen!
Instead of a traditional online forum I am considering starting a mailing list (think listserv). Some of my best best online conversations were on mailing lists in the late 90s. And e-mail is, after all, pretty cool.
Oh yeah, I’ve just been reading about how Slack is now ingesting your messages for their AI “training”.
"It feels good to me, so therefore it must be a good thing."
The foundational fallacy of harmful behavior and systemic injustice.
Just seeing so much of it right now. 😢
@datarama Yes, that's exactly it. 😊
@ingemar I had it on VHS when living in a country without television, so I’ve seen it multiple times 😅
@ambivalena Woot!? Galet.
It's an odd one, but I think the movie Cherry 2000 was formative to me.
Made in 1985, released in 1988, it's a Mad Max-esque adventure where a tracker (Melanie Griffith) is helping a businessman (David Andrews) find an out-of-production fembot in the post-apocalyptic desert wastelands of the future, to replace his animatronic wife that breaks down at the start of the film.
The year in the movie is 2017. Cherry 2000 is the name of the discontinued robot wife.
Needless to say, businessman Treadwell learns that an animatronic partner perhaps isn't the right future for him.
Anyone else remember this film?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0092746/
Fan vad långt Google Translate har kommit ändå. Det är bara att applådera.
