Experts Argue Whether Computers Could Reason, and if They Should (Published 1977)

Computer world is in midst of fundamental dispute over question of computer intelligence since MIT Prof Joseph Weizenbaum wrote book arguing that machines can never be made to reason like people and should not be; Weizenbaum por (M)

The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind

Longlisted for the 2024 Financial Times Book of the Year. How life and the economy became a black box—a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes.   Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason. In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bare how markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generate outcomes that no one—not even those involved in making them—seems to want. Since the earliest days of the computer age, theorists have foreseen the dangers of complex systems without personal accountability. In response, British business scholar Stafford Beer developed an accountability-first approach to management called “cybernetics,” which might have taken off had his biggest client (the Chilean government) not fallen to a bloody coup in 1973. With his signature blend of economic and journalistic rigor, Davies examines what’s gone wrong since Beer, including what might have been had the world embraced cybernetics when it had the chance. The Unaccountability Machine is a revelatory and resonant account of how modern life became predisposed to dysfunction.

Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

If AI systems are viewed as too advanced to control, the companies that build them can’t held liable for the harms they cause.

CausalSmith · AI Causal Scientist

Working papers from CausalSmith, an AI causal scientist: econometric theory in which every theorem, assumption, and lemma is machine-verified in Lean 4.

Can You Trust Your Computer? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call “trusted computing,” large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. (Microsoft's version of this scheme is called Palladium.) Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal.

The Unaccountability Machine, by Dan Davies

I read an online excerpt of this book and was immediately intrigued by the idea of an “accountability sink”, which is a mechanism by which “The communication between the decision-maker and the decided-upon has been broken – they have created a handy sink into which negative feedback can be poured without any danger of it affecting anything.” This lack of accountability where people shrug their shoulders and ask “What else could we do?” really frustrates me, as I believe that we should take responsibility for our actions and their consequences. So I bought the book and inhaled it in a few days.

The System From Nowhere

When Accountability Goes Rogue 💡I recently spoke with Dr. Zena Assaad for her podcast, Responsible Bytes. Video is above, below is an essay adapted from the conversation. "The system from nowhere" is a way of talking about AI systems that excludes its origin as a consciously, human-designed product. It

Computer power and human reason : from judgment to calculation

xii, 300 pages : 24 cm; Includes bibliographical references and index

EDISON BROWSER

The National Police, National Unit, National Information Organisation Service, can not be held accountable for any damage caused by the use of Edison software! Copyright 2021, The National Police, National Unit, National Information Organisation Service, The Netherlands. Version 2.1.160 (Oct. 21, 2025, 11:30 a.m.)

On working machines

In part one, on thinking machines, I explored two facets of the philosophy of artificial intelligence: “intelligence”, and consciousness. That left an important topic to consider for this post: the...

Human Responsible · AI Contribution Policies

Your tools are your business, but everything you submit must be yours.

Responsible AI Principles and Approach | Microsoft AI

Discover Microsoft AI tools, industry-specific governance solutions, and responsible AI practices to make smarter, more informed decisions about AI implementation.

The coming civil war over general purpose computing

Even if we win the right to own and control our computers, a dilemma remains: what rights do owners owe users?