The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age | The Walrus

The Digital Identity Event Horizon

A five year investigation into digital identity and its central role in creating brittle societies.

Socialized Proof of Work — Open Indie

There’s an increasing obsession with “humanness” these days: Humanness in the age of AI Worldcoin: a solution in search of its problem (...

The First Person Project: Redefining Digital Identity in an AI-Dominated World

Over the past days, a highly motivated community of digital experts gathered in sweltering Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss requirements and…

The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace

Interpreting the myths of the digital age: why we believed in the power of cyberspace to open up a new world.The digital era promises, as did many other te

AI's Affordability Crisis

A year ago in The Back Of The AI Envelope I pointed out that the AI platforms were running the drug-dealer's algorithm, "the first one's fr...

Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software

In the tradition of Being Digital and The Tipping Point…

Mathematical methods and human thought in the age of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the name popularly given to a broad spectrum of computer tools designed to perform increasingly complex cognitive tasks, including many that used to solely be the province of humans. As these tools become exponentially sophisticated and pervasive, the justifications for their rapid development and integration into society are frequently called into question, particularly as they consume finite resources and pose existential risks to the livelihoods of those skilled individuals they appear to replace. In this paper, we consider the rapidly evolving impact of AI to the traditional questions of philosophy with an emphasis on its application in mathematics and on the broader real-world outcomes of its more general use. We assert that artificial intelligence is a natural evolution of human tools developed throughout history to facilitate the creation, organization, and dissemination of ideas, and argue that it is paramount that the development and application of AI remain fundamentally human-centered. With an eye toward innovating solutions to meet human needs, enhancing the human quality of life and expanding the capacity for human thought and understanding, we propose a pathway to integrating AI into our most challenging and intellectually rigorous fields to the benefit of all humankind.

Computing, Complexity and Degrowth : Systemic Considerations for Digital De-escalation

Research on digital degrowth predominantly critiques digital expansion or presents alternative digital practices. Yet, analyzing the link between digital technologies and complexity is crucial to overcome systemic obstacles hindering digital de-escalation. This article presents the different types of links between complexity and computing observed in the literature: the infrastructural complexity inherent in digital technologies, the socio-political complexity induced by them, and finally, the ontological complexity (individual’s ways of relating to their environment) hindered by digitization. The paper explores these links to identify ways to reduce infrastructural and socio-political complexities, and to move away from the reductionist paradigm, in order to support digital degrowth. Its development shows that complexity induces ratchet effects (i.e. irreversibilities in the development of a technique in a society), rendering degrowth efforts difficult to handle by individuals. Therefore, strategies to overcome these barriers are proposed, suggesting that bottom-up simplification approaches stand a greater chance of making alternatives emerge from different stakeholders (including users). This digital shift assumes the development of methods and technical tools that enable individuals to disengage from their attachments to digital habits and infrastructure, opening a substantial field of study.

Decent Imaginaries

The digital sphere appears to be at an inflection point and we need to imagine what comes next as this era rots and burns. Imagining a renewed, decentralised world is difficult, but we can pull it off.

Why we must reclaim digital sovereignty

A new white paper envisions a radically different technological future

Protect Me From What I Want

Over on Mastodon, there are many people who enjoy not being in the grip of software like Facebook or Twitter that single-mindedly tries to maximize “engagement”, which means the amount of time you stare at the screen so they can show you ads. These algorithms don’t care what they’re showing you and if it turns out that showing you exclusively stories vilifying or praising Donald Trump (depending) maximizes engagement, then that’s what you’ll see. So the chant over there is “No algorithms on Mastodon!” This chant is wrong, and the discussion around it teaches us that we need clarity on what algorithms are, what moral weight they can carry, and whether they can be avoided. (Spoiler: They can’t.)

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.