Automated algorithms are already dictating our future and freedom.
Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor
In an exclusive global series, the Guardian lays bare the tech revolution transforming the welfare system worldwide – while penalising the most vulnerable
The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age | The Walrus
Why are we letting algorithms rewrite the rules of art, work, and life?
Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI
Our gravest AI risk isn’t runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems.
Building Political Superintelligence
Amidst fears of dystopia, a blueprint for how we use AI to reinvent the way we govern ourselves
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...
Automate the Boring
Delegating tedious tasks to AI is the most strategic, feasible, and humane use of the technology today.
Society-in-the-loop: programming the algorithmic social contract
Recent rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning have raised many questions about the regulatory and governance mechanisms for autonomous machines. Many commentators, scholars, and policy-makers now call for ensuring that algorithms governing our lives are transparent, fair, and accountable. Here, I propose a conceptual framework for the regulation of AI and algorithmic systems. I argue that we need tools to program, debug and maintain an algorithmic social contract, a pact between various human stakeholders, mediated by machines. To achieve this, we can adapt the concept of human-in-the-loop (HITL) from the fields of modeling and simulation, and interactive machine learning. In particular, I propose an agenda I call society-in-the-loop (SITL), which combines the HITL control paradigm with mechanisms for negotiating the values of various stakeholders affected by AI systems, and monitoring compliance with the agreement. In short, ‘SITL = HITL + Social Contract.’
Our Spreadsheet Overlords
Weatherby argues that the current discourse around AI, especially the buzz around “artificial general intelligence,” is a distraction from its actual impact: the expansion of bureaucracy through massive data systems…
AI and democracy: the right to resist optimization
Taiwan's cyber-ambassador Audrey Tang on why the real danger of AI isn't that machines imitate humans, but that humans adapt to machines.
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 AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It’s ‘Crunch Time for Humanity’
Jacob Coxon talks to WIRED about the “mini Manhattan project” inside Anthropic, the problem with alignment, and why AI labs have just a few years left to make their systems safe.
The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us | Critical AI | Duke University Press
Jathan Sadowski is an associate professor in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of two books on technology and capitalism, Too Smart (2020) and The Mechanic and the Luddite (2025). He also cohosts the podcast This Machine Kills.
Kyle Booten
Noöhacking1 is the title of my current research program. I use this term for ways that artists and everyday digital media users build and repurpose algorithmic tools in order to take care of their own minds/spirits, an especially challenging and important task amidst a digital milieu that seems designed to make us alienated, unintelligent, and miserable.
The Third AI Summer, Henry Kautz, AAAI 2020 Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Award Lecture
