#1655 A Pivotal Moment for Big Tech, Both Old and New: Google Search, the A.I. Boom, Antitrust, and Regulation
Air Date: 9-13-2024
We've been living through the modern equivalent of the oil boom, back when poking a hole in the ground would make one of the world's most valuable substances, upon which entire economies would be built. But in our case, it's not oil, it's data. Now we are at a pivotal moment as the old unchallenged master of data, Google, has been found guilty of illegal anti-competitive behavior at the same time as generative AI companies are in a new desperate rush to stake claims on every last piece of data they can find.
Read more#1638 AI: From Killer Apps to Killer Robots, the Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence Spans the Spectrum
Air Date: 6-28-2024
AI, like all new technologies, won't be all good or all bad. In fact, my favorite understanding of emerging technologies is that they often bring simultaneous utopia and dystopia, though many tend to focus on the benefits while only discovering the drawbacks later.
Read more#1632 SiliCON Valley: The False Promises, Enshittification Economics, and Misguided Adventures of the Twits of Tech
Air Date: 5-28-2024
Everyone knows the rule about not meeting your heroes because they'll so often disappoint you, today we look at the most disappointing yet most idolized false heroes of our day, the twits of tech and the zany hijinks they've been getting up to recently.
Read more#1628 New Era of Antitrust for a New Era of Capitalism, Mega-Corporations and Big Tech
Air Date: 5-11-2024
The effort to turn theory into practice that will open up new ways of thinking about antitrust lawsuits attempting to rein in big tech and other mega-corporations, which are operating in a new phase of capitalism.
Read more#1615 Envisioning a Leftisț Economic Future of Postcapitalism, High-Tech Automation, Universal Basic Income and a World (Mostly) Without Work
Air Date: 3-1-2024
We don't have to think too hard to understand the fears of a world in which work, and the ability of millions to support themselves, are lost to automation and artificial intelligence. But that is only a capitalist future in which the benefits of technological advancement are hoarded by the already-wealthy. Today we imagine a different path.
Read more#1614 Deep-Fakery and Deep Consequences for Democracy: AI-generated fake news threatens elections around the world and makes people question the ability to know what is real.
Air Date: 2-28-2024
AI-generated deepfakes, entirely fabricated audio and video of recognizable people, are here. They have been on the horizon for years but they have finally arrived during the biggest global election year in history which may prove to be a make-or-break year for democracy itself as we struggle to separate fact from fiction and autocracy is on the rise around the world.
Read more#1612 New Tech and the New Luddite Movement; Inequitable Distribution of Benefits from New Technology Always Sparks Demands from Labor and AI is Rekindling the Old Arguments
Air Date: 2-20-2024
"Luddite" should never have become the epithet that it is as the Luddites were never afraid of or opposed to technological advancement, they only opposed the exploitation of workers and the degradation to society that came with the unfair distribution of the benefits of the targeted technology.
Read more#1599 Taming the Beast: AI Regulation Before Human Relegation
Air Date: 12-20-2023
AI needs to be regulated by governments even though politicians don't understand computers just as the government regulates the manufacture and operation of aircraft even though your average politician doesn't know their ass from an aileron. That's why expert advisory panels are for.
Read more#1578 A.I. is a big tech airplane with a 10% chance of crashing, should society fly it?
Air Date: 8–20-2023
Big tech is currently scrambling to bring untested A.I. products to market, over-promising, under-delivering, and working hard obscure and ignore any possible downsides for society. Big tech needs A.I. regulation now before we all suffer the easily foreseeable consequences as well as some unforeseeable ones.
Read more#1547 Shaping the Future of the Internet
Air Date: 3–8-2023
Today, we take a look at some of the emerging elements of technology and regulation that will likely shape the next era of the internet and our relationship to it. For today, these will include synthetic relationships with artificial intelligence, fake audio and video virtually indistinguishable from reality that will facilitate disinformation, reinterpreting Section 230 for a new era of internet content and the ongoing struggle to regulate social media platforms.
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