The term Luddite is usually used as an insult. It suggests someone who is backward-looking, averse to progress, afraid of new technology, and frankly, not that bright. But Brian Merchant claims that that is not who the Luddites were at all.

They see facial recognition, smart diapers, and surveillance devices as inevitable evolutions. They’re not. Imagine you’re taking an online business class — the kind where you watch video lectures and then answer questions at the end.

On December 15, 1811, the London Statesman issued a warning about the state of the stocking industry in Nottingham. Twenty thousand textile workers had lost their jobs because of the incursion of automated machinery.

Undiagnosed by the mainstream media and much of the academic community, a major intellectual renewal is underway across the left. It is energetic and tech-savvy, building platforms such as Novara Media.

Not only does Ullman tell us what it was like to be an engineer during the dot-com bubble, but she does it in prose that many professional writers envy.

When we talk about artificial intelligence, we rely on metaphor, as we always do when dealing with something new and unfamiliar. Metaphors are, by their nature, imperfect, but we still need to choose them carefully, because bad ones can lead us astray.

Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone. Sixty years ago the futurist Arthur C. Clarke observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Te Hiku Media gathered huge swathes of Māori language data. Corporates are now trying to get the rights to it

I was raised in a household in which my mother, a divorced old-school feminist, openly hoped for the day when the “racist, angry old white men,” who keep our country in sociopolitical purgatory, would die.

“When Kurzweil first started talking about the “singularity”, a conceit he borrowed from the science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge, he was dismissed as a fantasist.

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do.

It’s 7 AM, April 13th, 2025. Your smart clock rouses you from a dreamless sleep and you climb from bed as your house comes to life. The bathroom light turns itself on and the shower begins to heat its water. After washing off, you throw on a T-shirt which has been perfectly fit for your body.

Parag Khanna is the author of Connectography (2016) and The Future is Asian (2019). Michael Ferrari is managing partner at Atlas Research Innovations and a senior fellow at the Wharton School.

Prof Stuart Russell wrote the book on artificial intelligence back in 1995, when the next few decades of AI were uncertain. Sitting down with Ian Sample, he talks about his latest book, which warns of a dystopian future in which humans are outsmarted by machines. But how did we get here?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2019/oct/18/stuart-russell-on-why-now-is-the-time-to-start-thinking-about-superintelligent-ai-science-weekly-podcast

‘Fuck Earth!’ Elon Musk said to me, laughing. ‘Who cares about Earth?’ We were sitting in his cubicle, in the front corner of a large open-plan office at SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles. It was a sunny afternoon, a Thursday, one of three designated weekdays Musk spends at SpaceX.

Citation: Hanna, Julian. ““Future Shock”: Manifestos in the Digital Age.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures no. 20, 2019. doi:10.20415/hyp/020.ex02 Abstract: The manifesto is currently one of most useful and vital online forms.

Modern technology seems always to have been judged according to its utility for human beings. To the extent that technologies have been viewed as tools, instruments, or prostheses for human use, and thus under human control, they have largely been seen in positive, utopian terms.

Author Adrienne Mayor discusses the myths that contained the first blueprints for artificial intelligence

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2018/nov/02/the-ancient-greeks-warned-us-about-ai-chips-with-everything-podcast

Could we stop worshipping rich men who are jerks? On Tuesday, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, took to Twitter once again with bizarre comments, saying how “strange” it is that the cave diver who rescued the Thai boys didn’t sue him after he called him a pedophile.

The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers. Mr. Hyman is an economic historian.