klint finley

All posts tagged klint finley

I spoke with Klint Finley over at WIRED about Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft’s new joint ethics and oversight venture, which they’ve dubbed the “Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society.” They held a joint press briefing, today, in which Yann LeCun, Facebook’s director of AI, and Mustafa Suleyman, the head of applied AI at DeepMind discussed what it was that this new group would be doing out in the world. From the Article:

Creating a dialogue beyond the rather small world of AI researchers, LeCun says, will be crucial. We’ve already seen a chat bot spout racist phrases it learned on Twitter, an AI beauty contest decide that black people are less attractive than white people and a system that rates the risk of someone committing a crime that appears to be biased against black people. If a more diverse set of eyes are looking at AI before it reaches the public, the thinking goes, these kinds of thing can be avoided.

The rub is that, even if this group can agree on a set of ethical principles–something that will be hard to do in a large group with many stakeholders—it won’t really have a way to ensure those ideals are put into practice. Although one of the organization’s tenets is “Opposing development and use of AI technologies that would violate international conventions or human rights,” Mustafa Suleyman, the head of applied AI at DeepMind, says that enforcement is not the objective of the organization.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked to Klint about the intricate interplay of machine intelligence, ethics, and algorithmic bias; we discussed it earlier just this year, for WIRED’s AI Issue. It’s interesting to see the amount of attention this topic’s drawn in just a few short months, and while I’m trepidatious about the potential implementations, as I note in the piece, I’m really fairly glad that more people are more and more willing to have this discussion, at all.

To see my comments and read the rest of the article, click through, here: “Tech Giants Team Up to Keep AI From Getting Out of Hand”

There is huge news, so I’ll cut right to it: I have been given the reigns of Technoccult.net, and I will be integrating it with A Future Worth Thinking About. AFWTA will act as the overarching header for all things we do here, and Technoccult will service those specific ventures which blend science and technology with the perspectives of magick and the occult.

Klint Finley, founder of Technoccult, has written some extremely kind words, here, so I’ll let him take it:

…when I interviewed Damien a few months ago, something clicked. He writes about the intersection magic and technology, transhumanism, and the evolution of human consciousness. All the things that Technoccult readers keep telling me they want to read more about. I thought “why isn’t HE writing the site?” Then I realized: I should just let him take it over. It would give him a broader reach for his writing, give Technoccult readers more of what they’re looking for, and let me resign knowing the site is in good hands. Win-win-win.

Plus, his interest pop culture analysis brings things full-circle back to the original idea behind Technoccult. Oh, and the first time I met Damien, he was wearing a Luxt shirt. I had Luxt on heavy rotation while I was cobbling together the original Technoccult site all those years ago.

I’m aware that although I’ve brought in other writers in the past, my voice has been the one consistent thing on the site, and that some of you might be happy to have me keep writing here, regardless of what I write about. Some of you might even prefer it. But overall I think Damien’s voice will be more of a continuation of the spirit of the site than mine at this point. And while he’ll surely bring a different perspective on a wide range of topics, I think we have compatible world views.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Technoccult, I recommend going over to read both the full announcement, and to tool through the archives and get a sense for the place. We’ll be working on the transitional fiddly bits, for the next little while, but there will be content and discussion there, sooner, rather than later.

Thank you all so much for making this possible and for coming with me, on this. Now let’s see where we go.

“Mindful Cyborgs – Episode 55 – Magick & the Occult within the Internet and Corporations with Damien Williams, PT 2

So, here we are, again, this time talking about magic[k] and the occult and nonhuman consciousness and machine minds and perception, and on and on and on.

It’s funny. I was just saying, elsewhere, how I want to be well enough known that when news outlets do alarmist garbage like this, that I can at least be called in as a countervailing voice. Is that an arrogant thing to desire? Almost certainly. Like whoa. But, really, this alarmist garbage needs to stop. If you have a better vehicle for that than me, though, let me know, because I’d love to shine a bright damn spotlight on them and have the world see or hear what they have to say.

Anyway, until then, I’ll think of this as yet another bolt in the building of that machine. The one that builds a better world. Have a listen, enjoy, and please tell your friends.