For Episode 11– our first Christmas episode!– I am joined by Dr. David Gunkel to talk about the possibility of virtual moral agents, the seriousness of online games, science fiction’s bad politics, and “USS Callister” (Episode 1, Season 4 of Black Mirror), which first premiered in 2017. Listen/Download BLACK MIRROR REFLECTIONS podcast episodes Subscribe to BLACK…
Read MoreFor episode 10, I am joined by Dr. John Danaher to talk about social credit systems, the ubiquity of ranking metrics, whether or not its possible to go “off the grid,” and “Nosedive” (Season 3, Episode 1 of Black Mirror), which first premiered in 2016. Listen/Download BLACK MIRROR REFLECTIONS podcast episodes Subscribe to BLACK MIRROR REFLECTIONS…
Read MoreOn Tuesday, this blog– which I very much consider an extension of myself– was finally released from Facebook jail, after having been “inside” for more than a month. I was reported by a user (who I do not know IRL and who is not a “Facebook friend” of mine) for violating Facebook’s “Community Standards,” specifically the…
Read MoreI’m sooooo excited to announce the release of our first episode of BLACK MIRROR REFLECTIONS podcast! As you may have heard– from my endless self-promoting on FB and Twitter– this podcast will be structured as a series of conversations between myself and some very smart people as we talk/think through the technology, philosophy, morality,…
Read MoreIf you haven’t already, please read Part 1 of “Why You Should Care That Artificial Intelligence Can Lie” before continuing, because I’m picking up in this post where I left off in the last one. Again, the concern here is whether or not robots (AI systems) can lie. As I demonstrated in Part 1, there…
Read MoreMany people, myself included, are willing to affirm the near-future possibility of artificial general intelligence (AGI), or machines capable of performing all of the cognitive functions normally associated with human minds. The most important of these capabilities, not yet achieved by our extant “narrow” AI, is consciousness (sometimes, problematically, called “self-awareness”): an imprecise, indefinite, and…
Read MoreICYMI, I posted the first iteration of “What To Assign If You Want To Teach The Future” last year at the conclusion of my advanced seminar called “Technology and Human Values.” I’m now teaching that course every semester and, because both emerging technology and the scholarship about it is being produced at a mind-boggling pace,…
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