artificial intelligence

August 18, 2020

The futility of artificial intelligence economics

Salesforce, an American cloud-based software company, earlier this year announced an initiative to develop an artificial intelligence economist. Stephan Zheng, the lead research scientist at Salesforce Research, describes the moonshot goal of this project as to “build a reinforcement learning framework that will recommend economic policies that drive social outcomes in the real world, such as improving sustainability, productivity, and equality.” Continue Reading...

December 12, 2019

Artificial Intelligence: A contribution or detriment to human flourishing?

In my recent book, Artificial Humanity. An Essay on the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (2019, IF Press), I analyze several interesting aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) from a philosophical, anthropological and even ‘futuristic’ point of view. Continue Reading...

July 01, 2019

The ghosts in Xi Jinping’s China Dream

Early on in Ma Jian’s new novel the main character has a vision: I saw elderly men and women smashing rocks against the ground under the steely gaze of teenage Red Guards. Continue Reading...

February 09, 2017

Don’t fear the ‘job-killing’ robots: Remembering the power of creative service

As Americans face increasing pressures of economic change and uncertainty, many have relished in a range of renewed nostalgias, whether recalling the blissful security of post-war industrialism or the rise of the Great Society and the prowess of the administrative state. Continue Reading...

April 17, 2007

Sailing to Byzantium with Avatars

Socrates in some sense has come full circle. In a case of life imitating art, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central Florida in Orlando have received a grant to create life-like virtual representations of historical figures, with whom students can interact, dialogue, and inquire (HT: Slashdot). Continue Reading...