Podcast | Voices in the Code: book discussion with the author
Automated decision-making systems or algorithms are playing an increasingly significant role in public administration and civil rights space. In his book “Voices in the Code: A Story About People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made,” David Robinson investigates and contextualizes the story of the Kidney Allocation System, which as a result of cross-disciplinary collaboration…
On Facial Recognition Technology
Originally published on Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology, and Society. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) has become significantly more accurate and more accessible. Both government and commercial entities use it in increasingly innovative approaches. News agencies use it to spot celebrities at big events. Car companies install it…
Can AI be creative?
More than 2000 years ago, Plato made several interesting references to the notion of creativity, in the Socratic dialogues. For example, in Meno, Socrates claims that “when poets produce truly great poetry, they do it not through knowledge or mastery, but rather by being divinely “inspired” by the Muses”. In another dialogue, Socrates contemplates the…
From cybernetics to posthumanism: Biological humans vs synthetic machines
Cyberspace, cybersecurity, cyberinfrastructure and cyborg are some of the most popular words in modern vocabulary. If we look up the etymology of the prefix cyber, it is an abbreviation of cybernetics, which in turn traces its roots back to a Greek word “kybernētēs” that means steersman, governor or pilot. In the mid XX century cybernetics…