Digital Ethics

When I was in grad school in the 1990s, we talked about “surviving the AI winter.” Explosive, transformative progress in AI had been…

If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

“It’s our job to make sure that we have machinery that we can keep control of,” the Professor of Ethics and Technology says.

Billionaires I have known: Part One of a three-part series

Generative AI, plus growing manufacturing and electric vehicles, is spiking U.S. power demand.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s hope for the chatbot to be the smartest, it struggles with facts, numbers and web search.

Some time ago, I was invited to peer-review Deepmind's paper on the ethics of Advanced AI assistants but needed to do my evaluation work at MIT, so it seems…

“Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn’t make a…

Their message isn't new, but it is gaining urgency as funding for green energy projects grows.

New data centers are springing up every week. Can the Earth sustain them?

No wonder industry is exploring nuclear as an alternative to electricity

AI Explainer #3. Here's an updated version of the relationship diagram I posted a couple of weeks ago. Getting your head around the relationships between… | 27 comments on LinkedIn

In real life, there’s too much friction, bad design, and customer-unfriendliness compared to the technological awesomeness we see in movies and on TV.

Tech chiefs warn that power-hungry data centres are a bottleneck in developing artificial intelligence

"Ownership" means ten different things to ten different people. Let's talk about what we actually want.

Drama over YouTuber Marques Brownlee's review of the Humane AI pin shows how much AI is propped up by hype.

This evening, Google indiscriminately fired over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in…

AI can be kind of useful, but I'm not sure that a "kind of useful" tool justifies the harm.

Exciting News from #FAccT2024! Our latest research paper explores "AI" anthropomorphism and its impact on user trust. Do terms like "intelligent" enhance trust…

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a key gas for electrification and data centers. It remains potent for 3,200 years, in comparison to 100 years for CO2. It has a…

[Identities of people quoted in this piece have been changed. Sources are linked at the bottom.

Only 5 weeks ago I warned Facial Recognition Technology bias in the Foodstuffs trial was technically likely and not a matter of if, but when and that Māori women would likely be discriminated against. That same week Māori Television first reported "Māori women and women of colour will be targeted’ i

We are potentially encroaching on a water supply crisis if data center operators, utilities, and the government don't implement preventative measures now.

Nine of the top ten US electric utilities attribute growth in demand to data centers

As deepfake nude scandals hit schools around the U.S., tools that can be used to manipulate girls’ images are being advertised across major social media platforms.

The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour

Microsoft Copilot is a powerful asset for companies, but with it comes an increased risk of data exposure. In this article, Varonis demonstrates prompt-hacking examples that can expose sensitive data.

Once praised for its generous social safety net, the country now collects troves of data on welfare claimants.

A new study shows systemic issues in some of the most popular models.