Techno-Politics and Tech Culture

Does generative AI pose a threat to the rich tapestry of human expression? Are we on an inevitable path toward digital monoculturalism? This essay was written in the fall of 2016. Considering how quickly generative AI content creation tools and copilots are being woven into the fabric of our lives, now would be a very good time to start thinking about what our human-created cultures truly mean to us. Continue Reading →

IMAGE: Vintage American anti-capitalist poster, circa 1938. Source: r/antiwork A few years ago, I received an invitation to walk in the Labor Day Parade. It got me thinking about labor law as an alternative path to meaningful data privacy regulation. Today, as we begin to think hard about how to approach AI regulation, I started Continue Reading →

As we stand on the precipice of an overwhelmingly AI-driven financial world, we must ask ourselves: Are we prepared for the potential fallout? Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, has sounded the alarm bells, suggesting that AI could be at the heart of future financial crises. His insights, drawn from a paper he penned in 2020, shed light on the risks of AI in financial markets and the limitations of regulatory bodies in addressing these challenges. Continue Reading →

Meta AI has introduced AudioCraft, a text-to-music AI model that does an impressive job of composing, arranging, orchestrating, and playing in a wide range of musical styles. Not only can it create or mimic a melody, but it also engineers and produces fully finished work, some of which is already suitable for commercial use – and this is only V1. Imagine where the state-of-the-art will be a year from now. Continue Reading →

In a stunning display of AI prowess, Meta AI has introduced AudioCraft, a single-stop code base that does an impressive job of composing, arranging, orchestrating, producing and playing music. AudioCraft is not just an AI that can mimic a melody. It's a sophisticated system that can create music, sound effects, and even handle audio compression. Continue Reading →

At CES 2017, wearing complexity as a badge of honor, Mark Fields (Ford Motor Company CEO) told a room full of tech analysts and reporters that the onboard computers in a Ford GT 25 were running 10 million lines of code – more than Lockheed used in an F-35 fighter jet. He proudly announced that all Ford motor vehicles were going to be, "computers on wheels." Continue Reading →

Can you name the three most famous Impressionist artists? Or describe the color palette and techniques that define Color Field Painting or Naive Art? Your ability to answer these questions will have a big impact on your experience with text-to-image generators like Midjourney. But what if you haven’t been to art school or spent years studying art history? Continue Reading →

China has laid out a blueprint for regulating generative AI – technology that powers chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Overseen by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the new regulations set parameters on the public use of AI. The law instructs Chinese AI systems to adhere to "core socialist values," which raises some interesting questions. Continue Reading →

For the past several years I've been publishing various versions of the "11 Hottest Tech Trends of 1776." This year, I thought it would be fun to ask ChatGPT for some help. So I asked it to read the previous versions of the article and if it could "think of any other technological advancements between 1750 and 1800 that would be a good addition to this story." It could and it did. So here, for your Independence Day reading pleasure, are the 18 hottest tech trends circa 1776. Continue Reading →

At a dinner party the other night, a very accomplished business person told a story about how he and his wife were certain that their devices were listening to their conversations. “I was talking to my wife about a pair of designer shoes that she wanted to purchase, and not 10 minutes later while she was doing some online research for work, she saw an ad for that exact pair of shoes. She hadn’t searched for the shoes; the ad just appeared. Clearly, our computers or our phones are listening.” Some people nodded in agreement, and others began to chime in. Continue Reading →