Episode 91: AI, ethics and dangers
AI is going to kill us all. Or save the world. Or another, secret, third thing.
Trying to find a pattern of truth within all the cultural noise about Artificial Intelligence is pretty hard right now, so we turned to someone who has been working on and with AI since the 1980s.
Jean-Louis Ecochard has been in on the development of everything from caller ID and online banking to video conferencing and e-health, and was one of the people behind what became WebMD. He now heads up the Center for the Digital Nonprofit and is Senior Head of Innovation for Nethope, an organisation that acts as a bridge between large NGOs with Big Tech.
He's also a whole lot of fun, and helped us reframe our thinking about AI.
In this episode, we asked JL about the dangerous intersection between capitalism and AI (of course we did), the ethics of big data and what, if anything, humanity has to fear from this latest great jump forward in technology.
It's a fascinating conversation that we hope will help you think about this much-hyped subject in a fresh way.
Also, here’s an insight into Malky’s design process.
We should be clear that this is the title and graphic we could have gone for.
See the kind of restraint we show? You’re all very welcome.
(We liked JL way too much to do it for real.)
You can find out more about the Center for the Digital Nonprofit, its mission and research here.
We also recommend The Eye of the Master: a Social History of Artificial Intelligence for a left-wing academic take of what, really, is being automated.
You can listen to Episode 91 anywhere: in a hot-tub, kicking back as AI-facilitated, fully-automated luxury Communism gives you the space to do whatever you desire; in a dystopian capitalist hellscape where the robots make the art and we do the work; in blissful ignorance, assuming that Ai is a cute sloth; or right here…
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Other things…
Malky’s design work has graced many good magazines and music videos. You can find his stuff and even commission him if he’s not too busy, here. Jonty's novel, Incredulous Moshoeshoe and the Lightning Bird, is not literature but it’s quite fun if you like Supernatural, Africa or the Goth scene.
We don't really want to preach at you, but some people like to know what we believe. It's this: Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to teach us a better way to be, while reconciling us to God and each other in a way we could never do without Him. He also changed water into wine. Nice.