Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent

What’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis? After all, it’s happening all over the world. Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military […]

Social Formation

1. The overview If you often ask yourself “How can people believe those lies and deceptions?” when facts clearly indicate them to be untrue, you are not alone.  If you ask how so-called leaders can get away with a policy that guarantees disastrous, anti-human consequences, you are not alone either. In order to examine these […]
The post Social Formation first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Amoral Compass: Palantir and its Quest to Remake the World

Finance analysts free of moral scruple can point to Palantir with relish and note that 2023 was a fairly rewarding year for it.  The company, which bills itself as a “category-leading software” builder “that empowers organizations to create and govern artificial intelligence”, launched its initial public offering in 2020.  But the milky confidence curdled, as […]

From News Deserts to Revitalization

In 1995, early in the development of the global internet, sociologist Michael Schudson imagined how people might process information if journalism were to suddenly disappear. An expert on  the history of US news media, Schudson speculated in his book, The Power of News, that peoples’ need to identify the day’s most important and relevant news […]
The post From News Deserts to Revitalization first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Foolish Exclusions: China and the Bletchley Declaration on AI

At the conclusion of the Second World War, debates raged on how best to regulate the destructive power of the atom.  Splitting it had been used most savagely against the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, thereby ending, to date, the globe’s costliest war.  Visions also abounded on the promise and glory of […]

Rishi Sunak’s AI Pitch: The Bletchley Declaration

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks as much a deep fake projection as a thin, superficial representation of reality.  His robotic, risible awkwardness makes a previous occupant of his office, Theresa May, look soppily human in comparison.  But at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, the nervous system of code breaking during the Second […]

Democratic Socialism Will Prevent the Catastrophes

Capitalism gathered resources — land, labor, and capital to start an industrial revolution that brought prosperity and elevated standards of living to much of the earth’s inhabitants. Once in motion, it generated additional capital that gathered more labor and more resources in a perpetual cycle of increased production that constantly benefitted populations. The achievements did […]