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Philosophy technology

AI as Propaganda

Context: Attack Mannequins: AI as Propaganda An interesting article but the assertion of ideological counter-propaganda in this context is a bit of stretch. It projects much more structure, aptitude and volition to the behavioural and regulatory (as control/governance) systems than has ever actually existed. The assertion of all ideological positions requires a foil, an antithesis […]

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technology

A Self-simulating Cosmos

Context: Largest virtual universe free for anyone to explore The TL;DR: Scientists have created an absolute computational monster of a Universe digital twin simulation. Such sophisticated models, simulations and predictive tools are measured by the material and organisational costs as displacement of complexity into integrated hardware, processing and memory as much as by the representational […]

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technology

Technology as Displaced Entropy

Context: Australia installs first space laser optical ground station in southern hemisphere It is interesting to observe, and from a broader (integrated, technological) systems perspective, that the value acquired by iterating upon and through the technical ratchet of space-based communications solutions and innovations is a measure of displaced information (as much as material) entropy. Much […]

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technology

Cybersecurity is an Infinite Game

Context: How quantum security generates randomness to shield IoT systems It strikes me as equal parts interesting and enigmatic that the implicit uncertainty of an abstraction (and extraction) of entropy as randomness upon which we must build our certainties of assurance in information security indicates a profoundly mischievous and rarely, if ever, acknowledged ontological fact. […]

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technology

Natural Technology

The long journey of technological civilisation is shaped by a curious and generally unacknowledged enigma that the most sophisticated technologies will almost always approximate to natural, physical and environmental systems that already exist. We should perhaps be unsurprised that technology converges towards the elegant sophistication, efficiency and eloquent complexity of nature. We might be even […]

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Philosophy technology

Artificial General Intelligence, but not as we expect it…

Notice that the organisational as much as technical self-propagation in AI research is, beyond the enlightened self-interests of commercial investment and the low-hanging fruit of metric spectacles, profoundly shaped by the degree to which the emergent entities, artefacts and systems provide the optimal opportunities for their own (non-ergodic, constrained or probabilistically-damped) self-replication. I realise that […]

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technology

Managerial Surveillance

Context: Bosses putting a ‘digital leash’ on remote workers could be crossing a privacy line I wonder if it would be all that difficult to demonstrate that each extra technical and surveillance-oriented component in a system of management and governance is actually more of a burden and cost than is the uncertainty invoked by remote […]

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technology

Machine Intelligence as Criminal Mastermind?

Context: The Criminal Potential of Artificial Intelligence Beyond autonomous cybernetic system as tool or aperture of adversarial vulnerability lies the distinct possibility of AI as malevolent criminal mastermind. Notwithstanding the current paucity of anything even vaguely resembling Artificial General Intelligence, and regardless of our best (and worst) aspirations to benchmark and bootstrap this technology into […]

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technology

The Great American Novel will not be Automated

Context: The Great American Novel will not be written by a Computer It’s a great point and notwithstanding that hard-core reductionist types often enough give the piñata of John Searle’s Chinese Room a comprehensively passive aggressive thrashing with pitchforks and torches, it is an irreducible fact under the current ascendant paradigm. Semantic complexity in either […]

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technology

Cybersecurity’s Endless Spinning Wheel

Context: Utah cyberattacks on the rise as millions paid out in new ‘double-extortion’ ransomware schemes Does there ever come a point at which the accelerating combinatorial complexity of this context transcends human aptitude to comprehend and mitigate the hyper-inflating entropy of the problem-space? I imagine that as long as human brains, incentives and motivations are […]

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technology

Private Lives, Public Spaces

Of course there is really no such thing as privacy any more. We are all kidding ourselves if we believe that there is. Ironically, privacy is never so highly valued or placed at such an institutional or commercial premium as when it no longer exists.

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technology

Engaging Ransomware

The perceived value of any particular information system, entity or artefact is directly proportional to the combined resources applied to protect it from unauthorised access. It is only as a function of the most simply-conceived models and idealised frameworks that such a dynamical system could ever remain static and unchanging. The reality is that complex […]