The Rise of AI Ethics

The focus on far-off consequences distracts from existing threats to human rights, fairness, justice, equality, and safety

AI ethics is not really a distinct field or coherent discourse, but more of an amalgamation of different perspectives considering the potential implications of automated systems and algorithms making decisions with consequential impacts on human lives. ...

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The Rise of AI Ethics

Walk Like a Loaded Man

An excerpt from The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men

Unlike the more straightforward concept of horniness (whose own mythic visual iconography is rife for analysis), thirst is more visceral, a physiological need....

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Walk Like a Loaded Man

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

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A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Truth, Damned Truth, and Statistics: A Quiet Mathematical Revolution Reshaping our Algorithmically-Mediated World

An interview with Justin Joque

There’s a shift in statistical approaches from one driven by what we traditionally think of as knowledge—knowing ‘the truth’—to a more economic approach. That shows what's always been the case but admits it in a more clear-eyed way: knowledge production is always tied to political economy. In fact, the ways ...
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Truth, Damned Truth, and Statistics: A Quiet Mathematical Revolution Reshaping our Algorithmically-Mediated World

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

"...there’s something much bigger at work here: The Chip Wars, as I’ve dubbed them, are heating up, and revealing some of the tensions between national needs and extraction from local communities."...

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The Chip Wars Heat Up