It wasn’t so much that Eric was an alcoholic; he just couldn’t think of anything better to do with his evenings. His doctor had warned him for years that his drinking would catch up to him, however, as Eric looked through the protective glass of the Bioplotter scanning back and forth, slowly building up his […]
The whole point of automation is to make our lives easier. Designers aim to take steps out of someone’s day (drive your car, prep your meal, brush your teeth, etc.) and transfer that responsibility to a machine of some kind. In theory, this setup sounds ideal – the more mundane tasks we can transfer to […]
History repeats itself and right now, the tech industry is starting to look a lot like it was in the 1970s. In the 70s, the tech was dominated by 2 firms: AT&T and IBM. AT&T’s telephones were in every home in America and it controlled pretty much the full gamut of communications – local, long-distance, […]
To think, or not to think, that is the question. Technological advancements have nearly always come with the promise of making our lives easier, taking a burden off our shoulders, and freeing up more time and mindshare for us to use as we see fit. As the current wave of automation technologies (AI, robotics, IoT, […]
It’s the day Doug hates; his yearly tune up. It’s not painful or anything, it’s the med-shop. It’s such an awkward, rough environment that reminds him of the accident and what he lost. Granted through the miracle of this modern technology, Doug was able to walk again after being a double-amputee, but after the novelty […]
As a researcher in Human-Robot Interaction, a lecturer in digital transformation, and a historian of all things automated, I am constantly surprised by the consistent failure of organizations deploying automation. I speak broadly here of automation: technologies that execute multi-step processes with minimal human intervention. More colloquially, I’m talking about robots, AI, IoT, chatbots, computerization, […]
Today I want to write a bit about the two sides of the artificial intelligence debate. The bulk of this piece – save some fun thoughts at the end – is going to be nothing new to those in the know, but there’s a lot of important prerequisite here that, since most of you aren’t […]
Many people are stuck with their eyes fixed on the AI horizon and the believed-to-be-inevitable singularity when humans transcend their physical form into a world of digital bliss. Regardless of which side of the singularity debate you fall on, there are many stepping-stones ahead of this extreme that warrant recognition and discussion not in five […]
OpenAI, one of the front runners of AI-based text generation, recently made their GPT-3 platform available without waitlist review. Though still in the beta phase, GPT-3 represents a seismic jump forward in the quality of algorithmically generated text. While this might not seem like a huge deal, what must be now realized is how easy […]
Min didn’t feel any different. However, as she awoke on the cold operating table, her mind began to make sense of the fact that so much had changed. The procedure had to be invasive since the root of her cancer was deep in the bone marrow. Min glanced at the recovery room clock and saw […]
Artificial Futures
Artificial Futures