artificial intelligence – Page 5

05 November 2017

Talking trust and the uncanny valley on ABC Melbourne

ABC logo It’s been a while since I’ve posted the audio from any of my radio spots, but we’re back. Here’s my conversation with Lindy Burns on ABC Melbourne from the evening of 31 October.

Two stories took our fancy.

First was the Australian tour of a supposedly intelligent robot called Sophia. I’m sceptical about how intelligent it actually was, but it gave me an excuse to talk about the uncanny valley, and the early chatbot ELIZA.

Second was the news that Amazon is launching a new service called Amazon Key, which will let couriers open people’s front doors and put deliveries inside. Would you trust strangers to come into your house?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.3MB)

29 October 201729 October 2017

Weekly Wrap 387: Roses, rain, wine, and cybers

My week of Monday 23 to Sunday 29 October 2017 was adequate. I’ve been having a relaxed Sunday, though, and I don’t want to spoil that, so let’s get on with the show.

Articles

NSW Police targeting shows the ethical dangers of secret algorithms, ZDNet Australia, 27 October 2017. There’s more to come on this topic, I think.

Podcasts

“The 9pm Hallucinating Goldfish”, or The 9pm Edict episode 69, was streamed live and recorded on Tuesday night. You can also listen at SoundCloud and Spreaker. You can support this podcast with a one-off contribution via PayPal or major credit cards. Please consider.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday, I spoke about the targeting of advertising on social media on ABC Canberra.
On Wednesday, I spoke about encryption policies and, briefly, Nazis for the next episode of the Covert Contact podcast, which will appear very soon. If you haven’t done so, you can still listen to my first appearance, the episode about Australian Cyber Policy.
My story about an Australian defence contractor’s data breach from a couple of weeks ago was picked up by a Ukrainian news site, and a site in Italian that I didn’t investigate further.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

Monday will definitely be a jumbled day of editorial planning, research, story pitches, and administrivia. I’m glad I’ve already sketched out the rest of the week.

On Tuesday I’m heading to Sydney for a couple meetings, but I’ve got room for more. I’m also doing a radio spot on ABC Melbourne at 1930 AEDT.

Wednesday will be a day of writing, as will most of the rest of the week.

At some point, I’ll also announce a new crowdfunding campaign. It’s been more than a year since my last concentrated ask-for-money burst, and the gods know my budget needs it. But there’s been some changes in the crowdfunding landscape since then, so I don’t want to rush it. Stay tuned for details.

Further Ahead

At this stage, I haven’t locked in anything specific for the rest of the calendar year. Please feel free to make some suggestions.

[Photo: Antique Roses at The Alex. The back bar of the Alexandra Hotel, Leura, was decorated with a bouquet of antique roses taken from the pub’s own garden. Photographed on 26 October 2017.]

07 December 2014

Talking Hawking and artificial intelligence on radio 2UE

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” said Stephen Hawking the other day.

“It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Look, I have many feels about this sort of statement, which will have to wait for another time. But I managed to express one of those feels to Justin Smith on Sydney’s radio 2UE on Thursday afternoon. And here it is.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.7MB)