If your revenue model relies on misleading, impoverishing and gaslighting your customers, then you probably should rethink your model. That would seem to be a reasonable statement to make, and one most businesses might agree with. But the reality is that companies are falling over themselves to charge people for things they didn’t ask for… Read More »
This is the second in a series of pieces I am writing on dystopian movies — — broadly defined — and what they tell us, or could tell us, about our own condition and what prescriptions they might offer for a way forward. In this piece I offer a different interpretation of the two Blade Runner movies and the… Read More »
I finally braced myself to see Alex Garland’s Civil War earlier this month, unable to watch in more than 10 minute chunks, and so found myself flipping between fictional scenes of American carnage and real-world assaults on the Holiday Inn in Rotherham. I learned an unpleasant lesson Burning bin at Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham,… Read More »
Sir Clive Sinclair mosaic, made with original keys from Sinclair computers, Charis Tsevis, 2011 (Flickr) Technology-wise, we’re presently in what might be called an interregnum. There is no clear outcome for AI, especially generative AI. We can’t tell whether it’s a saviour, a destroyer, or a damp squib. More importantly, generative AI — and a… Read More »
We’ve been poor about trying to predict the real, lasting impact of generative AI. It’s not through lack of trying: some have talked about rethinking the way our economies run and how we think about our lives, to treating it as an existential risk, to treating AI as a foundational, or general purpose, technology that will change everything. I’m… Read More »