Ed Dowding

Month: August 2017

What rules should govern AI?

Many people know Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics (basically humans come before robots), but as they develop more and more capabilities it’s time to look deeper at the guidance and governance which should apply to artificial intelligence (AI) to keep us safe and maximise benefits. The UN has already discussed (but not yet concluded) international ...

The narcissism of difference

The human condition: in which we are all dismayed by the same things at the same time, but because we’re dismayed for entirely different reasons we focus on that rather than actually addressing the problem.

Please stop misusing the word ‘survivor’

If we could please limit the use of the word ‘survivor’ to circumstances in which there was a reasonably high and realistic chance of your death, that would be great. Kthxbye.

71 words for love

There are apparently over 71 different types of gender. Yet we still have just one word for love. I suspect we’d be considerably less confused if there were 71 words for different types of love, and we remembered there’s just one species of human.