Category: ideas

“The core issue here isn’t that AI is worse than the existing human-led processes that serve to make predictions and assign rankings. Indeed, there’s much hope that AI can be used to provide more objective assessments than humans, reducing bias and leading to better outcomes. The key concern is that AI systems are being integrated into key social institutions, even though their accuracy, and their social and economic effects, have not been rigorously studied or validated.”

“Even as growing numbers of U.S. adults are disaffiliating from faith-based institutions, some have found that secular life lacks the community structures and sense of belonging often offered by religious organizations.”

“The university even hired a provost who specializes in corporate crisis management and dealing with ‘activist pressure.’ While the university accuses students of silencing opposing voices, it continues to insulate itself against difficult questions.”

“Three questions immediately arise. First, when Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978), imagined a whale popping into existence in mid-air above an alien planet, had he been reading Avicenna?”

“Yes, everything on the Internet is a mix of the human and inhuman. Automated algorithms play a very big role in some services, like, say, the Google Search Engine. But humans play a role in these services too. Humans whitelist and blacklist sites on the Google Search Engine. They make what you might think of as manual decisions, in part because today’s algorithms are so flawed. What’s more—and this is just stating what should be obvious—humans write the algorithms. That’s not insignificant.”

Robert A. Burton: “Any philosophical approach to values and purpose must acknowledge this fundamental neurological reality: a visceral sense of meaning in one’s life is an involuntary mental state that, like joy or disgust, is independent from and resistant to the best of arguments. If philosophy is to guide us to a better life, it must somehow bridge this gap between feeling and thought.”

“Across these diverse spaces, the two most consistent design principles are openness and a banishment of personal clutter. The new office presents itself as the interior design equivalent of everyone’s friend. It is comfortable and always available, a temporary platform onto which workers alight for meetings and some deskwork before fluttering off to another meeting, the home office, another job. But importantly, leave no trace behind. Remember: You have never been here.”

“When a business is beginning, often times its struggles are existential in nature. Consultants can come in and teach you the finer points of agile, scrum, kanban  –  you name it. Accountants can come in and teach you how to make sure you don’t lose track of your money. But precious few can come in and tell you what your business is really going to be at a deep level. But that’s the kind of stuff philosophers are trained to do.”

“The secret of the country’s infrastructure success lies in a forgotten political history: the demands by millions of Americans over time for fairer and more equitable access to rails, pipes, wires, roads and more. The wondrous US infrastructure achievements happened when citizens participated in infrastructure decisions. One can even propose a rule: the better the democracy, the better the infrastructure.”