As more religious communities begin to incorporate robotics — in some cases, AI-powered and in others, not —it stands to change how people experience faith. It may also alter how we engage in ethical reasoning and decision-making, which is a big part of religion. – Vox
Category: ideas
How We Think About Intelligence Warps How We Think About People
The notion that intelligence is a measurable ‘something’ that is possessed by people in varying degrees is one of the ways in which we end up with an education system that fails the majority of those it is supposed to be helping. – 3 Quarks Daily
Are Bots Defining Your Aesthetic? (Of Course They Are)
“The intelligent software agents that you interact with online are ‘intelligent agents’ in the sense that they try to predict your behaviour taking into account what you did in your online past (e.g. what kind of movies you usually watch), and then they structure your options for online behaviour. For example, they offer you a selection of movies to watch next. However, they do not care much for your reasons for action.” – 3 Quarks Daily
Why Birds Have Been Such Powerful Symbols Throughout History
“Birds enter popular culture from the earliest times, and they continue to pervade literature and art throughout the classical period. They are mentioned in the very first sentence of European literature – as scavengers, at the start of Homer’s Iliad. They feature repeatedly in subsequent epic, lyric, didactic, pastoral and personal poetry, in tragedy and comedy, in epigrams and invective, and in prose writings on geography, history, travel, medicine and early science.” – Aeon
We’re Rich. So Why Do We Work Even Harder?
“That the wealthiest countries in the history of the world have sustained manic work regimes has puzzled thinkers for more than a century. Why could we not limit work to, say, three hours a day—the figure favored by writers as divergent as John Maynard Keynes and the revolutionary journalist Paul Lafargue?” – The Point
How Conspiracy Theorists Are Building (And Rebuilding) Their Own Networks
Over the past few years, an ideologically diverse coalition of white nationalists, conservatives and ultra-libertarians has launched attempts to build out its own online infrastructure, setting in motion a migration towards newly established “censorship-free” platforms. – Journal of Design and Science
How Can A World Run By Big Data And AI Better Reflect The Real World, Including People Of Color?
To put it in the most basic ways, AI doesn’t see color – even when it should. “Errors from incomplete AI training data already affect people of color. For one, facial recognition software has a history of misidentifying black citizens. – Wired
How Should Writers Deal With Climate Change?
Novelist Amitav Ghosh has some ideas, but most of all, he wants writers to deal with it in their books instead of ignoring it. “Something this big and this important, there have to be an infinite number of ways to just talk about it,” he said. – The New York Times
How 18th-Century Gentlemen Got Dressed [VIDEO]
Hint: They didn’t do it for themselves. – Aeon
Malcolm Gladwell’s Impending Tipping Point
Nearly 20 years and millions of sales after his nonfiction debut, Mr. Gladwell is at something of a professional tipping point. He elicits from readers the kind of polarized reactions usually reserved for talk-radio hosts. To one camp, he is a master storyteller, pithily translating business concepts and behavioral science to a lay audience. To others, he is a faux intellectual, dressing up ordinary truths (such as an “Outliers” argument that success results from a combination of hard work and opportunity) as counterintuitive genius. How “Talking to Strangers” is received could cement Mr. Gladwell in one of those camps for good. – The New York Times