AI Social Risk? Real or Imagined by AI?
The development of AI has been centuries in the making. We notice it’s seeming instantaneous emergence in recent years as if it landed in a flash of light. Yet this lightning strike has been glowing within the computing world for over 75 years and much longer with philosophers and mathematicians. In most cases with the emergence of new technologies there have been some growing pains. However, science, engineering, and policy have acted to improve the solutions at each step. In this blog entry we will turn our attention to the history of AI, some of its key building blocks, and how its maturation may impact the types of social interests which Henry George discussed at length.
Tech Driven Monopolies and the Threat of Innovation
If you were born in the 1990s you might never have questioned the pervasiveness of companies like Google in the Internet domain. For you, such companies, products, services, and technologies have been ever present and seemingly unassailable.
Yet in the past few months we have seen the emergence of a set of technologies, especially ChatGPT, which have opened the real possibility of a technical and business threat to Google’s near monopoly on Internet search.
Tomatoes, Robots, Civilization, and Farm Fresh Equity
When we hear the word “Technology” we tend to think of electronics, flying cars, and the like. Since most of us live our lives as urbanites or suburbanites and few of us make a living farming, the Tech of Agriculture may seldom cross our minds. In this entry of the Tech & Society blog we will turn that around by asking how civilization even exists without the Agriculture Tech we rely on every day to stay alive. We will also look at how new and emerging technology including AI and robotics are shaping the future of Digital Agriculture and what this means on a global scale for Equity and economic fairness in light of the teachings of Henry George.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Cusick is an interdisciplinary applied researcher specializing in Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, History of Science, and Political Economy…read more
