Tag: Techno utopians
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With Horizon, the BBC abandons science
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Andrew Orlowski
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BBC TV’s venerable science flagship, Horizon, has had a rough ride as it tries to gain a new audience. It’s been accused of “dumbing down”. That’s nothing new – it’s a criticism often leveled at it during its 42 year life. But instead of re-examing its approach, the series’ producers have taken the bold step…
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Do Artificial Intelligence Chatbots look like their programmers?
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Do pets eventually resemble their owners? Or do owners get to look like their pets? It’s heck of a conundrum – but one we might now be a little closer to solving. For the past fortnight it’s been hard to escape the animated faces of “Joan”, or “George” the graphical representations of what we’re told…
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The Emperor’s New AI
by
Andrew Orlowski
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“It looks like you’re trying to have a conversation with a computer – can I help? In the early 1970s, no science show was complete without predictions of HAL-like intelligent autonomous computers by the turn of the century. The Japanese, fearing their industrial base would collapse without a response to this omniscient technology, poured hundreds…
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Neurosis as a lifestyle: remixing revisited
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Andrew Orlowski
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“We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the impossible ? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed” – Fillippo Marinetti, 1909 When a year ago…
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Junk science – the oil of the new web
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Andrew Orlowski
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There’s a case to made that James Surowecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds is the most influential book of the decade – The Selfish Gene for the noughties. Both have something else in common: the title of each book is profoundly misleading. Crowds aren’t wise, nor can genes be selfish – as one critic famously wrote,…