The Prometheus League
Breaking News and Updates
- Abolition Of Work
- Ai
- Alt-right
- Alternative Medicine
- Antifa
- Artificial General Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Super Intelligence
- Ascension
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- Atheist
- Atlas Shrugged
- Automation
- Ayn Rand
- Bahamas
- Bankruptcy
- Basic Income Guarantee
- Big Tech
- Bitcoin
- Black Lives Matter
- Blackjack
- Boca Chica Texas
- Brexit
- Caribbean
- Casino
- Casino Affiliate
- Cbd Oil
- Censorship
- Cf
- Chess Engines
- Childfree
- Cloning
- Cloud Computing
- Conscious Evolution
- Corona Virus
- Cosmic Heaven
- Covid-19
- Cryonics
- Cryptocurrency
- Cyberpunk
- Darwinism
- Democrat
- Designer Babies
- DNA
- Donald Trump
- Eczema
- Elon Musk
- Entheogens
- Ethical Egoism
- Eugenic Concepts
- Eugenics
- Euthanasia
- Evolution
- Extropian
- Extropianism
- Extropy
- Fake News
- Federalism
- Federalist
- Fifth Amendment
- Fifth Amendment
- Financial Independence
- First Amendment
- Fiscal Freedom
- Food Supplements
- Fourth Amendment
- Fourth Amendment
- Free Speech
- Freedom
- Freedom of Speech
- Futurism
- Futurist
- Gambling
- Gene Medicine
- Genetic Engineering
- Genome
- Germ Warfare
- Golden Rule
- Government Oppression
- Hedonism
- High Seas
- History
- Hubble Telescope
- Human Genetic Engineering
- Human Genetics
- Human Immortality
- Human Longevity
- Illuminati
- Immortality
- Immortality Medicine
- Intentional Communities
- Jacinda Ardern
- Jitsi
- Jordan Peterson
- Las Vegas
- Liberal
- Libertarian
- Libertarianism
- Liberty
- Life Extension
- Macau
- Marie Byrd Land
- Mars
- Mars Colonization
- Mars Colony
- Memetics
- Micronations
- Mind Uploading
- Minerva Reefs
- Modern Satanism
- Moon Colonization
- Nanotech
- National Vanguard
- NATO
- Neo-eugenics
- Neurohacking
- Neurotechnology
- New Utopia
- New Zealand
- Nihilism
- Nootropics
- NSA
- Oceania
- Offshore
- Olympics
- Online Casino
- Online Gambling
- Pantheism
- Personal Empowerment
- Poker
- Political Correctness
- Politically Incorrect
- Polygamy
- Populism
- Post Human
- Post Humanism
- Posthuman
- Posthumanism
- Private Islands
- Progress
- Proud Boys
- Psoriasis
- Psychedelics
- Putin
- Quantum Computing
- Quantum Physics
- Rationalism
- Republican
- Resource Based Economy
- Robotics
- Rockall
- Ron Paul
- Roulette
- Russia
- Sealand
- Seasteading
- Second Amendment
- Second Amendment
- Seychelles
- Singularitarianism
- Singularity
- Socio-economic Collapse
- Space Exploration
- Space Station
- Space Travel
- Spacex
- Sports Betting
- Sportsbook
- Superintelligence
- Survivalism
- Talmud
- Technology
- Teilhard De Charden
- Terraforming Mars
- The Singularity
- Tms
- Tor Browser
- Trance
- Transhuman
- Transhuman News
- Transhumanism
- Transhumanist
- Transtopian
- Transtopianism
- Ukraine
- Uncategorized
- Vaping
- Victimless Crimes
- Virtual Reality
- Wage Slavery
- War On Drugs
- Waveland
- Ww3
- Yahoo
- Zeitgeist Movement
-
Prometheism
-
Forbidden Fruit
-
The Evolutionary Perspective
Monthly Archives: July 2023
Patients think their health data will be leaked and don’t trust big tech … – Contemporary Pediatrics
Posted: July 29, 2023 at 8:46 pm
Patients think their health data will be leaked and dont trust big tech firms | Image Credit: Rawpixel.com - Rawpixel.com - stock.adobe.com.
Data and technology are vital in todays health care world, but that doesnt mean patients trust any of it.
In fact, a survey from Atlas VPN and Health Gorilla found that 95% of patients are concerned about a potential data breach or leak of medical records, with 70% having extreme (28%) or moderate (40%) concerns.
Medical data breaches can result in identity theft, financial fraud, reputational damage, and even endanger a patient's physical well-being if sensitive medical conditions are disclosed, the survey notes.
The findings also showed that25% of patients heldslight concernsabout potential data breaches. These patients reflect a cautious outlook on their information and highlight the need for enhanced data protection measures and transparency within the health care industry, according to the report.
Only5%of respondents displayeda lack of concernregarding the possibility of their medical records being leaked. The report states that this group may feel reassured by existing data protection measures or lack awareness of the potential risks.
Low trust in Big Tech
Data is a prized commodity and technology giants wield unparalleled influence, but the public's trust in Big Tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google, is not good. Many people are skeptical about large technology companies offering services to store sensitive medical information.
A significant38%of respondents expressed anoutright lack of trustin Big Tech. Many people are hesitant to trust Big Tech with their health data. Concerns come from the knowledge of past breaches, the potential for misuse or unauthorized access, and doubts about the profit motives of these companies, according to the report.
Similarly,27%of peopleslightly distrustBig Tech's ability to manage their health data securely. This group remains cautious, acknowledging the potential benefits of such services but remaining wary of the risks associated with sharing their health information with technology giants, the report states.
Only21%of those surveyed placedslight trustin Big Tech. Despite the majority's concerns, some people are still willing to give these companies the benefit of the doubt. They recognize the companies' technological capabilities and broad influence, hoping that they will handle their health data with responsibility.
In addition, only14%of respondents showedconfidencein Big Tech's ability to manage their health data securely. This group trusts these technology giants, seemingly unbothered by past controversies and fully willing to entrust their most sensitive medical information to their care, according to the report.
Health care providers must actively advocate for patient rights and data autonomy. Patients should be empowered with the knowledge of their data's value, ownership, and control. By offering stringent data protection measures, health care providers can create an environment where patients feel in command of their health information, the report reads in part.
This article was initially published by our sister publication, Medical Economics.
Originally posted here:
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on Patients think their health data will be leaked and don’t trust big tech … – Contemporary Pediatrics
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Big Tech Earnings Season – Fagen wasanni
Posted: at 8:46 pm
This weeks Big Tech earnings season showcased the central role of artificial intelligence (A.I.). Despite varying financial results, Meta and Alphabet reported stronger-than-expected advertising revenues, while Snaps forecast fell short. However, the buzz around A.I. was consistent across all earnings calls.
Executives from Intel, Microsoft, and Meta all mentioned A.I. several times. At Microsoft, A.I. discussions even surpassed references to the cloud, which is a key focus for the companys CEO, Satya Nadella. Yet, Alphabet emerged as the winner of the A.I. contest, with executives uttering the term 82 times during their 60-minute call. In contrast, search, which represents 60% of Alphabets business, was only mentioned 30 times.
Of course, its important to note that quantifying buzzwords isnt the sole indicator of a companys business priorities. The questions posed by analysts during earnings calls can also influence the language used by executives. Nevertheless, counting mentions of A.I. provides an interesting glimpse into the current trends and concerns across different tech companies.
At Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized efficiency eight times, in line with his companys focus on streamlining operations. The term metaverse, which the company renamed itself after, appeared 11 times, compared to 63 mentions of A.I.
On the other hand, Meta executives made just three references to social networking, despite its importance in Facebooks user base of 3 billion. Similarly, Microsoft executives mentioned Activision, the video game company they are acquiring for $69 billion, only three times. This deal, once completed, will be the largest in Microsofts history.
In other news, the Senate advanced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), signaling efforts to address the mental health crisis among young people. However, digital rights groups have expressed concerns about potential online surveillance resulting from KOSAs age restrictions.
There was positive news for Intel, with CEO Pat Gelsinger leading the company back to profitability, thanks in part to a slowdown in the decline of PC shipments. In terms of A.I. safety, researchers have demonstrated methods to bypass the safeguards implemented by A.I. companies, highlighting the need for ongoing vigilance in this area.
Lastly, a notable issue emerged in the gaming world, as malware reportedly spread through hacked lobbies in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This worm, transmitted from player to player, prompted Activision to temporarily take the games multiplayer mode offline for investigation.
Overall, A.I. remains a prominent theme in the tech industry, with companies dedicating significant attention to its development and integration into their products and services.
Read this article:
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Big Tech Earnings Season - Fagen wasanni
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Big Tech Earnings Season – Fagen wasanni
The problem with Big Tech’s voluntary AI safety commitments – Emerging Tech Brew
Posted: at 8:46 pm
The European Union might be making strides toward regulating artificial intelligence (with passage of the AI Act expected by the end of the year), but the US government has largely failed to keep pace with the global push to put guardrails around the technology.
The White House, which said it will continue to take executive action and pursue bipartisan legislation, introduced an interim measure last week in the form of voluntary commitments for safe, secure, and transparent development and use of AI technology.
Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI agreed to prioritize research on societal risks posed by AI systems and incent third-party discovery and reporting of issues and vulnerabilities, among other things.
But according to academic experts, the agreements fall far short.
The elephant in the room here is that the United States continues to push forward with voluntary measures, whereas the European Union will pass the most comprehensive piece of AI legislation that weve seen to date, Brandie Nonnecke, founding director of UC Berkeleys Citris Policy Lab, told Tech Brew.
[These companies] want to be there in helping to essentially develop the test by which they will be graded, Nonnecke said. That, combined with cuts to trust and safety teams in recent months, is cause for skepticism, she added.
Emily Bender, a University of Washington professor who specializes in computational linguistics and natural language processing, said the vagueness of the commitments could be a reflection of what the companies were willing to agree to (the agreements voluntary nature at work).
We really shouldn't have the government compromising with companies, she said. The government should act in the public interest and regulate.
Tech Brew informs business leaders about the latest innovations, automation advances, policy shifts and more to help them make smart decisions.
Bender also voiced concerns about the measures approach to potential future risks, pointing to commitments to give significant attention to the effects of system interaction and tool use and the capacity for models to make copies of themselves or self-replicate.
And that to me doesnt sound like grounded thinking about actual risks, she added. I suspect that one of the through threads here isthis AI hype train of believing that the large language models are a step toward what gets called artificial general intelligence, which humanity needs to be protected from because of this weird fantasy world that it becomes sentient or autonomous and takes over, Bender said. I dont see Nvidia and IBM playing that game so much, so that might be part of why theyre not there.
Both Bender and Nonnecke pointed to the Federal Trade Commission, which opened an investigation into OpenAI in July, as an effective regulatory player in the absence of federal AI legislation. But neither expects much to come from the voluntary commitments.
I could imagine that the White House was interested in coming to the table because they might feel stymied by the split Congress, and so they cant directly do that much in terms of regulation, Bender said. They want to look like theyre doing something, but theres no teeth here. This is not regulation. The title is Ensuring Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI, and I dont think it does any of that.
See the rest here:
The problem with Big Tech's voluntary AI safety commitments - Emerging Tech Brew
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on The problem with Big Tech’s voluntary AI safety commitments – Emerging Tech Brew
How the Crypto Market Prepares Ahead of Big Tech Earnings … – BeInCrypto
Posted: at 8:46 pm
Crypto and traditional finance find themselves in the spotlight once more as investors prepare for significant announcements in the United States.
The tech giants will release their earnings after the close of trading on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will shed light on the future of interest rates during its July 25-26 meeting.
The economic health of the United States presents an interesting backdrop for Big Tech. Particularly Alphabet and Microsoft, as they gear up to reveal their quarterly earnings.
Despite prevailing market uncertainties, these tech stalwarts are expected to indicate a halt to the almost year-long deceleration in their cloud businesses. The surge in technology expenditure and digital advertising could offset this lull.
Indeed, their stocks already showcase this anticipation, with Alphabet registering a 0.40% decline and Microsoft a 0.65% uptick.
The Nasdaq Composite Index, a technological barometer, has also flourished, registering an impressive rise of around 33.40% this year. A significant portion of this rally can be attributed to large-cap growth firms that are rate-sensitive.
The bullish trend is further fueled by the immense promise of artificial intelligence, combined with expectations of the culmination of the US Federal Reserves rigorous tightening cycle.
The real test will be for companies that have significant exposure to artificial intelligence as investors are eager to see if these companies can report strong enough results to support their significantly elevated share prices in recent months, said James Demmert, CIO at Main Street Research.
With inflation rates tapering and a gentle economic retreat, the Federal Reserve faces a pivotal decision. Will it heed the softer economic data and decide against additional rate hikes?
The market anticipates a 25-basis point rate increase, marking the highest level in approximately 17 years.
If inflation does not continue to show progress and there are no suggestions of a significant slowdown in economic activity, then a second 25-basis-point [quarter-point] hike should come sooner rather than later, but that decision is for the future, said ChristopherJ.Waller, member of the Board ofGovernorsat the Fed.
As the FOMC wades through its deliberations, it is evident that inflation remains a formidable concern.
While things seem to be heading in the right direction with inflation, we are only at the start of a long process, saidKaren Dynan, economist at Harvard University.
Despite fluctuating macroeconomic directives, Bitcoin has largely maintained its trading range, oscillating between $29,000 and $31,500.
Bitcoin is still fluctuating within a narrow range for a little more than a week, and it will likely continue to do so until the conclusion of this weeks FOMC meeting, said Yuya Hasegawa, analyst at Bitbank.
While traditional markets await the verdict from tech giants and the FOMC, the crypto industry also watches closely as the impending rate hike could have further implications for inflation.
The FOMCs rate decisions henceforth will likely continue to be live, and Bitcoin may not successfully break out of $31,500 for another while, concluded Hasegawa.
In adherence to the Trust Project guidelines, BeInCrypto is committed to unbiased, transparent reporting. This news article aims to provide accurate, timely information. However, readers are advised to verify facts independently and consult with a professional before making any decisions based on this content.
View original post here:
How the Crypto Market Prepares Ahead of Big Tech Earnings ... - BeInCrypto
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on How the Crypto Market Prepares Ahead of Big Tech Earnings … – BeInCrypto
Tony Anscombe: It’s Misleading to Ask if Big Tech Wants to Read … – BroadbandBreakfast.com
Posted: at 8:46 pm
Ever since the internet was introduced to the world, the demands placed on it by users have constantly evolved. It was once a blessing to simply be connected, but now that more than half the world relies on the internet for work, schooling, and day-to-day activities, the broadband industry must shift its focus to delivering a quality user experience.
For decades, speed has been used as the primary indicator of broadband performance. At the same time, networking experts have long realized that speed is just one dimension of broadband performance, and newer, increasingly interactive applications have made users aware that more than just speed is required to provide the best possible experience. As a result, the industry needs to look beyond conventional measurements of speed and even latency, to improve overall broadband experience and to facilitate the management of network performance against service and application requirements.
Because our always on, ultra-connected lifestyle now demands so much more from our networks, Quality of Experience can no longer be ignored. For example, the emergence of applications such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and other high bandwidth, latency-sensitive applications have the potential to place tremendous strain on broadband networks.
Notably, VR technology has become more accessible and widely used over the past few years and it only continues to grow in popularity, with an estimated base of more than 171 million users worldwide and applications in gaming, healthcare, education, architecture, and other markets.
As VR technology and applications evolve, they require much more responsiveness from the network, including stringent latency requirements that are critical to providing customers with a realistic and comfortable experience. In effect, a network providing VR must be invisible to the customer, delivering data packets so quickly and reliably that its presence between the user and the application is not detected.
Latency, or the amount of time it takes for a data packet to travel from one point to another, is one of the network performance metrics used to describe customer QoE and consumers have become increasingly aware of its importance. However, conventional latency measurements do not necessarily provide enough information to drive improvements to network performance, especially when supporting demanding applications and services.
The industry needs to be able to break latency into its components, each of which is affected by distinct factors within the network. By understanding the individual components that make up latency, network designers can focus on the most effective techniques to provide performance optimized for subscribers, services, and applications.
Broadband Forums Broadband Quality of Experience Delivered project, published as a series of specifications under the TR-452 umbrella, defines metrics that capture variability in network quality, relating directly to end-user QoE. The framework uses principles of Quality Attenuation (written Q) to characterize the performance metrics, measurements, and analysis required by innovative broadband networks, tackling factors such as latency, consistency, predictability, and reliability.
Quality Attenuation measurements provide the capability for decomposing latency into distinct components, matching them to the sources of performance degradation. For example, packet delay is decomposed into a constant component (due to distance travelled and also bounded by the speed of light), a variable component (caused by queuing or buffering), and a serialization delay (tied to link speeds).
Quality Attenuation then builds a representative statistical distribution of these latency components as well as packet loss, based on the measured transit times of variable sized packets sent over a network segment over time. This makes Quality Attenuation a powerful tool for evaluating both the nature and the causes of network performance issues.
For example, Broadband Quality Attenuation can be used to identify quality degradation due to an inadequate scheduling operation when the network is under load. This in turn allows network operators to optimize broadband performance more cost-effectively via configuration changes, treating the root cause of the issue rather than just increasing link speeds, which could entail significant expenditure without solving the problem.
In this new gigabit era with the likes of DOCSIS 4, XGS-PON, 25G, 50G, 100G, coherent PON, and Wi-Fi 7 either available now or on the horizon more speed has diminishing benefits as perceived by customers. Instead, a new generation of interactive apps and services requires a more responsive network. As this evolution continues, speed will no longer be the main differentiator, but rather just one factor in the quest for a more comprehensive understanding of network performance, based upon service and application QoE.
By focusing on QoE, service providers can achieve reduced churn, new Average Revenue Per User growth opportunities, service differentiation, and lower OPEX applied to customer support and network planning. Services differentiated for specific QoE can be offered initially to particular target groups and ultimately, to the wider broadband subscriber market. These offerings can be powered by Broadband QED, which provides the needed framework to specify, measure, and analyze, and ensure the quality required for these next-generation applications driving value-added services.
Gavin Young is responsible within Vodafone Group for the fixed broadband access technology strategy, architecture, vendor roadmaps and standards across the 17 countries where Vodafone currently has fixed access assets, including fiber, cable and DSL access technologies plus fixed-mobile access. Young was a founding director of the Broadband Forum, for which he served as technical chairman for 12 years, in addition to serving as co-chair of the UK21CN consultations broadband group and on other technical boards. He is chairman of the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board and is active in several CableLabs initiatives, and is a fellow of the IET. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.
Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces tocommentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.
More:
Tony Anscombe: It's Misleading to Ask if Big Tech Wants to Read ... - BroadbandBreakfast.com
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on Tony Anscombe: It’s Misleading to Ask if Big Tech Wants to Read … – BroadbandBreakfast.com
The Week Ahead: Fed, ECB and BoJ set rates, and Big Tech … – Financial Times
Posted: at 8:46 pm
What is included in my trial?
During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages.
Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital, click here.
Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the Settings & Account section.
If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month.
For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the Settings & Account section. If youd like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.
You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many users needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.
Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel.
You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side.
You can still enjoy your subscription until the end of your current billing period.
We support credit card, debit card and PayPal payments.
Go here to read the rest:
The Week Ahead: Fed, ECB and BoJ set rates, and Big Tech ... - Financial Times
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on The Week Ahead: Fed, ECB and BoJ set rates, and Big Tech … – Financial Times
China’s Big Tech making a comeback with Beijing offering fresh … – The Straits Times
Posted: at 8:46 pm
BEIJING - China has asked its largest technology companies to provide case studies of their most successful start-up investments in consumer, telecom and media firms, a sign that the authorities are ready to grant broader leeway in backing such deals after a crackdown brought them to a virtual halt two years ago.
Companies including Tencent Holdings and Meituan received the requests from Chinas Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.
Earlier requests for case studies on the robotics and semiconductor industries were followed by a rare post by NDRC the nations powerful economic planner on its official WeChat account highlighting investments by the two companies as being aligned with Chinas goals.
While the authorities did not give reasons for requesting the new case studies, any broadening of the types of investments looked upon favourably by regulators would be a significant step towards reversing a crackdown on disorderly capital that helped erase hundreds of billions of dollars in market value from Chinas tech giants since 2021.
President Xi Jinpings government has taken several steps to rebuild confidence in the private sector in recent weeks, including by ending regulatory probes into Tencent, which runs WeChat, and e-commerce billionaire Jack Mas Ant Group.
The moves have helped spur stock market gains, though it is far from clear that a recovery in private sector confidence can be sustained given continued worries over the risk of abrupt shifts in government policy.
Regulators requested information on the investments including the ownership structure and whether they involve foreign capital, as well as potential economic and social benefits such as how the investment serves goals including carbon neutrality, rural re-vitalisation and common prosperity, one of the people said.
The selected companies in the tech giants portfolios must be in compliance with relevant regulations and have no record of violations, the person said.
Representatives of food delivery platform Meituan, the Ministry of Commerce, NDRC and Tencent did not respond to requests for comment.
China is courting private sector companies as it looks to rescue its sputtering post-Covid-19 economic recovery.
China Securities Regulatory Commission vice-chairman Fang Xinghai met some global venture capital and private equity firms to hear their worries about investment in the country, Bloomberg News reported last week.
Encouraging Chinese tech companies to back consumer-facing businesses would represent a pivot from the governments guidance of the past few years. In December 2021, the Communist Partys top decision-makers, in a briefing following a key annual conference, reined in their language around the disorderly expansion of capital.
The briefing introduced a red-light, green-light metaphor indicating how the state would seek to guide the private sectors investment decisions.
Beijing has firmly steered investors towards bets on technologies it views as key battlegrounds with strategic rivals such as the United States. US President Joe Bidens administration is planning to further tighten existing curbs by restricting inflows into Chinas semiconductor, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors.
Tech companies, in particular, have heeded Beijings call to develop AI, a technology with far-reaching implications for the economy and national interests.
Tencent-backed Shanghai Enflame Technology, which develops AI chips, and Rongxin Semiconductor Ningbo, a wafer-level packaging and testing operator that Meituan invested in, are among the companies NDRC mentioned in its WeChat post.
Alibaba Group Holding was also praised for its investment in e-commerce platform Huitongda Network.
Some Chinese tech companies that once operated like venture capital firms have cooled on the strategy in recent years. ByteDance dissolved its venture capital and investing team and was set to radically overhaul its separate strategic investment arm, people familiar with the matter said in 2022.
Alibaba said in May its plan to break up the company into six different units will involve dispatching about half of its investment team to the various businesses. BLOOMBERG
Here is the original post:
China's Big Tech making a comeback with Beijing offering fresh ... - The Straits Times
Posted in Big Tech
Comments Off on China’s Big Tech making a comeback with Beijing offering fresh … – The Straits Times
Dangerous visions: How the quest for utopia could lead to catastrophe – Salon
Posted: at 8:45 pm
Visions of utopia are ubiquitous throughout Western history. They've inspired great works of art and literature, motivated countless believers to obey God's commandments and driven some of the bloodiest conflicts in the collective biography of our species.
Utopian visions are also a central feature of the hype around artificial general intelligence, or AGI. In an article titled "Why AI Will Save the World," the tech billionaire Marc Andreessen writes that advanced AI systems will enable us to "take on new challenges that have been impossible to tackle without AI, from curing all diseases to achieving interstellar travel." The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, similarly declares that with AGI "we can colonize space. We can get fusion to work and solar [energy] to mass scale. We can cure all diseases." Utopianism is everywhere in Silicon Valley.
The problem is that utopia has a menacing underbelly. First, its pursuit can cause profound harms to those who happen to be standing in the way. This is why utopian fantasies have fueled some of the worst atrocities in history: If the means are justified by the ends, and the ends are quite literally a utopian world of infinite or astronomical amounts of value, then what exactly is off the table when it comes to realizing those ends?
We can already see this sort of thinking in the race to AGI: Companies like OpenAI have engaged in massive intellectual property theft, resulting in a slew of lawsuits, and systems like ChatGPT are built on the brutal exploitation of people in the Global South, some of whom were paid $1.32 per hour to sift through some of the most horrendous material on the web. These harms are surely worth the benefits, given that, in Altman's words, "we are only a few breakthroughs away from abundance at a scale that is difficult to imagine."
Second, the realization of utopia could also have catastrophic consequences, as most utopian visions are inherently exclusionary. There is always someone who is purposely left out in any imagined utopia some undesirable group whose presence in paradise would disqualify it from counting as such. If the Christian heaven were to include atheists, for instance, it wouldn't be heaven. Hence, one should always ask who a particular utopian vision is for. Everyone, or just a select few? If so, which people are allowed in and which are banished to perdition, if not sentenced to be annihilated?
One should always ask who a particular utopian vision is for. Everyone, or just a select few? If so, which people are allowed in and which are banished to perdition?
Although religious belief is rapidly waning in the West, utopianism is not. That makes it important to understand the nature and potential dangers of utopian thinking. To get a better handle on these issues, I contacted my colleague Monika Bielskyte, a brilliant futures consultant who counts Universal Studios, DreamWorks and Nike among her past clients. She also consulted on the blockbuster movie "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," and over the past decade has given talks about the future at major media and tech conferences around the world. Subverting a term from the tech guru Kevin Kelly, she developed the "protopia futures" framework, which proposes a regenerative and inclusive vision for the future as an alternative to the utopia-dystopia binary.
In our phone conversation, we discussed a range of topics, including the origins of utopian thinking and whether the tech elite are "true believers" or are merely using utopianism as a "smokescreen" to distract from their destruction of the planet. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I've become very interested in this claim that utopia is inherently exclusionary. I heard you say on a podcast that marginalized peoples are often better off in imagined dystopias than utopias. Could you elaborate?
It's not even that they're better off in dystopias than utopias they literally don't exist in utopias! Almost without exception, marginalized people are outright erased from all but the most recent utopian visions. Pretty much the only place where marginalized peoples exist in sci-fi and futurist visions have been in dystopias (and their presence is often perceived as a signifier of dystopia), because there's literally no place made for them in utopia, given the eugenic and exclusionary nature of utopianism. For example, the presence of queer people, disabled people and neurodivergent people in some way denies the very nature of utopianism because if disability still exists (let alone is celebrated), is it even utopia? There's a whole set of superficially inspiring futurological visions that outwardly celebrate this erasure.
"The presence of queer people, disabled people and neurodivergent people in some way denies the very nature of utopianism if disability still exists (let alone is celebrated), is it even utopia?"
Then you inevitably have to ask the question: how did we arrive at the point where all of these people of marginalized backgrounds are literally gone? Was there a targeted genocide? A kind of eugenic elimination of those particular identities? So that's why these visions create this really difficult situation where a lot of creative people from these marginalized backgrounds end up having that preference for the dystopian genre, because those were the only sci-fi visions in which they saw themselves as kids or teenagers.
So we start thinking, "Well, is that the only story of the future that we can be telling as marginalized peoples of never-ending oppression and struggle?" Consequently, this creates a narrowing of possibilities of actually imagining a future where people of marginalized identities are not in this continued or even expanded state of oppression, but actually become the leaders, visionaries and healers of the kind of world that, right now, we should be hoping and dreaming of and working toward.
For example, I have this conversation with some peers of mine who are in the field of future-making as writers, directors, etc.: people from the Global South by which I mean the Majority World and its diaspora along with queer folks and the disabled and neurodivergent communities, who still too often feel that it is only within a dystopian framework that we can tell our stories. But the continuous regurgitation of dystopian inevitability reinforces our lack of agency in imagining a radical shift of any social, cultural or political narrative thinking that we can invent all these "magical" technologies and imagine all these extraordinary scientific advances, and yet we still cannot see a pathway towards a future that is beyond racism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia and so on. We do not have the luxury to fetishize dystopia, because we, or our ancestors, have already lived through it.
So why do we endlessly rehash these exhausted narratives and visions of the doomed future instead of using our time, energy and talent to envision what an actual liberation for oppressed peoples and a regenerative, life-centric society could look like? This is what the real danger of both utopian and dystopian visions is: They can have a toxic effect upon our imaginations, by distracting us away from both present-day oppression and liberatory future possibilities. It's why we started the Protopia Futures collective, to counter dystopian escapism as well as the utterly unrealistic and profoundly misinformed techno-solutionist narratives, and actually work toward what could be those shared "yes" visions of the future.
The particular utopian visions discussed by techno-futurists today transhumanists, longtermists and the like are fairly novel, as they deal with advanced technologies that weren't discussed much or at all before the mid-20th century. Yet these visions didn't come out of nowhere. They have a lineage, a genealogy, that goes back to traditional religion. Could you help us understand the history of utopian thought in the West?
So much of it has roots in Christian ascensionist narratives, a binary vision of paradise and hell (which is the predecessor of today's cosmic heavens and earthly soil utopia-dystopia binary) and its way of "sorting" who gets into each. This narrative is fundamentally settler-centric and human-centric. Only a narrow group of humans have the potential to reach paradise, based on a very homophobic and colonial idea of "morality," and no space at all is reserved for non-human species in "heaven." (This version of heaven, containing only humans, would be a kind of hell for most Indigenous people.) So Christian paradise, as the origin story of western utopianism, already has dystopia and exclusionism embedded within it.
I'm reminded of a term that's started to go mainstream: the "Eremocene," or "Age of Loneliness," which describes a time when we have extinguished so many other species and become increasingly isolated as a human species on this planet a kind of existential isolation and loneliness that results from being separated from the biosphere through this violent genocide of species and the extinction of their sensory worlds, as one of my favorite authors, Ed Yong, writes in his brilliant new book "An Immense World."
Many historical conceptions of utopia have also been exclusionary around these very lines of sexuality and ability anchored in settler-colonial "morality." Nazi Germany's justification for the utopian vision of the "Aryan Lebensraum" expansion provides an obvious example. The genocide began with the targeting of disabled and queer people and led to mass extermination of Jewish and Roma people and other minorities who were also associated with moral and physical "failures" for the purpose of dehumanization and expropriation.
Similarly, the Soviet Union, especially under Joseph Stalin, justified mass ethnic cleansing, imprisonment, torture and genocidal campaigns to justify the achievement of communist "Fatherland" utopia i.e., Holodomor [the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s]; Stalin's purge of Jewish people; the ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars; the suppression of Indigenous cultural traditions and their forceful replacement by Communist ideology across Russia's colonial realms, including Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia; the criminalization of homosexuality; utilizing mental health facilities and mental health justifications to eliminate opponents of the regime; and so on, as well as environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale.
I think the easiest way to measure the genocidal capacity of any given utopia is to look at how it treats marginalized peoples, especially those at the intersection of indigeneity, queerness and disability.
"Our lack of historical literacy of racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Indigenous biases, built on scientific grounds and amplified by technology, predisposes us to ignore how these discriminatory tendencies persist into the tech world today."
The key point is that this toxic legacy is still with us today. Our lack of historical literacy of racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Indigenous biases, built on scientific grounds and amplified by technology, predisposes us to ignore how these discriminatory tendencies persist into the tech world today, and suffuse the scientific community. These narratives are like the water that we swim in, and hence are invisible to many people within these milieus. Even today, I see so many "progressive" people, with often the best intentions, unknowingly echoing eco-fascist talking points in their desirable future visions that disregard the access needs of disabled people, or environmental justice issues between the Global North and Global South.
You've said in some of your talks that designing the future must always be a cooperative endeavor that it doesn't work if one group of people aims to dictate what the future will look like, even if they express concern for the wellbeing of other groups. Could you elaborate on this point?
That's right. If you're hoping to design something that's not harmful to start with let alone something that is useful or actually beneficial you can never design for somebody, you can only design with them. And by "with," that doesn't mean that you just choose one "token" person and then pretend that you're inclusive. You actually have to work with communities that are at that bleeding edge of harm, you need to ensure that key leadership consists of the most impacted groups. Because otherwise we just end up with harmful tokenization that is, predatory inclusion. This was exemplified by last year's push for crypto in the Global South and diaspora communities. When Spike Lee released a commercial about how crypto is the new money, it utilized a lot of really talented, prominent Black, brown and queer creatives to promote a vision that is fundamentally about extracting from their very communities. So even though some of the people involved may have benefited from those ads, their communities were ultimately harmed by the crypto push. That's one of a million examples of predatory inclusion.
A central feature of the techno-utopian visions influential within Silicon Valley today involves a narrative about humanity "transcending" itself. Our biological bodies are often derided as "meat-bags" that must be cast aside, replaced by robotic or computer hardware. Ultimately, the aim would be to replace biology altogether by "uploading" our minds to the cloud. I wonder how much this is influenced by the legacy of Christianity, which saw the body as sinful. After all, there are some cultural traditions for instance, some Indigenous traditions that don't see our bodies this way. Could you elaborate on how some of these traditions envisioned the future?
First of all, Indigenous accounts of what would constitute an aspirational future or present are not uniform there is a considerable diversity of views, of course. But, fundamentally, from the Indigenous perspective, you don't see yourself as apart from either your body or the other bodies you are codependent with. By "other bodies," I mean all other life, including bodies of other humans, but also plants, fungi and so on. All the transcendence and all the joy and pleasure that one experiences is not through being removed from this. It is, in fact, by deepening our interdependence with it.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
This is where there's this fundamental clash in civilizational visions, you could say, between the colonial TESCREALists advocates of the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies and Indigenous perspectives. So, if TESCREALists say that they know better than the Indigenous people about the aspirational future we should aim for, then, again, it's the same "manifest destiny" colonialism all over again. Not just in this desire to go out there and subject all these complex ecosystems to our own will, but even in this very notion that we should aspire toward removing ourselves from our own bodies and from the ecosystems within and around our bodies, and even from Earth itself. Some harmful olden-day futurist notions persist, such as Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" metaphor it seems appealing on the surface, but fundamentally misunderstands the fact that neither our home planet nor our very bodies can be engineered down to component parts, let alone zeroes and ones. As Indigenous people have always known, consciousness is not reducible to mathematical calculations, it's embodied, interconnected and inseparable from the matter that is life.
So the way I see it, the techno-utopian visions of a colonized cosmos and transcended Earth are really just about finding ideological ways to justify compounded human and biosphere genocide happening today a way to say that in light of those grand visions, extinction of species or languages is ultimately "not that important." That is absolutely false. It's not that we shouldn't aim to learn more about the cosmos, but that we need to refocus more energy to understanding and regenerating the damage we have wrought upon ourselves and this planet improving soil health and the health of our oceans, rewilding, etc., are more future-worthy endeavors right now. Instead of fantasizing about machine or alien consciousness, we should prioritize understanding non-human animal consciousness, because we are rendering species extinct before we are even able to learn about their perception and sensory experience of the world we share.
Finally, to what extent do you think the tech elite actually buy into their techno-utopian vision of being digital posthumans and colonizing space? Are they true believers? Or might they be exploiting the promise of utopia to "justify" their greed and ruthless quest for power in the present?
"The way I see it, techno-utopian visions of a colonized cosmos and transcended Earth are about finding ways to justify human and biosphere genocide happening today in light of those grand visions, extinction of species is ultimately 'not that important.'"
This is where I sometimes think that you and I might have slightly different views on the matter. It seems to me that some of the tech gazillionaires that sell us these grand civilizational fantasies of intergalactic colonialism are just doing it to obfuscate and justify much more banal goals of personal enrichment and keeping up their scams. Elon Musk's Tesla edifice has been collapsing for a long time because it was sort of "crypto" before crypto, by which I mean that it is built on a pyramid-scheme type of hype, as detailed in Edward Niedermeyer's book "Ludicrous." Musk was being called the wealthiest man on Earth but it was fictional, inflated stock money dependent on false promises he can't keep up with anymore and in order to keep up with the scam in an increasingly competitive market, you need to stake increasingly unrealistic claims and hope you won't get called on it. In general, this is also how most tech bubble/hype cycles work they're predicated on the majority public's lack of future literacy and the media's willing participation in pumping up these sensational headlines with little critical inquiry behind the claims of those set to profit from them.
So my sense is that the talk of humanity becoming "multiplanetary" is just a way to put a sci-fi smokescreen up to the media and general publiccapitalism always needs a new frontier, so space colonialism is this kind of deus ex machina to detract us from the reality that there is no "infinite growth" on a finite planet, and that we need fundamental restructuring of our societies and economies based on principles of equity and justice.
I'm sure there are some "true believers" in the transhumanist, cosmist, longtermist movements. But I think that for somebody like Musk, the much more immediate goal is to develop the means to reach and, through robotic peripherals, mine the asteroid belt, to extract platinum, gold, diamonds and other rare minerals, especially those needed for batteries, microchips and so on. When Musk realized that his self-driving cars, his vision for Tesla, actually would not deliver on the promises, he still had to keep up with these grand visions of humanity's future, because he had gotten used to that level of power, influence and adulation. He has to keep inflating his vision by selling this fantasy, and because of the lack of future literacy, people keep buying into it. That being said, he might just be a delusional apartheid heir who has a dream to bring back the hierarchical structures of apartheid South Africa on a cosmic scale. Either way, whether he's a true believer or just a cosmically greedy man, the fact that he possesses so much influence on global future narratives and economies puts the rest of us in grave danger.
"Many of the richest and most influential men in tech never really grew out of that teenage phase of being fanboys of particular sci-fi authors, movies or series. They cling to these sci-fi fantasies of eternal lives in the cosmic matrix."
In my talks, I often say that ultimately it's those who control the fantasy who control the future. So many of the richest and most influential men in tech never really grew out of that teenage phase of being fanboys of particular sci-fi authors, movies or series. They cling to these sci-fi fantasies of eternal lives in the cosmic matrix and other fictional stuff, even though the bleeding edge of scientific research suggests that minds cannot just be reduced to a digital program, because our consciousness is embodied and interconnected with an ecosystem that it's codependent with.
But if they admit that all they want is, ultimately, to mine the asteroid belt, then all of a sudden they're going to have much more intense scrutiny. Who should have the right to go and mine asteroids? Could a single company in the Global North have this right? What kind of neocolonial relationships could that perpetuate between the Global North and Global South? Similarly, with AI, the more you talk about these visions of artificial general intelligence, the easier it is to divert attention away from the real issues of how these very fallible yet increasingly dangerous AI tools are being designed, used and abused. What bias gets embedded within them, whose data gets expropriated for it, who gets the access and what type of behavior and manipulation does this allow and to whom.
So I tend to think that these people are not as "smart" and "visionary" as they're often perceived, but also not so foolish especially someone like Peter Thiel as to actually believe that the utopian fantasies they're peddling would not spell dystopia for most of the rest of us. It's not that they don't know how to read dystopian narratives critically, or that they fully buy into technology being the magical panacea for problems that are fundamentally social, cultural and political. It's that they actually see how dystopias (sometimes disguised as utopias) can be used as product roadmaps, not just because there's money to be made while the world burns, but because there's money to be made by setting the world on fire.
Dystopia is not a bug, it's a feature. It will take all of us to resist it, and to fight for the kind of future that is actually livable. We must do all we can to resist these lures of eschatological tech theologies and accelerationist fantasies, because they are designed to benefit the few, while harming, if not outright extinguishing, the rest of us.
Read more
from mile P. Torres on humanity's future
Original post:
Dangerous visions: How the quest for utopia could lead to catastrophe - Salon
Posted in New Utopia
Comments Off on Dangerous visions: How the quest for utopia could lead to catastrophe – Salon
Travis Scott Spends the Day in NYC Amid the Release of His New … – Just Jared
Posted: at 8:45 pm
Travis Scott enjoys a sunny day walking around New York City with his friends on Friday (July 28).
The 32-year-old rapper kept it casual for his day out in a black t-shirt and black pants, which he paired with Nike sneakers.
His outing coincided with the release of his latest album, Utopia, which dropped Friday night. It marks Travis first full-length album since 2018s Astroworld and features collaborations with artists like The Weeknd, James Blake, Bad Bunny, Beyonce, Future, 21 Savage and more.
Utopia made headlines upon its release after fans speculated that Travis may have dissed Timothee Chalamet on his song Meltdown. Timothee, 27, is rumored to be dating Kylie Jenner, 26, who is Travis ex. The pair share two children, 5-year-old Stormi and 17-month-old son Aire.
Stormi actually made her musical debut on one of the tracks from Utopia. Check it out!
Click through the gallery for the latest photos of Travis Scott in New York City
Continue reading here:
Travis Scott Spends the Day in NYC Amid the Release of His New ... - Just Jared
Posted in New Utopia
Comments Off on Travis Scott Spends the Day in NYC Amid the Release of His New … – Just Jared
The 5 Best New TV Shows of July 2023 – TIME
Posted: at 8:45 pm
As Barbenheimer rocks the box office, and Hollywood actors and writers hit the picket line, TV's summertime slump is in full effect. July 2023 saw the return of comedy favorites like What We Do in the Shadows, This Fool, Minx (which jumped from Max to Starz), and, for its final season, How To With John Wilson. Justified and Project Greenlight are back in new incarnations. But we didn't get much in the way of showstopping debut series. Still, there's a handful of titles worth checking out, from a flawed but fascinating Soderbergh thriller to a pair of beautifully executed docuseries to the best new animated comedy in recent memory.
Fatalism should make life simple. Once you embrace the belief, whether secular or spiritual, that everything happens as part of a grand cosmic plan, you can relax, safe in the knowledge that the universe (or God, or science) has had your discrete destiny gamed out since the dawn of time. But thats not how fateor is it free will?operates in MaxsFull Circle, a cluttered yet compelling thriller directed bySteven Soderbergh. As conceived by creator Ed Solomon, the trajectory of human life isnt a straightforward circle of cause and effect so much as its a tangled web of emotion, self-interest, faith, luck, character flaws, and above all history.
The series applies this worldview to the case of a seemingly incomprehensible kidnapping. In Queens, the brother-in-law of a Guyanese crime boss, Savitri Mahabir (CCH Pounder), is murdered by a rival family. But instead of exacting revenge on the immediate culprits, as her ambitious nephew Aked (Jharrel Jerome) proposes, Savitriwho believes the Mahabirs are cursedtravels to her home country, consults a mystic, and returns to New York convinced she knows how to close the circle of misfortune that has afflicted her family. Weirdly, the remedy entails abducting the hapless teen son, Jared (Ethan Stoddard), of a rich, white Manhattan couple. [Read the full review.]
Step aside, Sweeney Todd! There's a new human-meat entrepreneur in town, and her name is Dolores Roach. Playedgloriously against typeby the wonderful Justina Machado (One Day at a Time), Dolores has just been released from prison after doing time for a drug-dealer boyfriend. Hoping to reunite with him, she returns to their old neighborhood, Washington Heights, only to find the area overrun by young, white gentrifiers and the fancy businesses that so reliably spring up around them. At least good, old Empanada Loca is still hanging onand its proprietor, her acquaintance Luis (Alejandro Hernandez), is happy to host her there. Dolores moves into his gloomy apartment, in the basement of the empanada joint, and sets up a gray-market business to capitalize on a skill she learned behind bars: giving massages. Her hands are magic. So magic, it turns out, that they can fatally snap a client's neck before she's consciously decided to do so. Lucky for Dolores, Luis is twisted enough to help her dispose of the bodies by carving them up to make delicious empanadas.
Dolores Roach was a one-woman show and then a narrative podcast before it was adapted for Amazon, and the series uses a distracting framing device to acknowledge that history. But Machado makes a riveting antihero, believably unhinged but too warm to hate. The supporting actors, including Marc Maron, Cyndi Lauper, and Jean Yoon from Kim's Convenience, are perfectly cast. And what the social commentary on offer here lacks in freshness (the play does date back to 2015), it makes up for in cathartic humor, as Dolores dispatches the new neighbors who look down on her and Luis fries them up and feeds them to cool-hunting foodies.
[Read about Dolores Roach's Sweeney Todd connection.]
I've sampled so many nature documentaries over the past few years that they've all blurred together into an umpteen-hour mass of sweeping aerial panoramas, stunning wildlife closeups, and grand narration from David Attenborough. Don't get me wrong: I'm as awed by the beauty and technical achievement of these post-Planet Earth productions as anyone. But there's more than one way to make a great nature show. Human Footprint takes a chattier approach to exploring the Anthropocene, sending the affable biologist and Princeton professor Shane Campbell-Staton around the globe to document and discuss the often-catastrophic impact of humans on the natural world. Each of six hourlong episodes takes on a different facet of that enormous topic, from the invasive species we've introduced into fragile ecosystems to the phenomenon of the city. While there's plenty of heavy stuff here, Campbell-Staton knows when to inject some levityincluding an entire episode on our relationships with dogs.
More than an investigation, this true-crime series is an eloquent and timely rumination on why it took police in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania so many years to catch a serial killer who, throughout the early 1990s, picked up men at gay bars in Manhattan and crossed state lines to dispose of their dismembered remains. Unlike so much contemporary true-crime schlock, which enthuses over favorite murders and fetishizes Jeffrey Dahmer, its emphasis is on the victims, their still-grieving families, and a larger LGBTQ community that sublimated fear into action. Harnishs question epitomizes the disconnect that persists between police and one of the most vulnerable groups theyre supposed to serve and protect. [Read the full review.]
This exuberantly weird animated comedy comes from the mind of Anna Drezen, the former SNL head writer known for slyly surreal showbiz sendups like Nephew Pageant and Kate McKinnons unforgettable character Debette Goldry. Schitts Creek alum Annie Murphy riffs on her breakthrough fish-out-of-water role as the voice of Petra Petey St. Barts, a vivacious young New Yorker who loses her fianc (hes a literal slab of lumber, by the way), her best friend, her home, and her job as Senior Assistant/Editorial Assistant at a fashion magazine in the same awful day. Thankfully, her rich, distant mother, Christine Baranskis spectacularly named White St. Barts, has just informed Petey that she has a father. And he recently died. Also, as he explains in a VHS tape, shes just inherited the small, Southern town he owns. Its called New Utopia, which sounds like a cult because it is a cult. [Read the full review.]
More Must-Reads From TIME
Contact us at letters@time.com.
Original post:
Posted in New Utopia
Comments Off on The 5 Best New TV Shows of July 2023 – TIME