AI Week

New newsletter & free ebook!


AI Week is my free weekly newsletter about AI and society.
I’d love for you to join me! Sign up to get a free ebook
of my 2019 novella about AI in the workplace,
"The Auditor and the Exorcist."

Newsletter: AI Week

I recently started a weekly newsletter about AI. It’s not for experts and it’s extremely readable. It’s really aimed at science fiction writers and readers: non-experts (like me) who are interested in the impact of this tech on society.

Last week’s newsletter included:

  • ChatGPT and DALL-E generated carols
  • A new way to make chatbots break their rules
  • A nasty surprise: there’s child sexual abuse material in the AI training data
  • Creepy marketers claiming to spy on your devices and sift through your words with AI (part two)
  • AI-generated songs, alcopop, political speech, and more
  • Plus four very readable longreads about AI and society

I’d love to have you join me. Check out the archives on Buttondown and/or subscribe here:

The problem with near-future SF…

… is that it’s not long before it’s no longer fiction!

My 2019 story The Auditor and the Exorcist included an IoT coffeemaker that was hijacked by a malicious hacker. It’s 2020, and here’s the hacked IoT coffeemaker: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/how-a-hacker-turned-a-250-coffee-maker-into-ransom-machine/

Continue reading “The problem with near-future SF…”

Emotion-monitoring AI, part II

This is my second post on the emerging tech of emotion-recognition AI. In my last post, I considered some of the consequences of algorithmic blind spots on likely applications of emotion-recognition tech. In this post, I’ll get into algorithmic bias.

Continue reading “Emotion-monitoring AI, part II”

Emergent tech: emotion-monitoring AI

Back in 2019, when in-person conventions were still a thing, I participated in a Can-Con panel about the future of emotion-monitoring technology and AI. The panel was terrific, with able moderation by Kim-Mei Kirtland and fascinating contributions from my fellow panelists. I’ve written up some of my thoughts from that panel to share here.

Because of my tech background, I always find it interesting to think about the potential effects of bugs in fictional and emerging technology.

This is is the first of a series of posts the emerging tech of emotion-recognition AI, focusing on the strange and dark places that bugs in this tech could take us.

Continue reading “Emergent tech: emotion-monitoring AI”