At first glance, Hubert Dreyfus’ 1992 book What Computers Still Can’t Do (WCSCD, originally published in 1972 as What Computers Can’t Do) seems untimely in the current business climate, which favours massive and widespread investment in AI (these days, often understood as being synonymous with machine learning and neural networks). However, being untimely may in fact […]
Two momentous events that took place last year were the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, and the UK’s referendum on EU membership that led to the “Brexit†decision to leave the union. The two are often lumped together and seen as symptoms of a single larger force, which they probably […]
Elon Musk, entrepreneur of some renown, believes that the sudden eruption of a very powerful artificial intelligence is one of the greatest threats facing mankind. “Control of a super powerful AI by a small number of humans is the most proximate concern”, he tweets. He’s not alone among silicon valley personalities to have this concern. To reduce the […]
Technologists and engineers often use the ideas of utilitarianism to evaluate their solutions. If something is cheaper, or faster, or lets people live 3.2 days longer on average, or some other number can be optimised, they judge a solution to be better. In short, they use a quantitative form of  judgment. This way of thinking […]
(The multi-month hiatus here on Monomorphic has been due to me working on my thesis. I am now able to, briefly, return to this and other indulgences.) Life presupposes taking responsibility. It presupposes investing people, objects and matters around you with your concern. In particular, democratic society presupposes that we all take full, in some […]