From the Editor
“When killer robots come to America they will be wrapped in fur, carrying a ball”.
A rampaging robot art dog; a foray into the world of AI by Nobel Prize winning laureate, Kazuo Ishiguro; and a 750-page report by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence - is this the week that the implications of the dawning of the Age of Artificial Intelligence finally landed with the public?
While the NSCAI’s lengthy report is unlikely to attract as many reader’s as Ishiguro’s new novel, or capture the public’s attention in quite the same manner as Spot’s Rampage – it is gripping reading nonetheless. The report with its central thesis that China will lead the world in AI by the end of the decade casts a shadow every bit as grim as the Nobel Prize winner’s dystopian vision.
As it warns, we are only just beginning to “grapple with just how profoundly the AI revolution will impact our economy, national security, and welfare”.
Enjoy the Issue.
Top 5 News Stories of the Week
BIDEN URGED TO BACK AI WEAPONS TO COUNTER CHINA AND RUSSIA THREATS
The US and its allies should reject calls for a global ban on AI-powered autonomous weapons systems, according to an official report commissioned for the American President and Congress.
Read the full story here
AI-POWERED DRONES EMERGE AS R&D PRIORITY FOR BOEING
New technology that allows military drones to fly alongside manned warplanes has emerged as a rare area of corporate investment for Boeing’s defense business amid company-wide cost-cutting initiatives designed to stabilize its commercial jetliner division.
Read the full story here
CHINA WANTS TO DOMINATE AI. THE US AND EUROPE NEED EACH OTHER TO TAME IT.
Political leaders in the U.S. and Europe are becoming increasingly alarmed by China’s use of artificial intelligence to track its people and engage in other authoritarian behavior. But so far, the long-time allies are not united over rules for the rapidly evolving technology.
Read the full story here
BOW WOW! MSCHF’S LATEST DROP LETS YOU CONTROL A BOSTON DYNAMICS ROBOT WITH A PAINTBALL GUN ON ITS BACK
The prankster art / marketing collective MSCHF recently spent $74,500 to purchase a Spot robo-dog from Boston Dynamics. It mounted a Tippmann 98 paintball gun on its back and is allowing people around the world to remotely control the bot via their phones in an art gallery filled with its own work for two minutes at a time. MSCHF is calling it Spot’s Rampage.
Read the full story here
KAZUO ISHIGURO USES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO REVEAL THE LIMITS OF OUR OWN
Klara and the Sun is Ishiguro’s eight novel, and his first book since he won the Nobel Prize. The book is set in a dystopian future and explores the nature of artificial intelligence, but of course it is about much more, mostly love.
Read the full story here
REVIEW
Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins, by Andrew Cockburn
Everything you ever feared or suspected about drone warfare is true – at least according to London-based journalist, Andrew Cockburn, the editor of Harper’s Magazine. In this dense but well-sourced polemic, missile strikes from Afghanistan to Yemen, directed from the other side of the world, are not only legally and morally questionable, but riven with the risk of mistaken identity. Cockburn draws a line from the Second World War through Vietnam, Israel, and South America, and the self-deluding insistence that the latest technology combined with remote surveillance and bombing from the air can fashion justice, democracy and military victory. Ultimately, the author concludes, the anger caused by strikes reliant on deeply flawed information-gathering has caused insurgencies around the world to grow rather than diminish.
★★★★@Matt
UPCOMING EVENTS
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