Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords
How warnings of AI doom gave way to primal fear of primates posting.
How warnings of AI doom gave way to primal fear of primates posting.
Adam Elkus The New Atlantis Apr 2021 20min Permalink
A woman suspects her new boyfriend is less than human.
Kate Folk The New Yorker Mar 2020 25min
The author, who works remotely, and her evolving relationship with her physical representation at the office: “an iPad on a stick on a Segway-like base.”
Emily Dreyfuss Wired Sep 2015 15min Permalink
How can you know if you’re about to get replaced by an invading algorithm or an augmented immigrant? “If your job can be easily explained, it can be automated,” Anders Sandberg, of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, tells Oppenheimer. “If it can’t, it won’t.” (Rotten luck for people whose job description is “Predict the future.”)
Jill Lepore New Yorker Feb 2019 30min Permalink
What happens when robots act just like humans?
Can a $100,000 robot that makes a delicious crab bisque replace a real chef?
David Marchese New York Jan 2017 15min Permalink
Robots arrive on earth; a politician's grotesque fate.
Matt Rowan Necessary Fiction Nov 2016 Permalink
A trip to Japan and a glimpse of our automated future.
Gideon Lewis-Kraus Wired Mar 2016 30min Permalink
A profile of the highest-paid female executive in America, who was born male.
Lisa Miller New York Sep 2014 25min Permalink
The surprisingly difficult work of building bots that can walk.
Will Knight Technology Review Jun 2014 Permalink
The debate over autonomous lethal drones.
Don Troop The Chronicle of Higher Education Sep 2012 15min Permalink
A robot anatomist contemplates the mysteries of the mind.
"While we knew a little about the structure of the brain, its physiology is notoriously hard to study because of the brain's extreme delicacy. It is typically the case in fatal accidents that, when the skull is breached, the brain erupts in a cloud of gold, leaving little besides shredded filament and leaf from which nothing useful can be discerned."
Ted Chiang Jan 2009 25min Permalink
The autonomous car of the future is here:
I was briefly nervous when Urmson first took his hands off the wheel and a synthy woman’s voice announced coolly, “Autodrive.” But after a few minutes, the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the panorama of indecision, BlackBerry-fumbling, rule-flouting, and other vagaries of the humans around us—including the weaving driver who struggles to film us as he passes.
Tom Vanderbilt Wired Feb 2012 30min Permalink
Most military experts agree that robots, not people, will inevitably do the fighting in ground wars. In Tennessee, a high-end gunsmith is already there. The story of Jerry Baber and his robot army.
Evan Ratliff New Yorker Feb 2009 20min Permalink
Fifteen years ago, Sherry Turkle developed a little crush on a robot named Cog. Since then, the MIT professor has been studying our ever-increasing emotional reliance on technology. She’s not optimistic about where we’re headed.
Jeffrey R. Young The Chronicle of Higher Education Jan 2011 10min Permalink
The story of two Canadian artificial intelligence visionaries who became bitter rivals and then both committed suicide in the same month.
David Kushner Wired Feb 2008 Permalink