Quote of the Day

“Algorithms do not have ethics, moral, values or ideologies, but people do. Questions about the ethics of AI are questions about the ethics of the people who make it and put it to use.”

Olivier Penel

Quote of the Day

“The problem will never be solved, if solving it means getting rid of all the bad stuff, because we can’t agree on what the bad stuff is. Knowing that things won’t be perfect, what do we feel is most desirable? A system that errs on the side of caution, or one that errs on the side of being permissive?”

Rasmus Nielsen, Reuters Institute, Oxford.

Quote of the day

”The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.”

Peter Mair, Ruling the Void

Quote of the day

“Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment,” he said. “The owners of the platform giants consider themselves the masters of the universe, but in fact they are slaves to preserving their dominant position … Davos is a good place to announce that their days are numbered.”

George Soros, Davos, January 25, 2018

Quote of the day

”We erect a statue in our own image inside ourselves – idealised, you know, but still recognisable – and then spend our lives engaged in the effort to make ourselves into its likeness.”

Denis Diderot

Quote of the Day

“Benedict’s Law of Headlines: If an opinion piece uses ‘Artificial Intelligence’ instead of ‘machine learning’, you know in advance that its arguments will be weak.”

Benedict Evans.

Quote of the Day

“If it’s your algorithm, it’s your responsibility. This is the only way that we can sort of sustain a world where we know who is responsible for what.”

Margrethe Vestager, EU Competition Commissioner

Quote of the Day

Q: We’re now more than two years out from that experience, and obviously the controversies have not gone away — they’ve actually multiplied. Do you think Zuckerberg and Sandberg have made any progress on the stuff you warned about?

A: I want to avoid absolutes, but I think it’s safe to say that the business model is the source of the problem, and that it’s the same business model as before. And to the extent that they made progress, it’s in going after different moles in the Whack-a-Mole game. From the point of view of the audience, Facebook is as threatening as ever.

From an interview with Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and apparently a recovering former mentor to Mark Zuckerberg. He’s also the author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.