Category: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Amid a global labor force crisis, we cannot turn a blind eye to technological solutions. However, we must approach them with caution and prudence to avoid exacerbating existing biases.

Some topics addressed on the September 13 panel included climate change challenges related to health and healthcare, contributions of computing to the climate change problem in terms of energy use, along with the potential of computing to contribute to solutions to the crisis, agriculture and food security issues related to climate change, systems design, finding solutions and improving communication across IEEE societies, carbon removal, and economic and social aspects of the crisis including forced migration, water supplies, and the responsibilities of developed nations to developing nations in climate change mitigation.

The IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS 23) continued into its second day of regular programming on Thursday September 14, and included the presentation of a second panel related to climate change, this one focused on “Public Safety Technologies and Climate Change.”

We invite you to join us at Digital Platforms and Societal Harms, taking place 2 and 3 October at American University in Washington, D.C. and with keynote panels available in hybrid mode to enable online attendance, and – this is where you come in – though local in-person events that can be hosted by IEEE Sections or Chapters anywhere in the world.

What role does and can AI play in us being able to enjoy security in our places and spaces? Perhaps we could design technology-enabled spaces for the purpose of strengthening the community and empowering community action.

Listen in on this Economist podcast… featuring IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society EIC Katina Michael.

Strengers, an Associate Professor of Digital Technology at Monash University, and Kennedy, a postdoc at RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, argue that if we proceed down the current path of making our digital assistants, fembots, gynoids, and voice-activated devices look, sound, and/or behave like simulacra of women, we risk reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes in ways that could rebound on real women.

In our time, it is not mythologies or idols in the place of God, but  a new divinity, an “AI-centric” God, which according to some in the transhumanist movement, advocates for the enhancement of the human condition in terms of both its longevity and cognition. The rubrics of a divinatory algorithm would be shaped dependent on one’s philosophical or religious orientation or even all of the wisdom literature merged together.

Access Volume 4, Issue 1, 2023 – Special Issue on Designing Ethical AI Using A Human-Centered Approach: Explainability and Accuracy…  Read More

Technology has always been about more than simply a route to increased productivity and economic growth; technology also provides the opportunity to enhance, enrich, and empower—basically, to improve shared qualitative values or people’s quality of life (however that is measured). On the flip side, technology also provides the opportunity to develop and project organizational control, which itself can be weaponized to quantitatively determine human value as an asset to that organization, or to reinforce asymmetric power relationships.

Professor Katina Michael of Arizona State University in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society discusses ChatGPT and its implications. From The List Show TV.

We would act wisely if we turn to alternative ways of thinking, other wisdom traditions, and learn from them. Ubuntu philosophy can help to draw attention to social issues, for example, the horrors of colonialism, exclusion, and oppression, and to find ways to promote social justice. Aboriginal wisdom can help to apply diverse ways of knowing, for example, knowledge that is related to place, to kinship, to stories, to patterns—not only knowledge in books. The Indigenous cultures and wisdom of the Americas can teach us how to organize economic and political systems more sustainably and to develop more caring relationships with nature. And Confucian culture and wisdom can help to design and apply technologies in ways that support us as relational and developmental beings.

While it is true that technology is addressing problems and making elements of some people’s lives easier, there are aggregate measures that suggest a troubling trajectory.

This SSIT Guest Lecture was presented by Prof Ali Hessami, Vega Systems, UK at a Chapter Meeting organised by IEEE…  Read More

In this time of massive growth in the scale and scope of technological innovations, it is more important than ever to look critically at the nature of these innovations and to challenge a naïve, techno-utopian attitude that innovation is synonymous with progress.

The call for responsible innovation is a call to address and account for technology’s short- and long-term impacts within social, political, environmental, and cultural domains. Technological stewardship stands as a commitment to anticipate and mitigate technology’s potential for disruption and especially harm and to guide innovation toward beneficial ends. Dialogue and collaboration across diverse perspectives is essential for developing actionable technological solutions that attend in responsible ways to the evolving needs of society.

All the deep philosophical questions, starts the joke, were asked by the classical Greeks, and everything since then has been footnotes and comments in the margins, finishes the punchline.

“Digital and Societal Transformations” – Conference website here: https://www.istas22.org/

If caregiving is the very essence of being human, why would we consider turning it over to robots? Technology—and artificial intelligence (AI, in particular—have created a world in which automation is prioritized and digital is seen as an improvement on analog—more accurate, more portable, and more controllable. Caregiving is as analog as it gets and it is a field with a serious labor shortage. That makes it ripe for automation—and in fact, the robot caregivers are already here.

Social robotics is poised to impact society by addressing isolation and providing companionship by augmenting human interaction when none is available.