I was interviewed by Karen Tay for her series “Chats with a Human”, part of the Essentially Human website where she explores different people’s understandings of AI and what it does.
We had a wide-ranging conversation incorporating Aristotle, cybernetics, future scenarios, and Aretha Franklin. (Are we runnin’ out of fools?).
Check it out over at Essentially Human.
It’s a busy season and there are many plates to keep spinning. Moving from one to the next, tending them while keeping the whole in mind, stray thoughts arise.
Some thoughts dissipate. Some linger. Here are a few things that are currently on my mind when it comes to grappling with uncertainty.
Speaking about AI and foresight recently on Australia’s Burning Platforms podcast highlighted, for me, the current efforts in that nation to legislate for a “Digital Duty of Care“, which is intended to “obligate online services to keep their users safe, prevent serious harms before they occur, and anticipate the next generation of harms on the horizon.”
Discussions about the proposed duty reminded me of work by Jeremy Brice, Andrew Donaldson, and Jane Midgley on the “Horsegate” scandal of 2013, where horseflesh was mixed with beef products.
The research highlighted that when a regulatory apparatus renders a business responsible for taking action against foreseeable threats or harms, businesses can develop forms of strategic ignorance which are compliant with the regulations but limit true anticipation…and liability.
As the researchers put it,
Read moreI’m just back from the Paris Conference on AI and Digital Ethics, an excellent and lively event.
The best bits were the difficult ones – the little moments of tension and conflict which poked through the collegiality and cordiality and even the impeccable Parisian hospitality.
Read moreAlongside my other duties, I’m pleased to take on a new role leading the project “Death, dying, and afterlife in the age of AI” at Oxford University – a collaboration between the Uehiro Oxford Institute and TORCH – The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.
Emerging capabilities in artificial intelligence create the possibility of new relationships between the living and the dead.
After physical decease, what digital entities might live on in our stead? What agency will they have? How will the underlying technologies be developed, deployed, and managed? How will identity be authenticated?
What will be the impact on how individuals, families, communities, and societies approach the end of life, its associated rituals, and the ways in which we remember those who are gone?
Our team will use scenario planning to explore these questions and more, envisaging different future contexts for the relationship between AI and the afterlife, encompassing all aspects of memorial culture, funerary practices, and posthumous existence in the digital world.
“Uncertainty, agency, and the future context of internet governance: a foresightful conversation” is an article I co-wrote for the Journal of Internet Technology and Politics with colleagues Lucia Vesnic-Alujevic, Sophie Mitchell, Zoe Hawkins, and Cho Khong.
We explore how the structures, dynamics, and value of internet governance may play out in different scenarios – and the implications for the situations and decisions we face today.
I’m pleased to be presenting at the University of Oxford’s Human-Algorithm Interaction Workshop 2025, on “Governing the futures you didn’t see coming: artificial intelligence scenarios“.
Do join us in Oxford, 5-8 July, for an interdisciplinary event delving into the complex and evolving relationship between humans and algorithms.
The annual workshop is a gathering of industry leaders, AI pioneers, and leading researchers who will explore the evolving role of AI in business, governance, and society. This year’s theme is “Shaping the future of AI: innovation, ethics and impact.”
On June 9th, I’m hosting a discussion about dual use technologies for Oxford’s Emerging Threats Group.
A wide range of items are now recognised as “dual use”, capable of being employed for both civil and military purposes. From drones, robots, and software including AI to chemical and biological tools, the term has evolved beyond its original post-World War 2 meaning as a category of nuclear materials that could serve both the energy sector and the development of nuclear weapons.
Today anything is a weapon and may be used as such, especially in hybrid warfare. We live in an era when countless technologies can be used with benign or hostile intent, and when the governance mechanisms of global trade are being shaken under heightened geopolitical tensions. Under such circumstances, innovation, application, and regulation all become increasingly fraught. Businesses may find themselves drawn into new dilemmas if their technology is turned to malign ends, or seek opportunities that arise from a new era of dual use. Governments must act judiciously in an age when many items may be weaponised against them…or by them.
Join me, and four transatlantic experts, to consider the past, present, and future of dual use technology, 5pm-6.30pm BST on June 9th.
The editorial team at Issues in Science and Technology invited me to submit a response to Ed Finn’s excellent recent article on using science fiction to stage conversations about science and technology policy.
You can read my letter, “Looking Beyond the Ghost Scenario”, at the Issues website.
The world could always be otherwise than it is. Sometimes fate is only a failure of imagination. The trajectory of automation is not only uncertain, it is unwritten. The fundamental question is less about technical capacity than ethics, authority, and accountability: Who will create the future – and with what ends in mind?
In the latest instalment of ‘Scripturient’, my quarterly column for Information Professional magazine, I draw together comments from a few different thinkers on automation and art.
The latest instalment of Scripturient, my column for Information Professional, is out now.
In this series, I’m looking at how we can push the boundaries of literacy in the 21st century, to encompass new areas of representation. What does it mean to read the future? To read risks? To read the forces that underpin our relationships and drive us psychologically? To read the signs and signals which exist in the natural world?
In the latest issue of Information Professional, I talk to writer Helen Heath from Aotearoa New Zealand about birdsong, technology, poetry, and the natural world.
What would change about your work if you read, or even wrote, a poem on waking up every morning? To what new things would you attend? What would you learn about information, and our relationship to it?
You can read the column in a PDF download here, or get your own copy of Informational Professional magazine here.
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