It is easy to imagine a version of the human species that would not know any of the “luxuries” (or burdens) of high technology, from the humblest cars to smart …
Good grief!
The American Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, was alarmed: he visited various Chinese automotive industries and concluded that they will eliminate the American ones (only?;) if swift measures are not taken…
Do weapons “work” on their own?
Twenty or thirty years ago, “machines that kill by their own decision” were a matter of science fiction… Five years ago, the military use of complex algorithms (called “artificial intelligence”…) …
Cop with a low center of gravity
If you think that this tractor-like-rubber object among the (Chinese) policemen has been arrested, you are mistaken. It is their newest tech-colleague! The police robot (built by Zhejiang University) was …
anthrobots: “the third state”
So far, robot swarms have been constructed from artificial materials. Mobile biological constructs have been created from muscle cells that develop on precisely shaped scaffolds. However, exploiting emergent self-organization and …
drones versus drones: automation of war?
The (flying) drones, or otherwise UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicle), became internationally known as an American invention, at the beginning of the NATO invasion of Afghanistan. Against lightly armed insurgents: a …
the (robotic) rights of capital
In October 2017, Sophia officially became a citizen of Saudi Arabia, an event that probably wouldn’t warrant any mention if Sophia weren’t a robot. A few days earlier, she had …
It cares for me, therefore I feel attached
You may not have a home robot yet (vacuum cleaner?) – but 20 years ago you didn’t have a “smart phone” either; you didn’t even know such a remote control …
The “Immaculate Conception of Data”
When a farmer buys a tractor from the agricultural machinery company John Deere, they receive a license to operate the vehicle. Nowadays, tractors are not like the old vehicles of …
Restructuring
While in the western world the so-called “artificial intelligence” is presented mainly as a linguistic achievement (with the purpose of accumulating data from its “interlocutors”), in the far east its …
Two discussions on the digitalization of the food system
The following dialogues are transcribed text from the first two episodes of a podcast series by the ETC group (www.etcgroup.org), which began in the summer of 2023, titled “Who Will …
In the wing…
If they knew how to eat them in the industrial slums of Liverpool and Manchester in the 19th century, they would have passed out. And Engels wouldn’t have written that …