Scott Boehmer

Category: Technology

  • Killer robots hiding in plain sight

    As more and more decisions about human fates are made by algorithms, a lack of accountability and transparency will elevate heartless treatment driven by efficiency devoid of empathy. Humans become mere data shadows.

    Per Axbom

    Killer robots hiding in plain sight (Axbom)

  • Lost in the Future

    Modern existence has become engulfed in sludge, the institutions that exist to cut through it bouncing between the ignorance of their masters and a misplaced duty in objectivity, our mechanisms for exploring and enjoying the world interfered with by powerful forces that are too-often left unchecked. Opening our devices is willfully subjecting us to attack after attack from applications, websites and devices that are built to make us do things rather than operate with the dignity and freedom that much of the internet was founded upon.

    Ed Zitron

    Lost In The Future (Where’s Your Ed At)

  • Information literacy and chatbots as search

    If someone uses an LLM as a replacement for search, and the output they get is correct, this is just by chance. Furthermore, a system that is right 95% of the time is arguably more dangerous than one that is right 50% of the time. People will be more likely to trust the output, and likely less able to fact check the 5%.

    But even if the chatbots on offer were built around something other than LLMs, something that could reliably get the right answer, they’d still be a terrible technology for information access.

    Professor Emily Bender

    Information literacy and chatbots as search (Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000)