Business Improvement and Social media

Silicon Valley has lost some of its shine in recent months, what with the “fake news” and the bots and the hacks and the hate speech. All the promises about the democratization of information and power ring a little hollow nowadays.

I’d say they rang a little hollow all along. Of course that’s what I’d say. I’ve been saying it for years now.

There’s a new tale that’s being told with increasing frequency these days, in which tech industry executives and employees come forward – sometimes quite sheepishly, sometimes quite boldly – and admit that they have regrets, that they’re no longer “believers,” that they now recognize their work has been damaging to individuals and to society at large, that they were wrong.

These aren’t apologies as much as they’re confessions. These aren’t confessions as much as they’re declarations – that despite being wrong, we should trust them now that they say they’re right.

Via Miloš Bajčetić

Could robots change the way we think?

While that might seem the stuff of dark science fiction, New Zealand artificial intelligence (AI) experts say there's real fear that computer algorithms could hijack our language, and ultimately influence our views on products or politics.

"I would compare the situation with the subliminal advertising that was outlawed in the 1970s," said Associate Professor Christoph Bartneck, of Canterbury University's Human Interface Technology Laboratory, or HIT Lab.

"We are in a danger of repeating the exact same issue with the use of our language."

Via Miloš Bajčetić