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Tag Archives: humanity
A few thoughts on AI (and a bit of history)
While benign and belligerent robots and machines have existed since the dawn of science fiction, it was about ten years ago that I had some sort of epiphany and gradually began saving and/or bookmarking various online articles about artificial intelligence following recent worrisome developments in that field: chatbots were showing signs of coherent speech, Boston Dynamics’ robots had started doing backflips and parkour — but it was demonstrations of autonomous weapons systems that I took particular issue with. I wanted to keep the articles as “evidence” and “for future reference” — such as for essays like this one, and to backtrack how we got to where we are now. Continue reading
Posted in History, Internet, Technology
Tagged AI, apocalypse, art, artificial intelligence, augmentation, chatbots, ChatGPT, civilisation, current affairs, digitization, dystopia, enlightenment, ethics, evolution, extinction, growth hack, humanity, man-machine, progression, Skynet, virtuality
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Review: 2023
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. As of 2023 I’ve officially stopped giving a shit. Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged 2023, AI, babes, corona, current affairs, humanity, John Lennon, murder-death-kill, the end is nigh
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Review: 2022
2022 was a bit of a blurry blemish despite several significant events in my personal life. If it wasn’t for calendars, one could be forgiven for feeling that we’re still in 2020 or went way back to the year 1920. Indeed, 2022 may be remembered as the fuzzy period during which the world turned into a steaming pile of shit – but only in part due to pollution or climate change: it’s humanity that’s lagging behind its own technological advances. Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged 2022, babes, chaos, corona, current affairs, devolution, humanity, in the news, murder-death-kill
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Revision: 2020
2020 was a year of infamy. It will probably go down as the year of SARS-CoV-2 but sorry, we’re still in the middle of the very same pandemic. We still have a stretch to go. Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged 2020, brexit, corona, current affairs, fire, humanity, in the news, murder-death-kill, Thanos
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A few thoughts on the current coronavirus crisis
Here’s to another day of “social distancing” and “home office”. This is my fourth week of “lockdown”. City streets are deserted, roads are empty. Nature is taking a breather. My dining table has become my temporary office desk (I need the space for the monitors). This may become the “new normal”. While I’m no stranger to “remote working” and some of the luxuries it affords on account of my job functions I still think this ain’t right. Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged corona, humanity, in the news, murder-death-kill, Thanos, Weltschmerz
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Christmas Wars
Why the fuck am I driving anywhere near such a congregation of fools with more money than time management skills — on the last Sunday before Christmas, of all days? Never before have we witnessed such masses descend upon these holy temples of consumerist worship. You may know them as malls or shopping centres; I call it the place where the cinema happens to be. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged babes, cinema, consumerism, humanity, money-money-money, Star Wars, Yuletide
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Blade Runner 2019
It is November 2019. This is when the classic 1982 film Blade Runner takes place. For over three decades I’ve wondered what the year 2019 would really be like. Continue reading
The fall of walls
It was thirty years ago today that the Berlin Wall fell. The Iron Curtain had been breached, the Eastern Bloc was beginning to crumble. This most cruel of social experiments had finally run its course. A peaceful revolution was under way, and there was no stopping this tide from turning. The world was evolving. Even in a country as far away as South Africa, the developments made headlines. Continue reading
Posted in History
Tagged 1989, censorship, change, Germany, humanity, in the news, liberty, politics, South Africa
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