検索キーワード： テクノロジー・社会

先日、とある雑誌の企画で、いわゆる「お掃除ロボット」を使わせていただく機会がありました。正直、これまであまり必要性を感じたことはなかったのですが、使ってみると非常に面白かった。 ただ、僕の自宅で使い続けるにはひとつだけ、大問題がありました。それはお掃除ロボットが部屋を動き回るたびに、インコの「おもち」が、引きつけを起こしそうなぐらいに怖がってしまうということです。お掃除ロボットも捨て難いけれど、「おもち」はまぁ義理のある以前からの同居人（鳥）ですからね。残念ながら我が家で使い続けるのは不可能！　ということになり、大阪出張のついでに、母親に譲ることにしました。 私の母親も80歳を超えていて、僕としては「お掃除ロボットなんて、使い方わかるのかなぁ？」と半信半疑だったんですが、ふたを開ければすごく喜んでくれました。よく考えてみればうちの母親は掃除や洗濯といった家事が大の苦手。彼女にとっては、「勝手に掃除をしてくれるロボット」というのは、文字通り夢のような家電！　ということなのでしょう。(本文より） 名越康文の生きるための対話（dialogue）はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/nakoshi.html

Tech pioneer Chris Dixon has long advocated for a technology that can revive the dream of an open, entrepreneurial internet: blockchain networks. Often dismissed, sometimes vilified, these networks have until recently been dominated by amoral speculators and get-rich-quick schemes. But, more quietly, a group of visionaries have been using them to build the future. In Read Write Own, Dixon draws on 25 years at the vanguard of tech innovation to explore how blockchains will change the internet.

From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.

In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction - an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.

In 2023, hundreds of machine-learning scientists signed an open letter warning about our risk of extinction from smarter-than-human AI. Yet today, the race to develop superhuman AI is only accelerating, as many tech CEOs throw caution to the wind, aggressively scaling up systems they don't understand—and won’t be able to restrain. There is a good chance that they will succeed in building an artificial superintelligence on a timescale of years or decades. And no one is prepared for what will happen next.

Advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) have created a new class of computer systems that exhibit astonishing proficiency on a wide variety of tasks with superhuman performance, producing novel text, images, music, and software by analyzing enormous collections of digitized information. Soon, these systems will provide expert medical care; offer legal advice; draft documents; write computer programs; tutor our children; and generate music and art. These advances will accelerate progress in science, art, and human knowledge, but they will also bring new dangers.

In this accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative examination of the world’s most radical technology, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores what it really takes to build a brain from scratch. We have entered a world in which disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us—and are beginning to transform everything we do. But can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

In their book Abundance, best-selling authors and futurists Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler tackled grand global challenges, such as poverty, hunger, and energy. Then, in Bold, they chronicled the use of exponential technologies that allowed the emergence of powerful new entrepreneurs. Now the best-selling authors are back with The Future Is Faster Than You Think, a blueprint for how our world will change in response to the next 10 years of rapid technological disruption.

Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging listeners to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life.

2017年最初の配信は、『WIRED』創刊編集長のケヴィン・ケリー氏が著した『＜インター ネット＞の次に来るもの』に関する対談です。今後30年、インターネットがどう 発展していくか、12の動詞をもとに非常に具体的に分かりやすく 解説している話題作で、世界中でベストセラーになっています。ケリー氏は本書で一体どのようなことを伝えたかったのか、翻訳者である服部桂さんと高木利弘さんが語り合います。

Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole - and appear to assess black and white defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And autonomous vehicles on our streets can injure or kill.

In the year 1600, a monk is burned at the stake for claiming to have built a device that will allow him to know all things. 350 years later, having witnessed 'Trinity' — the first test of the atomic bomb — America's leading scientist outlines a memory machine that will help end war on earth. 25 years in the making, an ex-soldier finally unveils this 'machine for augmenting human intellect', dazzling as he stands 'Zeus-like, dealing lightning with both hands'.

UNIX等のマルチプラットフォームOSの技術者を支援するNPO法人MOSAは、Macintoshの技術者が拠り所とする団体でもある。この講演録は、そのMOSAが毎年秋に開催する泊まりがけのイベント、MOSA Software Meeting2008の基調講演を収録したものである。講演者は、軽妙な語り口ながら深い洞察力を秘めた話しで定評のある、大谷和利氏です。氏はこの講演の中で、iPhoneやMacintoshに関わる興味深い技術情報が多数紹介されました。MacintoshやiPhone、クラウド・コンピューティングに興味をお持ちの方には、ぜひお読みいただきたい一冊です。(C) NPO法人MOSA/Pamlink Corp.

テクノロジーライターの大谷和利氏と情報法制研究所理事長で新潟大学法学部教授の鈴木正朝氏が、漫画村などの「違法サイトのブロッキングはなぜ問題なのか？」ということについて、ずばり解説します。

Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the best-selling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.

今回高木利弘氏がスペシャルトークを行うお相手は、クロケーコーポレーションの大島芳樹氏です。

Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.

From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work - and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed. "We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing". So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge.

■因果を求めない人工知能の世界 先日、人工知能に関する事業をしている人と合う機会がありました。 僕の会社が展開している採用系のサービスでも、人工知能などを用いることで、 マッチング部分でもっと手間を省いた方が絶対にいいと思っている。会社側がどういった人を求めているのか、応募者がどういった会社を望んでいるのかっていうことは、履歴書にたくさん文章を書けば伝わる問題でもないから。 もちろん最後は人間が面談することが必要なんだけど、その手前で機械ができる ことの精度を高められれば、可能性が広がるんじゃないかな。 例えばビッグデータやディープラーニング。これらは、今のトレンドといっちゃ あトレンドです。大量のデータを処理することで、あらゆることの確率が表で表 せるようになる。」(本文より) 家入一真　「家入学級」はこちらから→ http://yakan-hiko.com/ieiri.html