Alison Powell

462 Followers
291 Following
136 Posts
Associate Prof at LSE. Many years in alternative tech and hacker spaces. Keywords: ethics as practice, citizenship, (counter)Optimization. Currently obsessed with the role of tech in austerity culture. Surprisingly sporty. Also a parent. She/they
McFilter: Blog All Dog-eared Pages: Radical Cities by Justin McGuirk

Fenwick @fenwick is kicking off our AI symposium @Milieux_news. Let’s use #unstable23 as hashtag, ok? 2 days of promising talks ahead of us: https://machineagencies.milieux.ca/unstable-diffusions/, incl @abpowell, Lucy Suchman, @bhaggart, @Mayameme, …
(un)Stable Diffusions - Machine Agencies

A two-day international symposium on AI's publics, publicities, and publicizations at Milieux Institute, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Rens Dimmendaal & Johann Siemens / Better Images of AI / Decision Tree reversed / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0 May 23 to May 24, 9am to 5pm Online and in person at Milieux Institute EV Building, 1515 Saint-Catherine St WMontreal Quebec

Machine Agencies - An experiment between human and machine intelligences.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer getting hit for multiple millions in settlement to avoid prosecution for tax evasion while in charge of Boris Johnson's government's finances, gagging the press with threats of SLAPP lawsuits, and being up to his eyeballs in a crooked speculative finance bubble over PPE gear during COVID, is absolutely on point for the Conservatives.

Like putting a libertarian bankster and private medical speculator in charge of the NHS.

Theirs is a parliament of thieves.

@FractalEcho hmmm we thought about this in the JUST AI project https://just-ai.net. We used gaps and sparse places in social network analysis of publications to think about who and what wasn’t there (as much).
home | JUST AI

JUST AI

Everyone (/unspecified loved ones) still whining about Covid only killing people with pre-existing conditions inspired me to Google how many humans have basically*nothing* wrong with them. The Lancet says less than five percent.

Maybe nobody needs to check their ableist privilege. 🤔

Climate change is already threatening the data centers required to power large scale tech, like "AI".

Or, accounting for climate we see a tech future that's patchier & less always-on + ubiquitous, NOT larger and more powerful.

This doesn't mean that those with power to shape and control tech will themselves grow less powerful. But it does mean that the colloquial Moore's law fantasies of tech, particularly popular in "AI", will face a series of hard stops. @mel_hogan

@KatrinaMatheson @Mer__edith @mel_hogan very interested in this! I teach around these topics. And research too I guess
@Mer__edith @mel_hogan Yes. I just wrote a paper (for a class - PhD student here) about how AI and Climate Change represent emerging epistemes in direct opposition.
"I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”"
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html
Anthony Hilton: Stay or go - the lack of solid facts means it’s all a leap of faith

Despite what the In and Out campaigns say, there’s nothing to back up either position with any certainty

Evening Standard
@RDBinns @elonjet lol but I remain unpersuaded that transparency is going to really shift power. I am willing to accept ‘every bit helps’ tho