Archives for AI

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

As we excitedly gather all sorts of amazing electronic digital devices to bestow on others during this gift-giving season, here are a few thoughts that might be worth considering before the recipients fire those devices up and start using them.

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Over 20 years ago, Bill Joy wrote that 21st century technologies posed a danger of the extinction of humans from the earth. Last month, that sentiment arose again from people as diverse as Henry Kissinger and Jaron Lanier. In between, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and other luminaries offered similar cautions. Why? And why should we pay attention to what they have to say?

Here are links to web sites mentioned today:

‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity, The Guardian
Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, WIRED
National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, The Final Report
How the Enlightenment Ends, Henry A. Kissinger, The Atlantic
The Age of AI And Our Human Future

About the host:
Jim Campbell has a longstanding interest in the intersection of digital technology, law, and public policy and how they affect our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. He has banged around non-commercial radio for decades and, in the little known facts department (that should probably stay that way), he was one of the readers voicing Richard Nixon’s words when NPR broadcast the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes. Like several other current WERU volunteers, he was at the station’s sign-on party on May 1, 1988 and has been a volunteer ever since doing an early stint as a Morning Maine host, and later producing WERU program series including Northern Lights, Conversations on Science and Society, Sound Portrait of the Artist, Selections from the Camden Conference, others that will probably come to him after this is is posted, and, of course, Notes from the Electronic Cottage.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download