Category: inprogress
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Military ML: Missing the Target
Are we on the precipice of developing autonomous killer robots; unmanned technologies that will completely dominate conflict, remorselessly, perfectly? Some advocates think so but this article explains why the killer robot view is misplaced and in its misdirection, draws attention away from how militaries are likely to use machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)…
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The Techcons
Revisiting Arthur Leff’s Swindling and Selling Yale Law Professor Arthur Leff wrote a powerful, market-structure analysis of consumer fraud in his 1976 Swindling and Selling. That work is more or less lost to history. Leff explained that con artists attempted to impose a false economy on marks. In a perfect congame, such as the Spanish Prisoner,…
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What is consumer privacy?
In this essay for a lecture at Stanford University, I attempt to explain consumer privacy as a deterrence theory strategy. I argue that privacy does have methods of analysis, based in fair information practices, while popular use of the term “privacy” is loose, a shibboleth representing uncertain values. This wide-ranging essay then goes on to…