A dive into computing etymology as part of a broader discussion on labour and automation.
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wythran wants to read The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
A mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever.
I expected many …
Fionnáin quoted Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford
The master-slave metaphor is riddled throughout engineering and computation. One of the earliest uses of this racist metaphor dates back to 1904 describing astronomical clocks in a Cape Town observatory. But it wasn't until the 1960s that the master-slave terminology spread, particularly after it was used in computing, starting with the Dartmouth timesharing system...The problematic implication that control is equivalent to intelligence would continue to shape the AI field for decades. And as Ron Eglash has argued, the phrasing has a strong echo of the pre-Civil War discourse on runaway slaves.
— Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford
wythran started reading Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford
Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality, and freedom
“Eloquent, clear and profound—this …