Category: 4. Society-at-large
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The Argument Against a Moral Machine in Autonomous Driving
Ever since autonomous driving became a hot topic, I’ve tried to sell to our automotive industry partners the idea of a project to build a moral machine in autonomous driving. My definition of a moral machine (there are others) is: A moral machine (for autonomous driving) is a machine that encodes the driver’s moral value…
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Why open source is good for your Economy
Today, at FOSSC 2019 in Muscat, Oman, I gave a talk about the benefits of sponsoring open source software development to about anyone who isn’t the software vendor whose product is getting replaced by that open source software. These are the slides. I will be repeating the same message at the German Forschungsgipfel in March.…
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Happy new year, the second amendment, and private messaging
There is wisdom in the second amendment of the constitution of the United States of America. A key motivation was to allow people to defend themselves against an oppressive government. Back when it was formulated, self-defense meant bearing firearms, which seems quaint today given that a government could came after you with tanks and drones.…
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The dancing robot dog: Magic trick or real artificial intelligence?
You may have seen the video below by Boston Dynamics. It shows a robot dog dancing to Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. It is fun and funny to watch, but people also expressed serious worries about robot inroads into human behavior. However, there is no explanation by Boston Dynamics and it is not at all…
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Open data: Source of public income or invaluable common good?
Not surprisingly, this huddling panel at the 2018 Berlin Open Data Day came to no specific conclusion, just different opinions on business models and who should earn what income. Some nuggets of insight: Leave it to public institutions to decide for themselves — open data should be freely available, otherwise some commercial business models break…
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Impressions from the Berlin Open Data Day 2018
If you think it is funny that the German government declares itself a leader in open data, please note that verbally the slide was declared as aspirational rather than current reality.