Archive

Brain Power: Michael Platt

It’s won­der­ful to be here in Davos shar­ing our com­mit­ment to improv­ing the state of the world. And the recipe is real­ly I think quite sim­ple. All you’ve got to do is grow the econ­o­my, increase par­tic­i­pa­tion in that econ­o­my, with­in a rapidly-changing world, with increas­ing automa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy, on a plan­et that’s strain­ing to meet our resource needs. Piece of cake, right?

Surveillance State of the Union

We want­ed to look at how sur­veil­lance, how these algo­rith­mic deci­sion­mak­ing sys­tems and sur­veil­lance sys­tems feed into this kind of tar­get­ing deci­sion­mak­ing. And in par­tic­u­lar what we’re going to talk about today is the role of the AI research com­mu­ni­ty. How that research ends up in the real world being used with real-world consequences.

Automating Inequality
How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

I start the sto­ry in 1819 rather than 1980. And that allows me to do some very spe­cif­ic work, which is to talk about what I think of as the deep social pro­gram­ming of the tools that we’re now using in pub­lic ser­vices across the United States.

Deducing the Cognitive Basis of Attempting to Influence Others

In the course of Donald Trump’s rise to pow­er, peo­ple have repeat­ed­ly been ask­ing, Why did he tweet that? What was he think­ing about?” Our fas­ci­na­tion with his men­tal states high­lights a very impor­tant ques­tion for us: What hap­pens in our minds and brains when we try to influ­ence others?