Research and writing at the intersection of technology, politics and ethics
This page brings together short articles and blog posts, many of which have been published elsewhere online and in print.
Trump’s transition from mainstream platform user to putative platform operator marks a watershed moment in the politics of platform governance. The launch of “Truth Social” brings to light a frequently underrated aspect of platform governance: how platform operators govern not only their own users, but also other platforms.
I have a new blog post at the OII discussing what the launch of Donald Trump’s “Truth Social” app may mean for platform governance going forward.
This election is not just about where — it’s also about when. When states report votes — and which votes are reported first— is likely to have a considerable impact on the perception of who is ahead at any given time.
I have a new blog post about the 2020 US presidential election now up on Medium.
The slow, deliberative nature of representative democracy seems ill-suited to the urgency of the present moment. Can it survive the new politics of speed?
Read my new blog post on Medium.
In a new blog on the Alan Turing Institute website, myself, Bertie Vidgen and Helen Margetts explain how the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the importance of social media, and argue for the protection of workers involved as content moderation as key workers.
This is the politics of subtraction: the false promise that progress is only possible if we as a nation remove ourself from existing partnerships.
In a new blog guest post for TechUK, co-authored with David Leslie, we explain why the development of trustworthy AI will rest on the ability to explain how it works and why it delivers particular decisions, to a range of different audiences.
I’m coming to the end of my first year* as a PhD student at Oxford University’s Internet Institute. It has been a challenging year, in ways both foreseen and not, but it has also been an endlessly fascinating, thought-provoking and perspective-shifting experience. … Here are four things I wish I’d known before starting a PhD.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has a “democratic deficit” — and maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. As Jonnie Penn and others have argued, AI, in conception and application, has long been bound up with the logic and operations of big business. Today, we find AI put to use in an increasing array of socially significant settings, from sifting through CVs to swerving through traffic, many of which continue to serve these corporate interests. (We also find “AI” the brand put to use in the absence of AI the technlogy: a recent study suggests that 40% of start-ups who claim to use AI do not in fact do so.) Nor are governments of all stripes lacking interest in the potential power of AI to patrol and cajole the movements and mindsets of citizens.
Rare is the film review that needs to start with a spoiler alert for something which *doesn’t* happen. But so it is for Free Solo, the extraordinary new documentary profiling lifelong climber Alex Honnold as he embarks on an unprecedented feat: scaling Yosemite’s daunting, thousand-metre-high El Capitan Wall without ropes, harnesses, or any other lifeline.
I appeared on the Monocle yesterday to discuss Google’s retreat from a Department of Defence contract following protests.
Josh Cowls 