May you live to see your research specialization go viral

Trending resolutions for 2024: - Think more philosophically - Talk to more philosophers - Spend more time in booths Get your 10,000 questions in tonight at the Philosophy Booth! TONIGHT! 8-10pm ET https://t.co/Vmg9MTgotd

Have you received your regular dose of Philosophy? Doctors recommend spending at least two hours each month wrestling with paradoxes and clarifying concepts. Get your steps in with the Philosophy Booth! TONIGHT! 8PM - 10PM ET https://t.co/Vmg9MTfQDF

Way back in 2020 I published a piece referring to GPT-3 as a 'statistical parrot'. A few months later, that 'stochastic parrots' paper came out, and now that's how everyone talks about it. I hope to one day live on as a footnote in some grad student's AI history dissertation.

📢📢Recently we shared a box folder of RESOURCES FOR TEACHING CRITICAL LITERACIES. Today we add this STUDENT GUIDE which you can download: https://t.co/Vz1YfsWEpq We are also updating our living document https://t.co/FASVOe0vIP Please circulate and feel free to comment!

Yesterday's #Robophilosophy2024 Workshop 10: Robot Rights - From Theory to Practice was a blast! We absolutely nailed it and had a great time. @David_Gunkel @autumnedwards @KamilMamak

Best part of the #robotrights workshop at @Robophilosophy_ is that we not only had brilliant contributions from @_aybig_ @autumnedwards @KamilMamak and Kęstutis Mosakas but also really inspired questions and comments from @eripsa @chrischesher @AnnaStrasser1 et al.

Here are the slides for my talk: https://t.co/j1GDDMRYce

I'll be in Denmark next week for #Robophilosoph2024 to present my paper "Can a robot hand grasp?" https://t.co/JKflul7jjx

I'm interested to see what ideas are floating around the workshop, but my intuition is that if we're still in the mode of proposing ontologies and conceptions of rights, we have a long way to go before rubber meets the road.

If we aren't talking about strategic coalitions with other rights activists and integrating ourselves with broader political networks and causes, then we aren't really talking about "practice" at all.

So, from my perspective, the only way for a "robot rights" discourse to move forward is to break this narrative and reclaim robots for the people. Emphasize the ways that robot rights protections help the people resist tech industry abuses. RR as a check on tech power.

However, the popular narrative today is that robots are of, by, and for corporations, which do not serve the interests of the people, but instead serve to control and exploit them. From within this perspective, the idea of "robot rights" is a cruel joke.

My view is that "robot rights" can only function as a popular political narrative if it is framed as arising from within a society that is of, by, and for the people. This requires a view of robots themselves as of, by, and for the people.

- the false conflation of robotics/AI with Big Tech and capitalist excess. If "robot rights" operates to obscure the abuses of the industry, what can we do to counter and disrupt this narrative? - can "robot rights" help resist these abuses? If not, who cares?

Specifically, I'm interested in what the group thinks about: - apparent antagonisms between robot rights and other rights and ethics work. AI ethicists today are overtly hostile to the very idea of robot rights, and they have big mics. How do we show we're on their side?

I'm looking forward to this workshop at #robophilosophy2024 ! The talks look great, but they also look rather theoretical. I'm hoping to talk more explicitly in Q&A about what "robot rights" looks like from the perspective of rights activists on the ground today.

There has been a lot of speculation and moralizing about #AI companions but little empirical data about the actual impact on users. Fortunately @amperjay has begun doing that work. New essay in "Journal of Social and Personal Relationships" @SageJournals https://t.co/6EtWlRHDTt

New paper where @bayesianboy, @andrewthesmart, and I outline how machine learning is laundering long discredited harmful pseudoscience and offer resources for research best practices to developers/practitioners https://t.co/JU9jVwpKNt

📢📢📢Vital work from @AINowInstitute finding the substance behind the hype, yet again. Critical reading for anyone who's waved their hands while calling for an "FDA for AI". Here's what that means IRL, where it could work, and the ways it would likely fail w/o big changes.👇