Jonathan Taplin, former music and film professional, tells first-hand what the new rentier economy of Internet aggregators like Google and Facebook has done to the creative arts, journalism, and democracy.
The hows and whys of the decisions of machine-learning algorithms are increasingly opaque, even to their programmers. That makes laws and norms increasingly difficult to apply.
A recent discussion of the AI film Ex Machina brings up ideas about the desire for the perfectability of humans and our irresistable urge to play god.