Two New SXSW Videos Explore AI Future

The Forrest Four-Cast: June 9, 2017

More than 100 videos from SXSW 2017 can be found via our YouTube channel. Some of the best of the best of these recording are revealed via this series of Medium posts from earlier this spring.

Two recent additions additions to this impressive library of content offer two very different approaches to how the ongoing artificial intelligence revolution will impact our future.

In her hour-long solo presentation titled “DARK DAYS: AI and the Rise of Fascism,” Kate Crawford focuses on how the advance of this new technology unwittingly parallels the recent proliferation of authoritarian governments. As a response to the potential problems of these intersecting trends, she has organized a project called AINow. This research community seeks to explore the social implications of artificial intelligence, including issues such as bias in machine learning, the effect of automation in labor and how AI is effecting our basic rights and liberties.

A slightly different angle on the opportunities (and challenges) of tomorrow is covered in “Basic Income: Can Giving Away Free Money Save Us?” In this three-person panel, Catherine Cheney (Devex), Michael Faye (GiveDirectly), and Michael Tanner (Cato Institute) cover many of the issues surrounding UBI, including the concept that in the decades ahead, governments should issue no-strings-attached money to its citizens to help make up for the loss of employment due to automation.

AI will likely remain a hot topic at next year’s event. If you have a speaking idea for SXSW 2018 related to artificial intelligence, then enter a proposal in the PanelPicker interface beginning June 26.

Hugh Forrest tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often (but not always) cover technology-related trends. When not attempting to wordsmith or meditating, he serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW in Austin.