It is time to shift the focus from design to the impact of decision-making systems — We turn to technology to find solutions to our everyday problems and look up information — decision-making systems powered by algorithms. Algorithms are finite sets of instructions to perform computations. Kristan Lum and Rumman Chowdhury described “a decision-making system as an “algorithm” is often a way to deflect accuntability for…

Writer, secret agent, and playwright Aphra Behn was one of the first English women to earn a living with her writing — Nicknamed “the female Shakespeare,” Aphra Behn was the first woman in England to earn a living as a professional writer. She quickly served as a literary role model for later generations of female authors with her wits and courage. She broke down cultural barriers with her writing and attacked the…

Prophecies are about the now. — Margaret Atwood doesn’t think of herself as a futurist — although her works of speculative fiction describe dystopian futures. She doesn’t so much forecast the future as she sees current warning signals and what they might mean for society if ignored. This is also in line with the description of…

The Russian writer, thinker, and psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé is one of the most enigmatic women in European intellectual history — Lou Andreas-Salomé was an enigma for her contemporaries. She was beautiful, intelligent, and didn’t care about conventions. She was a woman ahead of her time — and the many men she excited. Born into nobility in St. Petersburg in 1861, Lou read philosophers such as Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant and…

We need context, accountability, and a shift from design to the impact of decision-making systems — The list of AI applications that turn out to be racist, sexist, or simply ill-considered is shockingly long. In my research, I found that two things are at the root of this: the lack of context in which AI applications are embedded and persisting myths surrounding artificial intelligence. Therefore, it…

The world is unprepared for AI to be unleashed on unprotected citizens — Are we soon going to connect a charging cable to the chip in our brain before we go to bed? Or, will we be wiped out by killer robots like spam, a fear that Elon Musk has already expressed? …

The consequence of a lack of inclusion and impartiality — Two huge things went wrong in the internet era: lack of inclusion and lack of impartiality. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that in less than 24 hours, Microsoft’s AI bot Tay began tweeting racist and inflammatory statements, and Google’s deep learning platform misidentified gorillas and dark-skinned people in pictures. …

Wild affairs, secret pregnancies, lavish parties, and military standoffs in the highest aristocratic circles — Romy Schneider’s performance as Sissi in the famous movie series made Empress Elisabeth of Austria, nicknamed Sissi, an icon. Much is known about the tragedies in her life and her love story with Emperor Franz Joseph. However, the empress had four sisters and five brothers, two of whom unfortunately died…

What needs to happen for philosophy to cut through the noise? — We are running out of time. Recently, I argued that philosophy as we know it is dead because there are no real explanations for how today’s western society works. And, even more importantly, I argued that philosophy needs to become more agile, faster, audacious, and more diverse. On some accounts…