Robophobia

Robots-machines, algorithms, artificial intelligence-play an increasingly important role in society, often supplementing or even replacing human judgment. Scholars have rightly become concerned with the fairness, accuracy, and humanity of these systems. Indeed, anxiety about machine bias is at a fever pitch. While these concerns are important, they nearly all run in one direction: we worry about robot bias against humans; we rarely worry about human bias against robots. This is a mistake. Not because robots deserve, in some deontological sense, to be treated fairly-although that may be true-but because our bias against nonhuman deciders is bad for us. For example, it would be a mistake to reject self-driving cars merely because they cause a single fatal accident. Yet all too often this is what we do. We tolerate enormous risk from our fellow humans but almost none from machines. A substantial literature-almost entirely ignored by legal scholars concerned with algorithmic bias-suggests that we routinely prefer worse-performing humans over better-performing robots. We do this on our roads, in our courthouses, in our military, and in our hospitals. Our bias against robots is costly, and it will only get more so as robots become more capable. This Article catalogs the many different forms of antirobot bias and suggests some reforms to curtail the harmful effects of that bias. The Article\u27s descriptive contribution is to develop a taxonomy of robophobia. Its normative contribution is to offer some reasons to be less biased against robots. The stakes could hardly be higher. We are entering an age when one of the most important policy questions will be how and where to deploy machine decision-makers

Our Mythical Hope

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light. Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapte

Our Mythical Hope

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light. Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapte

Actor & Avatar: A Scientific and Artistic Catalog

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of "technical others" and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material

Bowdoin Orient v.126, no.1-23 (1997-1998)

https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-1990s/1010/thumbnail.jp

Aesthethics

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/hmvla_jampa/1011/thumbnail.jp

The publishing history and production patterns of picture and illustrated South African children’s books published from 2000 - 2020: an empirical study

The world we live in is constantly changing, resulting in new challenges. Over the past decades, there have been numerous developments in the children’s books industry. In an in-depth literature review it was learnt that book publishing plays an important role in any literary system and can be regarded as a mirror reflecting changes in the political, social, economic and cultural systems. Picture and illustrated books have a unique place in children’s literature and are considered an important subsystem of children’s literature. The publishing scenario of South African children’s books published in the 21st century is not well documented. Various attempts have been made over the years to compile bibliographies of South African children’s books. These lists provide valuable information on the publishing of South African children’s books. However, no comprehensive list of South African picture and illustrated books published since 2000 could be traced. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap and to give prominence to this field by providing a statistical mapping of the material production of picture and illustrated books, the state of publishing, trends and production patterns. A production profile of South African children’s picture and illustrated books provides evidence of the publishing history of children’s books. The production profile takes the form of an enumerative bibliography, the core of the production profile. An enumerative bibliography lists precisely what was published in a given period or genre, or by a particular author and illustrator. To address the question How can a production profile of South African children’s picture and illustrated books expose the state of publishing, production trends, and production patterns in this genre from 2000 to 2020? statistical-quantitative empirical research is used. This study contributes to an understanding of the important role of different role players in the production of picture and illustrated books and provides valuable information on the state of publishing of picture and illustrated books. The findings provide historical insight into the nature and production patterns of picture and illustrated books and reveal changes, trends, relationships and developments in the first two decades of the 21st century.Information SciencePh. D. (Information Science

Salience strategy: connectivity, aesthetics and the learning mind

This dissertation adds to the many arguments already made for the value of art (cultural artifact) in teaching and learning. The special approach developed here concludes with the articulation of Salience Strategy. The argument firstly questions the value of seeing intelligence as a problem-solving faculty. It continues by examining consciousness, memory and the imagination as both the ground and substance of intellection. It argues that, amongst other things, interconnectedness, reiterative pathways and networks are central to the operation of consciousness and therefore, are central to its epiphenomenal attributes like intelligence. As education should strive for greater intellectual functioning so it should, therefore, strive to harness the paradigms of interconnectedness, reiterative pathways and networks. The art object, (device, gesture, statement), it is proposed, is valuable when deployed as hubs in networks of ideas allowing learners to form patterns of unexpected and creative linkages enhancing both memory, curiosity and a capacity for imaginative and associative thinking. Learning becomes movement through a landscape of complex objects and outgrowths. Two salience itineraries are explored in this dissertation. The first in relation to concepts overheard during learner conversations over the duration of a school week, and a second, exploiting my own work as an artist, selected work by the British artist Richard Long, and some of the issues raised in the theoretical discussion of consciousness and networks