Issue 8 - Biden wants you to trust AI 🤖

Welcome to issue eight of the Eco Punks Gazette. As the days get shorter our network grows larger, as do the ecosystems we find ourselves in.

If you’re new to the Eco Punks, welcome! We’re here to serve and stimulate you, so please let us know if there are subjects or topics that you would like us to cover. We can always be reached by replying to this email or contacting us via email, [email protected] or [email protected].

We’ve also created a Signal group for Eco Punks to share links, ideas, and get a friendly reminder about salons and events. If you’d like to join us on Signal, email [email protected]. If this is the first time you’ve heard of Signal, or if you’re not already using it, this video will bring you up to speed and explain why Signal is the choice for Eco Punks:

Upcoming Event

Nov 7th at 11am EST - Getting in Touch

As with everything when it comes to language, there must be a reason for why it is touch that we keep referring to. What happens, what is the sensation and the magic that goes beyond the purely sensory experience and lead us to give touch that role in our vocabulary? Why is it that research has shown that basketball teams whose players touch each other prior to taking a free throw have higher scoring percentages than teams who don’t? Can’t touch this. I’m really touched - what is the magic of touch, and how can we all experience more of it if it is really that important?

If you’re not already participating in these salons, email [email protected] to get the details and join in.

Mind Meets Matter

We had a wonderful conversation on not just the unity of the body and mind, but ironically, the unity of our digital selves. If we posit that what we conceive as our mind is actually just a summation of our physical self, then what happens as our digital self is extended further and further? Is our digital mind a culmination of all of our digital expressions?

Jan loves to get lost in books in stores.

The value of analogue knowledge is rising

Fall is in full swing, and particularly the weekends in New York City seem to be drenched in rain recently. That led to a fun and interesting chance encounter last Sunday: while strolling through SoHo on my way to buy pants, I passed a bookstore that had Marr’s Guitars on display in the shopping window, and as a faithful Johnny Marr disciple, I stepped inside to check out that book.

I stayed for about an hour and then made my way back home through the rain and the smelly New York City subway. And even today, four days later, I’m feeding off of that bookstore experience. Spending time in bookstores will be part of my health routine moving forward and I will make a point of surrounding myself with physical books in physical spaces. Who knows, in a time when manifestos seem to be en vogue again, the Punks might even write a manifesto for bookstores in the near future. 

I do know that I will go back into the city later today, this time to the Strand, and get drunk and high on literature and its aura again. I need more of that, and it seems many of us do. And one day I might even buy Marr’s Guitars.

Biden wants you to trust AI

Regulatory capture of the whole of government

Do you trust AI? Do you trust POTUS? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then the White House has a proposition for you. Trust, after all, is elusive, and contextual. In this case, if the assumption is we trust Government then perhaps policy can help us trust AI?

The AI industry certainly desires regulation, at least regulation that ensures continued riches. Similarly, they desire that we trust AI enough to use and adopt it. Can policy play a role in mediating the tensions between using AI to exploit (consumers) and using AI to help (society)?

Yes, but the trick with policy is the public, and how that policy is perceived. For example, fighting bias for some is reinforcing bias for others.

In fairness, the White House is making a comprehensive and even coherent attempt at addressing the myriad of issues that plague the potential empowerment offered by AI. From privacy, to discrimination, to protecting workers, and mitigating harms. However, with any policy we have to ask ourselves, how much of this is just posturing, and how much is going to genuinely have an impact?

What makes this particular initiative relevant is the focus on the whole of government, i.e., acknowledging but also anticipating that AI is not limited, but touches all aspects of policy and regulation.

This is where the concept of regulatory capture comes in, and why it is so crucial to understanding these efforts to govern AI.

Regulatory capture is the idea that industry or specific companies can capture the regulatory process and ensure it benefits them. In this case, ensuring that AI regulations reinforce and benefit the power of entrenched incumbents like Google and Microsoft.

If these policies not only benefit existing players, but also make it near impossible for smaller or new entities to offer AI services, then regulatory capture also serves to reinforce the oligopoly that controls contemporary digital platforms.

Another example is privacy, which these companies pay lip service too, while effectively preventing real privacy options from being available.

There is a strong focus on privacy in this AI executive order, but many critics have noted that it is more theoretical than actual.

It’s not just the expectation or hope that technology will solve problems created by technology that is dubious. There is also a false assumption that relevant and sufficient expertise will exist to take on the industry, let alone the technology which continues to be rapidly developed and deployed.

Even though there is reason to believe these efforts are hollow and performative, they are part of a larger international effort to contain and limit the negative impacts and harms of AI.

VP Harris followed up Biden’s announcement with one of her own, timed to coincide with her presentation at the summit noted above.

Yet fundamentally all of this comes back to trust, not just whether we trust AI, but also whether we trust our politicians to effectively regulate AI and protect us from related harms. In that context, the comedians may be who we trust most, if only because they recognize how fleeting trust is.