I tried to focus on reading ‘for fun’ this summer and while I read some fiction I did end up consuming a few non-fiction books and podcast series that gave me some food for thought.

The first book that really got the brain whirring is by Frans de Waal, a primate behavioural scientist who’s book ‘Are we Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are’ set out an argument that testing animals for intelligence against a standard of human intelligence is not very useful or a relevant test of animal intelligence. It’s a great book and reminds me of my philosophy undergrad classes debating Peter Singer and his views on sentiency. My main takeaway here is that if we are only exploring things from our perspective then we won’t ever comprehend the fullness or complexity of something. A good thing to hold in mind when doing research.

The second book of note that I should capture some thoughts about is the book ‘The Dawn of Everything’ by David Graeber – where he argues that the linear view of human evolution from hunter gather to agriculture to city life was not inevitable, nor linear and that we should be updating our view on ancient civilisations and recognising that the current shape of our world has been made by our own choices as a species. An excellent book that challenges the narrative of the social and economic evolution of humans. I strongly believe that a different economic system is possible and that the patriarchy can be dismantled – so reading a book that explored how these were choices and thinking about alternative systems reinvigorated a bit of hope. Sorely needed at the moment!

The last books I’d like to make a specific note on is the latest Tim Marshall book ‘The Future of Geography’, a look at how the commercialisation of space exploration could be challenging due to the lack of current laws and systems to govern it. International law is always tricky and Marshall compares a lot to maritime law. It peaked my interest not just because of the real challenges that exist with the potential colonisation of space but also because it has a lot of parallels with AI developments and the law. There is always a tension between innovation and exploration and safety and we have been terrible at getting it right to date.

Outside of reading I have been continuing some activism with the Ethical Commerce Alliance. We recorded some workshops a few weeks ago and it was wonderful to be in a room of people all looking at different challenges around data sharing, consent and safety. It was the day after the story that broke in Spain where the girls in a town have had their social media photos taken and deep faked into nude photos of them. A stark reminder of the potential harms for gen-AI. We had a long debate on this and the difference between seeing AI as a tool that is good or bad depending on the user, vs whether the tool itself is inherently bad if it allows bad things to be done. Creating a gen-AI tool that specifically creates faked nudes is clearly not okay. However, creating an image gen-AI and it then being used for this purpose…it’s a harder conversation. There is also a conversation to be had I think about the shift in what is acceptable moral behaviour. Sort of like how the Overton window is shifting right in a lot of EU countries, there is a shift in acceptable behaviours, especially among young men and boys – fed by what I think is a rise in YouTubers specialising in shock content and also the de-sensitivication (is that a word?) to porn and violence that I think a lot of people now have due to the wide range of content available for free online in these areas. I wonder what research is happening in this shift in moral acceptability and the impact of characters like Andrew Tate on young people’s behaviours – I know a lot of teachers regularly talk about how they are having to have tough conversations in the classroom on this.

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Full Summer Reading List:

• Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar – Andy Greenberg
• How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division – Elif Shafak
• Privacy is Power – Carissa Véliz
• The ADHD Effect on Marriage – Melissa Orlov
• The Red Queens War Trilogy – Mark Lawrence
• The Future of Geography – Tim Marshall
• And What Do You Do? – Norman Baker
• The Cabinet – Kim Un-su
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? – Frans de Waal
• The Signal and the Noise – Nate Silver (don’t recommend)
• How to be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable – Ben Alridge
• The Debutante – Jon Ronson
• The Dawn of Everything – David Graeber
• Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes – Barnaby Phillips
• Glossy: Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story – Marisa Meltzer

We had a session on Thursday with the part timers and JB, who suggested we share our projects from last year with each other. It was so inspiring to see how creative and talented my classmates are and I really loved how there was a combination of data and technology being used across some of the projects. What did get asked as an interesting question to me was how could UBI be presented to someone who was further right on the political spectrum. It’s a good one to ponder as often it is seen as a slightly more left leaning approach, though many studies were done under a range of administrations on all sides of the spectrum. It’s something I’m certainly going to consider as part of one of my project ideas would be to research what messaging or policy points people would care about in the context of UBI.

[12] Reflecting on Summer Readings & Conversations / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society (2022-2023) by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0