About Me
I am Professor of Ethics at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
I've been busy over the past almost thirty years exploring the ethical implications of technological change, and the ways in which genetic and cybernetic technologies may alter us.
Latest
What does “Grok” mean? Elon Musk and the uncanny future of Artificial Intelligence
What does “Grok” mean? Elon Musk and the uncanny future of Artificial Intelligence
What does “Grok” mean? Elon Musk and the uncanny future of Artificial Intelligence
Might the mystery of Elon Musk's purchasing of Twitter and renaming it for a porn site finally make sense with his announcement of a generative AI that will learn from all of our foul-minded tweeting and X-ing? This piece for the ABC Ethics and Religion conjectures that it might.
Move over Wayne Barnes, it’s time for the robo-ref
What does “Grok” mean? Elon Musk and the uncanny future of Artificial Intelligence
What does “Grok” mean? Elon Musk and the uncanny future of Artificial Intelligence
In this twilight of the academic humanities do I have a future as a rugby pundit? In this piece published in the Wellington Post I consider the anger directed at the English referee of the Rugby World Cup final. Perhaps we should look to a future in which referees are fully automated.
Imagine a world without death
What does “Grok” mean? Elon Musk and the uncanny future of Artificial Intelligence
The best books to encourage big thinking about how technology could change humanity
I very much enjoyed participating in this discussion with the writer Omar El Akkad on the Apple Podcast Without. It addresses the promise and expected disappointments of radical life extension.
The best books to encourage big thinking about how technology could change humanity
Only moral progress can save us from being victims of tech billionaires’ fever dreams
The best books to encourage big thinking about how technology could change humanity
A list of exciting books about the future from outside of philosophy that inspired my writing of Dialogues on Human Enhancement (Routledge, 2023).
The human glitch: An ethics for disrupting the automated age
Only moral progress can save us from being victims of tech billionaires’ fever dreams
Only moral progress can save us from being victims of tech billionaires’ fever dreams
What can we learn from Karl Popper about being a human glitch and disrupting the technologies coming to automate you out of existence?
Only moral progress can save us from being victims of tech billionaires’ fever dreams
Only moral progress can save us from being victims of tech billionaires’ fever dreams
Only moral progress can save us from being victims of tech billionaires’ fever dreams
A piece for the ABC on what to make of the wild speculations of the tech elite about the future AI could bring. Will it end capitalism but not in a way we want?
Why we enjoy the excruciating miseries of the super-rich
Will the decline of Surveillance Capitalism herald a new era of Human Enhancement Capitalism?
Will the decline of Surveillance Capitalism herald a new era of Human Enhancement Capitalism?
A piece for Newsroom that probes our schadenfreude about the occasional miseries of the super-rich
Will the decline of Surveillance Capitalism herald a new era of Human Enhancement Capitalism?
Will the decline of Surveillance Capitalism herald a new era of Human Enhancement Capitalism?
Will the decline of Surveillance Capitalism herald a new era of Human Enhancement Capitalism?
A piece for ABC Ethics and Religion that speculates about the money that could soon flow into technologies of human enhancement
Should Humanities Professors Be Automated?
Will the decline of Surveillance Capitalism herald a new era of Human Enhancement Capitalism?
Confessions of a philosophical shit-stirrer
A piece for Project Syndicate on how recent advances in AI suggest an urgent need to rethink how humanities academics write. It's too easy to automate!
Confessions of a philosophical shit-stirrer
Confessions of a philosophical shit-stirrer
Confessions of a philosophical shit-stirrer
A follow up to this piece on the vice of philosophical shit-stirring. And a bit of a mea culpa for past shit-stirring.
The Inflection Pointillists
Confessions of a philosophical shit-stirrer
The Inflection Pointillists
A piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books written with Stuart Whatley that challenges popular beliefs about exponential improvement as the solution to pretty much everything.
The Dream Economy
Confessions of a philosophical shit-stirrer
The Inflection Pointillists
A piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books written with Stuart Whatley that deflates some of the hype that turns tech visionaries into multibillionaires.