Science and Technology

The Forum is our signature feature, bringing writers, scholars, and activists into dialogue about fundamental issues and pressing challenges.

The AI We Deserve

Critiques of artificial intelligence abound. Where’s the utopian vision for what it could be?

Cultivating Meaning

Evgeny Morozov responds.

Learning from the Luddites

The key to an alternative is building a movement.

The Plot Against Finance

Any public agenda will have to take on Wall Street.

Whose Values?

Boosters peddle the illusion of objectivity to avoid messy politics.

AI’s Missing Others

Those excluded from Silicon Valley point the way forward.

Trust Issues

The closed corporate ecosystem is the problem.

Machines of Caring Grace

The goal should be to support humans, not to replace them.

The Real Legacy of Cybernetics

Lessons from the personal computing revolution.

AI’s Walking Dog

Today’s tech inverts the value of the creative process.

My Father, the Cyborg

The seductions of medical surveillance.

What AI Can’t Do for Democracy

Its potential to enhance civic engagement crucially depends on what policymakers want to learn from the public.

Can AI Break Out of Panglossian Neoliberalism?

What Big Tech has done to our institutional and infrastructural imagination.

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

It’s not that there has been too much student protest. It’s that there has not been much, much more of it.

Can We Imagine a World Without Work?

The post-work movement reckons with reproductive labor.

An Innovation System That Works

Before rushing to build the next DARPA, we need to assess the R&D model we have.

Neither Governed nor Free

On art in the age of generative AI.

Our Avatars, Ourselves

Generative AI has made it possible to create lifelike models of real people. Should we?

Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious?

Within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness.

The Question Concerning (Workplace) Technology

Will workers and the public get a say in how it’s used?

Can Innovation Serve the Public Good?

Not as it’s traditionally done, but there are more equitable models.

The Fake News about Fake News

In Foolproof, psychologist Sander van der Linden compares misinformation to viral infection—and claims to have a vaccine.

AI and the Specter of Automation

In a just world, productivity-enhancing technology would create more leisure and prosperity for everyone.

Workplace Data Is a Tool of Class Warfare

Workers will benefit from technology when they control how it’s used.

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