Author: adrielhampton
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From Operatic Blobs to Mental Illness Predictions, AI’s Getting Deeper
In his essay “Taming the Digital Leviathan: Automated Decision-Making and International Human Rights,” Malcolm Langford of the University of Oslo warns against the mystification of artificial intelligence. This mystification begins when we treat AI as something exceptional, alien, or definitively non-human. “Discussions of automation and digitalization should be guided by a logic of minimizing danger,…
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Human Error Has Always Happened in Election Tabulation
In their book Human Error: Cause, Prediction, and Reduction, John W. Senders and Nevile P. Moray define human error as something “not intended by the actor; not desired by a set of rules or an external observer; or that led the task or system outside its acceptable limits.” There are many ways to commit human…
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YouGov Chat: An Experience in Interactive Polling
Trying to reach constituents, voters, and potential supporters via electronic communication technology is daunting for the inexperienced and frustrating for the experienced campaigner. People are so close and yet so far: close enough that you can establish an electronic dialogue with them, but too far away to be able to screen for unspoken sentiments or…
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Bad-Faith Speakers Like Trump Let Audience Fill in the Blanks
Way back in 2007, a GOP political strategist on a cable news discussion show said of the then-longshot presidential candidate, “I don’t think the Republicans have anything to fear from Barack Hussein Obama.” His voice emphasized the word “Hussein.” The meaning was obvious–or somewhat obvious, and that was the point. The American people would never…
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Adriel Hampton: ‘The COVID Crisis has Shown us Just How Fast Governments Can Act’
The long haul is going to be getting more left and corporate-free candidates at all levels — and that is going to take a few more cycles to really get rolling.
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Web-Based Cartography, Power and Community-Building
We were interested in the news that the Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei recently signed a deal with TomTom, the Dutch digital mapping company, for an alternative to Google Maps. TomTom has been an often unsung but never ignored force in map applications. It has several self-branded products on iOS and Android devices. But Huawei will…
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Big Data Makes for Big Sci-Fi Plots
We’re fans of science fiction, and its conversion into science fact, around here. Ray Bradbury has written that “science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world because it’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself . . . Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever…
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Huxley, Big Data, and the Artistic Mind
Imagine you’re a famous painter, but in an effort to get with the times, you crowd-source your newest painting. You make a nice big show of it, being creative in your soliciting of ideas, bringing people to your studio (and sharing the encounters on social media), maybe even hosting some focus groups to discuss themes,…
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Big Data, Cops, and Criminality
In the short story and movie “Minority Report,” police in the future are authorized to arrest, and prosecutors to convict, people for the crimes they will (according to predictive technology) commit in the future. Although the thought of arresting, trying and convicting individuals for what they have not yet done seems far-fetched, the basic structural…
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Constituent Communication Research: A Snapshot from Long Past
Political culture has changed a great deal, and this is not a “get off my lawn” post. In fact, as alienating and uncivil as much current political discourse seems, there’s a level of directness and candidness that earlier eras lacked, giving them a feel of artificiality and stuffy elitism. Take, for example, a research article…
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