We Need to Stop Talking About "AI"
The category of AI is very broad. When someone talks about AI, they could be talking about anything from a very simple computer program to a large neural network. In this article I argue that talking about AI implies talking about expectations, not about actual, purposeful implementations. In order to be capable of talking about and regulating the dangers of AI we have to limit our use of the term "AI" to precisely what it denotes: expectations and possibilities that may or may not be realized some time in the future. [Read more]
Heat Exhaustion
For two weeks I've had a serious problem of motivating myself. I had several ideas about what might've been the culprit, and I think I have finally pinpointed it: A feeling of existential dread caused by the climate catastrophe that people have already reported. [Read more]
Crowd Control
Besides actually going on vacation, I usually reserve one week of my vacation for work each year. In summer, I work for a music festival to get a break from my office and do physical work instead. This year, I had an experience that showed me the value of working a completely unrelated job for my actual work as a social scientist. [Read more]
Is AI finally becoming sentient?
No, it's not. But yesterday, news broke that allegedly some Google chat bot system may have gained sentience. How credible are these claims? While certainly interesting, they do not prove anything – as always. [Read more]
Thinking in Tables
If you work with data, you can't escape them: tables. Everything from small-scale surveys to huge register datasets are represented using the mental model of a table. While this representation of our data has worked for the better part of recorded sociological history, we are increasingly experiencing roadblocks: our analyses run slow, sometimes our computers crash, and many exciting research opportunities are left unasked, because we fear our computers will be incapable of helping us answer them. In this article, I provide – again – a somewhat technical explanation for what makes data tables so ill-suited for so many tasks, and what we can do instead. [Read more]
Deep Learning is Witchcraft
Deep learning is a fascinating piece of technology. It basically consists of chaining and stacking together millions of very small functions that, in effect, can predict incredibly complex things. This also means that deep learning can sometimes feel like witchcraft. For example, why do two classifiers almost always perform better than a single one? In this article I'll dig deeper into this curious finding. [Read more]
I almost got scammed today
The internet is full of scammers, and their most beloveth tool is emails. Therefore, whenever you receive an unsolicited email, you should be very careful whether even to reply. But even with many years of experience and after doing proper research, scammers can get you. Let me today share an episode where I almost got scammed myself. [Read more]
Tous pour libéralisme?
France has voted. And it got another five years to ensure that the right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen has no chance of securing the presidency of one of the central states within the European Union. However, these elections were a warning sign for Emmanuel Macron. Here, I collect some loose thoughts on the election. [Read more]
Zotero 6: A Review
Zotero 6 is out — time for a review. I tested the app in production for two weeks now and want to share my thoughts. [Read more]
Selling Trust, Part II: How Microsoft Harms the Security of their Users
Two years ago, I bough my first code signing certificate. A week ago, I bought a second one. In this article I report my experiences and explain why the practices of Microsoft revolving around code signing put Windows users in harms way. [Read more]