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"History of Rome" by Quintus Fabius Pictor

"History of Rome" by Quintus Fabius Pictor, introduced by Tim Cornell (University of Manchester)

A microchip

AI and the Attention Economy: What tech companies need to disclose

Tue 10 October 2023

Auditorium, Pembroke College

An abundance of information produces a scarcity of attention, as Herbert Simon noted in 1970. In the future (that is, our present) he postulated that we would need machines to help us manage our attention. And that insight is an essential foundation for understanding and managing today's information technologies.

Given the role of machines in how humans process information today – what Simon called the "institutional context" in which human "bounded rationality" operates – then it becomes clear that the disclosures that we require of companies today miss the mark.

Today's corporate disclosures have been designed for markets in which all the levers of market power and misbehaviour are financial.

By contrast, we need to define what today's big tech companies and the developers of frontier AI should be required to disclose about the operational metrics that they use to monetize and engage users as well as to manage disinformation, fairness, safety, and other possible harms.

Even when AI companies are doing their best to do everything right, we can't ignore the market-shaping power of internet platform technologies.

Without sufficient information from which to form a baseline of AI and platform behaviour, we will have little ability to see and correct things when things begin to go off the rails.

Join Tim O’Reilly in conversation with John Naughton, to discuss how to make AI more accountable.

About the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy

The Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy is an independent team of academic researchers at the University of Cambridge, who are radically rethinking the power relationships between digital technologies, society and our planet.

We are based in CRASSH (University of Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences).

Cost: Free

Enquiries and booking

Please note that booking is required for this event.

Website

Timing

In person

All times

Tue 10 October 2023 5:00PM - 6:00PM

Venue

Address: Auditorium, Pembroke College
Trumpington Street
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
CB2 1RF