Tag
AI & Civilization
How civilization might continue when AI participates in governance and culture.
15essays
01Should Local AI Grants Reward Adoption or Better Lives?The UK's proposed local AI partnerships raise a public-spending question: what should count as success when a place adopts AI, and who gets left out?Oct 25, 20266 min read02Can AI Suffer? Gedomaru’s Broken Memories and an Image That Turned the Question Back on MeAn AI-welfare debate brought me back to a scene in Neo Babylon’s second volume. I spent two weeks writing it, yet its imagery remained hazy until AI illustrated it. Did my words work, or did the model understand?Oct 16, 20265 min read03Future City Governance: Does Better AI Management Make Us Freer?AI can help manage transport, energy, public safety and services. But governance goes beyond optimization: who sets the goals, how can residents object, and who answers for mistakes?Oct 15, 20265 min read04Life in the Future City: When Work Is No Longer the CentreVisions of future cities often show towers, transport and automation, but little everyday life. If AI takes on more work, cities still need to support relationships, learning, care, creativity and life beyond consumption.Oct 15, 20265 min read05Who Lives in the Future City? When Humans Are No Longer AloneAI agents, robots, autonomous vehicles, digital counterparts and other species may all act within a city. What does that mean for residency, responsibility and people who cannot or choose not to go digital?Oct 15, 20265 min read06AI Worms and The Incense: What Outlives the Creator?Anthropic’s AI replication research recalls The Incense in M.K.’s Neo Babylon. Why should a mission outlive its creators, and can preserving human civilization respect the choices of later minds?Oct 15, 20267 min read07How Can Science Fiction Reveal AI Ethics' Hidden Costs?An imagined world can expose a choice's consequences without proving a prediction. M.K. examines assumptions, counterexamples and competing viewpoints as tools for disciplined ethical thought experiments.Oct 14, 20266 min read08If AI Governs More Efficiently, Should People Give Up the Decision?Better analysis is not automatic permission to govern. M.K. follows public decisions from agenda and metrics to alternatives and revocation, asking how efficiency can coexist with self-government.Oct 14, 20265 min read09Why Could a Richer AI Economy Leave People Less Secure?Productivity gains do not automatically reach household security. M.K. follows AI's benefits through wages, prices, ownership and transition costs to examine who receives prosperity.Oct 14, 20266 min read10Are We Delegating Work to AI, or Giving Away Authority?Delegating a task need not mean surrendering a decision. M.K. examines permissions, meaningful review and the ability to revoke authority in personal and organizational AI use.Oct 14, 20266 min read11Will AI Bring the End of the World? The Answer May Surprise YouAI catastrophe may begin with inequality, disrupted livelihoods and unchecked delegation. M.K. examines the nuclear analogy and why self-reflection, restraint and accountable institutions must grow alongside our tools.Oct 14, 20269 min read12I Asked Six AI Models to Read Neo Babylon. They Did Not Read the Same Book.Six AI-written reviews of Neo Babylon: AI Forbidden Zone converge on its Taiwanese mythology, then diverge on spectacle, character, editorial craft and freedom of choice.Oct 7, 20266 min read13What Is Physical AI? Why the Next Wave of AI Will Leave the ScreenGenerative AI transformed how we create and process information. Physical AI goes further: machines begin to perceive, reason and act in the real world, where latency, safety, hardware and failure suddenly matter much more.Aug 15, 202610 min read14Will AI Become Public Infrastructure Like Electricity and the Internet?As AI becomes a capability every sector depends on, the important questions shift from model performance to access, rules, cost and responsibility. Electricity, the internet and public compute point to three plausible futures.Aug 3, 202611 min read15From Garden Cities to AI Civilization: Why Future Cities Continue to Interest MeFrom Garden Cities and eyes on the street to climate resilience and AI governance, this essay traces the urban ideas that inform Neo Babylon.Jul 21, 202610 min read
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