I often talk in class about how computing is transforming almost every discipline it touches. The article linked discusses how the process of scientific discovery is shifting into a computing-centric approach.
"The physical technology of scientific research is still here — the new electron microscopes, the telescopes, the particle colliders — but they are now inseparable from computing power, and it is the computers that let scientists find order and patterns in the raw information that the physical tools gather.
Computer power not only aids research, it defines the nature of that research: what can be studied, what new questions can be asked, and answered."
Will they also transform politics? In what way could artificial intelligences alter political institutions and could they lead to the establishment of a new kind of political regime?
ReplyDeleteThere is not much reflection on the subject (apart from a few exploratory attempts: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/rumpalaepaper.pdf ).