Tim Hwang

From FSGO x Logic: a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet's precarious foundation In Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising—the beating heart of the internet—is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008. From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself—much like subprime mortgages—is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet—and its free services—will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it. Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

Subprime Attention Crisis

Rose George

Nicola Twilley

Infrastructure Observatory Press

Luke Iseman

Craig Cannon

The Container Guide

Ava Kofman

Miriam Posner

Conrad Amenta

Juan Llamas- Rodriguez

Logic Magazine Issue #1: Intelligence. Including new work by Ava Kofman on DIY brain scanners, Tim Hwang on collective intelligence failure in the Age of Trump, Juan Llamas-Rodriguez on border patrol robots, Conrad Amenta on the industrialization of medicine, Miriam Posner on the feminization of front-end coding, and more.

Intelligence

Logic Magazine Issue #1

M. Elish

How are practitioners grappling with the social impacts of AI systems? In An AI Pattern Language, researchers M.C. Elish and Tim Hwang present a taxonomy of social challenges that emerged from interviews with a range practitioners working in the intelligent systems and AI industry. In the book, they describe these challenges and articulate an array of patterns that practitioners have developed in response. The inspirational frame (and title) for the project was the unique collection of architectural theory by Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language (1977). For Alexander, the central problem is the built environment. As Elish and Hwang write, "While our goal here is not as grand as the city planner, we take inspiration from the values of equity and mutual responsibility, as well as the accessible form, found in A Pattern Language. Like Alexander's patterns, our document attempts to develop a common language of problems and potential solutions that appear in different contexts and at different scales of intervention." This collection is not intended to be comprehensive or prescriptive, but rather is an experiment in cataloguing and catalyzing. AI is not out of human control, and An AI Pattern Language calls attention to the ways in which humans make choices about the development and deployment of technology. This text was created in the spirit not of an answer, but of a question: how can we design the technological future in which we want to live'more urgent to examine real trends that will be realized within this decade.

An Ai Pattern Language

Ongoing discussion around the Russian development of hybrid warfare and the revelations about meddling in the 2016 United States Presidential election have focused the public's attention on the threats posed by coordinated campaigns of propaganda and disinformation. These recent events have also raised concerns around the broader challenge posed by the emergence of a "post-fact society," the notion that the weakening ability for civil society and the public to analyze truth and falsity is creating a threat to the health and sustainability of democratic institutions. Technology and the Internet, in particular, play a key role in shaping the flow of information through society. Not surprisingly, the role of these systems in enabling new types of information warfare has figured prominently in the discussion as policymakers and scholars begin to develop their thinking about the appropriate response to these issues. Platforms such as Facebook and Google have been seen as having had a significant role in facilitating Russian propaganda efforts, incentivizing the distribution of false information, and encouraging the creation of extremist "filter bubbles." As the defense community develops its approach to countering present-day online propaganda and disinformation techniques, it will need to place concerns around immediate threats into a broader understanding of the nature of the challenge. In short, the defense community will require an articulation of a unified strategic concept. This monograph offers an initial sketch of such a concept, proposing one approach to characterizing the strategic situation in the current information space and, based on that, some conjectures about the effective conduct of online information warfare.

On the Military Strategy of Online Information Warfare

Maneuver and Manipulation

Tim Hwang

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