Author Archives: Caitlin Olson

Artificial General Intelligences & Corporations — April 8, 2018

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Check out the Live Stream Here

Even if we don’t know yet how to align Artificial General Intelligences with our goals, we do have experience in aligning organizations with our goals. Some argue corporations are in fact Artificial Intelligences – legally at least we treat them as persons already.

The Foresight Institute, along with the Internet Archive, invite you to spend an afternoon examining AI alignment, especially whether our interactions with different types of organizations, e.g. our treatment of corporations as persons, allow insights into how to align AI goals with human goals.

While this meeting focuses on AI safety, it merges AI safety, philosophy, computer security, and law and should be highly relevant for anyone working in or interested in those areas.

Buy Tickets Here

Discussions on the day include:

Overview of AI Safety & definitions by Allison Duettmann, AI Safety Researcher at Foresight Institute, Advisor to EthicsNet

Corporations as Artificial General Intelligences (based on this literature review for a grant given by Paul Christiano on the legal aspects of AGI as corporations) by Peter Scheyer, Foresight Institute Fellow in Cybersecurity & Corporate AGI, Cybersecurity Veteran

Overview of the traditional field of AI alignment, with focus on CHAI’s approach to AI alignment, by Mark Nitzberg, Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Human Compatible AI

Aligning long-term projects with incentives in governmental institutions, by Tom Kalil, former Deputy Director for Policy for the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, Senior Advisor at the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Group

Building a 501c3 organization and similarities to AI alignment, by Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive, Digital Librarian, and Philanthropist

Civilizations as relevant superintelligence (based on this paper co-authored with Christine Peterson, and Allison Duettmann for the First UCLA Risk Colloquium), by Mark Miller, Senior Fellow of the Foresight Institute, pioneer of agoric computing, designer of several object-capability programming languages

This seminar will be highly interactive – we welcome your engagement throughout the session. If you have something valuable to add to the discussion contact Allison at a@foresight.org.

John Perry Barlow Symposium — Saturday, April 7

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Watch The Video Here

Please join us for a celebration of the life and leadership of the recently departed founder of EFF, John Perry Barlow. His friends and compatriots in the fight for civil liberties, a fair and open internet, and voices for open culture will discuss what his ideas mean to them, and how we can follow his example as we continue our fight.

Speakers Lineup:

Edward Snowden, noted whistleblower and President of Freedom of the Press Foundation
Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Cory Doctorow, celebrated scifi author and Editor in Chief of Boing Boing
Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab
John Gilmore, EFF Co-founder, Board Member, entrepreneur and technologist
Trevor Timm, Executive Director of Freedom of the Press
Shari Steele, Executive Director of the Tor Foundation and former EFF Executive Director
Mitch Kapor, Co-founder of EFF and Co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact
Pam Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley
Steven Levy, Wired Senior Writer, and author of Hackers, In the Plex, and other books
Amelia Barlow, daughter of John Perry Barlow

 

We suggest a $20 donation for admission to the Symposium, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. All ticket proceeds will benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

John Perry Barlow Symposium
Saturday, April 7, 2018
2 PM to 6 PM

Internet Archive
300 Funston Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118

RSVP Here

The Lost Landscapes of San Francisco: A Benefit for the Internet Archive — Monday, January 29

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by Rick Prelinger

Internet Archive presents the movie 12th annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco on Monday, January 29 at 7:30 pm at our headquarters in San Francisco. The show will be preceded by a small reception at 6:30 pm, when doors will also open.

Buy Tickets Here

I’ve been collecting historical footage of San Francisco and the Bay Area in earnest since 1993, when we acquired the collection assembled by noted local historian and film preservationist Bert Gould. Since that time I’ve worked to collect film material showing the history of this dynamic and complex region. Much of it is online for free viewing, downloading and reuse as part of the Prelinger Collection. Many great things have happened at the Archive showings: people have recognized their relatives in the films, and many have seen their own streets and neighborhoods as they’ve never before seen them.

Combining favorites from past years with this year’s footage discoveries, this feature-length program shows San Francisco’s neighborhoods, infrastructures, celebrations and people from the early 20th century through the 1970s. New sequences this year include North Beach clubs and nightlife, colorful New Deal labor graphics, early BART footage, a scooters’ rights demonstration (!), unbuilt sand dunes in the Sunset, Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal shooting WHAT’S UP DOC? on location in the Richmond District, more footage of the mysterious Running Man in Chinatown and on Nob Hill, Bay Area activism, birthdays and Thanksgiving in the Outer Mission in the late 1940s, Latino families dancing on Ocean Beach, and much, much more.

As always, the audience makes the soundtrack! This is an excellent venue for the show, as the shape of the Great Room makes it easy for participants to hear one another’s comments. Come prepared to identify places, people and events, to ask questions and to engage in spirited real-time repartee with fellow audience members, and look for hints of San Francisco’s future in the shape of its lost past.

Monday, January 29th
6:30 pm Reception
7:30 pm Interactive Film Program

Internet Archive
300 Funston Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118

Buy Tickets Here!

bitcoin accepted then email

Internet Archive’s Annual Bash this Wednesday! — Get your tickets now before we run out!

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UPDATE: Tickets for the 20th Century Time Machine are officially Sold Out! If you would like to join our waitlist, we’ll release tickets as they become available and let you know via email.

Click here to join the waitlist

—
Limited tickets left for 20th Century Time Machine — the Internet Archive’s Annual Bash – happening this Wednesday at the Internet Archive from 5pm-9:30pm. In case you missed it, here’s our original announcement.

Tickets start at $15 here.

Once tickets sell out, you’ll have the opportunity to join the waitlist. We’ll release tickets as spaces free up and let you know via email.

We’d love to celebrate with you!

Internet Archive Artist in Residence Exhibition — August 5–26

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By Amir Esfahani

Ever Gold [Projects] is pleased to present The Internet Archive’s 2017 Artist in Residence Exhibition, an exhibition conceived in collaboration with the Internet Archive presenting the culmination of the first year of the Internet Archive’s visual arts residency program, featuring work by artists Laura Hyunjhee Kim, Jeremiah Jenkins, and Jenny Odell.

The Internet Archive visual arts residency is organized by Amir Saber Esfahani, and is designed to connect emerging and mid-career artists with the archive’s collections and to show what is possible when open access to information meets the arts. The residency is one year in length during which time each artist will develop a body of work that culminates in an exhibition utilizing the resource of the archive’s collection in their own practice.

During the residency Kim, Jenkins, and Odell worked with specific aspects of the Internet Archive, both at its Bay Area facilities and remotely in their studios, producing multi-media responses that employ various new media as well as more traditional materials and practices.

Public Programming: Saturday, August 5th, 4-5pm — Brewster Kahle, Founder & Digital Librarian, Internet Archive, in conversation with Laura Hyunjhee Kim and Jeremiah Jenkins. Moderated by Andrew McClintock, Owner/Director of Ever Gold [Projects].
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 5th, 5-8pm
Location: Ever Gold [Projects] 1275 Minnesota St
Exhibit Dates: Aug 5–26, 2017

Jenny Odell: “For my projects, I’m extracting “specimens” from 1980s Byte magazines and animation demo reels—specimens being objects or scenes that are intentionally or unintentionally surreal. These collected and isolated images inadvertently speak volumes about some of the stranger and more sinister aspects that technology has come to embody.”

Jeremiah Jenkins: “Browser History is a project is about preserving the Internet for the very distant future. I will be transferring webpages from the Internet Archive and elsewhere onto clay tablets by creating stamps with the text and images, then pressing them into wet clay. After being fired, the slabs will be hidden in caves, buried strategically, and submerged in the sea to await discovery in the distant future. The oldest known clay tablet is a little over 4,000 years old. The cave paintings in Lascaux are around 14,000 years old. The oldest known petroglyphs are near 46,000 years old. It’s conceivable that these fired clay tablets could last for 50,000 years or more. The tablets will be pages from websites that document trade, lifestyle, art, government, and other aspects of our society that are similar to the kinds of information we have about ancient civilizations.”

Laura Hyunjhee Kim: “The Hyper Future Wave Machine is a project that positions the years 2017 and beyond as a speculative future based on audiovisual ephemera published in the years 1987 to 1991. Born in the late ’80s, I wanted to explore the technological advancements and innovations that were popularized during the nascent years of the World Wide Web. Utilizing the Internet Archive as a time machine, I searched through the archived commercial and educational media representations of networked technology, personalized computers, and information systems. Often hyperbolic with a heightened emphasis on speed, power, and the future, slogans from those past years are still relevant and surface aspirations that continue to introduce the “next big thing” to the present generation: “REALIZE THE FUTURE, YOU ALREADY LIVE IN.” As the title of the project suggests, the work revolves around an imaginary media access system, namely the Hyper Future Wave Machine (HFWM). Described as a three-way-cross-hybrid existing/nonexistent/and-yet-to-exist metaphysical machine, the concept came from contemplating data portability and the trajectory of human-machine interface technology that seamlessly minimizes physical interaction. From buttons to touchscreens to speech, would the next ubiquitously applied interface operate using some sort of nonverbal neural command?”

Film Screening: Lost Landscapes of LA on August 7

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By Rick Prelinger

Lost Landscapes of Los Angeles (2016, 83 minutes) is an experimental documentary tracing the changing city of Los Angeles (1920s-1960s), showing how its landscape expresses an almost infinite collection of mythologies. Made from home movies and studio-produced “process plates” — background images of the city shot by studio cinematographers for rear projection in feature films — Lost Landscapes depicts places, people, work and daily life during a period of rapid urban development. While audience  members are encouraged to comment, discuss and ask questions during the screening of this silent film, it is also a contemplative film that shows the life and growth of the U.S.’s preeminent Western metropolis as the sum of countless individual acts.

Lost Landscapes of Los Angeles is the latest of Rick Prelinger’s “urban history film events,” featuring rediscovered and largely-unseen archival film footage arranged into feature-length programs. Unlike most screenings, the audience makes the soundtrack — viewers are encouraged to identify places, people and events; ask questions; and engage with fellow audience members. While the films show Los Angeles as it was, the event encourages viewers to think about (and share) their ideas for the city’s future. What kind of a city do we want to live in?

Rick Prelinger is an archivist, filmmaker, and educator. He teaches at UC Santa Cruz and is a board member of Internet Archive. His films made from archival material have played at festivals, museums, theaters, and educational institutions around the world. Lost Landscapes of San Francisco (11 episodes, 2006-2016) plays every autumn in San Francisco. He has also made urban history films in Oakland and Detroit, and is currently producing a New York film for an autumn premiere. He thanks Internet Archive and its staff for making this film possible.

Get Tickets Here

Monday, August 7th, 2017
6:30 pm Reception
7:30 pm Interactive Film Program

Internet Archive
300 Funston Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94118

Join us for Ted Nelson’s birthday: OCTOTHORP — 80 AND STILL S#ARP

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You’re invited to a birthday celebration for Ted Nelson on July 11th at 6 p.m. at Internet Archive headquarters,
featuring Lauren Sarno.

TED NELSON
Internet Archive Fellow
author of the highly-influential book “Computer Lib”
first to imagine world-wide hypertext
coiner of many words and an inspiration to many people.

THE PROGRAM
Ted and Lauren will give a presentation,
including Songs and Poem by Ted Nelson:
song, “Machiavelli”
poem, “Homing” (originally published in The Oxford Magazine, 2008)
song, “Today Is Yesterday’s Tomorrow”

FOLLOWED BY a Q&A session, moderated by Jason Scott and Mark Graham.

FOLLOWED BY refreshments and schmoozing.
Drink Ted’s Kool-Aid! (Lemon-lime, his favorite as a boy, now sugar free.)

In order to say hello to everybody, Ted will be rationed and steered.

Ted’s statue at the Internet Archive has been scanned for 3D printing—the data to make your own Desktop Ted is now at https://archive.org/details/3DScanOfTedNelsonSculpture 

Copies of “Computer Lib” will be available for autographing
at $100 a piece, cash or check only
(bounced checks will be amusingly publicized).

When: Tuesday, July 11th, 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
Where: Internet Archive Headquarters
300 Funston Ave
SF, CA 94118

Get Free Tickets Here

Film Screening: Normal Is Over on July 17 at 7 p.m.

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…”An unusual, visually rich portrait of some of the world’s brightest and most innovative ideas.”- Daily Maverick S.A.

You’re invited to a screening of Normal Is Over The Movie, an award-winning documentary that looks for SOLUTIONS to climate change, species extinction, resource depletion, and the widening gap between rich and poor.

The screening will start at 7 p.m.  and will be introduced by Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, followed by a Q & A session, with Renée Scheltema, filmmaker, investigative journalist, and two other panelists to be announced.

Watch the Trailer: https://vimeo.com/168486528

Get Tickets Here

Your $10 ticket donations will support the artist, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

When: Monday, July 17, 2017
Time: Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and screening starts at 7 p.m.
Where: Internet Archive Headquarters
300 Funston Ave. San Francisco, CA 94118

If you like Normal Is Over, you can ‘captain’ theatrical and community screenings all over the US, & fundraise for your non-profit organization via Cinema-On-Demand.

“And the Webby Award for Lifetime Achievement Goes to….”

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“The Internet Archive…is building a home for Universal Access to All Knowledge, open to everyone, everywhere, to use as they like. Open to all societies of the future that care to build on our triumphs and learn from our mistakes.”

                                                                  – Lawrence Lessig

Last night in New York City, we put on our best duds and donned our fanciest archivist hats for a once in a lifetime event. The Internet Archive was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 21st annual Webbys, hailed by the New York Times as “one of the Internet’s highest honors.” The Webby Awards lauded the Internet Archive for being “the web’s most knowledgeable historian.”

Three of our veteran staff members, Tracey Jaquith, TV Archive Architect, Internet Archive founder and Digital Librarian, Brewster Kahle, and Alexis Rossi, Director of Media and Access, accepted the award. Kahle delivered the five-word acceptance speech with panache:  “Universal Access to All Knowledge.”

Perhaps the greatest honor of the evening came in the form of a video narrated by Open Knowledge champion, Lawrence Lessig.  He said, “Creativity and innovation built on the past.  The Internet Archive is the foundation preserving that past, so that perhaps, one can at least hope that our children and their children can shape a future that knows our joys and learns from our many mistakes.”

The award was presented by Nancy Lublin, CEO of the Crisis Text Line and DoSomething.org, who pointed out that in this chaotic political year, the Internet Archive has saved “200 terabytes of government data that could have otherwise been lost in the transition from blue light saber to red light saber.”

The award reads:

Webby Lifetime Achievement: Archive.org for its commitment to making the world’s knowledge available online and preserving the history of the Internet itself. With a vast collection of digitized materials and tools like the Wayback Machine, Archive.org has become a vital resource not only to catalogue an ever-changing medium, but to safeguard a free and open Internet for everyone.

The complete list of Webby Award winners is available here.

CANCELED: Hitting the Wall: How the Media Shapes the Immigration Debate

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We are incredibly disappointed to have to tell you all that, due to last minute unforeseen scheduling conflicts, the “Hitting The Wall” event has been cancelled. We know that many of you (us included!) were looking forward to the event and feel very passionately about this topic but circumstances beyond our control have made it necessary to cancel at this time. We appreciate your kind understanding and hope to see you at future events.

______________________________________________

How can we tell fact from fiction when it comes to a controversial topic like immigration? Join us at the Internet Archive for an evening with experienced journalists from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and Retro Report, who will work with the audience to develop strategies to fight back against propaganda and fake news.

Admission is $10 and includes tacos, beer, wine, and soda:

When: Wednesday, May 17th Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for food and drinks, and discussion starts at 7 p.m.
Where: Internet Archive
300 Funston Ave. SF, CA 94118

The program will take place in three acts.

Act 1: The Story

In Act 1, we’ll go deep on the facts and stories about immigration in the U.S.

What does the data tell us about immigration in the U.S.? Who is coming and who is going and what are the trends for both? What is the mission of the U.S. Border Patrol? What would it actually mean to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico Border? What does the term “sanctuary city” mean?

Act 2: The Challenge

In Act 2, we’ll work with the audience to find practical strategies to make the public debate over immigration fact-based and productive.

The CIR and Retro Report teams will work with the audience to hone in on key questions in the immigration debate, with special attention for the points of tension in the immigration debate.  What are common misunderstandings about immigration? How and why do they emerge?

Act 3: Solutions

In Act 3, we’ll do a group brainstorm on how to burst filter bubbles and work for constructive debate and change on immigration–and other issues

With the audience, the journalists will identify practical strategies they can take back to the newsroom and share with other media when reporting on controversial issues. How can the media work directly with communities, provide trustworthy reporting on a complex issue, and help the public recognize fake news?

Get Tickets Here

Retro Report is an award-winning, digital-first documentary news organization dedicated to bringing context to today’s headlines by telling the story behind the news; it is non-partisan, independent and non-profit.  Retro Report is founded on the conviction that without an engaging and forward-looking review of high-profile events and the news coverage surrounding them, we lose a critical opportunity to understand the lessons of history.  In a culture increasingly disposed towards trending news and Twitter-sized sound bites, the importance of that mission is amplified. Retro Report has produced more than 100 short documentaries and video series and partnered with The New York Times, PBS, NBC, Politico, the Guardian, Univision and others. 

The mission of The Center for Investigative Reporting is to engage and empower the public through investigative journalism and groundbreaking storytelling in order to spark action, improve lives and protect our democracy. Founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, we are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year. Over those four decades, we have developed a reputation for being among the most innovative, credible and relevant media organizations in the country. Reveal – our website, public radio program, podcast and social media platform – is where we publish our multiplatform work.