Philosophy, Technology, and AI. "The problem with artificial intelligence is (still) that computers don't (yet?) give a damn."
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withoutwhy.substack.comLatest Issues
Introducing My “Being and Time” Lecture Series
Goings About
This week, I’m in the recording studio today and tomorrow with one of my bands, WILDIFIRE. Then, directly from the recording studio on Wednesday, I take an airplane up to Crescent City, where I’m hosting a small retr...
My Paper in “The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Work”
screen grab of my article’s entry
Getting to It
All over the place talking heads and AI executives are promising (or warning?) that AI is on the verge of automating most of human work. What are we to make of this claim? And what would...
How to Give a Damn and Stay Punk in an Automated World (video)
Youtube thumbnail for my punk and care talk. “Angry Drummer Face” photo of me courtesy of Rob Coons.
Refuse the defaults.
Make things rather than just consume them.
Celebrate experimental amateurism.
Do things for th...
Why Not Brain Rot: AI & Contemporary Nihilism (video)
Thumbnail for the YouTube video. The foundational image is from when I gave the talk at ASEP meeting in Bombay Beach in January 2026, atop the Bombay Beach Museum of Bombay Beach (a double decker storage container with the sides cut out ove...
The Ambivalent Allure of Automation
Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1, as assembled in 1833, exhibited 1862, and later in the South Kensington Museum. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
How can we harness and orchestrate the awesome powers of automation while preserving t...
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B.’s substack, "Without Why," focuses on what it means to be alive in an age of intelligent machines. He is a lecturer and visiting scholar in Philosophy at UC Berkeley and an affiliate researcher at Topos Institute. He also drums in 3 punk bands.
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