Technology

Astro Hsu investigates how financial regulators for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) may balance between privacy protection and law enforcement efficacy. “Zero-knowledge proof” is a promising approach.

Katharina Klappheck examines AI’s intricate layers of power dynamics that leads to gender and racial invisibility, exclusion, and labour exploitation.

Aifric Campbell explores the future of love and intimacy as our attention to humans is seduced by machines.

This essay collection presents how rapid developments in human-machine interactions bring challenges in ethics, labour, gender equality, and intimacy.

AI chatbots introduce ethical issues that complicate social communication. This article discusses environmental impacts, fair use, and limits of language.

In Japan, despite the hiking single elderly population, there is a chronic shortage of caregivers for home visit. As many single seniors struggle to find a conversation partner, what about interacting with a robot instead of a human? Recently, the United States introduced communication robots to minimise medical costs incurred from the elderly’s social isolation. What can the world learn from Japan?

At the end of March 2022, Shanghai was plunged into surreal silence, and scarcity. The country’s strictest Covid-19 pandemic lockdown lasted for two months. Never, since decades, had the people minded their three meals that much, to the extent of becoming the only thing they cared about. In their struggles for self-sufficiency and survival, group buying came to rescue. Did dwellers find a new sense of community or were they more fragmented?

Change is all around us; experiencing it can be exciting or worrisome, confusing or even disturbing. By contrast, the idea of “transition” stands to provide a sense of direction, in a sea of change and insecurity. Change may be happening to us; a transition has direction, it can be planned, perhaps even be initiated. It moves into a positive, sustainable direction – or so we hope. The equivalent German term “Wende” and its numerous composite terms play a prominent role in the programme of the German Green and in the international work of Heinrich Böll Stiftung (hbs).