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?

The market for carbon offsets is growing exponentially but remains filled with dodgy projects that do little for the environment. Sceptics say it’s time to do away with the voluntary carbon markets altogether and take real action through carbon taxes and emissions caps. But by focusing on the imperfections of carbon offsets, they are dismissing a viable approach to climate action that should be used alongside a broader transition towards lower carbon emissions. Read more to find out why carbon credits shouldn’t be dismissed just yet and how technology is improving the integrity of the carbon market.

Politicians and billionaires are advocating geoengineering approaches as quick fixes on challenges of climate, biodiversity and environment. Many of these technologies are too dangerous to be deployed or even experimented with in the real world.

On June 15, a webinar held jointly by the Hong Kong office of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS) and the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a consortium of leading research universities in 19 economies of the Pacific Rim, highlighted the complexity of data rights for citizens and users, with risks deriving from both under-regulation and over-regulation of AI applications.