For moral reasons, we should not (now or in the future) create robots to replace humans in every undesirable job. At least some of the labour we might hope to avoid will require human-equivalent intelligence. If we make machines with human-equivalent intelligence then we must start thinking about them as our moral equivalents. If they are our moral equivalents then it is prima facie wrong to ow...

Stochastic variational inference (SVI) employs stochastic optimization to scale up Bayesian computation to massive data. Since SVI is at its core a stochastic gradient-based algorithm, horizontal parallelism can be harnessed to allow larger scale inference. We propose a lock-free parallel implementation for SVI which allows distributed computations over multiple slaves in an asynchronous style....

We use slave voyage data from 18th century Great Britain and France to answer two questions: 1) How important was the managerial quality of owners and captains in slave trading? and 2) What explains the substantial variation in managerial quality? Utilizing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, in which we observe the performance of owners and captains in each of their voyages, we follow the...

While U.S. slave institutions formally guaranteed slaveowner property, the threat of fugitive slaves constrained economic development in the slave sector. We present new evidence on the economics of the slave South, focusing on the enforcement of slave property rights. We collect data on the characteristics of, and money rewards offered to slave catchers for, individual runaway slaves from 20,0...

Objective/Context: This article aims to discuss the idea of “good treatment” given slaves, as well concept benevolence and paternalism in rural Brazilian properties, by using data on Benedictine Congregation Brazil, it was richest most influential religious order country nineteenth century. Methodology: The documentation analyzed based “antidiscipline” coined Michel de Certeau. sources highligh...

A threefold inscription scratched on a tile found in the surroundings of Reggio Calabria, dating back to late 2nd century BCE, evidences for insults addressed slaves employed local pottery. Both context and abusive terms point controversy broken out among colleagues within place work. The offensive words reveal Greek-Latin bilingualism, which Latin plays role language first learned used everyda...