Margaret Boden and Gaza

Prof Margaret Boden; Credit: Jay Williams (click through for source)

It's normal though tragic for the elderly to die. What's more tragic is the number of people posting they wish they'd met Margret Boden. What it took to meet her – frequently! – was participating in UK AI meetings. She was deeply committed to for example AISB, and frequently honoured by it. Sadly – despite the UK long leading in AI – British research councils stopped supporting such meetings because the meetings were merely "national." We all in every locale need to support our local networks, universities, and students as well as putting some time into keeping up with more global efforts. Maggie was fantastic at this – I'm pretty sure both of the most recent two times I talked to her were at the Houses of Parliament, where Steve Torrance often supported her participation, given her mobility issues. She came not only when she spoke, but also to listen in the audience. Keeping engaged with those trying to improve the world through the British government and media was Boden's project through her long retirement. 

 More tragic even than these missed opportunities are the number of people being killed, maimed, and starved in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and losing their health and the days of their lives in the illegal detention centres of the United States. As I struggle with the tragedies of losing people born in 1936, I wonder how to effect a future where we can be more efficacious in defending the lives of people who should be this planet's future. 

Thanks to Margaret Boden for all the work she did over the years, and to everyone who loved and promoted and supported her. May we all do the same for each other.

The above is what I wrote on facebook about the death of Margaret Boden. I expect to expand this post to include at a minimum a recounting of the time she, Sherry Turkle, and I were the "conservatives" claiming that humans were more than just our ideas, so AI could not be us. This was in the context of the meeting that turned into the book that includes the chapter Robots Should Be Slaves.  Thanks to Ezequiel Di Paolo for surfacing the excellent picture of her.