We create jungles we instill the wild poison ivy, cactuses ‘n’ cacti. Child!
we cut down trees we mow the lawn it’s a dawn of steel and wires it’s position and image for hire
when sofas and desk chairs as softness of comfort compound on relax: have you had a run since you turned thirty one?
hiding from claw and teeth’s life’s a breeze where masteries bring minds of pretended peace and luxurious anxieties brittles the new ease
lightness, lightness, brightness smile, teeth whiteness, comfy conductors, prescriptions conscription as scriptures of be
transparency and clarity ease, simplicity, ease keep it dumb or is it numb or is it under the thumb? who’s to say, who’s to see!
smile for cameras, here and there, or don’t fine-tune exposures and actions none-done life looks like a magazine, factual and undone There is chocolate melted on projections
life’s idealisms are realisms for some are stoic triggers
a saturation remanence of a probabilistically made up history
you will be able to unearth
the generated steps on a Moon landing film set
you will be able to dust off
The flat Earth from bloated dreams and pigeons and turtles with girth
you will be able to identify
those who claim no expertise yet by doing so get away with accolades
you will be able to say you were enabled
There will come a day we will claim you had agency
you will be able to deny that
and as for this life beautiful you smile, truce, and let us play truth
to the empowered.
—animasuri’24
—-• trigger
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What Is Agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 962–1023. https://doi.org/10.1086/231294
Floridi, L., Cowls, J., Beltrametti, M., Chatila, R., Chazerand, P., Dignum, V., Luetge, C., Madelin, R., Pagallo, U., Rossi, F., Schafer, B., Valcke, P., & Vayena, E. (2018). AI4People-An Ethical Framework for a Good AI Society: Opportunities, Risks, Principles, and Recommendations. Minds and Machines, 28(4), 689–707. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-018-9482-5
While we are collectively & synchronously brushing our teeth –in harmony with taking “the World From Another Point of View,” as the Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman encourages us, (1973)– let us revisit Norbert Wiener.
Besides likely Feynmanian brushing, Norbert also made a few predictions through his publications about “the development of controlled machines and about the corresponding techniques of automatization.” (1960)
Playing with Feynman, when we brush teeth at that sharp Earthly edge of day-to-night, & vice versa, have we been developed into a collective controlled machine by expert “dentists” & “parents” alike? Wiener claimed to foresee this having “important consequences affecting the society of the future.” (Wiener 1960)
Here is one of his 1960 predictions. Several of its attributes might harmonic oscillate with today’s AI applications & mythologies, grinding away at the socially-cleansed enamel we hold so dear:
“If we use, to achieve our purposes, [0] a mechanical agency [1] with whose operation we cannot efficiently interfere [2] once we have started it, [3] because the action is so fast [4] and irrevocable that we have not the data [5] to intervene before the action is complete, [6] then we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine [0] is the purpose which we really desire [7] and not merely a colorful imitation [8] of it”
Today, more than 60 years later: what are the new points of view relatable to achieving our purposes? That is, where the “point” in the “point of view” itself (à la Feynman) is innovative (irrespective of any of our technologies being more, or less, innovative)? Above I highlighted 8 attributes in Wiener’s quote that trigger both teeth grinding & the consideration of view-pointing in the imagined character writing this post. Below, I will touch on only three of those (if any one wishes I can also touch on the others)
This post does not pretend to answer the existence of innovating points of view. Besides hinting at some present concerns & polemic or hyped tensions (Wiener 1960, Samuel 1960) going back to the early days of ethics surrounding AI as a field, this post lets you widen your own points of view
& yet, we can note with text, context & subtext that “therefore, the task is not so much to see what no one has seen before as to think about what no one has yet thought about what everyone sees. That’s why it takes so much more to be a philosopher than a physicist” (Schopenhauer 1851)
As an influencing side note: in so many ways it is ironical that this quote is not a quote, as many claim on our (mis)informing internet, by the physicist Schrödinger. Either way, in allowing us a place in & a sense of the world, this quote can be extended: it is also our task to relationally look backward, forward, presently, outward & inward, far & nearby, & always confidently celebrate doubt
ITEM [0]
“purposes:” are these now aligned with needs, urgencies, importance? Who is “we”? Whose purposes, needs, urgencies and weighing of importance is addressed and is answered? If probably not all (and if any) needs (etc.) are considered or met, then who is affected by the consequential ethical debt?
Atari, M., Xue, M. J., Park, P. S., Blasi, D., Henrich, J. (2023, Sep 22). Which Humans?. Harvard University, University of Massachusetts Amherst. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5b26t.
Lazar, Seth, and Alondra Nelson. “AI Safety on Whose Terms?” Science 381, no. 6654 (July 14, 2023): 138–138. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi8982.
Petrozzino, C. (2021) “Who Pays for Ethical Debt in AI?” AI and Ethics 1, no. 3 (August 1, 2021): 205–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-020-00030-3.
ITEM [1]
agency has been understood as a “temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its “iterational” or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a “projective” capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a “practical-evaluative” capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment)” (Emirbayer et al. 1998)
Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Ann Mische. “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 4 (1998): 962–1023. https://doi.org/10.1086/231294.
Does this fit any or all (labeled) agent?
ITEM [5]
quality collection of data (e.g., in pre-process: consent, IPR, right to be forgotten. In post-output: libel via the mislabeled “hallucinations”) is unique from quality of data.
Samuel, A. L. (1960). Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation–A Refutation. Science, 132(3429), 741–742. doi:10.1126/science.132.3429.741
Schopenhauer, A. (1851) Parerga und Paralipomena: Kleine Philosophische Schriften. Volume 2, paragraph 76, p 93. Berlin: A. W. Hayn. Original: “Daher ist die Aufgabe nicht sowohl zu sehen was noch keiner gesehen hat, als bei Dem was Jeder sieht, zu denken was noch Keiner gedacht hat. Darum auch gehört so sehr viel mehr dazu, ein Philosoph als ein Physiker zu seyn.” https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_WuUOAAAAIAAJ/page/92/mode/2up
Wiener, N. (1960). Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation. Science 131, 1355-1358. DOI:10.1126/science.131.3410.1355
they call in at the least human hour for errands from the mind coped with ease and pulled out of a hat dangling with whistles and their phrasing ringing a bell It’s the sexual orientation between pen and paper do you carry it left or rightward penetrating upper layers angled onto the smooth skin of the empty canvas period and then nothing more off to the publisher who sanctions the matrimony with a public statement as words as pubic hair as sprinkled as snow as sugar sweet enticement of high brow pornography let the cultured look in for you perform a two by two or a threesome lined up on a sheet of promise and a hint of a punctum as the final resting place for remembrance until the next riddle comes along
wiping with Gustav feet fingers faces wiping sour I was there: criminal allure
—animasuri’23
ref: IMG_20230708_084746_1.jpg
8 Jul 2023, at 15:42 via Dr. WSA
Epilogue: “IMG_20230708_084746_1.jpg” or a picture speaks a thousand words. What if one hints at these thousand words and then removes the picture? Does this pervert, augment, represent what “IMG_20230708_084746_1.jpg” visualizes or what one imagines it visualizes?
Any version of a perceived apocalypse lies behind us. We are mesmerized by its reflection ahead of us, while procrastinating our individual and collective urgencies.
