While many of us strive for those around us to be less complete and complex humans,
we equally strive for our artificial output to be more anthropomorphic and life-like.
Is the place where both processes will find their nexus the singularity and a desert of the real we should yearn for?
—-animasuri’22
—-•
contexts:
In the world of research and application, there, lies the inflicted “AI.” I, as a flâneuring lay-person, have noticed what seems as polemics, between those experts vehemently promoting neural networks, and they staunchly nuancing any infallibility the latter camp claims, (back to / toward including) symbolic AI.
These authors, researchers, engineers, evangelists and some true believers have, surely unwittingly, poked me into considering a non-AI, digital and uneducated series, slowly collecting my interpretations on this intriguing topic. In simple terms: this is how I have been learning about your field for the past few years. Learning, as a non-machine, non-child, deems not to follow methodological institutional systematic rules, at all times and in all spaces. And then, it also does.
This process, and such output as this one here, is possibly befittingly, or overfittingly, a decomposition on (the) matter; if you will.
This exploration has been going on for a while. At times it was hidden, at times it was an openly trying to be hiding my fear to utter where the (claimed) expert giants roam.
Here, with the seemingly simple entitled photo above and among this text, I nurture a more defined trial. It is intended to be mushroomed over time. This one here, is a poem for you, Giant of Machine and Artifice.
Where are sets of meaning in the above visualization entitled “ be headed” —- if any meaning at all (to the receiver), while many to its creator and perhaps very different ones to yet other humans or other transforming transcoders?
is it to be found liminally, there in between the words (and the visual) where the artificial space separates “being” from “heading” towards something? be headed is not as be, headed not as be…………headed there.
OR-AND, is it to be found liminally at a dimension unwritten of one word hinted at, torn apart into a conjugation of being and head? Nnnnyes.
Can a network delicately unveil this and other nuanced or simultaneously parallel, hidden, yet to be unveiled or contradictory meanings? Can analysis via formal logic do so and get there?
Can the analysis unveil the unknown unknowns in possible meaning and must these then be accepted as a new ontology to unquestionably submit to?
OR-CONDITIONALLY, under the flag of pragmatic clarity and universal understanding, will an irrational broom be used to batter meaning into convenient consent? Descriptive, imposing, non-negotiably?
There is beauty in plasticity (ANDAND also as a process hinting at ambiguity + yes, don’t be afraid, at some texture of non-transparency) of meaning ANDAND metaphorical neurons ANDAND pragmatic Pierce.
This perhaps to the surprise of the initiated: beauty is sensed even by some of the uninitiated who are not (yet) seeing the enlightening covenants, enabling one seeing beauty whispered in Mathematics, while taming pedestrian and bland math.
Yes, I still lack enlightenment. Mind you, Enlightened One, so do the majority of your fellow humans. What does it then say of your dataset, if your outliers outweigh your desired sample?
The opposite, where one ridicules the other for not seeing one’s aesthetic, might, in its act of debasement by pretending to behead the other, contradict “solving” complexity. Constraining awe is then perceivable as anti-awe.
Is this our collectively carried child’s play at the highest order of human intellect; well-beyond the sphere where I and many more are to be headed? One might wish to circumvent it as such. Though, simultaneously, it might be less intelligent, yet wiser, to remember that debasement is likely the expression sprouted from unrecognized ignorance, imposed on the willingly disagreeable other.
It’s somehow thought so much easier to deny an other any consideration; deny meaning; even among they who unlocked beauty in Mathematics. Where is one’s enlightened insight then? (there, I intuit, lies a delightful paradox).
ANDYET, meaning keeps festering as long as consciousness blooms its spaces, well beyond the visualized linearity or sanctioned connectivity of a (written) syntax, (hierarchical) grammar, semantic (net), and (formalized) logic. Such as any other meaning by any other name is quickly binned, calibrated and celebrated as nonsensical.
Penrose and Hameroff hinted at a transitional in-between. A space where quantum physics and Newtonian physics are “transcoded” (for lack of any hint of substantiated understanding on my part; I am confidently lacking yet open to learning).
Is this what they call a microtubular space; is it a non-computational space? Or so my feeble mind wants to find one simplified meaning, among many more as if vectors upon vectors: pulling, pushing, stretching and contracting. How does pattern AND-OR meaning sprout there; perhaps metaphorically, as a mushroom, screaming relations in subterranean spaces.
If non-binary quantum computing and complexes of computation were to ever be-come com-bined, will logic or metaphorical representations of neural networks be able to be AND not be? Will they then be headed where all possible meaning lays to be captivated, as low hanging fruits, as if possibly decapitating any outliers be-yond reach, and which do not fit their fruity model?
Meaning is re-imagined, decomposed as a withering mycelial fruit of unknown origin. Beneath the fruits, the networking of “meaning” crosses species (“meaning” is what I anthropomorphically attach to it).
It is a truism, which is possibly hiding further depth, that the signaling occurs across and via the networks themselves. The transitioning of information signals occur in between, and perhaps because of, the negative spaces which tautologically lie outside the recognized held space, and which the physical attributes of the network occupy.
I imagine (and only imagine) the previous as if where space is itself explicitly an informational and meaning-giving, metaphysical, intentional non-architecture. I continue to imagine that this non-architecture is evolved via subtractive and additive synthesis over space and time.
I go deeper down the rabbit hole of my imagination and indulgently give self-satisfying meaning: this non-architecture is imagined as if a medium between quantum physics and the ever so slightly more tangible world.
Do I *know* and *understand* what I am writing about here?
Answer: no.
I do know and understand that I do not know nor understand. And yet, writing is learning as a snapshot in a process of becoming, if the reader is willing to be informed (or rather: willing to value assigning meaning) as such. This might be what still distinguishes the machine from the human; it does not know that it does not know nor that it does not understand.
Reverting this state back to humans, some who are not knowing they do not know that this could be given meaning to. Meaning as being imitating, inconsiderate, flippant, with pretense, pretentious, delusional, arrogant, having hubris or plainly being (un)intentionally dangerous.
Yes, a human can want to not know what they don’t know. Machines can neither offer this type of deceit. A machine cannot not want to register an input.
As much as their respective opposites, I also imagine this not-knowing and this not-understanding are relational, contextual and adaptive. I find in these meaning by relating back to myself, via self-reflection (however flawed), and (the unwitting) others.
The machine, as a human derivative, is at this stage neither able to express such a verbalization of imaginative meaning-making processes. It is derivative cleverness and hence incomplete and not nuanced to sensibly represent the fullest in-between spaces of human potential meaning-making.
In analogy, we humans are derivatives of the stars, calling a human a star does not make it so ANDYETNOR make it so any less.
Will the artificial net or the artificial logic, each as a model of the universal “rules” (though what with rules for the non-computational?), then be enabled to identify the (imagined) ability to be, ANDNOT be, contained in one place only, or would we rather loose our heads over this?
while the mathematized DALL-E mangles meaning and defaces human heads into seas of blurred humanization, we humans are sanctioned for playful or surreal or other (un)meaning-making, or exploration thereof at other more or less (costly) dead-ends, leaving serendipitous futures beheaded of meaning to be-come. It does not have to be if we keep our and more so others’ heads on.
Intentionally blurring and poetically yours,
—animasuri’22
post scriptum: I decided not to reference any text implied with (and in between) the above visuals and words.
there seem to be about 881000 “registered” scholarly “robots.” It seems not that obvious for them to be intelligently understood, and accepted as robots, by the one that rules them all
…perhaps lack of (deep & wide & fluid & relational) understanding could lead to undesirable impositions?
—-•
“Ubuntu & (A)I” | “I am a robot” . digitally edited digital screenshot —animasuri’22
—-•
Basil Bernstein was succinctly paraphrased by Atkinson when the latter wrote that “ritualized language use is highly predictable. In the most extreme case, the language may be entirely predictable. Or at least, such predictability is culturally required: deviations from the prescribed forms will be negatively sanctioned and the social occasion regarded as spoiled. There is no room here, socially speaking, for significant innovation. The innovator in such a context is deviant—perhaps heretical” (2002, 62)
A heretic, a disruptor, a rebel, a whistle-blower, an “enfant terrible”, a critic, a trickster, an anarchist, a maverick or a “dwarsligger” is someone who offers deviations during our collective unwillingness to relationally learn. The latter, “dwarsligger” is crudely translatable from Dutch as a hinderer, or an obstructionist. Yet, possibly it is better trans-coded as that strong crossbeam, supporting the rails carrying us collectively. Or, it is a book printed parallel to its spine
By observers these roles are too often assumed as having a plethora of “fun” to kick the quiet, & internally-perceived as well-functioning, hornets’ nest. Sure, to the hornet, the hornet is peaceful & abiding. To the hornet these external characters had best remain a mere aesthetic yet quiet, “sois belle et tais-toi”
The perceived proverbial kick these beauties can administer is not necessarily provided in “fun” nor is it indented to destroy universality of peace, nor create chaos. Many of these actors are non-violent & find civility in high-dimensional order
Hear this folks, self-reflection & reflection can lead to uncomfortable observations that require a movement out of a status quo, or in other words, out of a comfort zone into a liminal space of je ne sais pas quoi. It can happen on one’s sofa yet, it will jolt the spine
Of course, by the hornets these uncomfortable characters are too easily equated with chaos or violence; wrongfully so. In effect, the equation is a violent act of denial & character assassination; perhaps heretically so (Ibid). It is especially odd to see these words (chaos, anarchist & violence) equated in European or North-American setting while these same societies call for innovation & human transformation
After-all, how would this collection of diverse agents fit within the networked social fabric & its relational learning processes? How is relational learning stacked if not transformational & somewhat unsettling? That’s for humans: you, me, us
Now, how do some of the digital social network algorithms compare? Could it be, just as by some of their makers, that algorithms too equate human proverbial “crossbeams,” not with a solid ride but rather, with undesired disruption? Please your reader (ie use their language) or be technologically regarded as spoiling the social event
Any transformation had best come as conscious nuanced co-interrupting contextualizing humane acts forward
Reference:
Basil Bernstein via Atkinson, P.(2002). “Language, Structure, Reproduction: an Introduction to the Sociology of Basil Bernstein.” New York: Methuen & Co via Taylor & Francis e-Library. (p.62).
Continuing on that same page the author and the referenced author continue with interesting insights on “tradition” which I believe to find among proverbial hornets or their upsetting characters alike. Yes, I intuit that the innovator too will expose those who are deviating the “innovation”, as heretic. Ah, our species has so many human relational areas to transform.
An extra, rather tautological, quote from page 62:
“There is no such thing as a perfectly frozen, unchanging ‘tradition’ which is perfectly transmitted from generation to generation in unmodified forms” (Ibid).
Thinking of what I label as “boutique ethic”, such as AI Ethics, must indeed come with thinking about ethics (Cf. here ). I think this is not only an assignment for the experts. It is also one for me: the layperson-learner.
Or is it?
Indeed, if seen through more-than a techno-centric lens alone, some voices do claim that one should not be bothered with ethics if one does not understand the technology which is confining ethics into a boutique ethic; e.g. “AI”. (See 2022 UNESCO report on AI curriculum in K-12). I am learning to disagree .
I am not a bystander, passively looking on, and onto my belly button alone. Opening acceptance to Noddings’ thought on care (1995, 187) : “a carer returns to the cared-for,” when in the most difficult situations principles fail us (Rossman & Rallis 2010). How are we caring for those affected by the throwing around of the label “AI” (as a hype or as a scarecrow)?
Simultaneously, how are we caring for those affected by the siphoning off of their data, for application, unknown to the affected, of data derived from them and processed in opaque and ambiguous processes? (One could, as one of the many anecdotes, summon up the polemics surrounding DuckduckGo and Microsoft, or Target and baby product coupons, and so on)
And yet, let us expand back to ethics surrounding the boutiqueness of it: the moment I label myself (or another such as the humans behind DuckDuckGo) as “stupid”, “monster”, “trash”, “inferior”, ”weird”, “abnormal;” “you go to hell” or other more colorful itemizations, is the moment my (self-)care evaporates and my ethical compass moves away from the “...unconditional worth of all human beings and the equal respect to which they are entitled” (Rossman & Rallis 2010). Can then a mantra come to the aid: ”carer, return to the cared-for”? I want to say: “yes”.
Though, what is the impact of the mantra if the other does not apply this mantra (i.e., DuckDuckGo and Microsoft)? And yet, I do not want to get into a yoyo “spiel” of:
Speaker 1:“you first”,
Speaker 2: “no, you first”,
Speaker 1: “no, really, you first”.
Here a mantra of: “lead by example, and do not throw the first or n-ed stone” might be applicable? Is this then implying self-censorship and laissez-faire? No.
I can point at DuckDuckGo and Microsoft as an anecdote, and I think I can learn via ethics, into boutique ethics, what this could mean through various (ethical and other) lenses (to me, to others, to them, to it) while respecting the act of the carer. Through that lens I might wonder what drove these businesses to this condition and use that as a next steppingstone in a learning process. This thinking would take me out of the boutique and into the larger market, and even the larger human community.
The latter is what I base on what some refer to as the “ethic of individual rights and responsibilities” (Ibid). It is my responsibility to learn and ask and wonder. Then I assume that, the action by an individual who has following been debased by a label I were to throw at them (including myself), as those offered in the preceding sentence, is then judged by the “respect to which they are entitled” (Ibid). This is then a principle assuming that “universal standards exist” (Ibid). And yet, on a daily basis, especially on communal days, and that throughout history: I hurdle. After all we can then play with words “what is respect and what type of respect are they indeed entitled to?”
I want to aim for a starting point of an “unconditional” respect, however naive that might seem and however meta-Jesus-esque or Ghandi-esque, Dr. King-esque, or Mandela-esque that would require me to become. Might this perhaps be a left libertarian stance? Can I “respectfully” throw the first stone? Or lies the eruption in the metaphorical of “throwing a stone” rather than the physical?
Perhaps there are non-violent responses that are proportional to the infraction. This might come in handy. I can decide no longer to use DuckDuckGo. However, can I decouple from Microsoft without decoupling from my colleagues, family, community? Herein the learning as activism might then be found in looking and promoting alternatives toward a technological ecosystem of diversity with transparency, robustness and explainability and fair interoperability.
“Am I a means to their end?” I might ask then “or am I an end in myself?” This then brings me back to the roles of carer. Are, in this one anecdotal reference, DuckDuckGo and Microsoft truly caring about its users or rather about other stakeholders? Through a capitalist lens one might be inclined to answer and be done with it. However, I prefer to keep an openness for the future, to keep on learning and considering additional diversifying scenarios and acts that could lead to equity to more than the happy few.
Through a lens of thinking about consequences of my actions (which is said to be an opposing ethical stance compared to the above), I sense the outcome of my hurdling is not desirable. However, the introduction of alternatives or methods toward understanding of potentials (without imposing) might be. I do not desire to dismiss others (e.g., cast them out, see them punished, blatantly ignore them with the veil of silenced monologue). At times, I too believe that the act of using a label is not inherently right or wrong. So I hurdle, ignorant of the consequence to the other, their contexts, their constraints, their conditions and ignorant of the cultural vibe or relationships I am then creating. Yes, decomposing a relationship is creating a fragmented composition as much as non-dialog is dialog by absence. What would be my purpose? It’s a rhetorical question, I can guess.
I am able to consider some of the consequence to others (including myself), though not all. Hence, I want to become (more) caring. The ethical dichotomy between thinking about universals or consequence is decisive in the forming of the boutique ethic. Then again, perhaps these seemingly opposing ethics are falsely positioned in an artificial dichotomy. I tend to intuit so. The holding of opposing thought and dissonance is a harmony that simply asks a bit more effort that, to me, is embalmed ever so slightly by the processes of rhizomatic multidimensional learning.
This is why I want to consider boutique ethics while still struggling with being ignorant, yet learning, about types and wicket conundrums in ethics , at larger, conflicting and more convoluted scales. So too when considering a technology I am affected by yet ignorant of.
References
Gretchen B. R., Sharon F. R. (2010). Everyday ethics: reflections on practice, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23:4, 379-391
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rossman, G.B., S.F. Rallis. (1998). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rossman, G.B., S.F. Rallis. (2003). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
UNESCO. (2022). K-12 AI curricula-Mapping of government-endorsed AI curriculum.
In exploring this statement, I wish to take the opportunity to focus on, extrapolate and perhaps contextualize the word “worry” a bit here.
I sense “worry” touches on an important human process of urgency.
What if… we were to consider who might/could be “worried”, and, when “worry” is confused or used as a distracting label. Could this give any interesting insight into our human mental models and processes (not of those who do the worrying but rather of those using the label)?
The term might be unwittingly resulting as if a tool for confusion or distraction (or hype). I think to notice that “worry,” “opposition,” “reflection,” “anxiety” and “critical thought-exercises,” or “marketing rhetorics toward product promotion,” are too easily confused. [Some examples of convoluted confusions might be (indirectly) hinted at in this article: here —OR— here ]
To me, at least, these above listed “x”-terms, are not experienced as equatable, just yet.
As a species, within which a set of humans claims to be attracted to innovation, we might want to innovate (on) not only externals, or symptoms, but also causes, or inherent attributes to the human interpretational processes and the ability to apply nuances therewith, eg, is something “worrying” or is it not (only) “worrying” and perhaps something else / additional that takes higher urgency and/or importance?
I imagine that in learning these distinctions, we might actually “innovate”.
Engaging in a thought-exercise is an exercise toward an increase of considering altered, alternative or nuanced potential human pathways, towards future action and outcomes, as if exploring locational potentials: “there-1” rather then “there-2” or “there-n;” and that rather than an invitation for another to utter: “don’t worry.”
If so, critical thought might not need to be a subscription to “worry” nor the “dismissal” of 1 scenario, 1 technology, 1 process, 1 ideology, etc, over the other [*1]
Then again, from a user’s point of view, I dare venture that the use of the word “worry” (as in “I worry that…”) might not necessarily be a measurable representation of any “actual” state of one’s psychology. That is, an observable behavior or interpreted (existence of an) emotion has been said to be no guaranteed representation of the mental models or processes of they who are observed (as worrying). [a hint is offered here —OR— here ]
Hence, “worry” could be / is at times seemingly used as a rhetorical tool from either the toolboxes of ethos, pathos or logos, and not as an externalization of one’s actual emotional state of that ephemeral moment.
footnote
—-•
[*1]
Herein, in these distinctions, just perhaps, might lie a practical excercise of “democracy”.
If critical thought, rhetoric, anxiety, opposition are piled and ambiguously mixed together, then one might be inclined to self-censor due to the mere sense of overwhelming confusion of not being sure to be perceived as dealing with one over, or instead of, the other.
As a layperson, using my brain’s ‘algorithms’, trying to pattern-recognize the tree from the forest, I wish to share my ignorant “insight,” obtained during my ongoing life-long learning, being confident someone somewhere (perhaps a future me) will find an attribute or two to disagree on:
‘Symbolic Artificial Intelligence’ is synonymous to the more colloquial ‘Good Old-Fashioned AI’, which is in turn simplified to the abbreviation ‘GOFAI’. Symbolic AI uses symbols that could be read by humans. These symbols represent ‘real world’ concepts. These concepts could be formal logic concepts or other (e.g. ‘linguistic’). These symbols are used (or ‘manipulated’) to create ‘rules.’
‘Rules’ are also used to enable the use (or manipulation) of these symbols. This, in its entirety, I understand, for now, as an integrated whole that encapsulates human (‘expert’) knowledge, and these aforementioned rules, into a system which I understand as a ‘Rule-Based System’.
For instance then, ‘Reasoning through syllogisms’ is a rule-based method toward logic reasoning and implies a set of rules used by humans that are also computational and hence, I sense, could be used in the above-mentioned AI systems.
As an added bonus, I think to understand that if these rules and symbols are then used with, for instance, human (aka ‘natural’) language processing (‘NLP’), then one can see the ‘deterministic’ at work. And yet, here, I feel my learning is still very shaky.
That stated, my syntactic logic, of the latter, should not be turned around in thinking that I believe to have learned that NLP is inevitably and only GOFAI. I don’t think so; for now, I do not understand it as such.
This is where the last paragraph of my story here above is trying to imply the second major branch, along the first branch as described here above, in the field of AI: (un)supervised ML, ANNs and the likes; or so I am understanding it to the present day.
Some of these terms and words, in this second branch of the AI field, I explore elsewhere here on the blog, and that as output of my auto-didactic learning processes.
Keeping it as basic as possible, with the aim to explain it to anyone who might ask me (while I do think it more cautious not to ask this layperson), where could I improve or correct this “understanding” (which I assume to be lacking)?
It might be desirable to consider (functional, nonlinear) literacy in a larger context and not only within the market or professional realms; and not only of data preceding AI alone
For instance: computational thinking (as a methodology & secondarily as an “attitude” for increasing awareness and human discernment about one’s mental models creation) could (and is starting to) occur at a childhood’s level (K-12)
One might want to methodologically map this with digital literacy: not collapsed to technique or production alone, and yet, also through community lenses, eco-system & environmental lenses, cultural lenses, and policy lenses, which might/should imply ethics and careful consideration, via different mental models, allowing, for instance, what-if scenarios, value-thinking & context/consequential thought
And a learner could also be thinking about thinking:
“what could be (non-human) thinking, intelligence, awareness? How could these be imaginable, even if someone believed these not to exist outside of humans? What is signal versus communication versus language? What is poetry if not human-made? What is signal versus knowledge? Why might someone (besides me) care about alternative forms of intelligence? What would it be like to be an intelligence stuck in a car? Does consciousness exist? Is thought a tool of the mind and language a technology? What could it mean (to someone besides me) “to understand”? How do these technologies influence information? What can I do about it? How would these questions influence (my) design, application or recycling? How do / could these affect (my) energy use and (my being in this) environment? How would I balance reflection with action, with revision, with innovation, with harmony, with well-being with compassion, with…? How can I be(come) “smarter” (less gullible / biased / less dependent) about these structures and processes?”
…and so on
Next one could consider media literacy mapped with data literacy & learning about various visualizations of the same data leading to subjectivities, & implying information, misinformation, disinformation or confusions in representation and cognitive processes, leading to sustained undesirable biases & behaviors (note: debate and dialog about “undesirable” as ongoing, compassionate and driven by caring discernment)
Then, as the attached post resonates with me hinting behind its self-labeled “simplified” structure: AI literacy (well beyond the hype, brain mimicry or Neural Networks & Machine Learning alone; and inclusive of AI ethics even if, though some voices disagree, the technical insight is minimal)
These literacies could be nurtured both via #offline non-digital methods and via non-brand specific (online) electronics (soft & hardware)
ai strategy minus foundations could lack awareness and (longitudinal, multidimensional) sustainability
Header: sculpture by Lucas H. (2022); reproduced here with permission
Imagine the following scenario and world:
Doing the task well, is no longer sufficient in this world. In this world one must incessantly proof that one can do the task well, in a jargon and within time- and space-sensitive confinements that are defined and logged elsewhere; external to oneself. Either such processes toward proof are humanly observed (i.e., by other homunculi), or they are automated.
In effect, in this imagined world, the latter seems to be increasingly the case, spreading as if an ink blot across the ages and the social areas within which that world’s human individual (perhaps a homunculus) moves into, and out of, during their lifetime.
In this imaginary scenario, the task, as well, is no longer simply the act of making a living for oneself, one’s family, one’s community, one’s national context or one’s in-group’s nascent generations. The task is any data-generating act; preferably acts that can be aggregated and capitalized on by involving, at times unknown and obscured, third-parties.
The latter actor then is enabled to create, via its tasks, those tools toward improving tasks, to be fed back to those who have provided the data sets in the first place (e.g., that same homunculus), and to yet other parties interested in visualizing tasks outside of these tasks’ initially intended settings or (meta)physical aims.
In this imagined story, and in your imagination, where or how do you see yourself (if at all; and / or if you were that homunculus)?
—animasuri’22
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Header visual: digitally photo edited digital photo of paper and pencil folded against wood . “Mediated Existence” . —animasuri’22
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References and perverted note-taking intertwining “#task”, “#assessment” and “#data” from:
William, D. (2006) Assessment for #Learning. Cambridge AfL Keynote. Online Retrievable from here.
data tasked from bodies (as shedded data and free labor) from here
data tasked across species (as alienating datasets from those who do or don’t count) from here
data tasked across borders (as disembodied data teleportation) from here
data tasked from mobiles (as extended-cognition extenders) from here
#dataliteracy #wellbeing #systemsthinking #alienation #poetry #creativity #adaptability
Far more eloquently described, more then 15 years ago, by Lawrence Lessig, I too sense an open or free culture, and design there within, might be constrained or conditioned by technology , policy, community and market vectors.
I perceived Lessig’s work then to have been focused on who controls your cultural artifacts. These artifacts, I sense, could arguably be understood as types of (in)tangible data sets given meaningful or semiotic form as co-creative learning artifacts (by you and/or others).
I imagine, for instance, “Mickey Mouse” as a data set (perhaps extended, as a cognitive net, well beyond the character?). Mickey, or any other artifact of your choosing, aids one to learn about one’s cultural narratives and, as extended cognition, in positive feedback loops, about one self in communicative co-creation with the other (who is engaged in similar interactions with this and other datasets). However, engaging with a Mickey meant / means risking persecution under IPR (I wrote on this through an artistic lens here ).
Today, such data sets for one’s artificial learning (ie learning through a human made artifact) are (also) we ourselves. We are data. Provocatively: we are (made) artificial by the artificial. Tomorrow’s new psychoanalyst-teacher could very well be your friendly neighborhood autonomous data visualizer; or so I imagine.
Mapping Lessig, with the article below, and with many of the sources one could find (e.g.: Jason Silva, Kevin Kelly, Mark Sprevak, Stuart Russell, Kurzweil, Yuval Noah Harari, Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta ) I am enabled to ponder:
Who do the visualizations serve? Who’s privacy and preferences do they interfere with? Who’s data is alienated beyond the context within which its use was intended? Who owns (or has the IPR) on the data learned from the data I create during my co-creative cultural learning (e.g: online social networking, self-exhibition as well as more formal online learning contexts); allowing third parties to learn more about me then I am given access to learn about myself?
Moreover, differently from they who own Mickey, who of us can sue the users of our data, or the artifacts appropriated therefrom, as if it were (and actually is) our own IPR?
Given the spirit of artificial intelligence in education (AIED), I felt that the following article, published these past days on such data use that is algorithmically processed in questionable ethical or open manners, could resonate with others as well. (ethics , aiethics )
Epilogue — A quote:
“The FTC has required companies to disgorge ill-gotten monetary gains obtained through deceptive practices, forcing them to delete algorithmic systems built with ill-gotten data could become a more routine approach, one that modernizes FTC enforcement to directly affect how companies do business.”
References
Lessig’s last speech on free culture: here
Lessig’s Free Culture book: here
