Monthly Archives: October 2022

text | poetry, The field of AI

<< Transition By Equation >>

focus pair: Mechanomorphism | Anthropomorphism

One could engage in the following over-simplifying, dichotomizing and outrageous exercise:

if we were to imagine that our species succeeded in collectively transforming humanity, that is, succeeding in how the species perceives its own ontological being as one of:

“…we are best defined and relatable through mechanomorphic metaphors, mechanomorphic self-images, mechanomorphic relations and datafying processes,”

At that imaginary point, any anthropomorphism (as engine for designs or visionary aims) within technologies ( and that with a unique attention to those associated with the field of “AI”) might be imagined to be(come) empowered, enabled or “easier” to be accomplished with mechanomorphized “humans.”

In such imagination, the mechanomorphized human, with its flesh turned powerless and stale, and its frantic fear of frailty, surrenders.

It could be imagined being “easy,” & this since the technology (designer) would “simply” have to mimic the (human as) technology itself: machine copies machine to become machine.

Luckily this is an absurd imagination as much as Guernica is forgettable as “merely” cubistic surrealism.

text | wondering, The field of AI

<< Not Condemning the Humane into a Bin of Impracticality >>


There’s a tendency to reassign shared human endeavors into a corner of impracticality, via labels of theory or thing-without-action-nor-teeth: Philosophy (of science & ethics), art(ists),(fore)play, fiction, IPR, consent & anything in-between measurability of 2 handpicked numbers. Action 1: Imagine a world without these. Action 2: Imagine a world only with these.

Some will state that if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist in terms of being confined as a quantitative pool (e.g. data set) it can be ignored. Ignoring can be tooled in a number of ways: devalue, or grab to revalue through one’s own lens on marketability.

(re-)digitization, re-categorization, re-patterning of the debased, to create a set for remodeled reality, equals a process that is of “use” in anthropomorphization, and mechanomorphization: a human being is valued as datasets of “its” output, e.g., a mapping of behavior, results of an (artistic or other multimodal) expression, a KPI, a score.

While technology isn’t neutral, the above is neither singularly a technological issue. It is an ideologically systematized issue with complexity and multiple vectors at play (i.e. see above: that what seems of immediate practicality, or that what is of obvious value, is not dismissed).

While the scientific methods & engineering methods shouldn’t be dismissed nor confused, the humans in their loops aren’t always perceiving themselves as engines outputting discrete measurables. Mechanomorphism takes away the “not always” & replaces it with a polarized use vs waste

Could it be that mechanomorphism, reasonably coupled with anthropomorphism, is far more a concern than its coupled partner, which itself is a serious process that should also allow thought, reflection, debate, struggle, negotiation, nuance, duty-of-care, discernment & compassion?

epilogue:

…one could engage in the following over-simplifying, dichotomizing and outrageous exercise: if we were to imagine that our species succeeded in collectively transforming humanity (as how the species perceives its own ontological being) to be one of “we are best defined and relatable through mechanomorphic metaphors, relations and datafying processes,” then any anthropomorphism within technologies (with a unique attention to those associated with the field of “AI”) might be imagined to be(come) easier to be accomplished, since it would simply have to mimic itself: machine copies machine to become machine. Luckily this is absurd as much as Guernica is cubistically surreal.

Packaging the above, one might then reread Robert S. Lynd’s words penned in 1939: “…the responsibility is to keep
everlastingly challenging the present with the question: But what is it that we human beings want, and what things would have to be done, in what ways and in what sequence, in order to change the present so as to achieve it?”

(thank you to Dr. WSA for triggering this further imagination)

Lynd, R. S. (1939). Knowledge For What?. Princeton: Princeton University Press

text | poetry, text | wondering, The field of AI

<< The Non-actualized Possible >>


My best,
never to be mine, are
moments in memory that are

relational without explicit condition
and without explicit intent
nor with the intent of physical transaction

The transaction occurred metaphysically
The transaction was a side effect
of the transitional nature of the in-between

The transaction of the intangibles were in function
of fleetingly maintaining, ever so shortly,
the potential of relation,

beyond the fetal state of that relation
where the relation most likely, yet not intentionally,
would not grow beyond

Even in relationships that endured very long
and some still are continuing
the moments of depth, bond and passion

are mainly those of metaphysical fleeing, seemingly un-calculated, spontaneous, short-lived, unrepeated de-habiting interactions; with integrity or authenticity. They occur in meters and stanza, spaces and pauses, and rhythms and tempos unknown, changing yet familiar and the fade, they fade, the fade is heavenly uninhabited and uninhibitedly human.

All the while these relationships too find depth in the custom, habit and ritual no longer in need of negotiation yet filled with mutual respect, compassion and nuanced care. Those moments that are not taken beyond a pinnacle of saturation and fade in satisfaction before any sourness or staleness sets in. They exist because they do not have to.

These moments are not mechanized, not reproduced, not automated. Possibly they are not even anthropomorphic yet they are humanly experienced. They are not capitalised neither in letter nor in cent. They do follow sequence and arguably they have some algorithmic pattern as much as we can see a facial pattern on the surface of Mars.

Yet such models would lack the intangible they had intended to capture: “I was there.” And when they do claim to contain the experiences, they shall be adapted, or abandoned for yet another unforeseen, even serendipitously so. In their eagerness such models would confirm an ungraspable ontology of the anti-ontological.

What are these moments in memory? None possible to be actually reproduced yet actually there following intentional triggering. The events are memorized, fantastical structures allowing to trigger the sensation of the indescribable moment. All in all nonsensical these moments are when tried to be verbalized; as the words here are attempting, and failing. Would Magritte now rise as an event to one such moment or one such set of moments?

What are these moments in memory triggered by what events? The events of an imagined memorized past could have been those few minutes standing in front of an artwork while an other human was standing there as well. Or, I now imagine, I was Tintin’s dog while standing next to a human; a not-Tintin human. Not saying a word. Not being explicitly acknowledged, except perhaps with that fleeing movement of air when peacefully moving around the artwork. Now the artwork becomes a sculpture, or an artifact, of three dimensional potential; since we are crossing each other while walking around the work; four dimensionally. An attribute of the moment adored here is, for instance, a probability of being there (five) as Milou while being non-physically entangled with a non-comical human being (six), who might have sought and brought to mind a similar history of the art work being observed, as I was observing (seven). Or, better yet, a probability that it was a human, standing there with me in relation and via the artwork, who might have conjured up an entirely different story from the one I was (eight dimensionally). Who needs to know, really? Yet, we were there: relationally (collapsing space and time).

It could have been a moment triggered by an absurd event created by engaging with a grocery store clerk who was asked for a type of vegetable –and that in the most serious of ways– that didn’t and still does not physically exist. The grocery store clerk or owner might have started off thinking to be engaging in a transactional event, yet quickly might have realized the trick, and directed the inquiry to another grocery store, further down the street. To a store that didn’t exist, because it was never visited by the inquirer. Did the man in the store play along or whisk away? Who needs to know a singularity of the event, really?

An event could have been that singing of a song, forgotten now and a song nonetheless, while walking. It was a song convoluting the event with having someone cross the street and walk along me for a bit of the way, imagined to be doing so because she was enjoying the vocalization. Then the song ended and we parted ways: untouched, unspoken, unwatched.

Or more silently and serene, it could have been that crossing of sight when aiding someone in need, without lingering time allowing to be reimbursed for the effort by word or deed. Not saying a word, not introducing, not accolading. Not adulating, not debasing.

In non of these moments lies epic heroics. There neither is violent conquering and ripping up someone’s space, nor violating their being or restricting their becoming, nor a taking of their integrity as if some rightful collectable on a checklist of haves-and-still-need-to-gets.

These events and these moments, leading to these relationships, do not include these actualities at all. These moments might be(come) by means of that what is not (“actual” or psychical). There in those in-betweens there is nonverbal and Brownian acknowledgment at levels of unspoken relation, fleeing yet simultaneously universal, infinite, as the over-used adage hints of the proverbial universe looking onto itself.

Then it passes, then they pass
ever to remain

unexpectedly
.

—animasuri’22

pervertedly note-taking… of resisting the common sensed structures, of Quine, W.V.’s 1948 “On What There Is,” of symbolic AI, of the 2022 Nobel price in Physics, of the Belgian cartoonist Hergé — not to mention the painter that is not— (of the Belgian, since the memory of the events suggests these events took place in Belgium while the memories are now localized in a brain in Beijing and even more “now” superficially hinted at here or there and there as digital signals), of plagiarism and of automated taking as if a new automated peer review (this latter which has been bluntly copied from well-respected academics on LinkedIn).”

text | poetry

<< My Tree and Me >>


Does the tree knit together into a neat picture of life when branches broke off and leaves foliate the roadside into palettes of yellow-brown-greens unintended but nonetheless 

taken by pedestrians and urbanites to slide along in their newly seasoned vehicles: “look, I took a memory of what we’ll do again next autumn” some things will never change as mistaking cliches for the good life

Does the tree flip on its side and show its underbelly when veneered into that couch to pouch on as a bag of past virility 

and the calling of brevity of stride bent to the longevity of a crutch and stride of a walking stick postponing the cane into the grave 

Does the tree ring a year around its waste when eye-bags appeared and chests sagged 

relentlessly climbing downwardly as roots to death. 

periods are made of wood or ash spread across the soil of cycle not change. And yet there we are not the same while encroaching communal dust 

Does the tree freeze when winter is upon it 

as the mind’s breezes between birth and that circulated last breath over and set in repeat

Even at that last moment he taketh and does not give it; he breaks the bread, the cane, the sled and kisses the wooden floor he decades had tread 

Does my tree, planted at birth, and hashed to utility across a life time, remember me diffidently when our frost already set in?

—animasuri’22

perverted note-taking of Rothman, J. (2022, Oct 3). Are You The Same Person You Used To Be? In Annals of Inquiry, The New Yorker. Print edition October 10, 2022.

thank you for the hint Dr. WSA