Re: <nettime> Please show some conscience

[olia lialina <olia@profolia.org>]

it is more than surprise!

you know, when i hear computer scientists, developers, software 
engineers saying AI to an algorithm (whatever algorithm), or to an app 
that -- i don't know -- connects daylight data with alarm clock, naive 
me, who hoped to see singularity with her own eyes one day, is just very 
very frustrated

But leaving singularity and naive me aside... this change in jargon is 
more than a trend. Meaningless, inconsistent, but persistent substitute 
of computational terms, processes and products with "AI" is how IT 
industry is protecting themselves from 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_explanation and any other 
attempts to ask questions. AI noise is how silicon valley is working on 
alibi, getting ready to shift the blame for everything what goes wrong 
onto "emancipated machine intellect". I am sure we will here this 
argument in court.


On 23.03.2018 16:35, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> oh, but Olia, don't be surprised, you know this from way back when...: 
> these kinds of ideological tropes appear as _essential_ and _truthful_ 
> to the believers and the ideologues, whereas they appear as 
> "arbitrary, inconsistent and meaningless" only to skeptics and 
> non-believers. (And we know what can happen to such heretics...)
>
> Francis Hunger calls it "Enhanced Pattern Recognition"; but it is 
> unlikely that the believers and ideologues of "AI" will follow his 
> suggestion.
>
> Regards,
> -a
>
>
>
> Am 23.03.18 um 15:40 schrieb olia lialina:
> > what really strikes me (not only in this text but in so many of the last
> > three years) is arbitrary, inconsistent and just meaningless use of the
> > term AI. And this from people who are actually doing it!
> >
> >
> > On 22.03.2018 18:37, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> > > Twitter thread from GOOGL ML employee:
> > >
> > >
> > > François Chollet
> > >
> > > The world is being shaped in large part by two long-time trends:
> > > first, our lives are increasingly dematerialized, consisting of
> > > consuming and generating information online, both at work and at home.
> > > Second, AI is getting ever smarter.
> > >
> > > These two trends overlap at the level of the algorithms that shape our
> > > digital content consumption. Opaque social media algorithms get to
> > > decide, to an ever-increasing extent, which articles we read, who we
> > > keep in touch with, whose opinions we read, whose feedback we get.
> > >
> > > Integrated over many years of exposure, the algorithmic curation of
> > > the information we consume gives the systems in charge considerable
> > > power over our lives, over who we become. By moving our lives to the
> > > digital realm, we become vulnerable to that which rules it -- AI
> > > algorithms.
>
> <snip>

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