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The Second Future of A.I. Retreat

Posted by Damien P. Williams on September 25, 2018

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, afrofuturism, algorithmic bias, algorithmic intelligence, algorithmic justice, algorithmic systems, andy budd, animal ethics, artificial intelligence, artificial superintelligence, assistive technology, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous creative intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomous systems, autonomous weapons systems, autonomously creative intelligence, auto^2, bias, cennydd bowles, clearleft, communication, data, decolonization, design, disability, disability studies, distributed machine consciousness, economics, education, electronic personhood, embodied machine consciousness, ethics, ethnicity, gender, gender studies, implicit bias, intersectionality, Invisible Architecture of Bias, Invisible Architectures of Bias, juvet, kimberlé williams crenshaw, machine consciousness, Machine ethics, machine intelligence, machine learning, machine minds, man machine coevolution, moral agency, moral patiency, neurodiversity, neuroethics, nonhuman personhood, norway, personhood rights, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, science technology and society, smart cities, sociology, superintelligence, systemic disparity, technological ethics, technology, the future of a.i. retreat, The Second Future of A.I. Retreat, values. 1 comment

Kirsten and I spent the week between the 17th and the 21st of September with 18 other utterly amazing people having Chatham House Rule-governed conversations about the Future of Artificial Intelligence.

We were in Norway, in the Juvet Landscape Hotel, which is where they filmed a lot of the movie Ex Machina, and it is even more gorgeous in person. None of the rooms shown in the film share a single building space. It’s astounding as a place of both striking architectural sensibility and also natural integration as they built every structure in the winter to allow the dormancy cycles of the plants and animals to dictate when and where they could build, rather than cutting anything down.

And on our first full day here, Two Ravens flew directly over my and Kirsten’s heads.

Yes.

[Image of a rainbow rising over a bend in a river across a patchy overcast sky, with the river going between two outcropping boulders, trees in the foreground and on either bank and stretching off into the distance, and absolutely enormous mountains in the background]

I am extraordinarily grateful to Andy Budd and the other members of the Clear Left team for organizing this, and to Cennydd Bowles for opening the space for me to be able to attend, and being so forcefully enthused about the prospect of my attending that he came to me with a full set of strategies in hand to get me to this place. That kind of having someone in your corner means the world for a whole host of personal reasons, but also more general psychological and socially important ones, as well.

I am a fortunate person. I am a person who has friends and resources and a bloody-minded stubbornness that means that when I determine to do something, it will more likely than not get fucking done, for good or ill.

I am a person who has been given opportunities to be in places many people will never get to see, and have conversations with people who are often considered legends in their fields, and start projects that could very well alter the shape of the world on a massive scale.

Yeah, that’s a bit of a grandiose statement, but you’re here reading this, and so you know where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

I am a person who tries to pay forward what I have been given and to create as many spaces for people to have the opportunities that I have been able to have.

I am not a monetarily wealthy person, measured against my society, but my wealth and fortune are things that strike me still and make me take stock of it all and what it can mean and do, all over again, at least once a week, if not once a day, as I sit in tension with who I am, how the world perceives me, and what amazing and ridiculous things I have had, been given, and created the space to do, because and in violent spite of it all.

So when I and others come together and say we’re going to have to talk about how intersectional oppression and the lived experiences of marginalized peoples affect, effect, and are affected and effected BY the wider techoscientific/sociotechnical/sociopolitical/socioeconomic world and what that means for how we design, build, train, rear, and regard machine minds, then we are going to have to talk about how intersectional oppression and the lived experiences of marginalized peoples affect, effect, and are affected and effected by the wider techoscientific/sociotechnical/sociopolitical/socioeconomic world and what that means for how we design, build, train, rear, and regard machine minds.

So let’s talk about what that means.

Recollections of Decolonizing Mars

Posted by Damien P. Williams on August 3, 2018

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, afrofuturism, astrobiology, astronomy, astrophysics, becoming interplanetary, bodies in space, cybernetics, cyborg, cyborg anthropology, cyborg ecology, cyborgs, decolonization, decolonize mars, decolonizing mars, disability, disability studies, donna haraway, economics, engineering, eugenics, John W. Kluge Center, journalism, lucianne walkowicz, manfred e. clynes, mars, mental health, nasa, nathan s. kline, nutrition, philosophy, political science, pop culture, popular culture, religious studies, science and technology studies, science technology and society, sociology, space, space travel, sts, the expanse, the library of congress, transhumanism. 1 comment

So The U.S. Transhumanist Party recently released some demographic info on their first 1,000 members, and while they seem to be missing some some rather crucial demographic markers, here, such as age and ethnicity, the gender breakdown is about what you’d expect.

I mention this because back at the end of June I attended the Decolonizing Mars Unconference, at the Library of Congress in D.C. It was the first time I had been in those buildings since I was a small child, and it was for such an amazing reason.

We discussed many topics, all in the interest of considering what it would really mean to travel through space to another planet, and to put humans and human interests there, longterm. Fundamentally, our concern was, is it even possible to do all of this without reproducing the worst elements of the colonialist projects we’ve seen on Earth, thus far, and if so, how do we do that?

[Image of Mars as seen from space, via JPL]

Human Futures and Intelligent Machines (Part 2)

Posted by Damien P. Williams on July 9, 2018

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, Aaron Nicholson, african diaspora, afrofuturism, algorithmic bias, algorithmic justice, algorithmic systems, artificial intelligence, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomous weapons systes, bias, bioethics, biotech ethics, biotechnology, Chelsea Frazier, comparative religion, cybernetics, cyborgs, Daylan Dufelmeier, distributed machine consciousness, economics, embodied machine consciousness, Emma Stamm, ethics, facial recognition, feminist ethics, gender, Hani Awni, human augmentation, human biotechnological intervention, Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Josh Brown, Joshua Earle, Kent Myers, Machine ethics, machine learning, magic, magick, Mario Khreiche, nonhuman personhood, philosophy of engineering, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, police body cameras, police militarization, post-work economy, post-worker economy, race, Ralph Hall, Ras Michael Brown, religious history, religious studies, Sara Mattingly-Jordan, science and technology studies, science technology and society, sociology, surveillance culture, Sylvester Johnson, technoccult, technological ethics, technology and religion, values. Leave a Comment

Previously, I told you about The Human Futures and Intelligent Machines Summit at Virginia Tech, and now that it’s over, I wanted to go ahead and put the full rundown of the events all in one place.

The goals for this summit were to start looking at the ways in which issues of algorithms, intelligent machine systems, human biotech, religion, surveillance, and more will intersect and affect us in the social, academic, political spheres. The big challenge in all of this was seen as getting better at dealing with this in the university and public policy sectors, in America, rather than the seeming worse we’ve gotten, so far.

Here’s the schedule. Full notes, below the cut.

Friday, June 8, 2018

Josh Brown on “the distinction between passive and active AI.”
Daylan Dufelmeier on “the potential ramifications of using advanced computing in the criminal justice arena…”
Mario Khreiche on the effects of automation, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and the Microlabor market.
Aaron Nicholson on how technological systems are used to support human social outcomes, specifically through the lens of policing in the city of Atlanta
Ralph Hall on “the challenges society will face if current employment and income trends persist into the future.”
Jacob Thebault-Spieker on “how pro-urban and pro-wealth biases manifest in online systems, and how this likely influences the ‘education’ of AI systems.”
Hani Awni on the sociopolitical of excluding ‘relational’ knowledge from AI systems.

Saturday, June 9, 2018

Chelsea Frazier on rethinking our understandings of race, biocentrism, and intelligence in relation to planetary sustainability and in the face of increasingly rapid technological advancement.
Ras Michael Brown on using the religions technologies of West Africa and the West African Diaspora to reframe how we think about “hybrid humanity.”
Damien Williams on how best to use interdisciplinary frameworks in the creation of machine intelligence and human biotechnological interventions.
Sara Mattingly-Jordan on the implications of the current global landscape in AI ethics regulation.
Kent Myers on several ways in which the intelligence community is engaging with human aspects of AI, from surveillance to sentiment analysis.
Emma Stamm on the idea that datafication of the self and what about us might be uncomputable.
Joshua Earle on “Morphological Freedom.”

I talked with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Curt Hopkins, for their article “4 obstacles to ethical AI (and how to address them).” We spoke about the kinds of specific tools and techniques by which people who populate or manage artificial intelligence design teams can incorporate expertise from the humanities and social sciences. We also talked about compelling reasons why they should do this, other than the fact that they’re just, y’know, very good ideas.

From the Article:

To “bracket out” bias, Williams says, “I have to recognize how I create systems and code my understanding of the world.” That means making an effort early on to pay attention to the data entered. The more diverse the group, the less likely an AI system is to reinforce shared bias. Those issues go beyond gender and race; they also encompass what you studied, the economic group you come from, your religious background, all of your experiences.
…
That becomes another reason to diversify the technical staff, says Williams. This is not merely an ethical act. The business strategy may produce more profit because the end result may be a more effective AI. “The best system is the one that best reflects the wide range of lived experiences and knowledge in the world,” he says.

[Image of two blank, white, eyeless faces, partially overlapping each other.]

To be clear, this is an instance in which I tried to find capitalist reasons that would convince capitalist people to do the right thing. To that end, you should imagine that all of my sentences start with “Well if we’re going to continue to be stuck with global capitalism until we work to dismantle it…” Because they basically all did.

I get how folx might think that framing would be a bit of a buzzkill for a tech industry audience, but I do want to highlight and stress something: Many of the ethical problems we’re concerned with mitigating or ameliorating are direct products of the capitalist system in which we are making these choices and building these technologies.

All of that being said, I’m not the only person there with something interesting to say, and you should go check out the rest of my and other people’s comments.

Until Next Time.

Last week, I talked to The Atlantic’s Ed Yong about new research in crowd sentiment tipping points, how it could give hope and dread for those working for social change, and how it might be used by bad actors to create/enhance already-extant sentiment-manipulation factories.

From the article:

…“You see this clump of failures below 25 percent and this clump of successes above 25 percent,” Centola says. “Mathematically, we predicted that, but seeing it in a real population was phenomenal.”

“What I think is happening at the threshold is that there’s a pretty high probability that a noncommitted actor”—a person who can be swayed in any direction—“will encounter a majority of committed minority actors, and flip to join them,” says Pamela Oliver, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “There is therefore a good probability that enough non-committed actors will all flip at the same time that the whole system will flip.”

We talked about a lot, and much of it didn’t make it into the article, but one of the things that matters most about all of this is that we’re going to have to be increasingly mindful and intentional about the information we take in. We now know that we have the ability to move the needle of conversation, with not too much effort, and with this knowledge we can make progressive social change. We can use this to fight against the despair that can so easily creep into this work of spreading compassion and trying to create a world where we can all flourish.

[Argentina’s Mt Tronador Casaño Overa glacier, by McKay Savage]

But we have to know that there will also be those who see this as a target number to hit so that they might better disrupt and destabilize groups and beliefs. We already know that many such people are hard at work, trying to sow doubt and mistrust. We already have evidence that these actors will make other people’s lives unpleasant for the sake of it. With this new research, they’ll be encouraged, as well. As I said to Ed Yong:

“There are already a number of people out there who are gaming group dynamics in careful ways… If they know what target numbers they have to hit, it’s easy to see how they could take this information and create [or increase the output of the existing] sentiment-manipulation factory.”

The infiltration of progressive groups to move them toward chaos and internal strife is not news, just like the infiltration (and origin) of police and military groups by white supremacists is not news.

And so, while I don’t want to add to a world in which people feel like they have to continually mistrust each other, we do have to be intentional about the work we do, and how we do it, and we have to be mindful of who is trying to get us to believe what, and why they want us to believe it. Especially if we want to get others to believe and value as we do.

This research gives us a useful set of tools and a good to place to start.

Until Next Time.

The Human Futures and Intelligent Machines Summit at Virginia Tech

Posted by Damien P. Williams on June 8, 2018

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: A Future Worth Thinking About, afrofuturism, algorithmic bias, algorithmic justice, algorithmic systems, artificial intelligence, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomous weapons systes, bioethics, biotech ethics, biotechnology, cybernetics, cyborgs, distributed machine consciousness, embodied machine consciousness, ethics, feminist ethics, gender, human augmentation, human biotechnological intervention, Machine ethics, machine learning, nonhuman personhood, philosophy of engineering, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, police body cameras, police militarization, post-work economy, post-worker economy, race, science and technology studies, science technology and society, sociology, technoccult, technological ethics, values. 1 comment

This weekend, Virginia Tech’s Center for the Humanities is hosting The Human Futures and Intelligent Machines Summit, and there is a link for the video cast of the events. You’ll need to Download and install Zoom, but it should be pretty straightforward, other than that.

You’ll find the full Schedule, below the cut.

Nonhuman and Nonbiological Phenomenology

Posted by Damien P. Williams on May 15, 2018

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: alterity, artificial intelligence, autonomous created intelligence, autonomous generated intelligence, autonomously creative intelligence, bodyminds, communication, digital, distributed machine consciousness, distributed networked intelligence, electronic personhood, embodied cognition, embodied machine consciousness, Emma Stamm, extended mind hypothesis, John Flowers, k.g. orphanides, language, my face, my voice, my words, my work, my writing, nonhuman animals, nonhuman personhood, nonwestern philosophy, personhood rights, phenomenology, philosophy, philosophy of engineering, philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, Robin Zebrowski, sri international, symbols, theorizing the web, ttw18, wired, wired uk. 1 comment

Late last month, I was at Theorizing the Web, in NYC, to moderate Panel B3, “Bot Phenomenology,” in which I was very grateful to moderate a panel of people I was very lucky to be able to bring together. Johnathan Flowers, Emma Stamm, and Robin Zebrowski were my interlocutors in a discussion about the potential nature of nonbiological phenomenology. Machine consciousness. What robots might feel.

I led them through with questions like “What do you take phenomenology to mean?” and “what do you think of the possibility of a machine having a phenomenology of its own?” We discussed different definitions of “language” and “communication” and “body,” and unfortunately didn’t have a conversation about how certain definitions of those terms mean that what would be considered language between cats would be a cat communicating via signalling to humans.

It was a really great conversation and the Live Stream video for this is here, and linked below (for now, but it may go away at some point, to be replaced by a static youtube link; when I know that that’s happened, I will update links and embeds, here).

My piece “Cultivating Technomoral Interrelations,” a review of Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting has been up over at the Social Epistemology Research and Reply Collective for a few months, now, so I figured I should post something about it, here.

As you’ll read, I was extremely taken with Vallor’s book, and think it is a part of some very important work being done. From the piece:

Additionally, her crucial point seems to be that through intentional cultivation of the self and our society, or that through our personally grappling with these tasks, we can move the world, a stance which leaves out, for instance, notions of potential socioeconomic or political resistance to these moves. There are those with a vested interest in not having a more mindful and intentional technomoral ethos, because that would undercut how they make their money. However, it may be that this is Vallor’s intent.

The audience and goal for this book seems to be ethicists who will be persuaded to become philosophers of technology, who will then take up this book’s understandings and go speak to policy makers and entrepreneurs, who will then make changes in how they deal with the public. If this is the case, then there will already be a shared conceptual background between Vallor and many of the other scholars whom she intends to make help her to do the hard work of changing how people think about their values. But those philosophers will need a great deal more power, oversight authority, and influence to effectively advocate for and implement what Vallor suggests, here, and we’ll need sociopolitical mechanisms for making those valuative changes, as well.

[Image of the front cover of Shannon Vallor’s TECHNOLOGY AND THE VIRTUES. Circuit pathways in the shapes of trees.]

This is, as I said, one part of a larger, crucial project of bringing philosophy, the humanities, and social sciences into wide public conversation with technoscientific fields and developers. While there have always been others doing this work, it is increasingly the case that these folks are being both heeded and given institutional power and oversight authority.

As we continue the work of building these systems, and in the wake of all these recent events, more and more like this will be necessary.

Shannon Vallor’s Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting is out in paperback, June 1st, 2018. Read the rest of “Cultivating Technomoral Interrelations: A Review of Shannon Vallor’s Technology and the Virtues” at the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective.

Others have already examined the dances, the layering of images, so much else, but wanted to try to… evoke something of what I felt, watching this.

The absolute bare minimum simplest way to interpret this working is as an attempt to force a reckoning with the fact of and our complicity within the commodification of life, death, and culture, generally, and most specifically the commodification of Black lives, deaths, cultures.

Donald Glover’s newest song and video (song and dances, singing and dancing, schuckin’ and jivin’) constitute a celebration and a condemnation. It is about and IS complicity in the system which demands that Black people sing and dance or die—as in either be killed for not singing and dancing the way those with power want you to, or just, y’know, die for all they care (though if we kill each other who cares [“Go Away”]), but we’d better not resist (in any way they can understand, and even then our time on the stage in the spotlight had better be brief and cultivated for their pleasure), and we’d better not show anything real—unless it has a beat and you can dance to it.

I say again, it is a condemnation of this, and is about this, but it also is this. Because it has to be? Because the only time this country is Happy to listen to the voices of Black people is when they’re porgy-and-bess-in’ it…but also because Glover knows that’s what it takes to sell his art, tell his stories, to stay alive long enough to do so. (“Get your money, Black man.”)

But when you’re the product of 500 years of kidnapping and genocide, shouldn’t you get/don’t you need/want to breathe and laugh and dance, in spite of—because of—everything… and to keep it from happening to you?

This song and this video is about all of that. (And all the guilt and weight and weariness that all of that implies.)

I want this placed in conversation with both Beyoncé’s “Formation” working, and the series version of DEAR WHITE PEOPLE. Maybe in a classroom, or a podcast, or a panel discussion at a conference. I want scholars of color to undertake an exegesis of fame and incantations of power and safety in PoC-made pop media, and I want it in any way, shape, or form that it can be made to happen.

Earlier this month I was honoured to have the opportunity to sit and talk to Douglas Rushkoff on his TEAM HUMAN podcast. If you know me at all, you know this isn’t by any means the only team for which I play, or even the only way I think about the construction of our “teams,” and that comes up in our conversation. We talk a great deal about algorithms, bias, machine consciousness, culture, values, language, and magick, and the ways in which the nature of our categories deeply affect how we treat each other, human and nonhuman alike. It was an absolutely fantastic time.

From the page:

In this episode, Williams and Rushkoff look at the embedded biases of technology and the values programed into our mediated lives. How has a conception of technology as “objective” blurred our vision to the biases normalized within these systems? What ethical interrogation might we apply to such technology? And finally, how might alternative modes of thinking, such as magick, the occult, and the spiritual help us to bracket off these systems for pause and critical reflection? This conversation serves as a call to vigilance against runaway systems and the prejudices they amplify.

As I put it in the conversation: “Our best interests are at best incidental to [capitalist systems] because they will keep us alive long enough to for us to buy more things from them.” Following from that is the fact that we build algorithmic systems out of those capitalistic principles, and when you iterate out from there—considering all attendant inequalities of these systems on the merely human scale—we’re in deep trouble, fast.

Check out the rest of this conversation to get a fuller understanding of how it all ties in with language and the occult. It’s a pretty great ride, and I hope you enjoy it.

Until Next Time.

A Future Worth Thinking About

Thinking about magic, cyborgs, robots, and artificial intelligence--and why some of those words could use changing--since 1982.

The Second Future of A.I. Retreat

Recollections of Decolonizing Mars

Human Futures and Intelligent Machines (Part 2)

At HPE: “4 obstacles to ethical AI (and how to address them)”

On Social Tipping Points

The Human Futures and Intelligent Machines Summit at Virginia Tech

Nonhuman and Nonbiological Phenomenology

My Thoughts on “This Is America”

“We Built Them From Us”: My Appearance on the TEAM HUMAN Podcast

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