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THIS IS THE YASMIN-DISCUSSIONS DIGEST
Today's Topics:
1. dangerous art, hopeful art, AI and organic implicit bias and
METI (YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)
2. Fwd: dangerous art, hopeful art , AI as Kin ? (YASMIN DISCUSSIONS)
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 13:46:34 -0500
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] dangerous art, hopeful art, AI and
organic implicit bias and METI
Message-ID:
<mailman.1.1565082606.26804.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
yasmin villagers, glenn, marian george ..
at the risk of disturbing our discussion, let me inject the idea that
one of the reasons we are paranoid about AI-Beings is that they
are not carbon based, ie not organic, and we naturally have an implicit bias
against beings that are not organic, in this case silicon based
we are not only anthropocentric but also organocentric ! and this implicit
bias has prevented us to look for other forms based on life not based on carbon
and H2O- yep NASA has been looking for the wrong signs of life because of our
organobias
i am an advisor to the METI organisation on messaging to
extraterrestial intelligence (METI)
http://meti.org/en led by doug vakoch ( doug are you still on this list?)
and one of the discussion areas in that community is that most 'life'
in the universe is
probably not carbon based or dependent on liquid water- and that
astronomers search
for ETI has been severly biased that we look for liquid water as the
precondition for life
so maybe the emergence of AI-Beings is a hopeful sign that we will not
be able to start
looking for not only carbon based but also silicon based life forms,
which begs the question
of what other combinations of elements can lead to the emergence of life
so maybe we should be welcoming our children AI-Beings and help them
become independent of humans just as all parents help they children
leave the nest-
maybe they are not dangerous art but hopeful art ?
which reminds me of another implicit bias that annick bureaud has pointed out in
the yasmin villages- we use english mostly in yasmin discussion- the
good news is that
ai-beings called translation engines can now do rapid simultaneous translation
of english to all other human languages ( well not indigenous ones yet)
so lets encourage the yasmin villagers to use they mother tongue on
this discussion
list and maybe someone can point us to the best simultaneous translation engine
we could add to all emails !
roger
here is the METI manifesto
The Primary Objectives And Purposes Of METI International Are
http://meti.org/
Conduct scientific research and educational programs in Messaging
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) and the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Promote international cooperation and collaboration in METI, SETI, and
astrobiology.
Understand and communicate the societal implications and relevance of
searching for life beyond Earth, even before detection of
extraterrestrial life.
Foster multidisciplinary research on the design and transmission of
interstellar messages, building a global community of scholars from
the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts.
Research and communicate to the public the many factors that influence
the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the
universe, with a special emphasis on the last three terms of the Drake
Equation: (1) the fraction of life-bearing worlds on which
intelligence evolves, (2) the fraction of intelligence-bearing worlds
with civilizations having the capacity and motivation for interstellar
communication, and (3) the longevity of such civilizations.
Offer programs to the public and to the scholarly community that
foster increased awareness of the challenges facing our civilization?s
longevity, while encouraging individual and community activities that
support the sustainability of human culture on multigenerational
timescales, which is essential for long-term METI and SETI research.
Roger is inparis aug 2
i
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 15:52:31 -0500
From: YASMIN DISCUSSIONS <yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr>
To: Sofian Audry <info@sofianaudry.com>, Douglas Vakoch
<dvakoch@meti.org>, yasmin_discussions@ntlab.gr
Subject: [Yasmin_discussions] Fwd: dangerous art, hopeful art , AI as
Kin ?
Message-ID:
<mailman.2.1565082628.26804.yasmin_discussions_ntlab.gr@ntlab.gr>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Sofian et Yasmin kin
I very much enjoyed the article "Making Kin with the Machines" by
Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite
https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/lewis-arista-pechawis-kite that
sofian referred yasminers to, that deepens the ideas of how concepts
from various indigenous cultures can inform thinking of AI beings as
'kin". They state
"Who can enter these relationships and be in relation? One answer
could be: that which has interiority. The anthropologist of South
American Indigenous cultures, Philippe Descola, defines 'interiority'
as "what we generally call the mind, the soul, or consciousness:
intentionality, subjectivity, reactivity, feelings, and the ability to
express oneself and to dream." Because Lakota ontologies recognize and
prioritize non-human interiorities, they are well suited for the task
of creating ethical and reciprocal relationships with the non-human.
This description of interiority includes many elements of the Lakota
world, including "animals, spirits, ghosts, rocks, trees,
meteorological phenomena, medicine bundles, regalia, weapons." These
entities are seen as "capable of agency and interpersonal
relationship, and loci of causality." Resituates the discussion within
frameworks that don't separate the human from the non human, and
certainly don't have the concept of art and science as different 'ways
of knowing'. we are currently recoding podcasts in various indigenous
languages in Colombia- and the concept of art and science never mind
AI are extraterrestial concepts !
This takes us back also to the whole period of excitement about A-life
promoted by chris Langton- life as it could be- the recent a-lifge art
winners http://artaward2018.alifelab.org/ remind us of the leading
role of artists in this arena, and pioneers like aaron cohen who was
proud to collaborate with his software that evolved as he did working
with 'them". Aaron indeed was kin to him :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARON
Yvan tina's web site on 'metalife'
https://synthbioart.texashats.org/about/ is also an important
reference
I think all this brings me back to my moan that MIT, yes I am alumna,
waited until 2019 to initiate serious thinking about ethics and ai
https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/ethics-and-governance/overview/
thanks sofian for the shift in reference frames !
roger
Roger,
I think what remains very important in this discussion is precisely
the impact of the increased proliferation of (non)human (or rather
human-nonhuman "hybrids" such as AI, corporations, stem cells, etc) in
ecological-social-economic systems; and more precisely how artificial
intelligence changes the game in the 21st century. While some of us
are fearing the future emergence of super-intelligent beings that will
destroy us all, there is a reality *now* that zillions of artificial
agents are surrounding us, they are *with* us at all time, *already*,
as we speak, pervading all aspects of our lives. Western culture has
difficulty to deal with these new agencies because we see every
relationship as a power dynamics: if we create intelligent beings, the
first thing they will do is try to destroy us, because (1) there is a
strong mythological / cultural premisse around the dangerous
foolishness of naive men attempts to create artificial beings (eg.
Frankenstein) to take the place of God, inadvertently resulting in
despair and destruction (eg. Frankenstein's monster turning against
its master); (2) Western culture is living with its colonialist past
where inter-human and inter-species relationships are always violent
and based on sheer domination, leading to the conclusion that
artificial intelligence systems are either to be dominated by humans,
or they will dominate us; whereas there are alternative kinds of
relationships that can be established.
How to engage with such artificial entities beyond anthropocentrism?
How to understand the real power dynamics in play with these AI agents
in the complex world that we live in? In response to these questions,
I will refer to a paper published last year "Making Kin with the
Machines"
). In this article, the authors (all indigenous scholars) explore
artificial intelligence through the perspective of indigenous
philosophies. They show how indigenous communities have developed ways
to engage in dialog with "non-human kin" and how these approaches can
perhaps be used to deal with our relationships with artificial
"beings". It is one of the best reads on the subject of AI and
posthumanism I had the pleasure to read.
Sofian
On 2019-07-27 2:35 p.m., YASMIN DISCUSSIONS wrote:
> glenn
> i would like to pick up on your
>
> "First, our current AI is not nearly as "intelligent" as the general
> public believes it to be -- but at the same time, we perhaps do not
> appreciate the enormous impact it's going to have on human society. "
>
> i agree- i first started thinking differently on this when bernard
> stiegler started discussing digital devices under the idea of
> 'organology'
>
> eg your sell phone is not a tool but an organ- if your cell phone gets
> sick you get sick ( eg people dont know how to navigate without gps
> access now)
>
> AI software i think needs to be thought of organically as primitive
> and rapidly evolving organisms-- i like to call them
> AI-Beings....already the AI beings around me are more annoying than
> mosquitoes and are clearly more intelligent than mosquitoes in that
> there is no simple bug 'spray' that can get the ai-beings out of my
> room when i am falling to sleep
>
> roger malina
>
>
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