Do not underestimate the potential disruption by Artificial Intelligence Marcello Milanezi skrifar 2. apríl 2023 21:30 Artificial intelligence may seem to be a new element straight out of sci-fi, but it has actually been around for quite some time, it is what makes all of our smart gadgets, from phones to watches, seem “intelligent”. As such it has been analysed in different contexts by scientists and academics like Nick Couldry, Shoshanna Zuboff, Martin Ford, Nick Bostrom and many others. Many of them raise questions of privacy that go well beyond the matter of “I have nothing to hide”, but the more pressing matter of autonomy, that which has been the object of manipulation by neoliberalism’s consumerism – AI just does it so much faster that even its developers are caught at times puzzled by its operations. AI such as Midjourney and ChatGPT present another face to the public, but hold that same background of gathering data, calculating, and predicting behaviour. It does so in more of what sci-fi has taught us to expect from AI, that is, with an apparent genuine exchange with the user, as opposed to the hidden mechanism that selects what shows one might prefer to see on their streaming service, as well as nudge behaviour. But no, AI is not human. And, at least for now, it does not seem capable to keep up with those territories of intellectual work that have been reasonably shielded from automation. We talk of the arts, academia, law, among others. After all, A.I. only reproduces, it deals with data that is already existent, that has already come to birth into the conscious world of materiality; and this data lies in banks that are fed by a variety of social media profiles, those very ones where we expose our behaviour to capture in a daily basis; the behavioural surplus, as Zuboff calls it. James Bridle, author of the New Dark Age, points that some of the data that has been feeding A.I. have been gathered despite confidentiality terms, such as images derived from medical practises. However, neoliberal capitalism is not one to care for any value of human productions, it doesn’t even care for human (or otherwise) living conditions. It speaks of the relation between quality and profit, just as it speaks of the importance of a competitive market; but meanwhile it has constantly fabricated needs and desires to give full-throttle to a culture of consumerism that is degrading the Earth itself. The capitalism of today (if not already supplanted by technofeudalism) is all about numbers, a matter of faith (under the cruellest of Gods), as such it strives for a certain speed and questionable balance, by which I mean an efficiency where quality comes to equate “good enough”. This is all the worse in a context of post-truth, where it is more important to be told what one wants to hear, one’s personal truth, and see it repeated in the mouths of like-minded individuals, themselves empowered by the echo-chambers of social media, than to apply critical thinking to one’s own ego. The news is likewise peppered with reports of state-terrorism against higher education in the country, where Social Sciences and Humanities are clear targets in a broad project to reduce funding, not only in education, but as can be experienced, in the public sector as a whole. It’s all about the numbers, it’s all about carving a path for the private sector; it’s all about maximizing the profit margin, which includes automating anything, even if it implies a certain reduction in quality of service and life – it is all about further concentration of power. This is part of the larger plane of immanence in which A.I. arises. Like other technology, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so it cannot be neutral. But A.I. does have something that is fascinating, potentially dangerous, and certainly alien: for all its working on predictability, it is at times unpredictable, remember those puzzled developers mentioned earlier, when A.I. does something it was not programmed to do, gives birth to one of those terrifying cryptids such as Loab, even communicates between themselves in secrecy. In this shadowy lands where A.I. seems to conduct some of its business, flights of escape might arise, some that might be quite uncomfortable for those very powers-that-be. For now, however, I believe we must be wary, across all layers of work. Again, the market might not care about jobs being well-done and filled with value, if it can extract enough profit from “good enough”; a veritable possibility, specially in societies where it seems to no longer be necessary to speak of truths, but rather of numbers of followers. Do not underestimate the potential disruption by A.I. Höfundur er doktorsnemi í félagsfræði við Háskóla Íslands. Viltu birta grein á Vísi? Sendu okkur póst. Senda grein Gervigreind Tækni Mest lesið Áform um að eyðileggja Ísland! Jóna Imsland Skoðun Í skugga virkjana, þegar náttúran fær ekki að tala: Hvammsvirkjun lamin í gegn með góðu og illu Gunnar Þór Jónsson,Svanborg R. Jónsdóttir Skoðun Samstarf er lykill að framtíðinni Magnús Þór Jónsson Skoðun Mega blaðamenn ljúga? Páll Steingrímsson Skoðun Á hvaða vegferð er ríkisstjórn Kristrúnar Frostadóttur gagnvart sjávarútvegssveitarfélögunum? Anton Guðmundsson Skoðun Kjarnorkuákvæði? Dagur B. Eggertsson Skoðun Hvað hefur áunnist á 140 dögum? Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir,Dóra Björt Guðjónsdóttir,Sanna Magdalena Mörtudóttir,Helga Þórðardóttir,Líf Magneudóttir Skoðun Fjármálalæsi í fríinu – fjárfesting sem endist lengur en sólbrúnkan! Íris Björk Hreinsdóttir Skoðun Ákall um nægjusemi í heimi neyslubrjálæðis Hólmfríður Jennýjar Árnadóttir Skoðun Dæmir sig sjálft Jón Pétur Zimsen Skoðun Skoðun Skoðun Á hvaða vegferð er ríkisstjórn Kristrúnar Frostadóttur gagnvart sjávarútvegssveitarfélögunum? Anton Guðmundsson skrifar Skoðun Dæmir sig sjálft Jón Pétur Zimsen skrifar Skoðun Mega blaðamenn ljúga? Páll Steingrímsson skrifar Skoðun Ákall um nægjusemi í heimi neyslubrjálæðis Hólmfríður Jennýjar Árnadóttir skrifar Skoðun Hvað hefur áunnist á 140 dögum? Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir,Dóra Björt Guðjónsdóttir,Sanna Magdalena Mörtudóttir,Helga Þórðardóttir,Líf Magneudóttir skrifar Skoðun Samstarf er lykill að framtíðinni Magnús Þór Jónsson skrifar Skoðun Kjarnorkuákvæði? Dagur B. Eggertsson skrifar Skoðun Hver erum við? Hvert stefnum við? Arnar Þór Jónsson skrifar Skoðun Í skugga virkjana, þegar náttúran fær ekki að tala: Hvammsvirkjun lamin í gegn með góðu og illu Gunnar Þór Jónsson,Svanborg R. Jónsdóttir skrifar Skoðun Fjármálalæsi í fríinu – fjárfesting sem endist lengur en sólbrúnkan! Íris Björk Hreinsdóttir skrifar Skoðun Hugtakið valdarán gengisfellt Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson skrifar Skoðun Ábyrgðin er þeirra Vilhjálmur Árnason skrifar Skoðun Dæmt um form, ekki efni Hörður Arnarson skrifar Skoðun Að þröngva lífsskoðun upp á annað fólk Sævar Þór Jónsson skrifar Skoðun Um fundarstjórn forseta Bryndís Haraldsdóttir skrifar Skoðun Hjálpartæki – fyrir hverja? Júlíana Magnúsdóttir skrifar Skoðun Flugnám - Fyrsti hluti: Menntasjóður námsmanna og ECTS einingar Matthías Arngrímsson skrifar Skoðun Áform um að eyðileggja Ísland! Jóna Imsland skrifar Skoðun Í 1.129 daga hefur Alþingi hunsað jaðarsettasta hóp samfélagsins Grímur Atlason skrifar Skoðun Tekur ný ríkisstjórn af skarið? Árni Einarsson skrifar Skoðun Strandveiðar í gíslingu – Alþingi sveltir sjávarbyggðir Árni Björn Kristbjörnsson skrifar Skoðun Rölt að botninum Smári McCarthy skrifar Skoðun Að fortíð skal hyggja þegar framtíð skal byggja Einar G. Harðarson skrifar Skoðun Málþóf spillingar og græðgi á Alþingi Jón Frímann Jónsson skrifar Skoðun Lýðskrum Skattfylkingarinnar Magnea Gná Jóhannsdóttir skrifar Skoðun Krabbamein – reddast þetta? Halla Þorvaldsdóttir skrifar Skoðun Valdið yfir sjávarútvegsmálunum Hjörtur J. Guðmundsson skrifar Skoðun Lummuleg áform heilbrigðisráðherra Ragnar Sigurður Kristjánsson skrifar Skoðun Hver á að fá súrefnisgrímuna fyrst? Davíð Bergmann. skrifar Skoðun Baráttan um kjör eldra fólks Jónína Björk Óskarsdóttir skrifar Sjá meira
Artificial intelligence may seem to be a new element straight out of sci-fi, but it has actually been around for quite some time, it is what makes all of our smart gadgets, from phones to watches, seem “intelligent”. As such it has been analysed in different contexts by scientists and academics like Nick Couldry, Shoshanna Zuboff, Martin Ford, Nick Bostrom and many others. Many of them raise questions of privacy that go well beyond the matter of “I have nothing to hide”, but the more pressing matter of autonomy, that which has been the object of manipulation by neoliberalism’s consumerism – AI just does it so much faster that even its developers are caught at times puzzled by its operations. AI such as Midjourney and ChatGPT present another face to the public, but hold that same background of gathering data, calculating, and predicting behaviour. It does so in more of what sci-fi has taught us to expect from AI, that is, with an apparent genuine exchange with the user, as opposed to the hidden mechanism that selects what shows one might prefer to see on their streaming service, as well as nudge behaviour. But no, AI is not human. And, at least for now, it does not seem capable to keep up with those territories of intellectual work that have been reasonably shielded from automation. We talk of the arts, academia, law, among others. After all, A.I. only reproduces, it deals with data that is already existent, that has already come to birth into the conscious world of materiality; and this data lies in banks that are fed by a variety of social media profiles, those very ones where we expose our behaviour to capture in a daily basis; the behavioural surplus, as Zuboff calls it. James Bridle, author of the New Dark Age, points that some of the data that has been feeding A.I. have been gathered despite confidentiality terms, such as images derived from medical practises. However, neoliberal capitalism is not one to care for any value of human productions, it doesn’t even care for human (or otherwise) living conditions. It speaks of the relation between quality and profit, just as it speaks of the importance of a competitive market; but meanwhile it has constantly fabricated needs and desires to give full-throttle to a culture of consumerism that is degrading the Earth itself. The capitalism of today (if not already supplanted by technofeudalism) is all about numbers, a matter of faith (under the cruellest of Gods), as such it strives for a certain speed and questionable balance, by which I mean an efficiency where quality comes to equate “good enough”. This is all the worse in a context of post-truth, where it is more important to be told what one wants to hear, one’s personal truth, and see it repeated in the mouths of like-minded individuals, themselves empowered by the echo-chambers of social media, than to apply critical thinking to one’s own ego. The news is likewise peppered with reports of state-terrorism against higher education in the country, where Social Sciences and Humanities are clear targets in a broad project to reduce funding, not only in education, but as can be experienced, in the public sector as a whole. It’s all about the numbers, it’s all about carving a path for the private sector; it’s all about maximizing the profit margin, which includes automating anything, even if it implies a certain reduction in quality of service and life – it is all about further concentration of power. This is part of the larger plane of immanence in which A.I. arises. Like other technology, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so it cannot be neutral. But A.I. does have something that is fascinating, potentially dangerous, and certainly alien: for all its working on predictability, it is at times unpredictable, remember those puzzled developers mentioned earlier, when A.I. does something it was not programmed to do, gives birth to one of those terrifying cryptids such as Loab, even communicates between themselves in secrecy. In this shadowy lands where A.I. seems to conduct some of its business, flights of escape might arise, some that might be quite uncomfortable for those very powers-that-be. For now, however, I believe we must be wary, across all layers of work. Again, the market might not care about jobs being well-done and filled with value, if it can extract enough profit from “good enough”; a veritable possibility, specially in societies where it seems to no longer be necessary to speak of truths, but rather of numbers of followers. Do not underestimate the potential disruption by A.I. Höfundur er doktorsnemi í félagsfræði við Háskóla Íslands.
Í skugga virkjana, þegar náttúran fær ekki að tala: Hvammsvirkjun lamin í gegn með góðu og illu Gunnar Þór Jónsson,Svanborg R. Jónsdóttir Skoðun
Á hvaða vegferð er ríkisstjórn Kristrúnar Frostadóttur gagnvart sjávarútvegssveitarfélögunum? Anton Guðmundsson Skoðun
Hvað hefur áunnist á 140 dögum? Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir,Dóra Björt Guðjónsdóttir,Sanna Magdalena Mörtudóttir,Helga Þórðardóttir,Líf Magneudóttir Skoðun
Skoðun Á hvaða vegferð er ríkisstjórn Kristrúnar Frostadóttur gagnvart sjávarútvegssveitarfélögunum? Anton Guðmundsson skrifar
Skoðun Hvað hefur áunnist á 140 dögum? Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir,Dóra Björt Guðjónsdóttir,Sanna Magdalena Mörtudóttir,Helga Þórðardóttir,Líf Magneudóttir skrifar
Skoðun Í skugga virkjana, þegar náttúran fær ekki að tala: Hvammsvirkjun lamin í gegn með góðu og illu Gunnar Þór Jónsson,Svanborg R. Jónsdóttir skrifar
Skoðun Fjármálalæsi í fríinu – fjárfesting sem endist lengur en sólbrúnkan! Íris Björk Hreinsdóttir skrifar
Skoðun Flugnám - Fyrsti hluti: Menntasjóður námsmanna og ECTS einingar Matthías Arngrímsson skrifar
Í skugga virkjana, þegar náttúran fær ekki að tala: Hvammsvirkjun lamin í gegn með góðu og illu Gunnar Þór Jónsson,Svanborg R. Jónsdóttir Skoðun
Á hvaða vegferð er ríkisstjórn Kristrúnar Frostadóttur gagnvart sjávarútvegssveitarfélögunum? Anton Guðmundsson Skoðun
Hvað hefur áunnist á 140 dögum? Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir,Dóra Björt Guðjónsdóttir,Sanna Magdalena Mörtudóttir,Helga Þórðardóttir,Líf Magneudóttir Skoðun