2022 been a crazzzaayy year for AI and AIxD. I’m feeling a little out of breath / out of synch / out of alignment

The current discourse around AI is dominated by capitalist values / its obsession with scale, growth, and profitability / led by silicon valley workers and tech bros / harmful ideas such as longtermism and others which Timnit Gebru & Emile Torres bundled into the acronym TESCREAL. We’re not into it.

From a place of care, equity, ecologies, feminism, and other values that we align with.

Not just deconstructing or critiquing what we don’t want, but actively trying to construct what we do.

After a short stint of disillusionment from the topic altogether: we want to explore, create, gather, and generate alternative ways of building and designing but also thinking and talking about AI.

“I don’t want to destruct notions without constructing new ones” [Abdo]

We’re not sure what to call it but terms we’ve heard and resonate with its intentions are Slow AI, Participatory AI, AI alignment, and Beyond-Corporate AI.

https://washingtonspectator.org/understanding-tescreal-silicon-valleys-rightward-turn/

this board is made with KINOPIO - our new fav tool >>> https://kinopio.club <3

Inspired by community-led resources such as H&D Anti-Racism Pool and this sheet with examples of AI fails, we want to co-compile a space for hope - with recommended reading and resources but also a place for sharing and building on each-other’s thoughts.

what terms resonate?

what is ‘better’ AI? what juxtaposes the TESCREAL movement?

Please add your views, readings, links, terms, quotes, and anything you’ve found helpful in finding and adopting ‘better’ views on AI and feeling less frustrated.

On this board let’s collect what inspires and triggers us (in a good way), what gives us hope, what feels meaningful to think / talk about

a practice in re-aligning with the ideas & work we care for - in a space that feels noisy and violent as hell

‘democratizing AI’ & better definitions

please add, annotate, expand <3

low-key also a therapeutic exercise

STARTER KIT “READER” FOR COMMUNITY AI

“We don’t have to shut down the factory - we can just poke a stick in the machine” - Abdo

plurality & agency

what may we call the alternative?

joyful subversion

instead of striving for AGI (one-size-fits-all) > let’s create tailored / situated / small AI

“We are an interdisciplinary & globally distributed AI research institute rooted in the belief that AI is not inevitable, its harms are preventable, and when its production and deployment include diverse perspectives and deliberate processes it can be beneficial.”

AI = not ‘magic’ or an entity - it is made, trained, created for a specific purpose [and with values embedded]

“are we making work that points in a positive direction?” - eryk

the forever friction of turning fluffy experiences & multi-faceted identity into datapoints, parameters & proxies

Philosophy of Technology

resolving / stabilizing this space

let’s move into a thoughtful engagement with this

inclusive / anti-discriminatory AI

Long-termism / Futures vs Lived Realities

participatory AI

example projects

AI X NEURODIVERGENT

Refreshing way to look at artificial, human, and many other types of intelligences from a post-anthropocene (AKA: humans are not the centre of the universe lol) POV - really loved reading this - influenced by ecological thinking, about tech, but also very access

an over-fixation over potential future risks and existential thread over the lived realities & algorithmic harms that are already unfolding present-day

disobedient AI

how do we design non-discriminatory AI & anti-discriminatory AI?

Post-Anthropocene / More-than-human

community coming in hotttt

[design for] data rights

Data Sovereignty

Visual Language of AI

new economic models?

AI Enabled - Post Scarcity Anarchist Futures

See >>> Better Imgs of AI Board

or is it not that simple?

How can AI enable more human, non-hierarchical and ecological society

new Turing test for artificial capable intelligence ?

Language of AI

Interactions & UX

The Paradox Of Human Connection In An AI-Dominated World

Subversive AI

Algorithmic epistemologies & partial ways of knowing

What does it mean to ‘know’?

“As speculative models [...] artificial intelligences are, like aliens, rich poetic devices. They give us a sense of what is possible. [...] Because we struggle more and more to define ourselves in relation to machine intelligences, we are forced to develop language to describe them.”

Language shapes reality, the concepts we think in, and speak of. So in AI

alternate views on intelligence

how much have we fucked ourselves, that the robots taking our jobs is somehow a bad thing

[Potential questions to explore]

COMMUNITIES

Permaculture Design Principles

Ecological Footprint

Redesigning Design

Luddites / Labour of AI

AI is labor-intensive ..

.. labor that’s often outsourced and off-shored under poor working conditions

At the same time, AI is driving automation and posing risk of displacement (and actually it’s already happening across industries ..

Ideally we wouldn’t rely on jobs altogether, and embrace AI while we go frolick in the field .. but that’s not reality

Heideggerian AI & Neo-Luddism

So until we escape capitalism altogether, our livelihood is a key element to quality of life, so we care about workers’ rights

Technology by nature changes how we see the world. Technology makes us see nature & human as resources for input-process-output, a means to exploit for an ends.

Chellis Glendinning’s Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto

This made us revisit the Luddites - a term that’s gotten a false rep for being anti-tech, but was actually pro-workers-rights

However, with sufficient technical literacy and reflectivity, I believe we can train our minds to switch between modes of thinking, seeing things as it is with respect.

What can we do to protect workers’ rights in light of recent developments in AI?

would love examples hereee!

As we all get older in a world where AI may be seen as a shortcut to providing the care humans do, how can we influence this transition?

Sounds similar to Civic Tech ideas too

could this be used cinically by governments to shortcut essential services?

Open-source movement, CivicTech, anti surveillance tech

Political intervention. New sets of human rights drafted. Political party and grassroot research institutes formation

So, how do we get older people stakeholdership in building these services?

State of the Art: TESCREAL

State of the Art: TESCREAL

Dr. Timnit Gebru and other researchers and philosophers have coined the term TESCREAL to describe the current state of the art of Silicon Valley’s right-leaning ideology

subscription model - led by the client individually

positive potential impact of a companion on loneliness

google, apple, etc -Health / or BUPA, Nationale Nederland, etc?

The term stands for:

Impact on the care industry, if we look from optimistic perspective - care workers have more time for high value human tasks?

Transhumanism: humans should augment themselves through technologies to evolve our species

Extropianism: humans can extend their lifespan (possibly infinitely) by countering entropy

CASE: Open letter to pause AI dev

Singulariatism: technology will accelerate to a point that it can design itself and thus create a self-driven and irreversible explosion of technological advancements

calls for pausing AI development to stop it from becoming unaligned super intelligences that extinct humans use alarmist arguments, rooted in hierarchical and zero-sum view on intelligence

through utility company? like your electricity supplier will now lease you your EV, which companies will see an adjacent opportunity in this?

monitoring of folks alone at home, informing ES of need for help, etc

provided by local government/municipal public health authority

others wont believe the impact it may have - head in the sand types

some folks wont want to engage, or feel they can understand this new tech thing

Cosmism: maximising space exploration and colonialisation, promotes the resurrection of the dead

but you will never replace a human with a robot for the day to day tasks in the complexities of a clients home setting

Effective Altruism: reframing philanthropy (the desire to promote the welfare of others) in terms of efficiency and ultimate outcome

Longtermism: maximisation of future “intelligences” in the universe. Anyone that interferes with that goal is harming countless future (potential) lives.

“Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civil...

Rationalism: reason as the source of and basis for knowledge. Might exhibit a desire of perfection of one’s understanding and application of reason

What might the devices look like?

who will own these devices and services?

exposing the state of the art

the letter is an example for furthering the “AI hype” rather than addressing concrete harms that exist today

built into familiar devices and services - enhancements to TV, phone, etc

stand alone - Alexa type - monitors vital signs, companion, concierege/assistant

add on to health insurance

Any thoughts and comments welcome from people...

taxation for healthcare, government

robotics - anthro, animo, or utilitarian? would grandma want a robot dog who can call the ambulance if she falls?

Long-termins / Futures vs. lived Lifes

woof woof, hello Im Rags (anyone remember that?)

How will it be funded?

AI is labor-intensive ...

it requires an immense workforce of people, working in isolation on repetitive task under precarious conditions. This kind of work keeps the AI systems alive and will stay to fill gaps in datasets and continuely improve the systems

production of AI requires extractive practices with massive impact on the environment

“When AI comes for your job, you may not lose it, but it might become more alien, more isolating, more tedious.”

“The lifecycle of an AI system from birth to death has many fractal supply chains: forms of exploitation of human labor and natural resources and massive concentrations of corporate and geopolitical power. And all along the chain, a continual, large-scale consumption of energy keeps the cycle going.

adressing the harms that exist today

.. labor that’s often outsourced and off-shored under poor working conditions

“Today, far from an academic challenge, large corporations claiming to be “AI first” are fueled by this army of underpaid gig workers, such as data laborers, content moderators, warehouse workers and delivery drivers.”

in some sectors AI can have a positive impact on change, like in energy transition, where predictive models are key to planning energy distribution

Luddites / Labour of AI

Planetary Impact of AI

“Data labeling interfaces have evolved to treat crowdworkers like machines, often prescribing them highly repetitive tasks, surveilling their movements and punishing deviation through automated tools.”

what role does generative AI play here?

narrative of inevitability vs positive impact

At the same time, AI is driving automation and posing risk of displacement (and actually it’s already happening across industries ...

“There is a fear that if they don’t explore this, they’re going to be left behind in some way”

Communities and decentralised development

So until we escape capitalism altogether, our livelihood is a key element to quality of life, so we care about workers’ rights

find solutions fixing the current state and alternative narratives

Ideally we wouldn’t rely on jobs altogether, and embrace AI while we go frolick in the field .. but that’s not reality

This made us revisit the Luddites - a term that’s gotten a false rep for being anti-tech, but was actually pro-workers-rights

fiction / speculation

Intersectionality / Anit-discriminatory

What can we do to protect workers’ rights in light of recent developments in AI?

Is the AI ecosystem becoming the new fast fashion?

Subverting AI

Other economic models?

What would current AI models look like if all data was sourced ethically?

tailored / situated / small AI