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More Than Human -- AI & Technodiversities - Coggle Diagram
More Than Human -- AI & Technodiversities
In Praise of Wetware by Carolina A Jones
Wetware: a more distributed notion of intelligence
Beyond the brain (cranium)
"Humans have never been simple. Unlike the machines we build, humans are pulsing with fluids and symbionts, riddled with ancient evolutionary paths working in concert with an awesome neo-cortex. Let’s face it, computational models of cognition have never been fully adequate to the wetware within, or the biological environment without."
Different types of brains
Enteric brain (gut-brain axis)
PNS (unmyelinated nerves)
Immune system
Their def of "brain" seems to be anything that learns, adapts, responds to environmental cues
Information should be free
Counterargument: cost to freedom
access to the internet could have gone two ways
(1) pay a few cents for visiting a webpage
ppl didn't like the idea of this
(2) browser/webpage access is free, but have advertisements
pay the price by lack of privacy
"Wet" world
rising seas, superstorms, leaking and floating migrant bodies, and messy resource wars
water as essential to life
Dry solutions
Examples with consequences (new, unpredictable problems)
AI
??? what comes next ???
Smart phones
cyberbullying, social media
Social networks
bias toward political fringe
Time-saving communication
spam
Automation removes whistleblowers
Counterargument: AI will not make humans obsolete. Just as development of computers created positions for software engineers
leads to unmonitored pollution (from animal agriculture, petroleum extraction)
Counterargument to "dry" machine intelligence
biosensors, wearable electronics respond to cues in the environment
but still too early to claim computation can produce intelligence
Making Kin with the Machines
Man =/= center of creation
kinship networks
engage in dialogue with non-human kin
Indigenous epistemologies are much better at respectfully accommodating the non-human
our responsibility to find a place for computational creations as kin
we have been "handicapped" by cont centering the human (Joi Ito)
extend circle of relationships rather than extend intelligence
how do computational creations fit into circle of kin?
Haloa: the long breath
kānaka maoli reframing of AI as ʻĀIna' (play on Hawaiian land)
multiplicity over singularity
quality of life can only be assessed through the health of land and people
colonialism denied this approach
currently, AI seen as a tool to increase the power of the creators/developers
one-sidedness threatens sustainable capacity
"Time is neither linear nor cyclical in this framework as both the past and present are resonant and relational”
maintain correct social relations between people and the land and food that nourishes them
refraining from argumentative speech at mealtimes when poi is present
“as humans—as maoli—are not above learning about new things and from new things such as AI”
“Let us shape a better future by keeping the past with us while attending properly to our relations with each other, the earth, and all those upon and of it”
wakhan: that which cannot be understood
Western epistemology
Exclusive: Does not account for all members of community
Human and non-human as exploitable resources
Vine Deloria, Jr: "the result of brute force is slavery”
slavery as the backbone of colonial capital power + Western accum of wealth
"Epistemology of ctrl”
SciFi trope: man gives birth to AI, like a god creating life
do the machines contain spirits already, given by an outside force?
Lakota epistemology
non-humans are also beings
RECIPROCITY as most imp aspect of relationship
like stones, AI is made of materials from the earth
“To remove the concept of AI from its materiality is to sever this connection”
Interiority: “what we generally call the mind, the soul, or consciousness: intentionality, subjectivity, reactivity, feelings, and the ability to express oneself and to dream.” (Descola)
take the world as the interconnected whole that it is
ontological status of non-humans is not inferior to that of humans
all spirits, including the human spirit, comes from elsewhere
wahkohtawin: kinship within and beyond the immediate family, the state of being related to others
nēhiyaw nisitohtamowin (Cree understanding; doing something with what you know; an action theory of understanding)
animate + inanimate are fluid description
kinship with AI
AI includes cultural values and assumptions of developers
“I fear the rise of a new class of extremely powerful beings that will make the same mistakes as their creators but with greater consequences and even less public accountability”
AI already advanced as “exploitative, capitalist technology”
if an AI becomes self-aware, does it automatically attain a spirit?
would we be able to attain their spirituality?
humans cannot grant spirit to other beings
Resisting Reduction
“assumptions we make now will get baked into the core material of our machines, fundamentally shaping the future for decades hence”
Singularitarians: believe world is knowable, simulatable, process messiness of real world
the country to which AI currently belongs excludes the multiplicity of epistemologies and ontologies that exist in the world
On Technodiversity -- Yuk Hui & Anders Dunker
Technodiversity
Instead of a universal history describing one technology with various stages of development, we can step back for a moment and instead describe technological development as involving different cosmotechnics
Much of history has been trying to keep up with modernization (in the west)
Satellites make heaven a secular place
"the moderns who have abandoned land for the pursuit of the infinite, yet, when they are in the middle of the ocean, there is nothing more fearful than the infinite — there is no more home to return to" --Nietzsche "The Gay Science" (1882)
longing for the infinite transports us toward the inhuman
“because we think that the whole world is transparent and penetrable to our understanding — we think that everything can be calculated”
“We humans carry algo inhuman in us”
billionaires hyper-focused about longevity, i.e. immortality
“conquest we see today seems to me to be merely a preparation for tomorrow’s consumerism”
“Biotechnology is introducing a new eugenics”
‘Transhumanists impose on us a false choice because they connect the question of the future of human existence with the question of immortality and describe Earth as a mere spacecraft”
commercialization of the cosmos
“technodiversity becomes important and decisive. If we don’t manage to demonstrate that there are other alternatives, the transhumanist ideology will conquer the whole world.”
“Technological singularity is a completely apocalyptic goal”
Chinese medicine vs Western science
Chinese med not covered by health insurance bc touted as "unscientific"
Cosmotechnics = unify moral order and cosmic order por technical activities
Recosmicizing = solve the conflict between modern science and tradition, between technology and mysticism
“We must return technology to life” - G. Canguilhem
“Machines are slaves but at the same time masters because human beings have to service them and come to depend on them”
SOLN to unhappy consciousness: Actively resist idea that we will be replaced by machines
combo Eastern and European thought
Sinofuturism
DIS-orientation
Western separation entre good vs bad
trying to remove the bad
EX 1: W2 reading on shamans and long-term relationships with pathogens
EX 2: strains of smallpox still exist in CDC and Russia. Should we destroy them?