"Artificial intelligence is the study of how to build and/or program
computers to do the sorts of things which human minds can do", this is
how M. Boden begins his seminal essay The Creative Mind (2004) about
artificial intelligence, and it is interesting to note how a parallel is
very clearly established between what AI can do and the creative power
of the human mind. AI (and we will not dwell here on the problem of
whether it is truly intelligent or is nothing more than the highly
refined result of a statistical model) reproduces what the human mind
can think on the basis of predictive models that imitate its aspects.
Many philosophers and scientists have wondered whether machines can
think: to this question Alan Turing answered: "certainly yes". We remain
on a cautious "neither/nor": they can mimic aspects of human thought and
in some cases they can be mistaken for thinking beings (a practical
example? Today it is impossible to distinguish music composed by AI when
compared to music composed by human beings: try listening to the jingle
of the Tokyo Olympics: it was composed by a machine). However, the
question is not what AI can or cannot do, but whether AI should do what
it does. Let's be clear, I personally cannot support the thesis
according to which the machine (almost as if it were the Heideggerian
technè or the Deleuzian machine) should be demonized: welcome to the
machine when it saves me physical effort, when it helps me with tiring
and repetitive tasks, welcome to the machine when it frees up my time
and takes the worries of daily chores out of my head (who would really
want to wash clothes in the river?). Welcome the machine if it is at the
service of the human, if it is an instrument of the dignity of the
creative mind of man, as were the wheel, the plow, fire and every
technology. Could we perhaps criticize Zeno of Elea for having invented
a rudimentary steam engine? As far as AI is concerned, I always
recommend avoiding pastist readings with a Luddite flavor: the society
we want must be a society of free men, free to be able to express
themselves completely, free to surpass themselves, free above all from
work. In this process of liberation the machine takes on a fundamental
role: against all primitivism the machine guarantees the progress of
humanity. What went wrong, then, along the path towards the liberation
of toil? Why are we afraid of AI today? The reason is always and only
one: the capitalist use of the machine. If the machine is used as a tool
to extract value from work, to lower the cost of labor and to replace it
in an increasingly ruthless capitalist labor market, then the machine
becomes the enemy. In capitalism everything is inhuman, it, in the
hypocrisy of wanting to affirm the centrality of the individual,
actually crushes him in its inexorable grip: so even the machine becomes
dehumanizing, and Deleuze can affirm that, in capitalism, one never
leaves the machine. Because the machine of capitalism is as dehumanizing
as capitalism itself, and AI, in this context, is nothing but yet
another tool in the hands of the masters to extract the human from
humanity, to empty it, to reduce it to a competitor of the machine.
There are jobs that should disappear from the face of the earth, jobs
that brutalize any individual, and instead of rejoicing for their
progressive disappearance, we almost loudly demand them. This is the
paradox that capitalism, which deprives us of everything, pushes us
into: it creates the tools of liberation and takes possession of them,
and we regret our past slavery, and it seems more tolerable than the
current one, in a very serious error of optics and perspective: let us
therefore wrest the tools from the hands of capital, we demand a world
where there is enough free time to write novels and stories, paint
pictures, grow plants, spend time with loved ones and family, we do not
want a future as sad servants of the machine, but we must be the
masters, we are the creators. I never tire of repeating it: we must
avoid nostalgic, passé temptations: things were no better when they were
worse, none of us wants to give up the comfort of the machine, and it is
right that we should not give it up, on pain of returning to a worse
condition of slavery, and we delude ourselves into thinking we are free
when in reality we are breaking our backs. Furthermore, let's give the
right weight to words: Artificial Intelligence does not exist: there are
statistical-predictive models that operate on large datasets and
elaborate results probably similar to those that a human would
elaborate. Calling Artificial Intelligence what is nothing but a series
of tensors, if not a series of linear algebra tools, is highly
misleading: it is a tool like the plow, and calling it Intelligence is a
very clever marketing operation, even in this capital has fooled us,
making us take a great fright, instilling fear in us, because we feel
our very humanity, our very inner mind, is being undermined.
Let us then escape from this lie, and let our cry of protest be even
louder: let all the machines be ours, let the future that comes be ours.
Zoro Astra
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
computers to do the sorts of things which human minds can do", this is
how M. Boden begins his seminal essay The Creative Mind (2004) about
artificial intelligence, and it is interesting to note how a parallel is
very clearly established between what AI can do and the creative power
of the human mind. AI (and we will not dwell here on the problem of
whether it is truly intelligent or is nothing more than the highly
refined result of a statistical model) reproduces what the human mind
can think on the basis of predictive models that imitate its aspects.
Many philosophers and scientists have wondered whether machines can
think: to this question Alan Turing answered: "certainly yes". We remain
on a cautious "neither/nor": they can mimic aspects of human thought and
in some cases they can be mistaken for thinking beings (a practical
example? Today it is impossible to distinguish music composed by AI when
compared to music composed by human beings: try listening to the jingle
of the Tokyo Olympics: it was composed by a machine). However, the
question is not what AI can or cannot do, but whether AI should do what
it does. Let's be clear, I personally cannot support the thesis
according to which the machine (almost as if it were the Heideggerian
technè or the Deleuzian machine) should be demonized: welcome to the
machine when it saves me physical effort, when it helps me with tiring
and repetitive tasks, welcome to the machine when it frees up my time
and takes the worries of daily chores out of my head (who would really
want to wash clothes in the river?). Welcome the machine if it is at the
service of the human, if it is an instrument of the dignity of the
creative mind of man, as were the wheel, the plow, fire and every
technology. Could we perhaps criticize Zeno of Elea for having invented
a rudimentary steam engine? As far as AI is concerned, I always
recommend avoiding pastist readings with a Luddite flavor: the society
we want must be a society of free men, free to be able to express
themselves completely, free to surpass themselves, free above all from
work. In this process of liberation the machine takes on a fundamental
role: against all primitivism the machine guarantees the progress of
humanity. What went wrong, then, along the path towards the liberation
of toil? Why are we afraid of AI today? The reason is always and only
one: the capitalist use of the machine. If the machine is used as a tool
to extract value from work, to lower the cost of labor and to replace it
in an increasingly ruthless capitalist labor market, then the machine
becomes the enemy. In capitalism everything is inhuman, it, in the
hypocrisy of wanting to affirm the centrality of the individual,
actually crushes him in its inexorable grip: so even the machine becomes
dehumanizing, and Deleuze can affirm that, in capitalism, one never
leaves the machine. Because the machine of capitalism is as dehumanizing
as capitalism itself, and AI, in this context, is nothing but yet
another tool in the hands of the masters to extract the human from
humanity, to empty it, to reduce it to a competitor of the machine.
There are jobs that should disappear from the face of the earth, jobs
that brutalize any individual, and instead of rejoicing for their
progressive disappearance, we almost loudly demand them. This is the
paradox that capitalism, which deprives us of everything, pushes us
into: it creates the tools of liberation and takes possession of them,
and we regret our past slavery, and it seems more tolerable than the
current one, in a very serious error of optics and perspective: let us
therefore wrest the tools from the hands of capital, we demand a world
where there is enough free time to write novels and stories, paint
pictures, grow plants, spend time with loved ones and family, we do not
want a future as sad servants of the machine, but we must be the
masters, we are the creators. I never tire of repeating it: we must
avoid nostalgic, passé temptations: things were no better when they were
worse, none of us wants to give up the comfort of the machine, and it is
right that we should not give it up, on pain of returning to a worse
condition of slavery, and we delude ourselves into thinking we are free
when in reality we are breaking our backs. Furthermore, let's give the
right weight to words: Artificial Intelligence does not exist: there are
statistical-predictive models that operate on large datasets and
elaborate results probably similar to those that a human would
elaborate. Calling Artificial Intelligence what is nothing but a series
of tensors, if not a series of linear algebra tools, is highly
misleading: it is a tool like the plow, and calling it Intelligence is a
very clever marketing operation, even in this capital has fooled us,
making us take a great fright, instilling fear in us, because we feel
our very humanity, our very inner mind, is being undermined.
Let us then escape from this lie, and let our cry of protest be even
louder: let all the machines be ours, let the future that comes be ours.
Zoro Astra
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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