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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 20, 2023, 3:44 PM

    I've started reading Resisting AI. It's not a very long book, and quite clear and readable.

    McQuillan links AI, that is, machine learning, to fascism, by describing fascism as palingenetic ultranationalism as an elite response to crisis. Palingentic ultranationalism is the fantasy of restoring an imaginary past national glory through purification, which is all too familiar for those of us in the US and UK, certainly. So AI systems are used to reinforce existing systems of bigotry.

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Replies

  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 20, 2023, 3:45 PM

    I'm looking forward to chapter six, where he talks about mutual aid systems and the possibilities of resistance to AI by tech workers.

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 23, 2023, 9:30 PM

    "Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn called this kind of organizing idea a paradigm: a persistent underlying framework of understanding that acts as a kind of container for specific theories and practices (Kuhn, 1996]. A paradigm provides a widely diffused logic that other specific ideas and solutions need to fit within if they are to 'make sense'."
    (1/2)

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 23, 2023, 9:35 PM

    "A paradigm persists even in the face of contradictory evidence, until it is replaced by a different paradigm. AI makes sense not only because it can carry out specific tasks but because it's being promoted as a paradigm -- as a general way to develop an understanding of the world."
    Dan McQuillan, Resisting AI, Chapter 3: AI Violence
    (2/2)

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 24, 2023, 2:17 AM

    The general theme is that AI escalates the scientism of bureaucracy, asserting prejudice and stereotype as fact, inflicting punishment on anyone who does not conform to assigned type, and citing the results as evidence the prejudices and stereotypes were correct to begin with.

    McQuillan mentioned Cedric Robinson and racial capitalism, the theory that racism and capitalism are interwoven, as the transition from feudalism to capitalism involved colonialist segregation inside and outside Europe.

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 24, 2023, 2:20 AM

    In general, AI deep learning is about asserting that correlation is causation.

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 24, 2023, 2:28 AM

    "Sociogenomics is the latest manifestation of biological determinism, described by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould as the proposition that 'the social and economic differences between human groups -- primarily races, classes, and sexes -- arise from inherited, inborn distinctions and that society, in this sense, is an accurate reflection of biology' (Gould, 1996, p 20)."
    (1/2)

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 24, 2023, 2:29 AM

    "Gould points out that, historically, there's a surge in biological determinism during times of austerity and political instability."
    Dan McQuillan, Resisting AI, Chapter 3: AI Violence
    (2/2)

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 24, 2023, 2:40 AM

    "By ignoring our interdependencies and sharpening our differences, AI becomes the automation of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher's mantra that 'there is no such thing as society' (Thatcher, 1987)."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Chapter 4: Necropolitics

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 24, 2023, 3:17 AM

    "It's not that the AI industry is filled with far-right activists, but rather that strands of reactionary opinion appear rhizomatically across the field of AI. As we shall see, following these strands reveals the descending double helix of AI's technopolitics as it connects the ideologies of statistical rationalism to those of fascism."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Chapter 4: Necropolitics

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 4:01 PM

    "Challenging AI's ways of knowing means not only establishing a peer community but questioning what kind of knowledge can actually be created. The insight from standpoint theory is that knowledge is always partial, and not acknowledging this partiality means that knowledge is actually 'taking sides'."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Chapter 5: Post-Machinic Learning

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 4:21 PM

    "The world of experience comes from what Barad, borrowing directly from Judith Butler, calls 'sedimenting out': the way the repetition of specific divisions lays down the more familiar world of 'this' and 'that'. We can understand AI in the same way: as an apparatus whose repetition and recursion sediments out the world that it is supposedly just predicting. It's by interrupting these repetitions that we can reclaim our collective agency."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Ch 6: Post-Machinic Learning

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 5:19 PM

    "Rather than starting from the statistical assumption of separability, which always comes with a gradient of power, mutual aid embraces entanglement as a form of leveling."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Ch 6: People's Councils

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 9:00 PM

    The last chapter talks about the possibilities of workers councils in the tech industry, and in parallel, peoples councils. In distinction to labor unions and their representative democracy, workers councils and peoples councils are bodies of those concerned directly present, their subjectivity directly engaged. This puts them counter to the logic of AI, with its abstraction and denial of subjectivity. Workers councils and peoples councils are based on mutual aid, rather than exploitation.

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 11:03 PM

    McQuillan refers to "Tools for Conviviality", which discusses designing tools with limits so they enhance creativity and happiness but do not replace or subordinate human agency and community.

    That strikes me as relevant to critiques of FOSS design ethos. What are genuine failings of FOSS design, and what are deliberate limitations intended to foster our agency?

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 11:32 PM

    "Tempting as it might be to look at the continent-spanning logistics of a corporation like Walmart and imagine it reordered for social benefit (Rozworski and Philips, 2019], or to wish for accelerated automation across healthcare and manufacturing that delivers luxury for society as a whole (Bastani, 2020), everything we've looked at in terms of the coupling of technical and social orders tells us this won't pan out as we may hope."
    (1/2)

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 11:36 PM

    "Existing systems, and AI perhaps most of all, are not simply tools that can be turned to good ends or bad but technosocial infrastructures with an established momentum. A new apparatus will bear as much resemblance to existing AI as the eco-social innovations of the Lucas Plan did to the tanks and planes produced by Lucas Aerospace."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Ch 7: Anti-Fascist AI
    (2/2)

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 11:42 PM

    "The framing of a new apparatus accepts that the diversity, variety, and complexity of experience overflows representation and is therefore immune to representation."
    McQuillan, Resisting AI, Ch 7: Anti-Fascist AI

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  • FoolishOwlfoolishowl@social.coop
    Feb 25, 2023, 11:48 PM

    I strongly recommend Resisting AI, particularly to any radical leftist working in the IT industry.

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