Sean Cubitt via nettime-l on Tue, 2 Jan 2024 21:49:33 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Experience Democracy (Max Herman)


Actual Democracy
(source: today's newspapers)

Government of the people by the billionaires for the billionaires




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Today's Topics:

   1. Experience Democracy (Max Herman)
   2. ?I?ve built a simple AI? (olia lialina)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2024 14:59:04 +0000
From: Max Herman <maxnmherman@hotmail.com>
To: "nettime-l@lists.nettime.org" <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Subject: <nettime> Experience Democracy
Message-ID:
        <MW4PR14MB5484F2A481D2A836D3986432A59DA@MW4PR14MB5484.namprd14.prod.outlook.com>

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Experience Democracy is:

Three sources

  *   The Federalist Papers nos. 1 and 85
  *   William Blake?s ?All Religions Are One?
  *   John Dewey

Three suggestions

  *   Experience, and experiment.
  *   Interact with real humans about democracy and beware your feed.
  *   Pretty good is good enough ? survive the tsunami.

Three caveats

  *   Experience Democracy is not partisan but questions antidemocratic parties.
  *   Like Occupy Wall Street, it has no official documents or leadership.
  *   It has, like Lincoln, faith that right makes might.

#ExperienceDemocracy
ExperienceDemocracy2024.org

+++


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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2024 10:18:13 +0100
From: olia lialina <olia@profolia.org>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: <nettime> ?I?ve built a simple AI?
Message-ID: <b7be443d-c660-4858-ba66-a6996cb7c748@profolia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Happy new year, dear nettimers!

In the mid of AI summer, I often think back about last spring, and one
product, or rather it's announcement, that brought us to where we are now.

/https://pad.profolia.org/s/I_ve_built_a_simple_AI -- illustrated
version with links /


AI?s 75 year history is a chain of periods filled with excitement and
anticipation of the singularity, taking turns with times of ignorance
known as AI winters. I on purpose count from right after WWII ? 1946,
when Mechanical (later Machine) Translation effort has started, and not
from 1956 when the term AI was coined, because the term is less
important when the idea that machines can perform understanding (of
languages), and also because it was exactly the failure of Machine
Translation that designated beginning of the first known AI winter in
the beginning of 1960?s.On the eve of 2024 we, no doubt, are enjoying AI
midsummer. It?s so brutally, unnaturally hot, that some start to suspect
that this time it won?t be just a winter that will compensate for the
heat, but rather something usually depicted as an ice age or a nuclear
winter is in front of us. It will be very cold and dark for a very long
time?The last winter, which was caused by the failure of the 5th
generation computer and logic based AI systems in the late 80?s was
rather short. It was over in the mid 90?s. From that time research in
machine learning grew steadily. But science and industry seasons do not
necessarily correlate to the one?s in mass media. Public attention at
that time was glued to the Internet, WWW, Social Networks and all of the
above becoming magically available on mobile devices in the end of the
noughties.In the beginning of the tens mass media started to report
about Big Data and the Internet of Things. Let?s, from today?s
perspective, call it a thaw.Real spring, or mass media AI spring started
in 2016. I see 3 events that made a break in popular consciousness:?
Hanson?s humanoid robot Sophia,? Google?s neural network algorithm Deep
Dreamand? Mark Zuckerberg?s Jarvis.One still remembers Sophia?s glorious
appearances at the United Nations and on the covers of lifestyle
magazines. Sophia?s existence also started a wave of discussion about
ethics in AI and social robotics, that are still actual and
vital.Psychedelic images of Deep Dream are also hard to forget. And the
impact of the algorithm is still here since style transfer and surreal
visuals became AI?s flagship businesses.But Jarvis? Why do I even
mention this rather modest personal project of Zuckerberg to control his
house facilities through his phone? The app itself was not remarkable,
but the words that announced it were.There were two posts. On January 3,
2016, Zuckerberg published his New Year resolution: ?My personal
challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me
with my work.? And on December 19, 2016 he reported ?I?ve built a simple
AI?.These posts quoted many times during 2016 and 2017 started a trend
talking about AI as if it is an app, a product, something at hand.?I?ve
built a simple AI? played a big role in bringing AI to where it is now ?
a whirlwind of crap, when not only every further automation in software
products, but simply every new function or feature is marketed as
Artificial Intelligence.That AI became a synonym to a chatbot is
somewhat historically justifiable. But there is hardly any app today
that is not marketed as AI. A filter is an AI, a file is referred to as
an AI output. Ai (only A is upper case, as if a given name) in the slang
of Humane and name of their Ai Pin is the sign of the same process. AI
is an object, let?s call it Ai.In 2016 ?I?ve built a simple AI?
suggested that AI was a thing. Could be simple, could be complex, but a
thing, ready to be packed. In my opinion, it was the event that marked
the beginning of objectification of the Artificial Intelligence concept,
its oversimplification, and devaluation.




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