Ian Alan Paul on Sun, 29 Oct 2017 22:25:42 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> Algorithmic / Biometric Governmentality


This very digestible short talk (22:00) on the emerging threat of algorithmic/biometric governmentality from Zeynep Tufekci may be of interest to those who research control societies, etc..: https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads

The transcript is below:

So when people voice fears of artificial intelligence, very often, they invoke images of humanoid robots run amok. You know? Terminator? You know, that might be something to consider, but that's a distant threat. Or, we fret about digital surveillance with metaphors from the past. "1984," George Orwell's "1984," it's hitting the bestseller lists again. It's a great book, but it's not the correct dystopia for the 21st century. What we need to fear most is not what artificial intelligence will do to us on its own, but how the people in power will use artificial intelligence to control us and to manipulate us in novel, sometimes hidden, subtle and unexpected ways. Much of the technology that threatens our freedom and our dignity in the near-term future is being developed by companies in the business of capturing and selling our data and our attention to advertisers and others: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent.

So what can we do? This needs to change. Now, I can't offer a simple recipe, because we need to restructure the whole way our digital technology operates. Everything from the way technology is developed to the way the incentives, economic and otherwise, are built into the system. We have to face and try to deal with the lack of transparency created by the proprietary algorithms, the structural challenge of machine learning's opacity, all this indiscriminate data that's being collected about us. We have a big task in front of us. We have to mobilize our technology, our creativity and yes, our politics so that we can build artificial intelligence that supports us in our human goals but that is also constrained by our human values. And I understand this won't be easy. We might not even easily agree on what those terms mean. But if we take seriously how these systems that we depend on for so much operate, I don't see how we can postpone this conversation anymore. These structures are organizing how we function and they're controlling what we can and we cannot do. And many of these ad-financed platforms, they boast that they're free. In this context, it means that we are the product that's being sold. We need a digital economy where our data and our attention is not for sale to the highest-bidding authoritarian or demagogue.

(Applause)

So to go back to that Hollywood paraphrase, we do want the prodigious potential of artificial intelligence and digital technology to blossom, but for that, we must face this prodigious menace, open-eyed and now.

Thank you.


_____________________________________

Dr. Ian Alan Paul
www.ianalanpaul.com
Assistant Professor of Emerging Media
Art Department, Stony Brook University

“What can I do?
One must begin somewhere.
Begin what?
The only thing in the world worth beginning:
The End of the world of course.”

           -Aimé Césaire

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