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Asst. Professor of Philosophy & Data Science, UNCC
Degrees in Science, Technology, & Society; Philosophy; Religious Studies
Thinking on Algorithms, 'A.I.,' Human Values, Marginalized Lived Experiences, Magic/Occult, Pop Culture
He/Him/His
Proud to present my article "Bias Optimizers" in American Scientist Magazine, on the ethical, epistemological, and social implications of of GPT-type tools "A.I." writ large. (I'm (Particularly proud of these intro grafs.) Hope you enjoy it:
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/bias-optimizers
(As you may or may not know, I've been thinking about the ethical, epistemological, and social implications of GPT-type tools and "A.I." in general for a while now, and I'm really grateful to the team at American Scientist for the opportunity to discuss all of those things with such a wide audience)
If you're not able to get this with the free login, those with university library access should be able to get this issue of American Scientist in a few days when the repository updates
Reminder that if you're interested in more of the kind of thing I had to say in my American Scientist article, there's a really great article by Bryn Nelson and William Faquin in the Journal Cancer Cytopathology on the problems of using "A.I." in medicine:
Christopher Golden, Richard Kadrey, and Sarah Silverman are suing OpenAI and Meta for training their "A.I." models on the creators' material without their consultation or consent.
To which I say: GOOD for them.
She says the companies’ chatbots were trained on her book.
www.theverge.comWhether this place gets better or worse almost entirely depends on whether, how quickly, and what kinds of cultures of moderation, trust and safety, and algorithmic sort— even if that's only chronological+— they implement, and how closely they stick to them, in the face of the monetization disease.
So. People newly thinking about "AI" in TV & movies? Hi.
The folx who warned about the likely incursions of "AI," back when they faked bourdain's voice? When deepfakes 1st hit the street? When, again, they made poor dead fred astaire dance w/ that vacuum cleaner that replaced damn ginger rogers?…
…Those people? Might be good people to talk to, as you strategize your responses.
Just saying.
So I'm reading Mustafa Suleyman, previously of google/deepmind, thinks "the turing test is almost over" & should be "replaced" by a test to see if "AI" can "make a million dollars," as a test of "complex problem solving."
So his plan is, take systems that already exacerbate the worst of capitalism…
…& VERY INTENTIONALLY subject said systems to conceptual evolutionary pressures that would optimize them to doing that… on purpose.
Do i have that right? Because it Sounds terrible.
Like, Suleyman says it isn't "about" making money, but more about testing for complex problem solving, but I really…
…and I mean just ABSOLUTELY— need everyone to dig deep and introspect on the fact that Suleyman's first proposal for a new foundational "complexity test"— a test of whether "AI" is "I" "enough" or "truly" "I"— is about making money & trying to get rich.
…Because this is your regular reminder that tests for "intelligence" or "consciousness" or "complexity" or "human-likeness" or whatthefuckever else are fundamentally exclusionary and always have and likely always will exclude, marginalize, and harm some category of real living humans.
I mean I'll just… Leave these… right here
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/bias-optimizers
https://afutureworththinkingabout.com/?p=5600
And that's some stuff about me.
I saw a screenshot of this & I'd hoped it was a joke but it's real. Honestly, I kind of still hope he's joking, because the idea that someone who misunderstands shit This Badly gets lauded as a genius & invited to the white house & fêted to help craft literal life-altering national policy? Holy SHIT
All the worst people in the world band together to give each other money, power, and influence.
If you needed any more incentive to go see Barbie, reminder that Margot Robbie has the Weirding Way:
From this article:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/margot-robbie-cover-babylon-star-on-navigating-hollywood
“The highs are really high and the lows are really, really low.”
www.vanityfair.com
From my article "Bias Optimizers;" just a reminder, if you haven't gotten around to it yet.
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/bias-optimizers
You know nobody's ONCE YET given me credit for the fact that sections 1.1-1.3 of my 3rd diss. chapter make a complete (& funny) call & response which is, itself, a summary of the argument which those sections prove? 😠
('Who’s Positive About “Right Kinds?” Eugenicists Teaching to the (Turing) Test')
(I mean, aside from my advisor and my partner, because I made punning husky face at both of them for different reasons after I came up with those section titles)
Your periodic reminder that "human-like AI" is a near-meaningless framing with deeply ableist, sexist, racist, colonialist, eugenicist roots. Stop uncritically deploying it.
Yes I will elaborate and that is a threat:
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919...
Tell your friends, your enemies, and random passersby on the street.
Look, the framing of "human-like AI" reinforces assumptions about who & which kinds of minds are"measurably" "human/right enough," a line of discourse which currently (still) has major impacts for disabled & trans & gender nonconforming individuals. It has impacts along racialized & gendered lines…
…and that affects how people get talked about in public discourse, in the press, & in the law.
Those are all very real impacts.
Thinking that there is a measurable "standard" or "threshold" of "humanness" is literally the foundation of eugenics, & eugenic thought is unfortunately very much alive…
…to this day.
In the present context, eugenics undergirds much of the mainstream public didcourse around "wild," "futuristic" ideas like "transhumanism" and "effective altruism," but also less esoteric concepts like resource deployment for pandemics and climate crises, and, again, developing "AI."…
And if you want to learn more about all this, I go into it at great depth, with historical and contemporary sources and citations, in my dissertation. Link's up-thread.
When I started trying to explore & highlight overlaps btwn magic, religion, epistemology, & technology like "AI," 18 years ago, a lot of people didn't think there was a there, there. A lot more people do this work, now, & some of y'all *still* don't believe it means anything.
Meanwhile, at OpenAI:
That paragraph is from this piece. Also if you want more about the overlap of corporate culture and religiosity I cannot recommend Dennis LoRusso's work highly enough
The young company sent shock waves around the world when it released ChatGPT. But that was just the start. The ultimate goal: Change everything. Yes. Everything.
www.wired.comAs a religious studies scholar, I'm duty-bound to use the phrase "New Religious Movement," and honestly he'd probably hate that one even more ;)
I mean… That's literally exactly it.
1) Yes, very very many. I use a lot of them in my dissertation ( vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919...) and have an even longer list in this running working bibliography ( docs.google.com/document/d/1...)
2) I think that influence is honestly huge.
Exactly, and there are a whole host of reasons they do it, and why it really thoroughly works :\
That paragraph is from this piece. Also if you want more about the overlap of corporate culture and religiosity I cannot recommend Dennis LoRusso's work highly enough
The young company sent shock waves around the world when it released ChatGPT. But that was just the start. The ultimate goal: Change everything. Yes. Everything.
www.wired.com
Hello new people. If you're here for more of the magic+religion+"AI" stuff, here's what's still one of my favourite conversations on the topic:
"Under Its Spell: Magic, Machines, & Metaphors." With @lifewinning.com Deb Chachra, @karengregory.bsky.social, @melissagiragrant.com, & me.
Hope you like.
I think the steps that need to happen before that happens, and even all the training and values that would cause it to behave in that way, are all human steps, and human values, and should first be intervened on at a human level
I wonder how much the person camping on the extremely empty wolven.bsky.social nick wants for it. I mean, I'll never pay them, but it for sure is an interesting question.
🤷🏾♂️ worth a reaching out I guess
I am mulder, invisigoth, and scully, in this scene
The Atlanta city council and mayor just doxxed and targeted over 100,000 people who signed a petition to put the stop cop city referendum on the ballot.
100k people who were literally just like "the citizens of Atlanta should have a say in this" now exposed via the state to harassment & violence.
There are more than 25,000 pages of signatures that list names and addresses.
www.wsbtv.comYeah it feel really really deeply wronh
If your takeaway from this is to argue a point that "technically, home addresses are public data so this is perfectly legal," your ignorance is AT LEAST STARTING to verge into maliciously willful. And that's me being generous.
Let me say it plain:
Home addresses. Should not. Be considered. Public.
Not ever, not once, never before, but especially not in a time of increasingly normalized political violence should a private citizen's home address where they and their families sleep and eat be considered or treated as "public data."