[Xmca-l] Re: The ethics of artificial intelligence, past present and future

[Edward Wall]

Annalisa

     In my read when Dreyfus wrote the book you reference, he believed that ‘mind' was neither ‘material’ nor ‘mental’ On the other hand, I have often wondered if ‘minds' aren’t ‘material.'

Ed Wall

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

> On Dec 21, 2019, at  1:22 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello fellow and distant XMCArs,
> 
> So today I saw this in the Intercept and thought I would share for your awareness, because of the recent developments that likely impact you, namely:
> the neoliberalization of higher academic learning
> the compromise of privacy and civil life in the US and other countries
> the (apparently) hidden agenda of technology as it hard-wires biases and control over women, minorities, and other vulnerable people to reproduce past prejudices and power structures.
> In my thesis I discuss historical mental models of mind and how they inform technology design. During reading for my thesis I had always been bothered about the story of the AI Winter. 
> 
> Marvin Minsky, an "august" researcher from MIT labs of that period, had discredited Frank Rosenblatt's work on Perceptrons (which was reborn in the neural networks of the 1980's to early naughts). That act basically neutralized funding of legitimate research in AI and, through vicious academic politics, stymied anyone doing research even smelling like Perceptrons. Frank Rosenblatt died in 1971, likely feeling disgraced and ruined, never knowing the outcome of his lifework. It is a nightmare no academic would ever want. 
> 
> Thanks to Herbert Dreyfus, we know this story which is discussed in What Computers Still Can't Do https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/what-computers-still-cant-do <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/what-computers-still-cant-do>
> 
> Well, it ends up that Minksy has been allegedly tied up with Jeffery Epstein and his exploitation of young women. 
> 
> This has been recently reported in an article by Rodrigo Ochigame of Brazil, who was a student of Joichi Ito, who ran the MIT Media Lab. We know that Ito's projects were funded by none other than Epstein, and this reveal forced Ito's resignation. Read about it here: https://theintercept.com/2019/12/20/mit-ethical-ai-artificial-intelligence/ <https://theintercept.com/2019/12/20/mit-ethical-ai-artificial-intelligence/?utm_source=The+Intercept+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0277d72712-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_12_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e00a5122d3-0277d72712-124483985>
> 
> I have not completed reading the article, because I had to stop just to pass this on to the list, to share. 
> 
> One might say that computer technology is by its very nature going to reproduce power structures, but I would rather say that our mental models are not serving us to create those technology tools that we require to create an equitable society. How else can we free the tools from the power structures, if the only people who use them are those who perpetuate privilege and cheat, for example by thwarting academic freedom in its process? How can we develop equality in society if the tools we create come from inequitable motivations and interactions? Is it even possible?
> 
> As I see it, the ethics at MIT Labs reveals concretely how the Cartesian model of mind, basically normalizes the mind of the privileged, and why only a holistic mental model provides safeguards against these biases that lead to these abuses. Models such as distributed cognition, CHAT, and similar constructs, intertwine the threads of thought to the body, to culture, history, tool-use, language, and society, because these models encapsulate how environment develops mind, which in turn develops environment and so on. Mind is not separate, in a certain sense, mind IS material and not disembodied. It is when mind is portrayed otherwise that the means of legitimizing abuse is given its nutrition to germinate without check.
> 
> I feel an odd confirmation, as much as I am horrified to learn this new alleged connection of Minsky to Epstein, how the ways in which as a society we fool ourselves with these hyper-rational models which only reproduce abusive power structures. 
> 
> That is how it is done. 
> 
> It might also be a reminder to anyone who has been unethical how history has a way of revealing past deeds. Justice does come, albeit slowly.
> 
> Kind regards as we near the end of 2019,
> 
> Annalisa

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