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

[Sébastien Lerique]

Dear all,

I'm jumping on the occasion created by Annalisa's email to 
announce a workshop I am organising which might interest some in 
this community: it is the "Embodied interactions, Languaging and 
the Dynamic Medium Workshop" (ELDM2020), an event gathering 
interests and works in embodiment, languaging, diversity computing 
and humane technologies, on **18th February in Lyon, France**. As 
is confirmed in the messages here, recent developments in these 
communities are ripe for focused conversations, and this workshop 
will be a coming-together for cross-pollination and explorations 
of possible common futures.

Invited speakers:
- Elena Clare Cuffari (Worcester State University)
- Mark Dingemanse (Radboud University)
- Omar Rizwan (Dynamicland.org)
- Jelle van Dijk (University of Twente)

There is an open call for proposals until 6th January 2020, and 
registration opens on 1st January. All the details are available 
on the main website: https://wehlutyk.gitlab.io/eldm2020/ . I will 
be delighted to answer any questions that might arise!

Best wishes,
Sébastien Lerique

PS: My sincere apologies for somewhat hijacking the thread with 
this announcement. I have in fact already sent this message three 
times to the list, and they seem to be spam-filtered as the 
announcements neven went through.


Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> writes:

> 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
>
> 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/
>
> 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