Technology and Culture

In the latter half of the 1990s the digital
image became prevalent, easy to manipulate, and consequently, easy to recontextualize,
meaning that now just about any image is available to any computer user for any occasion. To use Bolter's terminology, the "interpenetration" of textual and pictorial space in digital environments, especially on the Web, has increased
markedly, so that the predominance of the digital image now rivals that of the digital word. Indeed, a number of thinkers have noted the digital image's ascendancy in communicating
information via the computer. But how are we to think about, to analyze the rhetorical dimensions of these images? This essay focuses on using classical rhetoric 'as a way of
thinking about the persuasive power of computer-based images.

Computer mediated communication (CMC) tends to erase power structures because such communication somehow undermines or escapes discursive limits. Online discussions seem to promote rhetorical experimentation on the part of the participants. Finding a way to explain disparities between electronic discussion and oral discussion has proven difficult. Those in composition studies have tried to theorize CMC by reference to postmodern theory, but another form of theory that might help in the investigation of the nature of online communities derives from cybernetics and from information theory. Cybernetics' wider implications have led to the advent of a second-order cybernetics or systems theory--self-organizing, self-making, or autopoietic. Reflexivity provides an implicit reason for the difficulty of controlling electronic class discussion. Third wave cybernetics can be used in conjunction with social applications of systems theory to think about what happens when machines, teachers, and students are all "spliced" into one grand system. It seems that traditional approaches to class discussion with the instructor controlling the flow and order make it natural for teachers to view electronic communities as the early cyberneticists did, as allopoietic mechanisms whose goals can be set and observed. Though control of a system with multiple, dynamic elements may be somewhat difficult, a lack of control does not, in terms of systems theory, preclude an instructor's valuable involvement in an online community.

There are numerous indications in his own writing that Aristotle may not have been completely convinced of his own arguments in support of slavery.  One example is the fact that, in his _Politics_, he ponders the possibility of creating artificial slaves, such as looms that would operate themselves.  It is clear upon careful reading that he ponders this because of the dangers that human slaves present.  But, besides this, there is also his ambivalence about the propriety of enslaving certain classes of people, and his difficulty explaining how some humans can be considered “natural” slaves.  Indeed, the very need to defend the idea that “natural slaves” exist points to qualms about his compatriots’, and perhaps about his, views of slavery.

This article surveys and analyzes the pre-industrial history of artificial humanoid servants and their historical persistence. The idea of artificial slaves—and questions about their tractability—is present not only in the literature of modern times but also extends all the way back to ancient Greek sources; and it is present in the literature and oral history of the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well. Furthermore, at each of these intervals, this idea is connected with an emotional paradox: the joy of self-enhancement is counterpoised with the anxiety of self-displacement that comes with distribution of agency. The idea of rebellious and dangerous artificial slaves is an archetype that spans Western history and persists not only in the pre-modern and modern imaginations, via stories about rebellious AI servants, but also in ancient scientific accounts and in modern systems theory, which is the basis for real AI.

As the field of Artificial Intelligence continues to make progress, there is a question of what protocols should be developed to make sure such developments are accomplished in a responsible way.  [Download paper here, see original link here: https://www.upi.com/Science_News/Technology/2012/08/30/Outside-View-The-Mars-Landing-and-Artificial-Intelligence/11341346322600/]

The idea of artificial slaves - and questions about their tractability - is present not only in the literature of modern times but also extends all the way back to ancient Greek sources; and it is present in the literature and oral history of the early modern period as well.  Aristotle is the first to discuss the uses and advantages of the artificial slave in his Politics.

What is really significant when we look at technology in the ancient world is that technology is not limited to Classical mythology. Rather, its presence in those stories coincides in important ways with its appearance in other types of fictional and non-fictional accounts, and not just in Western literature, but in the literature of other cultures as well. These other accounts include quasi-mythological tales like The Iliad, tales from ancient cultures in India and China, and non-fictional accounts of real instances of technological innovation by ancient inventors. The devices made by ancient Greek engineers—such as the Antikythera mechanism, or the devices of Ctsebius and Hero of Alexandria, and Philon of Byzantium—are especially notable because they reflect, and are reflected by, the various fictional accounts. Chief in importance among technological innovations that appear in all three realms (stories, myths, and reality) are automata, especially humanoid automata. Their main significance is their ability to enhance and project the power and status of their makers or owners, who were sometimes the same individuals.

This paper examines the correspondences between the magical codes of the Renaissance wizard and the virtual “magic” produced by the coding of modern computer
wizards, who use the information inherent in symbolic, programming language—their own form
of incantations—to program systems that embody impressive aspects of human cognitive capabilities and, often, formidable physical power. Coding is the primary tool of modern
scientists and gamers who try to make digital artifacts, and coded incantations that derive from occult knowledge are the first methods that Renaissance scientists resorted to when trying to
create and control their artificial servants and intelligent artifacts. This coded correspondence between words and reality goes beyond metaphor in the realm of artificial servants and artifacts
in both the modern and early modern periods. In the case of the sixteenth century legends of the golem, for instance, the Cabalistic combinations of the Hebrew alphabet and the various secret names of God that its creator chanted literally made flesh out of earth. In the modern world, the special codes comprised of algorithmic combinations of words, numbers, and symbols that
today’s computer specialists type into their machines actually weave together the fabric of virtual worlds and creatures like bots and, in some modern systems theory and in the world of science
fiction, have the potential to create full-fledged human simulacra, such as the robots in Asimov’s I, Robot, and the avatars in online games.

This presentation is on what I will call “affective robotics,” the recent attempts to induce an affective state (emotion) in various types of Artificial Intelligence (AI).  The growing body of work in this new field involves both theoretical (e.g., Buddhist, Kantian deontological, utilitarian) and practical ways (as with Arkin’s and Rossler’s programs) to instill—or at least imitate—human emotion in robots, and also to induce emotions toward robots in humans (as with experiments at MIT, and the theories of Kim and Lipson).  The aim of all of this is primarily to guarantee that as AI becomes smarter and more powerful, it will remain friendly to us.  Inducing emotions is important to this effort to create “friendly AI” because it is hoped that AI and humans will develop mutual emotional attachments, and because emotions are one of two crucial building blocks for creating advanced AI that are morally aware: what Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen have termed “Artificial Moral Agents” (AMA).  In my presentation, I will discuss the more important of these efforts and then address some important questions that arise relative to human progress in the digital age: What sorts of psycho-social models may work best to develop a truly moral machine, given that technological progress brings us sufficiently complex AI?  What are current successes?  Impediments?  Do efforts such as these indeed reduce the complexities of emotive human “movement and the non-verbal spectrum to patterns of imitation and functionality,” or do these theories and programs do more?

(note: this is a chapter in the book "Beyond Artificial
Intelligence: The Disappearing Human-Machine Divide," Eds. Jan Ramportl, Eva Zackova and Jozef Kelemen (Springer, 2014), pp.97-109).
ABSTRACT: The growing body of work in the new field of “affective robotics” involves both theoretical and practical ways to instill—or at least imitate—human emotion in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and also to induce emotions to-ward AI in humans. The aim of this is to guarantee that as AI becomes smarter and more powerful, it will remain tractable and attractive to us. Inducing emo-tions is important to this effort to create safer and more attractive AI because it is hoped that instantiation of emotions will eventually lead to robots that have moral and ethical codes, making them safer; and also that humans and AI will be able to develop mutual emotional attachments, facilitating the use of robots as human companions and helpers. This paper discusses some of the more sig-nificant of these recent efforts and addresses some important ethical questions that arise relative to these endeavors.

NOTE: this is an author's draft of chapter 12 of the book "Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television," eds. Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck, Curtis Carbonell (Palgrave, 2015).  The final, published version is here: https://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137430328.0018?focus=true  ABSTRACT: LaGrandeur demonstrates how the character of the android in film and television represents three themes common to the idea of the posthuman: our blindness to the possible dangers of our own ingenuity and evolving technology; the problems posed by technology-spurred species creation and species-transition (androids often are represented as an emerging species—or human hybrid); and, concomitantly, the perils of human exceptionalism that could lead to the exploitation of any new, intelligent species we may create in our image—in other words, the possibility of a new slave class, with all that it entails.

As post- and transhumanism have become ever-hotter topics over the past decade or so, their boundaries have become muddled by misappropriations and misunderstandings of what defines them, and especially what distinguishes them from each other. This edition of essays by various experts, edited by Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner, goes a long way to resolve these issues. The introductory essay by the two editors – both of whom are philosophers – is alone worth the book’s purchase price. They give a very straightforward and understandable synopsis of what defines posthumanism, transhumanism, and the posthuman; and they also give thumbnail sketches of the major differences between them. Basically, transhumanists believe in improving the human species by using any and every form of emerging technology. Technology is meant in the broad sense here: it includes everything from pharmaceuticals to digital technology, genetic modification to nanotechnology. The posthuman is the state that transhumans aspire to: a state in which our species is both morally and physically improved, and maybe immortal – a species improved to the point where we perhaps become a different (and thus “posthuman”) species altogether.

Early literary instances of artificial humanoid and intelligent systems anticipate in a general way the kinds of thematic issues that cyborgs, androids, and intelligent networks like supercomputers bring up for the contemporary notion of the posthuman, understood as a condition in which the human and the machine are becoming increasingly intermingled. Humans have never really been autonomous entities, but rather have always been intimately interdependent upon their environments and tools. And their dreams of intelligent tools even extend back into the era of ancient Rome and Greece, as I will describe below. Thus the seemingly modern idea of a reciprocal dependency upon mechanical devices is just a variation of a much older theme.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations are legal persons--meaning not that they are human, but that as entities they have certain legal rights equivalent to persons.  My thesis is that this fluidity in perception and definition of what counts as a “person” also parallels our increasingly common struggles with determining our evolving relationship with animals and Artificial Intelligence.  Recent lawsuits by Stephen Wise and the Non-Human Rights Project regarding the “legal personhood” of captive apes and other animals, as well as our animals’ continued evolution from working servants to members of our families, and even the similar titles of recent books such as Citizen Canine and Cyborg Citizen (both about the increasing elision of our definition of personhood) display common themes of ambivalence toward our non-human companions—artificial and natural—in Western society.

This paper discusses the ethical implications of some current cybersecurity projects under way at his and several other institutions.  Especially important are issues of individual privacy and the increasing digital codification of human character.

This past summer saw the release of the new film “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Like so many recent movies, the villains in this one were once again killer robots. But the idea of deadly, weaponized robots isn’t just isolated to titillating movie plots. Such machines are already with us, in one form or another, in many places on the globe.