On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 3:25 PM tbyfield <tbyfi...@panix.com> wrote:
> It seems like Morlock, who I'd bet has forgotten more about AI than Brian > knows, is using it in a loose 'cultural' way; whereas Brian, whose > bailiwick is cultural, intends AI in a more ~technical way. Ted, I like how you look at disputes from all sides, both for the intrinsic interest of the meta-discussion, and because you put a finger on the very existence of the dispute. For me it boils down to the old question about critique, what it is, how it works, why anyone would engage in such a thing. What I care about here is not AI, nor culture in the literary and artistic sense, but attention to reality in a time when lots of things are going wrong. Reality is hard to grasp: you have to look at the relation of human actors with technical systems in a dynamic situations shaped by environmental factors as well conflicting strategic aims. The Boeing case has all that, it's typical of the present. Can such problems be resolved? Or do we just vent our rage against the machine? In Morlock's writing I see two things: a justified critique of the reckless speed with which automated control systems are being implemented, plus the continual escalation of an aggressive rhetoric that blurs any distinction whatsoever. The larger cultural/political context and the interplay of conflicting strategies get left out of this entirely: according to his own declarations, things like capitalism or democracy don't exist for Morlock, only computation. That's a tendentially know-nothing approach, and when he throws out any attempt to deal with the technical systems, what's left is the inflammatory rhetoric. There's a good reason not to like it at this particular moment, when every serious attempt at government is blocked by outraged expressions of passions via networked media. The story that emerges from the Max 8 crashes is not that the pilots were looking for a fire axe to smash the AI. Instead, most of them were fully aware of the problem. Acting collectively, they shared their knowledge and learned to turn off the poorly conceived patch that was supposed to make up for a bad design. They were struggling against automation, for sure. But they were also struggling against the strategy of a corporation that would do anything to boost its profits -- in this case, first by building a more fuel-efficient plane that wants to nose-dive on take-off, and second, by claiming that crews wouldn't even need training to fly such a thing. Fortunately, the pilots still paid some attention to reality. I respect their craft, I'm alive because of it. And you know, unlikely as it may seem, I look for something analogous in discursive spaces like this one. What lurks behind computation and the illusions of control is something more elemental: a compulsive form of greed that denies the fundamentally suicidal nature of its short-term successes. I stand for a critique of the relations between capitalism and complex systems. thanks for the meta, Brian
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