The mirror for (artificial) intelligence in capitalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-200
Author(s):  
Phoebe V Moore
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Workplace Relations ◽  
Everyday Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Special Issue ◽  
Work And Life

‘The mirror for (artificial) intelligence in capitalism’ expands on the historical episodes outlined in the article by Engster and Moore in the current Special Issue, to develop the historical materialist critique of the history of ideas leading up to and during the eras of artificial intelligence, but also as a way to critique the contemporary moment where machines are ascribed autonomous intelligence. Specifically, the history of the ideational manufacturing of human intelligence demonstrates a pattern of interest in calculation and computation, intelligent human and machinic behaviours that are, not surprisingly, ideologically aligned with capitalism. The simultaneous series of machinic and technological invention and related experiments shows how machines not only facilitate the processes of normalisation of what is considered intelligent behaviours, via both human and machinic intelligence, but also facilitate and enable the integration of capitalism into everyday work and life. Intelligent behaviours are identified as the capacity for quantification and measure and are limited to aspects of thinking and reasoning that can provide solutions to, for example, obstacles in the production and extraction of surplus value, based on the specific postulations and assumptions highlighted in this piece. Today, ideas of autonomous machinic intelligence, seen in the ways artificial intelligence is incorporated into workplaces outlined in the sections below, facilitate workplace relations via intelligent behaviours that are assistive, prescriptive, descriptive, collaborative, predictive and affective. The question is, given these now autonomous forms of intelligence attributed to machines, who/what is looking in the mirror at whose/which reflection?

scholarly journals Rethinking the distinctions between old and new media: Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Lesage ◽  
Simone Natale
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
New Media ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Change ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Vinyl Records

Recent approaches to media change have convincingly shown that distinctions between old and new media are inadequate to describe the complexity of present and past technological configurations. Yet, oldness and newness remain powerful ways to describe and understand media change and continue to direct present-day perceptions and interactions with a wide range of technologies – from vinyl records to artificial intelligence voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa. How can one refuse rigid definitions of old and new, while at the same time retaining the usefulness and pertinence of these concepts for the study and analysis of media change? This introduction to the special issue entitled ‘Rethinking the Distinctions between Old and New Media’ aims to answer this question by taking up the notion of biography. We argue that the recurrence of oldness and newness as categories to describe media is strictly related to the fact that interactions with media are embedded within a biographical understanding of time, which refers both to the life course of people or objects and to the narratives that are created and disseminated about them. Employing this approach entails considering the history of a medium against the history of the changing definitions that are attributed to it and, more broadly, to considering time not only as such but also against the narratives that make it thinkable and understandable.

Critical Intimacy: Jacques Derrida and the Friendship of Politics

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Orford
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
History Of

Since receiving the invitation to participate in this special issue, I have been wondering about whether I can do justice in this brief space to what I have learnt from reading Derrida. And as someone who long ago began to distrust those versions of the history of ideas organized around the names of important individuals, I've also wondered about how and why I would want to link lessons to the proper name “Jacques Derrida.” Indeed the pleasure, and even the reward, I have received from reading Derrida is hard for me to separate out from the experience of living as part of a community that exists within and across the institutions I inhabit, with colleagues, students and friends. I associate Derrida with a way of life, a way of reading, writing, speaking and listening to each other, that is part of the “simple day-to-dayness” and “the intense moments of work, teaching and thinking” that constitutes this community, that allies us. I hope I can communicate a little of what reading Derrida has meant, and still does mean, to me then within this particular institutional life.

scholarly journals Ideologies of Diplomacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-492
Author(s):  
Jane Yeang Chui Wong
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Special Issue

The publication in 2008 of John Watkins’s special issue for the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, “Toward a New Diplomatic History of Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” opened up the formal aspects of the ambassador’s office and official channels of diplomatic negotiation to a complex sociocultural landscape underlying the processes of diplomacy-in-the-making. The field of New Diplomatic History has since burgeoned. This current special issue hews closely to the cross-disciplinary nature of newer diplomatic history, and it responds to critical challenges that have recently emerged in scholarship, particularly the need to balance both breadth and depth of historical and cultural analysis. This volume considers how English institutional and sociocultural networks informed diplomatic practice in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and how diplomatic thought, representation, and the forging of international relations were interpreted within various English communities. The collection takes special interest in how “ideologies of diplomacy” were formed, negotiated, and articulated within and beyond formal diplomatic spheres. Drawing on various elements of international relations theory, the essays address the ambiguous and contradictory elements of diplomatic reciprocity, explicating the tensions between diplomatic ambition and local governance.

A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: On the Past, Present, and Future of Artificial Intelligence

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Haenlein ◽  
Andreas Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
External Data ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Flexible Adaptation

This introduction to this special issue discusses artificial intelligence (AI), commonly defined as “a system’s ability to interpret external data correctly, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation.” It summarizes seven articles published in this special issue that present a wide variety of perspectives on AI, authored by several of the world’s leading experts and specialists in AI. It concludes by offering a comprehensive outlook on the future of AI, drawing on micro-, meso-, and macro-perspectives.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

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