Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science
Ca' Foscari University Venice
PI
@erc_aimodels
OUTNOW → The Eye of the Master: A Social History of AI (Verso)
Off to print! Finally my book The Eye of the Master: A Social History of AI is ready.
Big thank to
@VersoBooks
@mckenziewark
@KIM_HfG
and to Sandro Mezzadra, Simon Schaffer, and Jürgen Renn for endorsements
Officially out -> 10 October 2023
Good mayday everyone!
On this very day Vladan Joler
@TheCreaturesLab
and me finally unveil the
#nooscope
A visual manifesto on AI as instrument of knowledge extractivism
I am humbled (and bumbled too) to be one of the recipients of the ERC Consolidator grant 2022 — it is a prestigious achievement also made possible by the help of all our collaborators and PhD students.
The Automation of General Intelligence
In the current issue
@e_flux
journal kindly propagates an excerpt from my book The Eye of the Master
@VersoBooks
As a recognition of years of research,
@KIM_HfG
received a 1.4 million EUR grant from Volkswagen Foundation to develop a sociotechnical study of AI
Cheers to this great team:
@haltingproblem
@LeoImpett
@NouraAlMoubayed
Claude Draude!
Today we are thrilled to announce All Models — an international mailing list of critical AI studies conspired with
@haltingproblem
@KIM_HfG
and a great community of scholars, mathematicians, coders and activists...
Semester break readings — the magazine Electra just published a text of mine on the economic genealogy of algorithms (to be read against studies of algorithm as "discourse" and "concept").
"On the Origins of Marx's General Intellect" — Radical Philosophy publishes the essay where I disclose from whom
#Marx
got the term but more importantly I study his relation with
#Babbage
to write a materialist theory of machine intelligence
Dear friends in Barcelona, so long. After a decade, I will be again in town for this lecture at Palau Macaya on April 6.
Invisible Work in AI: From the Assembly Line to the Algorithm
Last semester,
@negativactivity
and me taught together an ambitious course on "abstract labour."
The syllabus is now public for anyone interested in discussing and expand these ideas - still a work in progress.
We are at the HM conference in London Nov 10 to debate the theories of automation before and after AI
Also an opportunity to discuss the 'labour theory of automation' at the center of The Eye of the Master
@VersoBooks
Drop a line if around!
"The Nooscope is a cartography of the limits of AI, a provocation to both computer science and the humanities. Any map is a partial perspective, a way to provoke debate. Similarly, this map is a manifesto — of AI dissidents."
It would be good to reformulate the trite question "Can a machine think?" into the sounder question "Can a statistical model think?" — The Nooscope Manifested
"Given the degree of myth-making and social bias around its mathematical constructs, Artificial Intelligence has inaugurated the age of statistical science fiction" — an essay for Spheres
#5
on the logical limits of AI
If you are in London at Historical Materialism conference, say hi and check our panel on automation theories at 2pm with Senthil Babu, Paolo Caffoni,
@LeoImpett
and myself...
Today, after 17 years [!] I go back to my Alma Mater, the University of Bologna, to give a talk on historical epistemology and AI with Pietro Daniel Omodeo
(streaming available)
A new issue of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas edited by Pietro Omodeo, Giulia Rispoli, and Rodolfo Garau on geoanthropology
— with a text on mine on the metrics of energy and information in the Anthropocene.
With the new year our ERC
@cafoscari
officially started: please share this call for a research assistant.
3 postdocs and 3 phds will be announced shortly. Stay tuned! 📡
CALL 👉Research Assistant Position
ERC project AIMODELS
Ca' Foscari Venice
1-year, renewable
Project investigates the history of AI models and models of intelligence
Candidates with MA or PhD in humanities
Deadline 29.02.2024
Impressions from this extraordinary exhibition opening today
@cececebe
in Barcelona on Tosquelles, revolutionary psychiatrist and master of Fanon, Guattari among others.
Francesc Tosquelles: Like a Sewing Machine in a Field of Wheat
The program of the workshop Breaking Models organised by
@KIM_HfG
and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
@MPIWG
is finally out. Join us on September 24
The Nooscope manifests for a Machinery Question in the age of AI, to reclaim more collective intelligence about machine intelligence, more public education instead of learning machines and the regime of knowledge extractivism.
Waving from the PhD symposium
@kim_hfg
Thanks to the mindful hands of Mariana Silva, Paolo Caffoni,
@MaxGruenberg
, Arif Kornweitz, Sascha Freyberg, Alan Diaz,
@ArianaDongus
, Davide Lorenzon, and Guillermo Collado Wilkins
Critical gestures by
For Sidecar, Rob Lucas (
@roblucas
) on the history and politics of machine learning:
'Capitalist production always involved an alienation of knowledge; and the mechanization of intelligence was always embedded in the division of labour.'
The public mythology of
#AI
has been always operating on the side of capital with the hidden agenda to foster human stupidity, including racism and sexism. "Ignorance is the mother of industry"
Intelligence resides in the ramifications of human cooperation rather than in individual mental labour. Machine intelligence mirrors, embodies and amplifies the analytical intelligence of collective labour.
As in an old dream of mine (or worst nightmare) I walked alone into a spectrally desert Stabi before tomorrow's lockdown. Hope it reopens soon or we'll all go mad.
The rise of
#AI
in the twentieth century has reminded everyone (including orthodox Marxists) that knowledge can be analysed, measured and automated as successfully as manual labour
Breaking Models: Data Governance and New Metrics of Knowledge in the Time of the Pandemic
A workshop at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 24 September 2021. In collaboration with
@kim_hfg
@allmodels_ai
Landed in a balmy Barcelona and preparing my talk on "invisible labour as the logic of AI" later at Palau Macaya (talk will be streamed too apparently)
Out now for
I'm interviewed about The Eye of the Master
@VersoBooks
Thanks to Shane Anderson who turned AI mess into friendly words
Great issue in the company of Harmony Korine, Irina Shayk, Yeat, etc. A big Gramscian hug everyone
"There is no intelligence in Artificial Intelligence, nor does it really learn, even though it’s technical name is machine learning, it is simply mathematical minimisation"
@danmcquillan
/
In Venice
@La_Biennale
of Music just opened:
@arifjgk
and me contributed a text for the catalogue:
The Sound of Multidimensional Space: How Avant-Garde Music Foreshadowed Artificial Intelligence
For a labour theory of
#AI
: according to Babbage and Marx a machine always emerges by imitating a previous division of labour, machine intelligence included
glad to see the French translation of my essay on the origins of Marx's General Intellect for the new issue on automation of Les Mondes du Travail [ping me if interested]
Thanks to the invitation of Pietro Daniel Omodeo, November 16 I will be at Ca' Foscari University in Venice to give a seminar on 'The Political Epistemology of AI'
"It was in the utopian socialist William Thompson that Marx encountered the idea of the general intellect and the argument that knowledge may become a power inimical to workers — once it has been alienated by machines"
Under this ancient banner, this semester I teach a course on the history of algorithms, or better we look back at their economic applications to decipher contemporary AI as division of labour.
It would do good to reformulate the naive question ‘Can a machine think?’ into the theoretically sounder question ‘Can a statistical model think?’ — A Grammar of Error for
#AI
@mckenziewark
"The general intellect of the whole community, male and female, is stunted or perverted in infancy by keeping from women the knowledge possessed by men." William Thompson, 1824
"Knowledge becomes an instrument, capable of being detached from labour and opposed to it" - Marx's anticipation of the Dialectics of the Enlightenment, or the origin of the general intellect idea
"What was developed in the Enlightenment was a modern idea of truth defined by error, a modern idea of knowledge defined by failure, conflict, and risk, but also hope." — David Bates' philosophy of error as quoted in