Writing Homework Help

We are at a point in history when work in artificial intelligence and “surveillance capitalism” (see Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism) are intrinsically linked. In the past several decades, artificial intelligence has entered into routine research and economic workflows in order to analyze the glut of computational data being collected in all sectors of society.

Artificial intelligence itself requires large amounts of data, from which it can “learn” to identify patterns and make assessments, among a range of other tasks. In Harun Farocki’s Eye/Machine I-III (Week 6) , for example, we saw the way machines equipped with optical sensory devices can identify objects, or assess the integrity of machine parts. Other common AI tasks– emerging directly out from surveillance practices in social media and law enforcement– include facial recognition.

Many researchers have been critical of facial recognition software, not only for privacy concerns, but also because these AI programs routinely reflect the bias of their programmers and the data sets they use and create, which can have permanent and devastating effects in the real world. Mistaken identity has lead to false arrests and false imprisonment.

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facial-recognition-60…

Trevor Paglen and Kate Crawford recently explored the implications of

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ImageNet

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https://excavating.ai , one of the most valuable AI image training sets on earth based on its sheer size. Labels have been applied to images in this repository, which categorize people into types, harkening back to what were once obsolete nineteenth-century criminology practices

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https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/visibleproofs/g… (if you are interested for more on this, see Allan Sekula’s “The Body and the Archive”

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/778312?origin=crossre… ). However, as they point out, companies and researchers routinely use this biased and questionable repository of images at ImageNet (as well as others) in a variety of AI applications.

Despite calls for greater transparency and reflection on these computing techniques, Google touts its work in AI as being beneficial to “everyone

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https://ai.google

” while squashing dissent and whistle blowers within its own ranks. In the past year, the company significantly undermined its own credibility

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https://www.cnet.com/news/google-ai-chief-says-rep…

by forcing the resignation of talented programmers, like Timnit Gebru, who was originally hired to explore the ethics of AI

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https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/.

These ethics are at the center this week’s Lecture and Reading Response.

Our Week 8 Group Presentations focus on the work of Forensic Architecture

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https://forensic-architecture.org/about/agency

, an investigative agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which seeks to apply forensic research and crowd sourcing of information, data, smartphone documentation to uncover some of the most unethical acts of violence across the globe. These investigations, which are presented online, in popular news outlets, and in art exhibitions, suggest the ways in which artists, media practitioners, architects, and designers can critically intervene within or subvert this computational horizon.

Please review these presentations, watch this interview with Trevor Paglen

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and Timnit Gebru’s TED Talk

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and tell us what you think of these debates on surveillance and AI. Zuboff points out that this new “surveillance capital” and the “commodification of behavior” “pivots us towards a societal future in which market power is protected by moats of secrecy, indecipherability, and expertise.” (Zuboff, 100)


Can this work ever escape cultural bias? And can it ever, according to Google, truly “benefit everyone”?

What does it mean to live in a control society, and how does it relate to historic forms of vision and discipline?

In your response please refer to the assigned reading, lectures, group presentations, media, or past week’s themes.

The reference can only use in the pdf file.