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*34c3 intro*

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Herald: the next talk is Marloes de Valk,
she's an artist and writer from the

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Netherlands and she's working with lots of
different materials and media and at the

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moment she's doing an 8-bit game, so the
topic is "why do we anthropomorphize

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computers and dehumanize ourselves in the
process?" and we have a mumble, which is

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doing the translation, the talk is in
English and we will translate into French

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and German.
Okay, give a big applause for Marloes!

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*applause*

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Marloes: Thank you and thank you all for

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coming, my name is Marloes de Valk and I'm
going to talk about anthropomorphization

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and I will approach this as a survival
strategy, see how it works and if it is

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effective. And when I'm speaking of big
data, which is an umbrella term, my focus

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will be on the socio-technical aspect of
the phenomenon, the assumptions and

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beliefs surrounding Big Data and on
research using data exhaust or found data

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such as status updates on social media web
searches and credit card payments.

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Oh and now my slides are frozen. Oh my
gosh.

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Audience: Have you tried turning it of and on again?

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Marloes: *laughs*
I will in a moment. gosh it's

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completely frozen... I'm very sorry,
technical staff I have to exit, if I can.

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I can't. Help! I have to get rid of
something I think, should we just kill it?

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That's so stupid yeah.

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But they're gonna have a coffee soon and then it's gonna

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Yes, force quit... I think I know
what the problem is. I'm sorry it's, it's

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really not working. All right let's see if
we're back.

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Okay, okay so sorry for the interruption.

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I wanted to start by letting Silicon
Valley itself tell a story about

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technology, really, sorry about the
interruption. So, Silicon Valley propaganda

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during our lifetime, we're about to see
the transformation of the human race, it's

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really something that blows my mind every
time I think about it. People have no idea

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how fast the world is changing and I want
to give you a sense of that because it

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fills me with awe and with an
extraordinary sense of responsibility. I

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want to give you a sense of why now is
different why this decade the next decade

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is not interesting times
but THE most extraordinary times ever in

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human history and they truly are. What
we're talking about here is the notion

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that faster cheaper computing power which
is almost like a force of nature, is

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driving a whole slew of technologies,
technology being the force that takes what

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used to be scarce and make it abundant.
That is why we're heading towards this

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extraordinary age of abundance. The future
will not take care of itself as we know

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the world looks to America for progress
and America looks to California and if you

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ask most Californians where they get their
progress they'll point towards the bay,

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but here at the bay there is no place left
to point, so we have to create solutions

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and my goal is to simplify complexity,
take Internet technology and cross it with

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an old industry and magic and progress and
big things can happen. I really think

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there are two fundamental paths for
humans, one path is we stay on earth

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forever, or some eventual extinction event
wipes us out, I don't have a doomsday

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prophecy but history suggests some
doomsday event will happen. The

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alternative is becoming a spacefaring and
multiplanetary species and it will be like

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really fun to go, you'll have a great
time. We will set on Mars and we should,

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because it's cool. When it comes to space
I see it as my job to build infrastructure

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the hard way. I'm using my resources to
put in that infrastructure so that the

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next generation of people can have a
dynamic entrepreneurial solar system as

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interesting as we see on the internet
today. We want the population to keep

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growing on this planet, we want to keep
you using more energy per capita. Death

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makes me very angry, probably the most
extreme form of inequality is between

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people who are alive and people who are
dead. I have the idea that aging is

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plastic, that it's encoded and if
something is encoded you can crack the

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code if you can crack the code you can
hack the code and thermodynamically there

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should be no reason we can't defer entropy
indefinitely. We can end aging forever.

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This is not about
Silicon Valley billionaires

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living forever off the blood of young
people.

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It's about a Star Trek future where no one
dies of preventable diseases where life is

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fair. Health technology is becoming an
information technology, where we can read

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and edit our own genomes clearly it is
possible through technology to make death

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optional. Yes, our bodies are information
processing systems. We can enable human

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transformations that would rival Marvel
Comics super muscularity ultra endurance,

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super radiation resistance, you could have
people living on the moons of Jupiter,

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who'd be modified in this way and they
could physically harvest energy from the

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gamma rays they were exposed to. Form a
culture connected with the ideology of the

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future, promoting technical progress
artificial intellects, multi-body

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immortality and cyborgization. We are at
the beginning of the beginning the first

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hour of day one, there have never been
more opportunities the greatest products

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of the next 25 years have not been
invented yet. You are not too late.

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We're going to take over the world, one
robot at a time. It's gonna be an AI that

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is able to source create solve an answer
just what is your desire. I mean this is

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an almost godlike view of the future. AI
is gonna be magic. Especially in the

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digital manufacturing world, what is going
to be created will effectively be a god,

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the idea needs to spread before the
technology, the church is how we spread

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the word, the gospel. If you believe in
it, start a conversation with someone else

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and help them understand the same things.
Computers are going to take over from

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humans, no question, but when I got that
thinking in my head about if I'm going to

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be treated in the future as a pet to these
smart machines, well I'm gonna treat my

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own pet dog really nice, but in the end we
may just have created the species that is

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above us. Chaining it isn't gonna be the
solution as it will be stronger than any

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change could put on. the existential risk
that is associated with AI we will not be

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able to beat
AI, so then as the saying goes if you

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can't beat them, join them.
History has shown us we aren't gonna win

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this war by changing human behavior but
maybe we can build systems that are so

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locked down, that humans lose the ability
to make dumb mistakes until we gain the

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ability to upgrade the human brain, it's
the only way. Let's stop pretending we can

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hold back the development of intelligence
when there are clear massive short-term

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economic benefits to those who develop it
and instead understand the future and have

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it treat us like a beloved elder who
created it. As a company, one of our

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greatest cultural strengths is accepting
the fact that if you're gonna invent,

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you're gonna disrupt. Progress is
happening because there is economic

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advantage to having machines work for you
and solve problems for you. People are

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chasing that. AI, the term has become more
of a broad, almost marketing driven term

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and I'm probably okay with that. What
matters is what people think of when they

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hear of this. We are in a deadly race
between politics and technology, the fate

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of our world may depend on the effort of a
single person who builds or propagates the

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machinery of freedom, that makes the world
safe for capitalism.

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These were all quotes. Every single one.
not only Silicon Valley CEO speak of

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Technology in mysterious ways, let's see
some examples from the media.

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Our official intelligence regulation,
"lets not regulate mathematics" a headline

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from import dot IO from May 2016 about the
European general data protection

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regulation and the article concludes
autonomous cars should be regulated as

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cars, they should safely deliver users to
their destinations in the real world and

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overall reduce the number of accidents.
How they achieve this is irrelevant. With

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enough data the numbers speak for
themselves which comes from the super

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famous article "The end of theory" from
Chris Anderson in Wired magazine 2008.

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"Google creates an AI that can teach
itself to be better than humans" headline

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from "The Independent. The
article continues the company's AI

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division deepmind has unveiled "alpha go
zero" an extremely advanced system that

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managed to accumulate thousands of years
of human knowledge within days. Microsoft

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apologizing for their teen chat Bot gone
Nazi stating it wasn't their fault. "We're

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deeply sorry for the unintended and
hurtful tweets from Tay which do not

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represent who we are or what we stand for
nor how we design Tay" and then the PC

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world article "AI just 3d printed a brand
new Rembrandt and it's shockingly good",

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the subtitle reads
"the next Rembrandt project used data and

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deep learning to produce uncanny results".
Advertising firm J walter thompson

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unveiled a 3d printed painting called "the
next Rembrandt" based on 346 paintings of

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the old master, not just PC world, but
many more articles touted similar titles

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presenting the painting to the public, as
if it were made by a computer, a 3d

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printer, AI and deep learning. It is clear
though, that the computer programmers who

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worked on the project are not computers
and neither are the people who tagged the

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346 Rembrandt paintings by hand. The
painting was made by a team of programmers

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and researchers and it took them 18 months
to do. So what is communicated through

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these messages is that the computer did
it, yet there is no strong AI, as in

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consciousness in machines at this moment,
only very clever automation, meaning it

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was really us. We comprehend the role and
function of non-human actors rationally,

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but still intuitively approach them
differently. We anthropomorphize and

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stories about the intelligent things
machines can do and force the belief in

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the human-like agency of machines, so why
do we do it.

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I'd like to think of this as two survival

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strategies that found each other in big
data and AI discourse. George Zarkadakis

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in the book "in our own image" describes
the root of anthropomorphization, during

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the evolution of the modern mind humans
acquired and developed general-purpose

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language, through social language and this
first social language was a way of

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grooming of creating social cohesion.
We gained theory of mind to believe that

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other people have thoughts, desires,
intentions and feelings of their own -

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Empathy. And this led to the describing of
the world in social terms, perceiving

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everything around us as agents possessing
mind, including the nonhuman, when hunting

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anthropomorphizing animals had a great
advantage because you could strategize,

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predict their movements. They show through
multiple experiment- Oh, Reeves and Nass

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were picking up on this
anthropomorphization and they show through

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multiple experiments that we haven't
changed that much, through multiple

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experiments they show how people treat
computers, television and new media like

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real people in places even though it test
subjects were completely unaware of it,

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they responded to computers as they would
to people being polite cooperative,

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attributing personality characteristics
such as aggressiveness, humor, expertise

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and even gender. Meaning we haven't
evolved that much, we still do it.

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Microsoft unfortunately misinterpreted
their research and developed the innocent

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yet much hated Clippy the paper clip,
appearing one year later in office 97.

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This survival strategy found its way into
another one. The Oracle. Survival through

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predicting events.
The second strategy is trying to predict

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the future, to steer events in our favor,
in order to avoid disaster. The fear of

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death has inspired us throughout the ages
to try and predict the future and it has

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led us to consult Oracles and to creating
a new one.

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Because we cannot predict the future in
the midst of lives many insecurities, we

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desperately crave the feeling of being in
control over our destiny, we have

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developed ways to calm our anxiety, to
comfort ourselves and what we do is we

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obfuscate that human hand in a generation
of messages that require an objective or

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authority feel, although disputed is
commonly believed that the Delphic Oracle

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delivered messages from her god Apollo in
a state of trance induced by intoxicating

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vapors arising from the chasm over which
she was seated, possesed by her God the

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Oracle spoke ecstatically and
spontaneously. Priests of the temple then

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translated her gibberish into the
prophesies, the seekers of advice were

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sent home with. And Apollo had spoken.
Nowadays we turn to data for advice. The

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Oracle of Big Data functions in a similar
way to the Oracle of Delphi. Algorithms

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programmed by humans are fed data and
consequently spit out numbers that are

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then translated and interpreted by
researchers into the prophecies the

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seekers of advice are sent home with. The
bigger data the set, the more accurate the

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results. Data has spoken.
We are brought closer to the truth, to

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reality as it is, unmediated by us,
subjective biased and error-prone humans.

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This Oracle inspires great hope. It's a
utopia and this is best putting words in

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the article "The end of theory" by
Anderson where he states that with enough

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data the numbers can speak for themselves.
We can forget about taxonomy, ontology,

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psychology, who knows why people do what
they do. The point is they do it and we

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can track and measure it with
unprecedented fidelity, with enough data

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the numbers speak for themselves. This
Oracle is of course embraced with great

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enthusiasm by database and storage
businesses as shown here in an Oracle

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presentation slide. High Five! And getting
it right one out of ten times and using

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the one success story to strengthen the
belief in big data superpowers happens a

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lot in the media, a peculiar example is
the story on Motherboard about how

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"Cambridge Analytica" helped Trump win the
elections by psychologically profiling the

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entire American population and using
targeted Facebook ads to influence the

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results of the election. This story evokes
the idea that they know more about you

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than your own mother. The article reads
"more likes could even surpass what a

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person thought they knew about themselves"
and although this form of manipulation is

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seriously scary in very undemocratic as
Cathy O'Neil author of "weapons

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of mass mass destruction" notes, "don't
believe the hype".

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It wasn't just Trump everyone was doing it
Hillary was using the groundwork, a

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startup funded by Google's Eric Schmidt,
Obama used groundwork too, but the

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groundwork somehow comes across a lot more
cute compared to Cambridge analytica,

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funded by billionaire Robert Mercer who
also is heavily invested in all-tried

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media outlet Breitbart, who describes
itself as a killing machine waging the war

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for the West, he also donated Cambridge
analytica service to the brexit campaign.

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The Motherboard article and many others
describing the incredibly detailed

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knowledge Cambridge Analytica has on
American citizens were amazing advertising

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for the company, but most of all a warning
sign that applying big data research to

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elections creates a very undemocratic
Asymmetry and available information and

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undermines the notion of an informed
citizenry. Dana Boyd and Kate Crawford

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described the beliefs attached to big data
as a mythology "the widespread believe

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that large datasets offer a higher form of
intelligence and knowledge that can

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generate insights, that were previously
impossible with the aura of truth

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objectivity and accuracy".
The deconstruction of this myth was

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attempted as early as 1984 in a
spreadsheet way of knowledge, Steven Levi

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describes how the authority of look of a
spreadsheet and the fact that it was done

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by a computer has a strong persuasive
effect on people, leading to the

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acceptance of the proposed model of
reality as gospel. He says fortunately few

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would argue that all relations between
people can be quantified and manipulated

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by formulas of human behavior, no
faultless assumptions and so no perfect

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model can be made. Tim Harford also refers
to faith when he describes four

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assumptions underlying Big Data research,
the first uncanny accuracy is easy to

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overrate, if we simply ignore false
positives, oh sorry, the claim that

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causation has been knocked off its
pedestal is fine if we are making

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predictions in the stable environment,
but not if the world is changing. If you

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do not understand why things correlate,
you cannot know what might breakdown this

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correlation either.
The promise that sampling bias does not

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matter in such large data sets is simply
not true, there is lots of bias in data

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sets, as for the idea of why with enough
data, the numbers speak for themselves

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that seems hopelessly naive, in data sets
where spurious patterns vastly outnumber

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genuine discoveries. This last point is
described by Nicholas Taleb who writes

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that big data research has brought cherry-
picking to an industrial level. Liam Weber

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in a 2007 paper demonstrated that data
mining techniques could show a strong, but

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spurious relationship between the changes
in the S&P 500 stock index and butter

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production in Bangladesh. What is strange
about this mythology, that large data sets

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offer some higher form of intelligences,
is that is paradoxical it attributes human

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qualities to something, while at the same
time considering it to be more objective

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and more accurate than humans, but these
beliefs can exist side by side. Consulting

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this Oracle and critically has quite far-
reaching implications.

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For one it dehumanizes humans by asserting
that human involvement through hypothesis

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and interpretation is unreliable and only
by removing ourselves from the equation,

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can we finally see the world as it is.
The practical consequence of this dynamic

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is that it is no longer possible to argue
with the outcome of big data analysis

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because first of all it's supposedly bias
free, interpretation free, you can't

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question it, you cannot check if it is
bias free because the algorithms governing

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the analysis are often completely opaque.
This becomes painful when you find

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yourself in the wrong category of a social
sorting algorithm guiding real-world

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decisions on insurance, mortgage, work
border check, scholarships and so on.

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Exclusion from certain privileges is only
the most optimistic scenario, so it is not

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as effective as we might hope. It has a
dehumanizing dark side

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so why do we
believe. How did we come so infatuated

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with information. Our idea about
information changed radically in the

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previous century from small statement of
fact, to the essence of man's inner life

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and this shift started with the advent of
cybernetics and information theory in the

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40s and 50s where information was suddenly
seen as a means to control a system, any

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system be it mechanical physical,
biological, cognitive or social. Here you

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see Norbert Wiener's moths a machine he
built as part of a public relations stunt

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financed by Life magazine. The photos with
him and his moth were unfortunately never

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published, because according to Life's
editors, it didn't illustrate the human

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characteristics of computers very well.
Norbert Wiener in the human hues of human

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beings wrote,
"to live effectively is to live with

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adequate information, thus communication
and control belong to the essence of man's

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inner life, even as they belong to his
life in society" and almost

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simultaneously, Shannon published a
mathematical theory of communication a

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theory of signals transmitted over
distance. John Durham Peters in speaking

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into the air, describes how over time this
information theory got reinterpreted by

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social scientists who mistook signal for
significance.

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Or at Halpern in beautiful data describes
how Alan Turing and Bertrand Russell had

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proved conclusively in struggling with the
Entscheidungsproblem that many analytic

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functions could not be logically
represented or mechanically executed and

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therefore machines were not human minds.
She asks the very important question of

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why we have forgotten this history and do
we still regularly equate reason with

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rationality. Having forgotten this ten
years later in '58, artificial

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intelligence research began comparing
computers and humans. Simon and Newell

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wrote: the programmed computer and human
problem solver are both species belonging

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to the genus 'information processing
system'.

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In the 80s, information was granted an
even more powerful status: that of

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commodity. Like it or not, information has
finally surpassed material goods as our

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basic resource. Bon appetit! How did we
become so infatuated with information?

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Hey sorry *sighs* yeah, this is an image
of a medieval drawing where the humors,

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the liquids in the body were seen as the
the essence of our intelligence in the

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functioning of our system. A metaphor for
our intelligence by the 1500s automata

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powered by Springs and gears had been
devised, inspiring leading thinkers such

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as Rene Descartes to assert that humans
are complex machines. The mind or soul was

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immaterial, completely separated from the
body - only able to interact with the body

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through the pineal gland, which he
considered the seat of the soul.

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And we still do it, the brain is commonly
compared to a computer with the role of

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physical hardware played by the brain, and
our thoughts serving a software. The brain

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is information processor. It is a metaphor
that is sometimes mistaken for reality.

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Because of this the belief in the Oracle
of big data is not such a great leap.

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Information is the essence of
consciousness in this view. We've come

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full circle, we see machines as human like
and view ourselves as machines. So does it

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work, we started out with two survival
strategies predicting the behavior of

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others through anthropomorphizing and
trying to predict the future through

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oracles. The first has helped us survive
in the past, allows us to be empathic

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towards others - human and non-human. The
second has comforted us throughout the

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ages, creating the idea of control of
being able to predict and prevent

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disaster. So how are they working for us
today?

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We definitely have reasons to be concerned
with the sword of Damocles hanging over

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our heads: global warming setting in
motion a chain of catastrophes threatening

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our survival, facing the inevitable death
of capitalism's myth of eternal growth as

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Earth's research has run out we are in a
bit of a pickle. Seeing our consciousness

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as separate from our bodies, like software
and hardware. That offers some comforting

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options.
One option is that since human

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consciousness is so similar to computer
software, it can be transferred to a

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computer. Ray Kurzweil for example
believes that it will soon be possible to

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download human minds to a computer, with
immortality as a result. "Alliance to

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Rescue Civilization" by Burrows and
Shapiro is a project that aims to back up

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human civilization in a lunar facility.
The project artificially separates the

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hardware of the planet with its oceans and
soils, and a data of human civilization.

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And last but not least, the most explicit
and radical separation as well as the

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least optimistic outlook on our future,
Elon Musk's SpaceX planned to colonize

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Mars, presented in September last year.
The goal of the presentation being to make

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living on Mars seemed possible within our
lifetime. Possible - and fun.

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A less extreme version of these attempts
to escape doom is what, that with so much

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data at our fingertips and clever
scientists, will figure out a way to solve

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our problems. Soon we'll laugh at our
panic over global warming safely aboard

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our CO2 vacuum cleaners. With this belief
we don't have to change our lives, our

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economies, our politics. We can carry on
without making radical changes. Is this

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apathy warranted? What is happening while
we are filling up the world's hard disks?

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Well, information is never disembodied, it
always needs a carrier and the minerals

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used in the technology hosting our data
come from conflict zones, resulting in

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slavery and ecocide. As for instance in
the coltan and cassiterite mines in Congo,

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gold mines in Ghana. Minerals used in
technology hosting our data come from

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00:26:02,679 --> 00:26:07,399
unregulated zones leading to extreme
pollution, as here in the black sludge

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00:26:07,399 --> 00:26:15,850
lake in Baotou in China. EU waste is
exported to unregulated zones, and server

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farms spit out an equal amount of CO2 as
the global aviation industry. Our data

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00:26:20,070 --> 00:26:23,860
cannot be separated from the physical, and
its physical side is not so pretty.

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And what is happening is that the earth is
getting warmer and climate research is not

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00:26:27,789 --> 00:26:32,039
based on Twitter feeds, but our
measurements yet somehow largely has been

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00:26:32,039 --> 00:26:36,539
ignored for decades. Scientific consensus
was reached in the 80s, and if you compare

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00:26:36,539 --> 00:26:40,070
the dangerously slow response to this, to
the response given to the threat of

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terrorism which has rapidly led to new
laws, even new presidents, this shows how

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00:26:44,789 --> 00:26:48,799
stories, metaphors, and mythologies in the
world of social beings have more impact

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00:26:48,799 --> 00:26:52,740
than scientific facts. And how threats
that require drastic changes to the status

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00:26:52,740 --> 00:26:59,730
quo are willfully ignored.
So does this survival strategy work? This

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mythology, this belief in taking ourselves
out of the equation, to bring us closer to

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truth, to reality as it is, separating
ourselves from that which we observe,

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blinds us to the trouble we are in. And
our true nature and embodied intelligence,

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not a brain in a jar, an organism
completely intertwined with its

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environment, its existence completely
dependent on the survival of the organisms

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it shares this planet with, we can't help
to anthropomorphize, to approach

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everything around us as part of our social
sphere with minds and agencies. And that

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is fine, it makes us human. It allows us
to study the world around us with empathy.

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The most important thing is that the
metaphor is not mistaken for reality. The

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computer creating, thinking, memorizing,
writing, reading, learning, understanding,

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and people being hard-wired, stuck in a
loop, unable to compute, interfacing with,

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and reprogramming ourselves - those
metaphors are so embedded in our culture.

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You can only hope to create awareness
about them. If there is more awareness

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00:27:59,159 --> 00:28:02,480
about the misleading descriptions of
machines as human-like and humans as

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00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:06,820
machine-like and all of reality as an
information process, it is more likely

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that there will be less blind enchantment
with certain technology, and more

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questions asked about its
purpose and demands.

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There is no strong AI... yet, only very
clever automation. At this moment in

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history machines are proxies for human
agendas and ideologies. There are many

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00:28:23,419 --> 00:28:32,679
issues that need addressing. As Kate
Crawford and Meredith Whittaker point out

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in the AI Now report, recent examples of
AI deployments such as during the US

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elections and Brexit, or Facebook
revealing teenagers emotional states to

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00:28:41,190 --> 00:28:45,539
advertisers looking to target depressed
teens, show how the interests of those

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00:28:45,539 --> 00:28:49,039
deploying advanced data systems can
overshadow the public interest, acting in

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00:28:49,039 --> 00:28:53,080
ways contrary to individual autonomy and
collective welfare, often without this

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00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:58,630
being visible at all to those affected.
The report points to many - I highly

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00:28:58,630 --> 00:29:04,769
recommend reading it - and here are a few
concerns. Concerns about social safety

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nets and human resource distributions when
the dynamic of labor and employment

356
00:29:08,290 --> 00:29:12,691
change. Workers most likely to be affected
are women and minorities. Automated

357
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decision-making systems are often unseen
and there are few established means to

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00:29:16,899 --> 00:29:20,460
assess their fairness, to contest and
rectify wrong or harmful decisions or

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00:29:20,460 --> 00:29:29,590
impacts.
Those directly impacted.... Sorry,

360
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automated... No, sorry.... I'm lost...
Those directly impacted by deployment of

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00:29:35,570 --> 00:29:49,909
AI systems rarely have a role in designing
them. *sighs* And to assess their

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00:29:49,909 --> 00:29:54,070
fairness, to confess and rectify wrong and
harmful decisions or impacts, lacks....

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00:29:54,070 --> 00:29:58,960
lack of methods measuring and assessing
social and economic impacts... nah, let's

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keep scrolling back.... In any case, there
is a great chance of like me bias because

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of the uniform... uniformity of those
developing these systems. Seeing the

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Oracle we've constructed for what it is
means to stop comforting, comforting

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00:30:20,889 --> 00:30:25,269
ourselves, to ask questions. A quote from
super intelligence, the idea that it's

368
00:30:25,269 --> 00:30:29,800
smart people by (?)Muchaichai(?) (?)Clowsky(?),
the pressing ethical questions in machine

369
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,430
learning are not about machines becoming
self-aware and taking over the world, but

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about how people can exploit other people.
Or through careless, in carelessness

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00:30:37,910 --> 00:30:43,070
introduce immoral behavior into automated
systems. Instead of waiting for the nerd

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00:30:43,070 --> 00:30:46,860
rapture, or for Elon Musk to whisk us off
the planet, it is important to come to

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terms with a more modest perception of
ourselves and our machines. Facing the

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ethical repercussions of the systems we
are putting in place. Having the real

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discussion, not the one we hope for, but
the hard one that requires actual change

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and a new mythology. One that works, not
only for us, but for all those human and

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non-human, we share the planet with.
Thank you. That's it.

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*applause*

379
00:31:24,170 --> 00:31:30,209
Herald Angel: Thank you, Marloes. Is there
any questions? Like, you would have one

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00:31:30,209 --> 00:31:36,689
minute. *laugs* Okay. So, thank you
again. Give her a big applause again,

381
00:31:36,689 --> 00:31:39,469
thank you.

382
00:31:39,469 --> 00:31:43,976
*applause*

383
00:31:43,976 --> 00:32:04,901
*34c3 outro*