Download or read book Critical Theory of AI written by Simon Lindgren and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of artificial intelligence. Machines think and act in ever more complex ways, making suggestions and decisions on our behalf. While AI might be seen as practical and profitable, issues of data surveillance, algorithmic control, and sexist and racist bias persist. In this rapidly changing landscape, social analysis of AI risks getting scaled down to issues of ‘ethics’, ‘responsibility’, and ‘fairness’. While these are important issues, they must be addressed not from an ‘AI first’ perspective, but more thoroughly in terms of power and contention. Approaching artificial intelligence from the often overlooked perspective of critical social theory, this book provides a much-needed intervention on how both old and new theories conceptualize the social consequences of AI. Questions are posed about the ideologies driving AI, the mythologies surrounding AI, and the complex relationship between AI and power. Simon Lindgren provides a way of defining AI as an object of social and political critique, and guides the reader through a set of contentious areas where AI and politics intersect. In relation to these topics, critical theories are drawn upon, both as an argument for and an illustration of how AI can be critiqued. Given the opportunities and challenges of AI, this book is a must-read for students and scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines.

Download or read book Critical Theory A Very Short Introduction written by Stephen Eric Bronner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical theory emerged in the 1920s from the work of the Frankfurt School, the circle of German-Jewish academics who sought to diagnose -- and, if at all possible, cure -- the ills of society, particularly fascism and capitalism. In this book, Stephen Eric Bronner provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukács and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on the cluster of concepts and themes that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors. Bronner explains and discusses concepts such as method and agency, alienation and reification, the culture industry and repressive tolerance, non-identity and utopia. He argues for the introduction of new categories and perspectives for illuminating the obstacles to progressive change and focusing upon hidden transformative possibilities. In this newly updated second edition, Bronner targets new academic interests, broadens his argument, and adapts it to a global society amid the resurgence of right-wing politics and neo-fascist movements.

Download or read book The Cultural Life of Machine Learning written by Jonathan Roberge and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together the work of historians and sociologists with perspectives from media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, and information studies to address the origins, practices, and possible futures of contemporary machine learning. From its foundations in 1950s and 1960s pattern recognition and neural network research to the modern-day social and technological dramas of DeepMind’s AlphaGo, predictive political forecasting, and the governmentality of extractive logistics, machine learning has become controversial precisely because of its increased embeddedness and agency in our everyday lives. How can we disentangle the history of machine learning from conventional histories of artificial intelligence? How can machinic agents’ capacity for novelty be theorized? Can reform initiatives for fairness and equity in AI and machine learning be realized, or are they doomed to cooptation and failure? And just what kind of “learning” does machine learning truly represent? We empirically address these questions and more to provide a baseline for future research. Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Download or read book AI for Everyone written by Pieter Verdegem and published by University of Westminster Press. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are entering a new era of technological determinism and solutionism in which governments and business actors are seeking data-driven change, assuming that Artificial Intelligence is now inevitable and ubiquitous. But we have not even started asking the right questions, let alone developed an understanding of the consequences. Urgently needed is debate that asks and answers fundamental questions about power. This book brings together critical interrogations of what constitutes AI, its impact and its inequalities in order to offer an analysis of what it means for AI to deliver benefits for everyone. The book is structured in three parts: Part 1, AI: Humans vs. Machines, presents critical perspectives on human-machine dualism. Part 2, Discourses and Myths About AI, excavates metaphors and policies to ask normative questions about what is ‘desirable’ AI and what conditions make this possible. Part 3, AI Power and Inequalities, discusses how the implementation of AI creates important challenges that urgently need to be addressed. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and regional contexts, this book offers a vital intervention on one of the most hyped concepts of our times.

Download or read book Critical Theory Today written by Lois Tyson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.

Download or read book Artificial Whiteness written by Yarden Katz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dramatic statements about the promise and peril of artificial intelligence for humanity abound, as an industry of experts claims that AI is poised to reshape nearly every sphere of life. Who profits from the idea that the age of AI has arrived? Why do ideas of AI’s transformative potential keep reappearing in social and political discourse, and how are they linked to broader political agendas? Yarden Katz reveals the ideology embedded in the concept of artificial intelligence, contending that it both serves and mimics the logic of white supremacy. He demonstrates that understandings of AI, as a field and a technology, have shifted dramatically over time based on the needs of its funders and the professional class that formed around it. From its origins in the Cold War military-industrial complex through its present-day Silicon Valley proselytizers and eager policy analysts, AI has never been simply a technical project enabled by larger data and better computing. Drawing on intimate familiarity with the field and its practices, Katz instead asks us to see how AI reinforces models of knowledge that assume white male superiority and an imperialist worldview. Only by seeing the connection between artificial intelligence and whiteness can we prioritize alternatives to the conception of AI as an all-encompassing technological force. Bringing together theories of whiteness and race in the humanities and social sciences with a deep understanding of the history and practice of science and computing, Artificial Whiteness is an incisive, urgent critique of the uses of AI as a political tool to uphold social hierarchies.

Download or read book Communicating Artificial Intelligence AI written by Seungahn Nah and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite increasing scholarly attention to artificial intelligence (AI), studies at the intersection of AI and communication remain ripe for exploration, including investigations of the social, political, cultural, and ethical aspects of machine intelligence, interactions among agents, and social artifacts. This book tackles these unexplored research areas with special emphasis on conditions, components, and consequences of cognitive, attitudinal, affective, and behavioural dimensions toward communication and AI. In doing so, this book epitomizes communication, journalism and media scholarship on AI and its social, political, cultural, and ethical perspectives. Topics vary widely from interactions between humans and robots through news representation of AI and AI-based news credibility to privacy and value toward AI in the public sphere. Contributors from such countries as Brazil, Netherland, South Korea, Spain, and United States discuss important issues and challenges in AI and communication studies. The collection of chapters in the book considers implications for not only theoretical and methodological approaches, but policymakers and practitioners alike. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Communication Studies.

Download or read book AI Ethics written by Mark Coeckelbergh and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This overview of the ethical issues raised by artificial intelligence moves beyond hype and nightmare scenarios to address concrete questions—offering a compelling, necessary read for our ChatGPT era. Artificial intelligence powers Google’s search engine, enables Facebook to target advertising, and allows Alexa and Siri to do their jobs. AI is also behind self-driving cars, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. These and other AI applications raise complex ethical issues that are the subject of ongoing debate. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible synthesis of these issues. Written by a philosopher of technology, AI Ethics goes beyond the usual hype and nightmare scenarios to address concrete questions. Mark Coeckelbergh describes influential AI narratives, ranging from Frankenstein’s monster to transhumanism and the technological singularity. He surveys relevant philosophical discussions: questions about the fundamental differences between humans and machines and debates over the moral status of AI. He explains the technology of AI, describing different approaches and focusing on machine learning and data science. He offers an overview of important ethical issues, including privacy concerns, responsibility and the delegation of decision making, transparency, and bias as it arises at all stages of data science processes. He also considers the future of work in an AI economy. Finally, he analyzes a range of policy proposals and discusses challenges for policymakers. He argues for ethical practices that embed values in design, translate democratic values into practices and include a vision of the good life and the good society.

Download or read book The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence written by Isabel Millar and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the crucial role of psychoanalysis in understanding what AI means for us as speaking, sexed subjects. Drawing on Lacanian theory and recent clinical developments it explores what philosophy and critical theory of AI has hitherto neglected: enjoyment. Through the reconceptualization of Intelligence, the Artificial Object and the Sexual Abyss the book outlines the Sexbot as a figure who exists on the boundary of psychoanalysis and AI. Through this figure and the medium of film, the author subverts Kant’s three Enlightenment questions and guides readers to transition from asking 'Does it think?' to 'Can it enjoy?' The book will appeal in particular to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, film and media studies, critical theory, feminist theory and AI research.

Download or read book Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI written by Markus D. Dubber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 1000 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume tackles a quickly-evolving field of inquiry, mapping the existing discourse as part of a general attempt to place current developments in historical context; at the same time, breaking new ground in taking on novel subjects and pursuing fresh approaches. The term "A.I." is used to refer to a broad range of phenomena, from machine learning and data mining to artificial general intelligence. The recent advent of more sophisticated AI systems, which function with partial or full autonomy and are capable of tasks which require learning and 'intelligence', presents difficult ethical questions, and has drawn concerns from many quarters about individual and societal welfare, democratic decision-making, moral agency, and the prevention of harm. This work ranges from explorations of normative constraints on specific applications of machine learning algorithms today-in everyday medical practice, for instance-to reflections on the (potential) status of AI as a form of consciousness with attendant rights and duties and, more generally still, on the conceptual terms and frameworks necessarily to understand tasks requiring intelligence, whether "human" or "A.I."

Download or read book Critical Theory of Technology written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pathbreaking book argues that the roots of the degradation of labor, education, and the environment lie not in technology per se but in the cultural values embodied in its design.

Download or read book Transforming Technology written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-02-06 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoroughly revised, this new edition of Critical Theory of Technology rethinks the relationships between technology, rationality, and democracy, arguing that the degradation of labor--as well as of many environmental, educational, and political systems--is rooted in the social values that preside over technological development. It contains materials on political theory, but the emphasis has shifted to reflect a growing interest in the fields of technology and cultural studies.

Download or read book Identity Institutions and Governance in an AI World written by Peter Bloom and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 21st century is on the verge of a possible total economic and political revolution. Technological advances in robotics, computing and digital communications have the potential to completely transform how people live and work. Even more radically, humans will soon be interacting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) as a normal and essential part of their daily existence. What is needed now more than ever is to rethink social relations to meet the challenges of this soon-to-arrive "smart" world. This book proposes an original theory of trans-human relations for this coming future. Drawing on insights from organisational studies, critical theory, psychology and futurism - it will chart for readers the coming changes to identity, institutions and governance in a world populated by intelligent human and non-human actors alike. It will be characterised by a fresh emphasis on infusing programming with values of social justice, protecting the rights and views of all forms of "consciousness" and creating the structures and practices necessary for encouraging a culture of "mutual intelligent design". To do so means moving beyond our anthropocentric worldview of today and expanding our assumptions about the state of tomorrow's politics, institutions, laws and even everyday existence. Critically such a profound shift demands transcending humanist paradigms of a world created for and by humans and instead opening ourselves to a new reality where non-human intelligence and cyborgs are increasingly central.

Download or read book An Introduction to Communication and Artificial Intelligence written by David J. Gunkel and published by Polity. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication and artificial intelligence (AI) are closely related. It is communication – particularly interpersonal conversational interaction – that provides AI with its defining test case and experimental evidence. Likewise, recent developments in AI introduce new challenges and opportunities for communication studies. Technologies such as machine translation of human languages, spoken dialogue systems like Siri, algorithms capable of producing publishable journalistic content, and social robots are all designed to communicate with users in a human-like way. This timely and original textbook provides educators and students with a much-needed resource, connecting the dots between the science of AI and the discipline of communication studies. Clearly outlining the topic's scope, content and future, the text introduces key issues and debates, highlighting the importance and relevance of AI to communication studies. In lively and accessible prose, David Gunkel provides a new generation with the information, knowledge, and skills necessary to working and living in a world where social interaction is no longer restricted to humans. The first work of its kind, An Introduction to Communication and Artificial Intelligence is the go-to textbook for students and scholars getting to grips with this crucial interdisciplinary topic.

Download or read book The Culture of AI written by Anthony Elliott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ground-breaking book, Cambridge-trained sociologist Anthony Elliott argues that much of what passes for conventional wisdom about artificial intelligence is either ill-considered or plain wrong. The reason? The AI revolution is not so much about cyborgs and super-robots in the future, but rather massive changes in the here-and-now of everyday life. In The Culture of AI, Elliott explores how intelligent machines, advanced robotics, accelerating automation, big data and the Internet of Everything impact upon day-to-day life and contemporary societies. With remarkable clarity and insight, Elliott’s examination of the reordering of everyday life highlights the centrality of AI to everything we do – from receiving Amazon recommendations to requesting Uber, and from getting information from virtual personal assistants to talking with chatbots. The rise of intelligent machines transforms the global economy and threatens jobs, but equally there are other major challenges to contemporary societies – although these challenges are unfolding in complex and uneven ways across the globe. The Culture of AI explores technological innovations from industrial robots to softbots, and from self-driving cars to military drones – and along the way provides detailed treatments of: The history of AI and the advent of the digital universe; automated technology, jobs and employment; the self and private life in times of accelerating machine intelligence; AI and new forms of social interaction; automated vehicles and new warfare; and, the future of AI. Written by one of the world’s foremost social theorists, The Culture of AI is a major contribution to the field and a provocative reflection on one of the most urgent issues of our time. It will be essential reading to those working in a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, science and technology studies, politics, and cultural studies.

Download or read book The Myth of Artificial Intelligence written by Erik J. Larson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Artificial intelligence has always inspired outlandish visions—that AI is going to destroy us, save us, or at the very least radically transform us. Erik Larson exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it. This is a timely, important, and even essential book.” —John Horgan, author of The End of Science Many futurists insist that AI will soon achieve human levels of intelligence. From there, it will quickly eclipse the most gifted human mind. The Myth of Artificial Intelligence argues that such claims are just that: myths. We are not on the path to developing truly intelligent machines. We don’t even know where that path might be. Erik Larson charts a journey through the landscape of AI, from Alan Turing’s early work to today’s dominant models of machine learning. Since the beginning, AI researchers and enthusiasts have equated the reasoning approaches of AI with those of human intelligence. But this is a profound mistake. Even cutting-edge AI looks nothing like human intelligence. Modern AI is based on inductive reasoning: computers make statistical correlations to determine which answer is likely to be right, allowing software to, say, detect a particular face in an image. But human reasoning is entirely different. Humans do not correlate data sets; we make conjectures sensitive to context—the best guess, given our observations and what we already know about the world. We haven’t a clue how to program this kind of reasoning, known as abduction. Yet it is the heart of common sense. Larson argues that all this AI hype is bad science and bad for science. A culture of invention thrives on exploring unknowns, not overselling existing methods. Inductive AI will continue to improve at narrow tasks, but if we are to make real progress, we must abandon futuristic talk and learn to better appreciate the only true intelligence we know—our own.

Download or read book Critical Theory and Methodology written by Raymond A. Morrow and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1994-06-24 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of Choice Magazine's 1996 Outstanding Academic Book Award Author Raymond Morrow outlines and recounts the development of the major tenets of critical theory, exemplifying them through the works of two of their most influential, recent adherents: Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens. Beginning with a comprehensive yet meticulous explication of critical theory and its history, the author next discusses it within the context of a research program; his work concludes with an examination of empirical methods. Emphasizing the connections between critical theory, empirical research, and social science methodology, Morrow's volume offers refreshing insights on traditional and current material.