Disintegrator

Jon McCormack has been investigating the relationships between machine intelligences and creativity for decades. In Episode 3, Jon joins Marek and Roberto to speak about the social and cultural implications of AI -- beginning with the parasitism that deep learning methodologies practice upon human culture and the downstream effects on how we think, learn, and act. We had the privilege of meeting Jon at an event thrown by SensiLab, an incredible research facility founded by Jon within Monash University, at their Creative AI summit in Prato this past summer. For anyone interested in the creative dimensions of AI, we highly recommend exploring the link above. A few notes from the conversation: At the beginning of the episode Jon references his absolutely beautiful work Holon, which is worth virtually exploring on his site. For anyone with a cursory or recent understanding of what it means to make art with AI, a deep dive into Jon's work is recommended -- it truly hits so many dimensions of this topic in stirring and striking ways and has been incredibly influential on many disciplines. It will definitely shake your conceptions of "AI + art" from that of idle generativity on commercial platforms.Jon references Anthony O’Hear’s “Art and Technology” as a foundational work establishing the parasitic tendencies of AI back in the 90s.There are some quite evocative images of the “alien-looking” structures developed through generative technologies as mobilized for spacecraft here. Jon references objects like this as examples of expanded notions of creativity.We strongly recommend Art in the Age of Machine Learning by Sofian Audry (a future guest on the podcast and a member of the Choreomata team), as it engages with Jon’s work.This episode continues the through-line of skepticism toward the recent hype around major commercial investments in generative deep learning -- enumerating upon their bottlenecks, biases, and social and cultural effects. Jon’s critique here is strong and pithy, as are his gestures toward alternatives.

Tiziana Terranova has provided all of us with one of the sharpest critical accounts of the modern internet. In this episode, Tiziana, Roberto, and Marek discuss the labor dynamics at play in the contemporary digital economy -- from changes in the social status of creative work, the hidden labor underpinning the mechanics of the virtual world, and the material means by which AI resists pushes for decentralization.We reference a few of Tiziana’s texts in the interview, which build foundational scaffolding for theories of what it means to live within networks: Free Labor: Producing Culture of the Digital EconomyNetwork Culture: Politics for the Information AgeAfter the Internet: Digital Networks between Capital and the CommonWe further recommend some background information about some of the theorists Tiziana references, including: Tiziana speaks about the Autonomist Marxist tradition beginning in Italy in the 60s, with key exponents like Paolo Virno, Antonio Negri, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi. Virno’s recent The Idea of World: Public Intellect and Use of Life is a great primer for this conversation.Since we speak about Marx’s Grundrisse, David Harvey has quite a good primer on this important but unusual text here.Something that informed Marek’s thoughts in this conversation was an excellent recent episode of Aufhebunga Bunga (number 362 with Cory Doctorow).Tiziana references the work of sociologist Antonio Casilli; we are looking forward to the English translation of Waiting for Robots: An Inquiry Into Digital Labor into English.Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Toward a Global Idea of Race comes up in the context of racialized capitalism.Peter Galison’s War Against the Center is highly recommended as we speak about centralization.In the conversation on reproductive labor, Tiziana references Amelia DeFalco’s work on posthuman care.Enjoy this fast-paced, dynamic episode as it grapples with the question: will algorithm ever set us free?

Reza Negarestani has put together one of the strongest philosophical conceptions of Artificial General Intelligence. In this episode, Reza, Marek, and Roberto hit virtually every limit of AI theory -- from the outer banks of the "human", the boundaries of creativity and imagination, the borderlands of contemporary computation, and the social and political and aesthetic implications of all of the above. This episode is a great companion piece to not just Reza's chapter in Choreomata (Galatea Reloaded: Imagination Inside-Out Imagine) but his absolutely mindblowing work Intelligence and Spirit. We reference a few texts in the interview:Intelligence and Spirit (in our opinion, one of the most important treatises on AGI)Reza's work on the "inhuman" in The Labor of the Inhuman and Drafting the InhumanHis collaboration with the brilliant visual artist and theorist Keith Tilford, who also has a significant piece in Choreomata, but who most famously collaborated with Reza on ChronosisReza's conversation with one of our favorite political theorists, Nick Srnicek, via the awesome Impossible Object BooksWhile this episode is quite technical, we are confident that repeat listens are rewarding. Reza will uproot everything you believe about Artificial Intelligence in this incredible interview.