Force Magnifier: The Cultural Impacts of Artificial Intelligence

171 Pages·2020·3.077 MB·English

by  Michael Betancourt

other Wildside Press books by Michael Betancourt
Two Women and a Nightengale
Artemis: A Tragedy of Collage
Those Hidden Obstructions
Re–Viewing Miami
Structuring Time:
notes on making movies
Harmonia:
Glitch, Movies and Visual Music
The History of Motion Graphics:
from avant–garde to industry in the United States
A Short Guide to Writing About Motion Graphics
Visual Music Instrument Patents
Mary Hallock–Greenewalt: The Complete Patents
Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia
A. Wallace Rimington’s Colour–Music
MICHAEL BETANCOURT
0
WILDSIDE PRESS
Published by Wildside Press, LLC.
www.wildsidepress.com
Copyright © 2020 Michael Betancourt, all rights reserved
Cover artwork:
instaglitch_41476766_2209971759249345_425094765525400455_n.jpg
copyright © 2018 Michael Betancourt / Artists Rights Society (ARS)
Aspects of this analysis are drawn from The Critique of Digital Capitalism:
An Analysis of the Political Economy of Digital Culture and Technology, Punctum
Books, 2016.
Other parts of this book were adapted from previous publications
produced in earlier stages of this analysis:
“Article: a107, Disruptive Technology: The Avant–Gardness of Avant–Garde
Art” CTheory, 2002.
“Theory Beyond the Codes: 058, The Demands of Agnotology::Surveillance”
CTheory, 2014.
“Theorizing 21c: 21C012, The Limits of Utility,” CTheory, 2015.
“Theorizing 21c: 21C031, The Paradox of Agency,” CTheory, 2016.
Ideologies of the Real in Title Sequences, Motion Graphics and Cinema (New York:
Routledge, 2019).
Additional materials concerning automation, return on investment,
and the issues of social media are adapted from material posed on
Cinegraphic.net.
ISBN 9781479448197 PERFECT
ISBN 9781479448203 CASEBOUND
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CONTENTS
PREFACE .................................................. 13
Defining the Post-Labor Economy ........................ 17
Rationalizing Intellectual Labor .......................... 21
§ 1. THE COMMODIFICATION OF AGENCY .................... 25
§ 1.1 Distinctions in Automation .......................... 28
§ 1.2 Taylorist Foundations .............................. 33
§ 1.2.1 Determinative Judgment ....................... 35
§ 1.3 The Role of Refractive Judgment ..................... 36
§ 1.4 Semiotic Production ................................ 43
§ 1.5 Automating Judgment: Autonomous Agency ............ 48
§ 2. CONFLICTS BETWEEN LABOR, PROFIT, AND VALUE .... 53
§ 2.1 The Dynamics of Value Creation and Extraction ....... 54
§ 2.1.1 Use and the Scarcity of Capital .................. 56
§ 2.2 Determinative Judgment, Human Labor, and Agency ... 58
§ 2.2.1 The Cultural Disenfranchisement
of Determinative Judgment .......................... 61
§ 2.2.2 The Contradiction of Productivity and Exchange .. 63
§ 2.3 The Automation of Artistic Creation .................. 64
§ 2.4 Futurity and Post-Labor ............................ 67
§ 3. USE LIMITS VALUE .................................... 69
§ 3.1 Contingent Demand ............................... 73
§ 3.2 Baumol’s Cost Disease .............................. 76
§ 3.3 Autonomous Artistry ............................... 78
§ 3.4 Scarcity of Capital ................................. 83
§ 4. ETHICAL AUTONOMY AND HUMAN AGENCY ......... 87
§ 4.1 The Problem of
Production–Distribution–Consumption ................... 89
§ 4.2 Immaterial Control Over Moral Rights ................ 93
§ 4.3 The Creative Act ................................... 99
§ 4.4 The Responsibility of Machines ..................... 104
§ 5. AUTONOMOUS INSTRUMENTALITY .................. 107
§ 5.1 Instrumentalizing Implicit Bias ..................... 113
§ 5.2 Accountability and Restricted Access ................ 116
§ 5.2.2 A Social Intervention ......................... 118
§ 5.3 The Fallacy of ‘Objectivity’ ......................... 119
§ 5.4 Social Control .................................... 122
§ 6. CONCLUSIONS:
THE SOCIAL AND THE AUTONOMOUS ................ 127
§ 6.1 Emancipating Human Labor ....................... 128
§ 6.2 Futurity and History .............................. 133
§ 6.3 The ‘Society of Leisure’ ............................ 134
§ 6.3.1 Autonomous Management .................... 138
§ 6.4 The Final Contradiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
§ 6.4.1 The Automation of Societal Position ............ 145
§ 6.5 The Problem Posed for Universal Basic Income ....... 147
AFTERWORD ............................................ 151
REFERENCES ............................................ 155
FIGURES
Frontis The robot Marius (Gilbert Ritchie) along with two
manual labor robots on stage with Harry Domin (Basil
Rathbone) and Helena Glory (Frances Carson) in Act 1 of a
performance of Karel Čapek’s play Rossumovi Univerzální
Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) at St. Martin’s Theatre,
London, England, 1923 .................................... 12
1.1 All is Vanity, C. Allan Gilbert, 1891 ........................ 37
1.2 By the Gondola (‘IMG_1023’ by Warren R.M. Stuart), 2007;
identified as a face by the AI program Anthroptic;
image used with permission ............................. 41
1.3 Funny Animals generated by the Deep Dream system, 2015;
licensed by Google, Inc. under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License ......................... 43
4.1 Helena Glory (Frances Carson) questions the robot Radius
(Leslie Banks) in Act 2 of a performance of Karel Čapek’s play
Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots) at
St. Martin’s Theatre, London, England, 1923 .................. 86