We're back on the talks now. Again, reminder of the topic, magic metaphors on AI. And we're going to start with Jan Martins, right here. Hello. I'm going to let you do your presentation. Hi, everyone. It's a nice day. So it's perfect. Yeah, here in Barcelona unfortunately we are in vain and I am really jealous because the festival is amazing. I want to thank you very much, the organizers, that we participate online. And I will start now. So today my talk, and we have thought explore the concept of the future as something that can be designed from the present, or better said, how can we express as an algorithm to delete the test outcome for humanity that's becoming a natural practice. So to say, like looking into a crystal ball. I will start from a project that I did back in 2017, which was mixed magic practices with AI, to then explore various ideologies that are bundled up in the DESCREAL acronym. And I will conclude by offering you a way to summon a spirit that might help in reconsidering our relationship to technology. So, I that have an image? Here. Oops. So, oh, no. Okay. This one works really well. So, I'll just say like this. Yeah, the Physionomic Horoscope was a project I did back in 2017 for the Internet Yamiichi that took place at the house of the electron-choking Zimbardo. And it was a project that was really interesting becauseoscope was a project i did back in 2017 for the internet yamichi that took place at the house of electronic in the basil and then i started to read and show interest over development of ai's especially for face recognition systems uh in those years there were two very weird systems were developed. One of them was developed in the US, the GADAR, and the other one was developed in China to recognize criminal by face features. The GADAR was a facial recognition system developed to detect whether a person is homosexual or not, that beside the fact that the results of such systems were comparable to random tests, the main question remains, what is the reason to develop such technology? And similarly in China, another facial recognition model was developed to discriminate between criminals and non-criminals. So to say a technological reinterpretation of physiognomy. For those who don't know what physiognomy is, it was the practice to assess someone's character by their appearance, especially their facial traits. This was used especially during the 19th and 20th century to assess whether someone would be a criminal or not. And such form of pseudoscience was used to justify racism and ableism back then. I was therefore quite terrified by how AI systems were used to reproduce racism, ableism, homophobia without even questioning such aspects. My approach to such question was to build a similar machine myself, but rather than identifying sexual orientation or character, I decided that having a machine that would define someone's horoscope would be a good starting point for a discussion about the short promise of AI systems. The machine that I built for the Internet Yamiichi was trained with images of known actors, and here I must admit I'm culpable of data theft and their project sign. Now I hope this must really suggest all of you that to make some correlation with only out arbitrary results, total and European randomness, because assuming that the day of birth might shape the way your face develops is completely absurd. But of course, this would be the art for the faces. Therefore, during the event, people would let the machine take a picture of them and the IC would predict their astrological times and 90% of the time was wrong. And to be honest, some people were also pissed that it was not working correctly. And this would start a conversation between me and the user where I would explain them why it should not work and why we should refuse such system in the first place. In the system I found myself practices some trap AI magic. What the system I built was doing was to do prediction based on the data from the past and this is how AI system works. It is nothing else than statistical analysis of large data sets in order to recognize patterns and therefore make predictions. Therefore, facial recognition should be rather termed facial prediction because what machine learning algorithms return is not a certain thing, but rather the percentage of accuracy that is in some cases close to 100%, like in the case of digit recognition, but also below 60% in the case of digit recognition but also below 60 percent in the case of the guider what i want to focus here is the term prediction and how it relates to the idea of the future but also how it relates to magic as in predicting the future especially how the damaging those predictions are because they are based on data from the past especially when the past is synonymous with traces label is hom homophobia, to allow a few of the many biases that are incorporated in data sets. So if there is an argument to create a parallel between technology and magic based on the idea of predictions as a magical praxis, when zooming out and looking at technology at large as discussed in popular culture magic and technology also intertwined to borrow the words of joel jordanstein from his paper technology and his discontent on the verge of the post-human the massive social transformation brought by telegraph railroad and electricity created a sense of technology was white magic. And here the use of the word white is not a reference to fantasy fiction, but rather the racial implication it has. The author has more to say about this in the following paragraph. Nearly all Euro-American foundational narratives of 19th century frontier settlement understood the right to the land not as the new Jerusalem of the puritans but as the technological transformation of untouched space whether by the axe the mill the canal the steamboat the railroad the dam or the steel plow the technology caused at a chain of, allowing the settlers to participate in what they called a second creation. The white settlers legitimated their presence from New England to California by putting forth the technology as the agent that conquered the United States nothing less than a national myth of origin. And such ideology is from the mind of John Locke, who coined the labor theory of property. A God given right to white men to transform the so-called untouched land through technological means and turn it into property and it is not the case that such kind of ideology appears during the first wave of naval colonialism finally settlers have the moral and physical and philosophical justification to dispossess indigenous community of their land and it is very important here to emphasize the role of technology in the transformation of land into property, not only the technology in itself, but also the concept that the settlers bring technology and that the uneducated indigenous community do not comprehend such matters. And thus their technological knowledge does not count as technology under the gates of the settler. So to say settler technology is superior to the technology of the colonized and therefore should be adopt in order to bring progress. Of course, such a discourse could be expanded, but for the sake of this lecture, I would like to focus on this idea of ideology and technology as form of white magic and specifically to look how this bundle unfolds today, not only for the dispossession of indigenous land or the colonization of outer space, but also to colonize time, more specifically the future. In order to describe this, it is worth to look into the work of Timnit Gebru and Emil Pitorres who together have coined the acronym Intesquerel that stands for transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and long-termism. Some of those terms might be familiar with you, but it's nevertheless worth explaining some of them, not all of them. But I take the one that interests me the most. So transhumanism in a natural is the philosophy of merging the human body with technology. Some authors would argue that we are already transhuman as we already use technologies such as cochlear implants and pacemaker to assist disabled and ill people to live longer. And while such interventions show how technology can be used for social good, transhumanist philosophy does not stop there. It aims at the human enhancement towards a superior posthuman species, therefore implying that some forms of consciousness and modes of experience are inherently more valuable than others. So to say eugenics or white liberal eugenics in this case, the superior consciousness is a constructed one that needs to be freed from the human flesh and its cognitive limitations. So to say to reach the potential of superintelligence, therefore deeming anything that does not fit the racist measure of high IQ as disposable. Furthermore, such views of the super intelligent posthumans always project such endeavour as a result of the work we put now for the future, allowing research in such eugenic ladder fields for the betterment of the future. Singularitarianism, this is my favourite ideology and also my starting point of investigation in the topic I'm presenting to you. And this interest was sparked from the project I presented you before about the physiognomic horoscope as when I started to research in AI, the term singularity and its ideology started to trigger my interest. In simple words, singularitarianism is a way, the moment in which technology, specifically AI, would be so developed that it would be able to rewrite and enhance itself. So to say a form of technological recursion where artificial intelligence would explode in artificial general intelligence. Such scenario in this ideology might lead to either complete doom, like the Matrix or Terminator, or into benevolent sort of AI God who will help humankind with compassion. Probably some of you are already rolling their eyes, especially if they grew up in a spiritual household. Such ideas remind very much the ways in which Christianity described the final days of humanity, in which Jesus Christ will come and judge us into hell or heaven. Effective altruism. So if any of you were following the saga of the downfall of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by some bankman Fritz, you might have also heard of the term effective altruism. The latter is quite an interesting ideology as it is based on a very noble principle, altruism, to donate wealth that is in excess to the less fortunate. Nevertheless, it distorts temporality and space in a way that turns it into a bizarre way to justify wealth accumulation. The whole idea basically wants to supercharge altruism with effectiveness, and what does that mean exactly well the effectiveness in this case can be thought as a sort of algorithm or calculation by which one should measure the effort of their own altruism therefore before donating to a charity that is important to you or also geographically close to you the choice of your altruist should be guided by maximizes effectiveness in the future so instead of disaster relief funds you should maybe do uh donate to foundations for development of school and of course the same from a utilitarian and pragmatic point of view this makes sense somehow but nevertheless such philosophy argues that there is a correct way to donate and the correct way is by maximizing effectiveness in the future but the core principle of such philosophy is that instead for example devote your life to work for a charity or on a low salary everyone should aim to work for example for a big petrochemical company so that you would have more disposable income to donate to the rights charity to maximize positive outcomes for the future. Then long-term means could be described as effective altruism on steroids, but rather than focusing on the way that disposable income should be used for projects that will assure a better future, long-term is as a philosophy takes a more grim turn again the premises of these thoughts start from a noble point of view we should develop technology that will ensure that the next generations will live in a better society than the one we live now like for example when you develop an ai system that targets civilians households to dismantle terrorist groups system that targets civilians' households to dismantle terrorist groups. The grim turn of long-termist philosophy is that rather than looking to the, let's call it near future, so to say the next 100 years, they're concerned with the far distant future, like hundreds of thousands of years from now. Therefore in their view, if for example, climate change actions would put a halt on technological development, especially AI systems or crypto that are energy-hungry infrastructure, this would hinder the development of a post-human race and therefore it is counted as a negative impact. Here I do not want to necessarily place long-termists together with climate change denials. I just want to highlight that for long-termists, the extinction of part of the world population in the next few hundred years would not be a problem if such scenario would entail an utopian future in year one billion, for example. And to steal the words of Nis Devenot, long-term is an extension of the extractive logic that Williams and Brandt characterize as anti-life, drawing on Achille Mimbès' concept of necropolitics or the subjugation of life to the power of death. They reveal how the colonial project is a premise on a white supremacist human exceptionalism that assumes the right to label some life as disposable and hence to identify acceptable sacrifices in the concept of more award causes. So a whole point of bundling such philosophies together is that they are the talking points of many of the tech elites of our time. Some months of close AI to Elon Musk, but not only from people of the industry, but also influential academics like Nick Bostrom. And such bundle produces a technical political project that asserts the necessity of focusing research and research and resources into the further development of machines at all costs. Nevertheless, the ideas of Emil Torres and Timid Gabriel have received some criticism in the sense that their view of such philosophy resembles a conspiracy theory. So, we need to incorporate some alternative point of view in this talk, otherwise it looks like I'm biased and as you know, researchers have to be objective. And so in their piece for medium, Elisa Nash and James J. Hughes, a PhD candidate and the head of Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, have written a piece identifying the work of the aforementioned authors, Cameron Torres, as a form of conspiracy theory. James Hughes in his piece also takes a look at all of the philosophy bundled in the test, in the test real acronym, and with minor criticism sees them as an asset for leftist futurism. Their vision for the leftist futurism boils down to two paragraphs that denounce right-wing billionaires and that harshly criticizes and that actually criticizing texture is a form of reactionary nostalgia for Stalinism and Keynesian economics. And this is often the case when technologies criticize this. Who disagrees with technological advancements is a backward looking person who wants to get back to the Stone Age. Furthermore, even accepting their position, one can easily see how such philosophy, rather than trying to solve social issues through collective political action, they tend to prioritize individualistic approach to problems, as in the case of affective altruism. The fact of justifying wealth accumulation as a good thing, but also in the case of transhumanism and the hope of a post-human species. It is just an approach that reproduces ableist thoughts of erasing disability rather than building a society that accommodates heterogeneous abilities. In the case of the other two philosophies, single-life Italianism and long-termism, there is no justification for their ideas, they are just cringe to begin with. Nevertheless, what is important to take away from the critical piece is their somewhat failed attempt to advocate for a leftist futurism, putting emphasis on the word future, and this word is the token that bundles up all the aforementioned and not mentioned philosophies. So to say is to look at the future as something that can be shaped, constructed and designed from now, employing technology as the main tool. And I guess now it is really the moment for me to bring all of those pieces together and in respect to the topic of this, yeah. And in respect to the topic that I proposed to connect magic design and technology. As I already mentioned, the thread that connects these philosophies is the white case toward the future and the way in which technology and its development converge towards it. One aspect is to keep in mind is that it is also apparent in the effect of Altruist philosophy, is this notion of technology as being an autonomous force, something that can be controlled by humanity. The ways in which these ideas instilled in all of us can be read in the writings of Langdon Wiener, where he criticizes this idea of technology as an autonomous, almost unnatural force. An example is the case of the atomic bomb and the moral and ethical dilemmas that afflicted Oppenheimer after the US decided that it would be a good idea to obliterate roughly 200,000 Japanese citizens. When the scientists expressed his discontent about his discovery, a prompt response came. If it was not you, someone else would have invented it. Such rhetoric permeates the whole tech industry. If it was not you, then it would have been someone else. Technological advancement can't be stopped. And while there might be some truth to that, it is also true that without Oppenheimer, the development of such bomb would have taken more time and we would have saved 200,000 lives. Furthermore, outside of wartime, such technology would have been studied with more ethical framework and maybe banned or dismissed in its production. This is just to say that politics and context matter a lot when governments decide where to invest their research funds. Furthermore, also, D'Einstein discusses the autonomous nature of technology, especially in regards to genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics in a critical way. Technological progress has long structured our American identity, and it functions as a prop for a muted form of social Darwinism. Eiter might make right or survival of the fittest. Here is the techno-cultural matrix progress, religion, whiteness, modernity, masculinity, the future. Furthermore, treating technology as an autonomous aspect of cultural production, illuminating the road to a utopian future that will not require social or political change. Dimstein's contribution highlights the gender and racial inequalities that are intrinsic to the idea of autonomous technology, especially because the only technology that is autonomous is the one developed within the Western institutions of technology. Test release therefore propose a philosophy that might at first glance, might look attractive because they propose to work for the betterment of human life, nevertheless, their approach rather than offer social techno-political solution for the betterment of the coming years and catastrophes, they just offer a distorted view of a possible future. Such practice of predicting the future is in view what could be termed as magical, to rephrase Thornstein, white magic, where industrial ideologies function as a techno-political crystal ball to see the future that operates similarly to how colonial and imperialist forces dispossess land from indigenous people. Because such philosophy adopts forms of hierarchy in which some forms of life are more expendable than the other, to the point that the transhumanist project should take over the whole humanity, one step at a time, from the less desirable to the white Western population. Thus, the astral vision of the future is a way to occupy it with the imaginary of the white transhuman species free to occupy it and colonize outer space. Um, so I'm almost at the end and yeah. And so here I want just to propose how Ned Lutz could meet Simon Doan. I want just to propose how Ned Ladd could meet Simon Donne. So in his work on the mode of existence of technical object, Simon Donne spends quite some time describing the passage from manual labor to technical objects. He describes this as a result of the dissolution of slave labor in Europe during the Renaissance and the study of mechanical physics done by Ré Descubinans. To do so, he uses a lot of dichotomies to illustrate the separation of knowledge and ability, operation and intellect, craftsman and engineer, dominated and dominating. The craftsman will be like a magician and his knowledge will be operational rather than intellectual. It will be an ability rather than a knowing by its very nature. It will be a secret for others because it will be a secret for himself, for his own consciousness. The magician in this case, the craftsman reminds me of the worker in the British textile factories. That while crushing textile machinery was chanting about net Ludd. Termite Luddites, craftsmen from the incipit of industrial era, decided that the only way to defend their livelihood was to destroy the technologies that was taking it away, that was taking their livelihood away for the profit of the few industrialists. And so I wanted to conclude with the summoning of these two spirits, Simondon and Ladd, to offer a starting point for reflection. So is it worth continuing with this trajectory where technology equals future? Or is it time to change this direction and point towards the present and perhaps also the past? And I conclude here.