Algorithmic Empathy: Toward a Critique of Aesthetic AI

Bajohr, Hannes

doi:10.1353/con.2022.0011

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Further research may also wish to more deeply consider the source codes of thanabot systems, as well as the language models those systems draw upon. The source code of a system like Project December is largely shielded by a superficial representation of a significant other, reflecting what Hannes Bajohr calls the ‘connectionist paradigm’ (2020): although output statistically resembles input, users have limited opportunities to understand the technical process of text creation. Despite chatbot and other natural language generation systems often depending on unshared ‘black box’ code and training sets (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chatting with the dead: The hermeneutics of thanabots

Henrickson

2023

Media, Culture & Society

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In 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle released a feature article about a man who chose to resurrect his deceased fiancée by training a chatbot system built on OpenAI’s GPT language models on her old digital messages. He then had emotional conversations with this chatbot, which appeared to accurately mimic the deceased’s writing style. This case study raises questions about the communicative influences of thanabots: chatbots trained on data of the dead. While thanabots are clearly not living conversational partners, the rhetoric, everyday experiences, and emotions associated with these system have very real implications for living users. This paper applies a lifeworld perspective to consider the hermeneutics of thanabots. It shows that thanabots exist in a long lineage of efforts to communicate with the dead, but acknowledges that thanatechnologies must be more thoroughly studied for better understanding of what it means to die in a digital age.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chatting with the dead: The hermeneutics of thanabots

Henrickson

2023

Media, Culture & Society

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“…[56, p. xi] Nevertheless, Allado-McDowell has no interest in the phantasm of strong artistic AI. On the one hand, they use 20 For a more in-depth discussion of the 'sequential' and the 'connectionist' paradigms, see [49]. Nota bene: Since the concept of 'AI' itself is agnostic about the technology through which it is pursued -earlier AI models were sequential while today most research is connectionist -, the distinction between weak and strong AI does not correlate with that of sequential and connectionist; each technology can be used for each goal, and has been, see [50].…”

Section: Experiments In Vector Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second tendency to react to the unfamiliarity of neural networks lies in the exploration of their media-specific affordances [49]. For VAUDn oc HORRRR, programmer and artist Zach Whalen trained a GAN on 4800 comic panels of the horror genre and had it output new ones (fig.…”

Section: Experiments In Vector Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

The Paradox of Anthroponormative Restriction: Artistic Artificial Intelligence and Literary Writing

Bajohr

2022

CounterText

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Artificial Intelligence, in the shape of stochastic machine learning models, has seen an increased use in artistic production in recent years. However, it makes an immense difference if such an ‘artistic Artificial Intelligence’ is conceived of as an autonomous agent or only as a tool in the context of a human-machine assemblage. This article introduces the distinction between a ‘ strong’ and a ‘ weak’ artistic AI, and suggests that each invites a specific aesthetic. The former is inherently anthropocentric, strives for the reduplication of existing artforms, and reproduces concepts of a postromantic tradition such as expression, genius, and creativity. The latter, on the other hand, allows for an experimental approach towards genuine artistic novelty unhampered by human models through, paradoxically, keeping a human in the loop. This point is illustrated by discussing Ahmed Elgammal’s ‘Creative Adversarial Network’ and the digital poetry of Allison Parrish and Zach Whalen.

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The Replacement of What? Artificial Intelligence, Creativity and (More-than-)Humanness

Fernandes

2024

Journal of Creative Communications

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The ongoing discourse regarding the potential substitution of human creativity by Artificial Intelligence (AI) raises questions about the essence of human nature. If the essence of humanity lies in creativity, and if AI can replicate this trait, it appears that creativity alone does not define what it means to be human. Rather than perceiving this as an ‘anthropological loss’ to be accepted or fought against, it can be viewed as an occasion to contemplate the human from a more-than-human perspective. By considering this perspective, it becomes evident that the definition of humanity has been a matter of dispute long preceding the recent advancements in AI. A theoretical approach to the relationship between AI, creativity and more-than-humanness is proposed as a way to show the possibilities that philosophy brings to counteract pessimistic approaches to the replaceability of the human by AI. By challenging the notion that humans are the sole proprietors of creativity, one can explore alternative forms of creativity beyond the human realm and consider how humans can facilitate their emergence.

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Algorithmic Empathy: Toward a Critique of Aesthetic AI

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Chatting with the dead: The hermeneutics of thanabots

Chatting with the dead: The hermeneutics of thanabots

The Paradox of Anthroponormative Restriction: Artistic Artificial Intelligence and Literary Writing

The Replacement of What? Artificial Intelligence, Creativity and (More-than-)Humanness

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