[SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: Invitation to HoAI Reading Group, Wed 17 June, on Hidden Labour

[Jonnie Penn]

Dear SIGCIS colleagues,

I politely share the invitation below. The Cambridge University Mellon
Foundation Sawyer Seminar “Histories of AI: A Genealogy of Power"
<https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/about/research-projects/histories-of-ai/about>
convenes a multi-disciplinary community. This is our second Reading Group
meeting. News about future events is available here
<https://lists.cam.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/hps-hoai> via the HoAI listserv.

All best,
Jonnie

—
Jonnie Penn
Affiliate, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society | Harvard University
Project Development Lead | History of AI | Leverhulme Center for the
Future of Intelligence
PhD Candidate | Department of the History and Philosophy of Science
Pembroke College | University of Cambridge
Cambridge, CB2 1RF
jnp28 at cam.ac.uk


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: HoAI Sawyer Seminar <hoai at hermes.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 5:39 PM
Subject: Invitation to HoAI Reading Group, Wed 17 June, on Hidden Labour
To: <hps-hoai at lists.cam.ac.uk>


Dear all,

We invite you to join the second Reading Group session for the Mellon
Sawyer Seminar on Histories of AI: A Genealogy of Power
<https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/about/research-projects/histories-of-ai>. This
will be the first of two sessions to explore the theme of Hidden Labour. A
summary of that theme is available below. Part II will be held in
September. A schedule of events for July and August will be distributed
soon.

This month's Reading Group will be co-facilitated by Matteo Pasquinelli
(PhD), professor at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe. Prof.
Pasquinelli coordinates the research group on media philosophy and
artificial intelligence KIM. With Vladan Joler, he recently published the
visual essay ‘The Nooscope Manifested: AI as Instrument of Knowledge
Extractivism’ (nooscope.ai). For Verso, he is preparing a book titled *The
Eye of the Master* on the history of AI as the automation of labour, of its
vision and division.

We hope you can join us.

*Reading Group #2 on 'Introduction to Seminar Theme: Hidden Labour (Part
I)'*
Time: Wednesday 17th June @ 15:00-17:00 BST / 10:00am-12:00pm EST
Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82131742765?pwd=T3ZRS29Sallvd21neXJzS0JUQlY3QT09
Password: histories

Co-facilitator: Prof. Matteo Pasquinelli <http://matteopasquinelli.com/>
(University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe)
Discussants: Audrey Borowski
<https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/people/audrey-borowski> (University of
Oxford), Cindy
Lin <https://www.si.umich.edu/people/cindy-lin> (University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor)
Moderator: Prof. Matthew L. Jones
<https://history.columbia.edu/faculty/jones-matthew-l/> (Columbia
University)

*Schedule (BST):*
15:00 - Seminar co-organizers introduce the session, co-facilitator and
each discussant. Attendees are invited to share their name, affiliation and
location in the chat.
15:05 - Prof. Pasquinelli introduces the two readings (below) in respect to
the Seminar theme.
15:20 - Discussants briefly summarize their own research and offer
provocations for discussion.
15:30 - Discussion proceeds, with a Seminar co-organizer moderating.
17:00 - End.

*Readings*:

   - Daston, Lorraine (2018). ‘Calculation and the Division of Labor,
   1750-1950’. Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 62 (Spring), 9-30.
   - Pasquinelli, Matteo (forthcoming). ‘The Material Tools of Algorithmic
   Thinking’, chapter 1. *The Eye of the Master*. London: Verso.

Please email us here (hoai at hermes.cam.ac.uk) if you need help accessing
texts.

*Summary:* Prof. Pasquinelli shares this overview.

*The Hidden Intelligence of Labour: For a Social History of Algorithms*

Different genealogies of artificial intelligence can be read on the
shoulders of workers, merchants, bureaucrats and spies. AI emerged as the
project to automate tasks that, since WWII, have ranged from image
recognition and object manipulation, to stock price negotiation, and the
analysis of public and military datasets.

This overview retraces a canonical genealogy of AI from within the milieu
of the industrial revolution and early political economy. Daston (1994,
2017), Schaffer (1994), and Jones (2016) have shown that the project of
machine intelligence emerged from the industrial automation of mental
labour as hand calculation (Babbage, 1832) rather than the mere dream to
forge ‘thinking automata.’ The design of intelligent algorithms imitated,
then, the ‘analytical intelligence’ (Daston, 2018) of the division of
labour. This intuition can be expanded, today, to interrogate in which way
the algorithms of machine learning automate sophisticated forms of manual,
mental and visual labour by encoding an extended division of space, time
and social behaviours.

In order to understand the relation between AI and labour, it would be
useful to clarify first the relation between the algorithm form and the
division of labour. From the point of view of invention and knowledge
production, which one comes first? Knuth (1972) attempted a historicisation
of the algorithm in the essay ‘Ancient Babylonian Algorithms.’ At the time,
Knuth aimed at systematising the new field of computer science and to make
it into a respectable academic and industrial discipline (Ensmerger, 2010).
The idea of the ancient algorithm was mobilised to stress that the new
field of computer science was not about obscure machinery but part of a
long tradition of cultural techniques of symbolic manipulation. On their
side, historians of mathematics such as Chabert (1999), Damerow and Lefèvre
(1981) have clarified the genesis of mathematical abstractions in the
relation of labour with material tools. Also these approaches can be used
to interrogate computation and AI as a solution to the problem of the
management of labour, or, from another angle, to recognize the hidden
intelligence of labour building the algorithm from within.

*References:*
Babbage, Charles (1832). *On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures*.
London: Charles Knight.
Chabert, Jean-Luc, ed. (1999). *A History of Algorithms: From the Pebble to
the Microchip*. Berlin/New York: Springer.
Damerow, Peter, and Wolfgang Lefèvre, eds. (1981). *Rechenstein,
Experiment, Sprache: Historische Fallstudien Zur Entstehung Der Exakten
Wissenschaften*. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Daston, Lorraine  (1994). 'Enlightenment Calculations'. *Critical Inquiry*
21, no. 1: 182-202.
Daston, Lorraine (2018). ‘Calculation and the Division of Labor,
1750-1950’. Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 62 (Spring), 9-30.
Ensmenger, Nathan (2010). *The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers,
Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise*. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Jones, Matthew L. (2016).
*Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking
About Thinking from Pascal to Babbage*. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Knuth, Donald E. (1972). 'Ancient Babylonian Algorithms'. Commun. ACM 15,
no. 7: 671–77.
Schaffer, Simon. (1994). 'Babbage's Intelligence: Calculating Engines and
the Factory System'. *Critical Inquiry *21, no. 1: 203-27.

We look forward to seeing you.

With best wishes,

Jonnie Penn


On behalf of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar team:

Syed Mustafa Ali, The Open University

Stephanie Dick, University of Pennsylvania

Sarah Dillon, University of Cambridge

Matthew Jones, Columbia University

Jonnie Penn, University of Cambridge

Richard Staley, University of Cambridge

*Hidden Labour*
The introduction of forms of mechanisation – of labour and knowledge
equally – is usually described as saving labour; but in reality shifts it.
Examining how the boundaries between human and machine have been changed
over time we must track status, and ask what is being hidden: how have
autonomous systems redistributed tasks in ways that burden and mask the
contributions of marginalised people? In Ghost Work (2019), Mary L. Gray
demonstrates how the history of labour laws in the United States,
manifested in a shift from piecework to outsourcing, hollowed out the
decency of many entry level jobs in the digital economy while
simultaneously powering the AI revolution through low-pay click-work. Gray
credits today's MTurk workforce as 'the AI revolution's unsung heroes'
(Gray 2019). In her own scholarship and advocacy work, such as with
TurkOpticon, Lilly Irani has sought to illuminate additional hidden layers
of human data work (Irani 2016).

In the Seminar, we will bring a comparative historical perspective to bear
on contemporary conversations about which human faculties can be
'automated' and explore how AI and its implementation serve to value and
devalue certain forms of cognitive labour and systems of recognition. As
the previous work of Jones (2016) and Dick (forthcoming) has shown, as well
as that of Lorraine Daston (1994), such an equivocation of value has long
been central to the human history of mathematical calculation, and
critically from the nineteenth century onwards. It is in that moment when
'calculation' is debased from genius to the 'merely mechanical' that it
becomes the domain of human computing, to be executed by low paid labourers
and regendered as women's work (Hicks 2017).

Click here for Works Cited
<https://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/about/research-projects/histories-of-ai/about/works-cited>
.
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