Call for proposals: A New AI Lexicon
Hello SIGCIS, I'm excited to share that my colleagues at AI Now, Noopur Raval and Amba Kak, have launched the project: A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI Discourse. The projects aims to expand and revise critical AI thinking by attending to global racial histories, diverse queer movements, struggles of caste and tribe communities, and their specific place-based demands especially outside of the West. We need a more expansive stocktaking of race and gender relations as well as the variegated forms of marginalization globally. As part of this project, we are inviting short essays that address or challenge a dominant concept, metaphor, or keyword along which critical AI thinking is currently undertaken (like Fairness, Transparency, Accountability, Bias, Auditing, Ghost Labor, Explainability, Social Good etc.). Or identify new terms or formulations currently missing from the discourse. We encourage academics, activists, journalists and others, especially early career or junior colleagues researching global AI histories, materialities and futures to apply. We are able to offer financial support to a limited number of contributors, and the submission guidelines are available here: https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-responses-and-challenge... If you have any questions, or know someone who would be a good fit for this project, please feel free to reach out to me, Noopur (noopur@ainowinstitute.org) or Amba (amba@ainowinstitute.org). Thanks very much, Joy Joy Lisi Rankin | she/her/hers Research Lead for the Gender, Race, and Power in AI Program AI Now Institute @ NYU Author: A People's History of Computing in the US Recently: "Bodies into Bits" and "Whitewashing Tech"
Hi, Joy. Thanks for posting this announcement. In considering concepts, metaphors, and terms used in AI, I wonder if it would also be useful to address WHY different people and organizations pursue AI (and maybe you and your colleagues do already). I found this helpful in teaching AI courses. You'll see people casually say things like "The purpose of AI is to understand the human mind." But this isn't the goal of applied AI at, say, Amazon, when they suggest I buy a nice Cross pen because I recently bought a nice Parker pen. They aren't interested in my mind at all, and don't care if they model how I think. They just want to sell a pen. In contrast, a philosopher or mathematician working in AI might be interested in what is theoretically or practically computable in complex reasoning tasks. A biologist might look at AI to get ideas for the study of birds' flocking behavior. A psychologist might consider automated techniques employed in visual pattern recognition to get ideas about how the human visual system works. I found that without considering goals or motivation to pursue AI, simply defining the field was pretty hopeless. Terms and metaphors can vary quite a bit, depending on the AI researcher's goals and discipline (and also on the time period during which the work is done). Not sure if this is that relevant to your pursuits, but FWIW... Regards, Bill ________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin [drjoy@joyrankin.com] Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2021 6:00 PM To: Sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for proposals: A New AI Lexicon Hello SIGCIS, I'm excited to share that my colleagues at AI Now, Noopur Raval and Amba Kak, have launched the project: A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI Discourse<https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-responses-and-challenges-to-the-critical-ai-discourse-f2275989fa62>. The projects aims to expand and revise critical AI thinking by attending to global racial histories, diverse queer movements, struggles of caste and tribe communities, and their specific place-based demands especially outside of the West. We need a more expansive stocktaking of race and gender relations as well as the variegated forms of marginalization globally. As part of this project, we are inviting short essays that address or challenge a dominant concept, metaphor, or keyword along which critical AI thinking is currently undertaken (like Fairness, Transparency, Accountability, Bias, Auditing, Ghost Labor, Explainability, Social Good etc.). Or identify new terms or formulations currently missing from the discourse. We encourage academics, activists, journalists and others, especially early career or junior colleagues researching global AI histories, materialities and futures to apply. We are able to offer financial support to a limited number of contributors, and the submission guidelines are available here: https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-responses-and-challenge... If you have any questions, or know someone who would be a good fit for this project, please feel free to reach out to me, Noopur (noopur@ainowinstitute.org<mailto:noopur@ainowinstitute.org>) or Amba (amba@ainowinstitute.org<mailto:amba@ainowinstitute.org>). Thanks very much, Joy Joy Lisi Rankin | she/her/hers Research Lead for the Gender, Race, and Power in AI Program AI Now Institute<http://www.ainowinstitute.org/> @ NYU<https://www.nyu.edu/> Author: A People's History of Computing in the US<https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674970977> Recently: "Bodies into Bits<https://logicmag.io/care/bodies-into-bits/>" and "Whitewashing Tech<https://medium.com/@AINowInstitute/whitewashing-tech-why-the-erasures-of-the-past-matter-today-166d0d5e2789>"
I want to climb onto Bill Aspray's points. Back in the "good old days" of early AI, mimicking the brain as a metaphor or objective suggested that work on AI in multiple disciplines was anthropomorphic, hence why it was called *artificial* as opposed to human intelligence which was seen as *real.* Brain scientists study the brain as psychology and biology, but as Bill suggests, those who are using what is called AI today are not wedded to the anthropomorphic paradygm, nor did they realistically ever adhere to it. The history of rules-based computing, followed by "expert systems," then learning software, "cognitive computing," etc. is the story of a different path taken. In time, the history of AI will be seen as a tale of many paths taken and that even its name may be misleading, if not inappropriate. I say it's too early to tell, but then the subject is not in my wheelhouse IMHO. Love the topic, however--keep pushing the boundaries. Jim On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 9:18 AM McMillan, William W < william.mcmillan@cuaa.edu> wrote:
Hi, Joy.
Thanks for posting this announcement.
In considering concepts, metaphors, and terms used in AI, I wonder if it would also be useful to address WHY different people and organizations pursue AI (and maybe you and your colleagues do already).
I found this helpful in teaching AI courses. You'll see people casually say things like "The purpose of AI is to understand the human mind."
But this isn't the goal of applied AI at, say, Amazon, when they suggest I buy a nice Cross pen because I recently bought a nice Parker pen. They aren't interested in my mind at all, and don't care if they model how I think. They just want to sell a pen.
In contrast, a philosopher or mathematician working in AI might be interested in what is theoretically or practically computable in complex reasoning tasks.
A biologist might look at AI to get ideas for the study of birds' flocking behavior.
A psychologist might consider automated techniques employed in visual pattern recognition to get ideas about how the human visual system works.
I found that without considering goals or motivation to pursue AI, simply defining the field was pretty hopeless. Terms and metaphors can vary quite a bit, depending on the AI researcher's goals and discipline (and also on the time period during which the work is done).
Not sure if this is that relevant to your pursuits, but FWIW...
Regards, Bill
________________________________ From: Members [members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] on behalf of Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin [drjoy@joyrankin.com] Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2021 6:00 PM To: Sigcis Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for proposals: A New AI Lexicon
Hello SIGCIS,
I'm excited to share that my colleagues at AI Now, Noopur Raval and Amba Kak, have launched the project: A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI Discourse< https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-responses-and-challenges-to-the-critical-ai-discourse-f2275989fa62>. The projects aims to expand and revise critical AI thinking by attending to global racial histories, diverse queer movements, struggles of caste and tribe communities, and their specific place-based demands especially outside of the West. We need a more expansive stocktaking of race and gender relations as well as the variegated forms of marginalization globally.
As part of this project, we are inviting short essays that address or challenge a dominant concept, metaphor, or keyword along which critical AI thinking is currently undertaken (like Fairness, Transparency, Accountability, Bias, Auditing, Ghost Labor, Explainability, Social Good etc.). Or identify new terms or formulations currently missing from the discourse.
We encourage academics, activists, journalists and others, especially early career or junior colleagues researching global AI histories, materialities and futures to apply. We are able to offer financial support to a limited number of contributors, and the submission guidelines are available here: https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-responses-and-challenge...
If you have any questions, or know someone who would be a good fit for this project, please feel free to reach out to me, Noopur ( noopur@ainowinstitute.org<mailto:noopur@ainowinstitute.org>) or Amba ( amba@ainowinstitute.org<mailto:amba@ainowinstitute.org>).
Thanks very much, Joy
Joy Lisi Rankin | she/her/hers Research Lead for the Gender, Race, and Power in AI Program AI Now Institute<http://www.ainowinstitute.org/> @ NYU< https://www.nyu.edu/> Author: A People's History of Computing in the US< https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674970977> Recently: "Bodies into Bits<https://logicmag.io/care/bodies-into-bits/>" and "Whitewashing Tech< https://medium.com/@AINowInstitute/whitewashing-tech-why-the-erasures-of-the...
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participants (3)
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Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin -
James Cortada -
McMillan, William W