stm

What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest “to solve intelligence”—a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations. Here he is interviewed by Richard Hames, audio producer at Novara Media.

There is a part where he critiques "vitalism in cybernetics"

Apocalypse Express is an action management Roguelike in which the player conducts, upgrades and repairs different parts of the train through endless waves of enemies in a post-apocalyptic setting. Departing the darkness of their lifelong shelter, the player decides to embark on a journey through the wasteland looking to fulfill the dream of seeing the outside world with their own eyes, charting out a map around the few remaining memories of the past world.

Apocalypse Express is an action management Roguelike in which the player conducts, upgrades and repairs different parts of the train through endless waves of enemies in a post-apocalyptic setting. Departing the darkness of their lifelong shelter, the player decides to embark on a journey through the wasteland looking to fulfill the dream of seeing the outside world with their own eyes, charting out a map around the few remaining memories of the past world.

In The Cat and the Coup, you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall.

As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life by knocking objects off shelves, scattering his papers, and scratching him.

The game, situated within the traditions of Persian miniature art form and cold war foreign policy, asks players to consider their connection to Iranian history. The Cat and the Coup is both about the relationship between the Western video game player and Mossadegh and, by extension, the United States and Iran. It lays a foundation for today’s critical question -- how do the people know when their democracy is threatened?

What could be real uses of AI (llm, or generative) for anarchist organizations ?

Is there any ?

So far I didn't come for any AI use except for some fun with creating images, or text. It just gives junk data most of the time.

But are there some real life uses that showed beneficial ?

This story is profoundly ironic: America rejected cybernetics but implemented the cybernetic vision, while the Soviet Union did just the opposite: it paid lip service to cybernetics and stalled practical cybernetic projects. The cybernetics scare both focused the attention of U.S. science administrators on human-machine interaction and made explicit cybernetic references ideologically suspect. As a result, Americans pursued a narrowly defined but viable technical project, while the Soviets aimed at a utopian grand reform. This teaches us something about the power of discourse: it resides not so much in overt declarations but in subtle metaphors that change our mode of thinking and ultimately reshape our world. ≈

Thames Television drama-documentary about the West Riding Luddites, from 1988. Please note, although this documentary accords with many of the known facts, there are several instances of dramatic license being employed in this documentary. Particularly notable are the angry meeting between the manufacturers and croppers (which never took place), and the scene at the end where the priest tries to take confession from the condemned Luddites (a reworking of the legendary last words of the dying Luddite John Booth).

When reading some of Stanislaw Lem’s stories as a young adult, I first stumbled across the word ‘cyberneticists’ - basically denoting a tech wizard in the eyes of my younger self. Ever since reading Andrew Pickering’s The Cybernetic Brain - Sketches for another Future I think that this early impression was basically justified. In many ways cybernetics is the less successful but actually more brilliant twin of the poster child discipline of artificial intelligence (AI). Here I will explore why cybernetics was in many ways superior to AI, why it can still teach us a few important insights about the mind, and why cybernetics is relevant to the question of whether intelligent machines are dangerous for their creators.

The letter which follows was addressed by one of our ranking mathematicians to a research scientist of a great aircraft corporation, who had asked him for the technical account of a certain line of research he had conducted in the war. Professor Wiener’s indignation at being requested to participate in indiscriminate rearmament, less than two years after victory, is typical of many American scientists who served their country faithfully during the war. Professor of Mathematics in one of our great Eastern institutions, NORBERT WIENER was born in Columbia, Missouri, in 1894, the son of Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University. He took his doctorate at Harvard and did his graduate work in England and in Göttingen. Today he is esteemed one of the world’s foremost mathematical analysts. His ideas played a significant part, in the development of the theories of communication and control which were essential in winning the war. — THE EDITOR

SIR : — I have received from you a note in which you state that you are engaged in a project concerning controlled missiles, and in which you request a copy of a paper which I wrote for the National Defense Research Committee during the war. As the paper is the property of a government organization, you are of course at complete liberty to turn to that government organization for such information as I could give you. If it is out of print as you say, and they desire to make it available for you, there are doubtless proper avenues of approach to them.

When, however, you turn to me for information concerning controlled missiles, there are several considerations which determine my reply. In the past, the comity of scholars has made it a custom to furnish scientific information to any person seriously seeking it. However, we must face these facts: The policy of the government itself during and after the war, say in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has made it clear that to provide scientific information is not a necessarily innocent act, and may entail the gravest consequences. One therefore cannot escape reconsidering the established custom of the scientist to give information to every person who may inquire of him. The interchange of ideas which is one of the great traditions of science must of course receive certain limitations when the scientist becomes an arbiter of life and death.

For the sake, however, of the scientist and the public, these limitations should be as intelligent as possible. The measures taken during the war by our military agencies, in restricting the free intercourse among scientists on related projects or even on the same project, have gone so far that it is clear that if continued in time of peace this policy will lead to the total irresponsibility of the scientist, and ultimately to the death of science. Both of these are disastrous for our civilization, and entail grave and immediate peril for the public.

I realize, of course, that I am acting as the censor of my own ideas, and it may sound arbitrary, but I will not accept a censorship in which I do not participate. The experience of the scientists who have worked on the atomic bomb has indicated that in any investigation of this kind the scientist ends by putting unlimited powers in the hands of the people whom he is least inclined to trust with their use. It is perfectly clear also that to disseminate information about a weapon in the present state of our civilization is to make it practically certain that that weapon will be used. In that respect the controlled missile represents the still imperfect supplement to the atom bomb and to bacterial warfare.

The practical use of guided missiles can only be to kill foreign civilians indiscriminately, and it furnishes no protection whatsoever to civilians in this country. I cannot conceive a situation in which such weapons can produce any effect other than extending the kamikaze way of fighting to whole nations. Their possession can do nothing but endanger us by encouraging the tragic insolence of the military mind.

If therefore I do not desire to participate in the bombing or poisoning of defenseless peoples — and I most certainly do not — I must take a serious responsibility as to those to whom I disclose my scientific ideas. Since it is obvious that with sufficient effort you can obtain my material, even though it is out of print, I can only protest pro forma in refusing to give you any information concerning my past work. However, I rejoice at the fact that my material is not readily available, inasmuch as it gives me the opportunity to raise this serious moral issue. I do not expect to publish any future work of mine which may do damage in the hands of irresponsible militarists.

I am taking the liberty of calling this letter to the attention of other people in scientific work. I believe it is only proper that they should know of it in order to make their own independent decisions, if similar situations should confront them.

NORBERT WIENER

A history of real-time information technlology, war, politics, commerce and the rise of the idea of organisational cybernetics.

Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971--1973 (during the government of President Salvador Allende) aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy.

Project Cybersyn was based on Viable system model theory and a neural network approach to organizational design, and featured innovative technology for its time: it included a network of telex machines (Cybernet) in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information with the government in Santiago. Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software (Cyberstride) that would monitor production indicators (such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism) in real time, and alert the workers in the first case, and in unnormal situations also the central government, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges.

In July 1971, Stafford Beer was contacted by Fernando Flores, then a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO), for advice on incorporating Beer's theories of cybernetics into the management of the newly nationalized sector of Chile's economy. Beer saw this as a unique opportunity to implement his ideas of cybernetic management on a national scale, and also sympathized with the stated ideals of Chilean socialism, which aimed to maintain Chile's democratic system and the autonomy of workers instead of imposing a Soviet-style system of top-down command and control. More than just offering advice, Beer stepped aside from most of his other consulting business and devoted a great deal of time to what became Project Cybersyn, [...] However, after the military coup on September 11, 1973, Cybersyn was abandoned and the operations room was destroyed.

Sources "IU professor analyzes Chile's 'Project Cybersyn'". UI News Room. Retrieved 27 May 2013. Project Cybersyn | varnelis.net Eden Medina (2011). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile, 1st edn. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01649-0. section 4, p. 121 Eden Medina (2006). "Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile". J. Lat. Amer. Stud. (Cambridge University Press) (38): 571--606. doi:10.1017/S0022216X06001179.

www.rootandthorn.soup.io

80 min. Root and Thorn - Realease-year unknown. By Ganix Naston, Zoe Pavlovitch, Harun Krasna

Interview with workers from worker owned company Loomio that makes decision making software used by organizations, unions, collectives etc. from what I get based around direct democracy.

Although I'm not a big fan of software solutions to social problems, I liked this podcast because it talks about organizing and managing software production and applying VSM(viable system model). And in general, General Intellect Unit has interesting podcast episodes.

This is a Manual. Its objectives are: firstly, to provide you with a set of tools which will enable you to deal with any problems concerning your organisational structure, and secondly, to show you how to use these tools. It offers an alternative to the usual approach which depends upon hierarchy, authority and obedience, and is of particular interest to enterprises which are looking for ways of becoming more efficient and of encouraging participation and democratic work practices. As the manual unfolds, you will gradually acquire a new vocabulary. This new language is the basis of the Viable Systems Model approach: it will enable you to think about your organisation in a fundamentally different way. The methods described will enable you to Diagnose your own organisation. Prescribe ways of dealing with inadequacies. Design a healthy organisation from scratch.