A dominant view describes AI as the quest “to solve intelligence” - a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli’s 2023 book, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence 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, as it is found in Charles Babbage’s “calculating engines” of the industrial age as well as in the recent deep neural networks for face recognition. In this event, Pasquinelli will discuss his reading of the “labour theory of automation” in the age of AI.
Matteo Pasquinelli is associate professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, and the South Atlantic Quarterly, amongst other journals. His latest book, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence, was published last year by Verso.
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Audrey Borowski is a research fellow with the Desirable Digitalisation project, a joint initiative of the Universities of Bonn and Cambridge that investigates how to design AI and other digital technologies in responsible ways. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Aeon. Her first monograph Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant is forthcoming with Princeton University Press: press.princeto...
Andrés Saenz de Sicilia is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London and Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, as well as a member of The Philosopher's editorial board. His writing has appeared in Radical Philosophy, Language Sciences, European Journal of Social Theory and Ciencias Sociales, amongst other venues. His book Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society is forthcoming with Brill.
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