Cybernetics, AI, and Ethical Conversations

Quote above: An approach to interface design based on Heinz von Foerster’s Ethical Imperative where “choices” are distinguished from “options” — options are anything that is possible, while choices are only those options that are viable and well-suited to this user in this moment.

More and more, today’s AI makes the world we see and the world we live in — and we need to respond. In a presentation hosted by the AiTech Agora at TU Delft, Paul Pangaro responds with a proposal for collaboration that bridges AI and cybernetics with conversation.

Click for video of presentation.          Click for full abstract and slides.

“Pandemic” comes from “all” and “people”, meaning something negative that effects us all. While not biological, today’s AI foments polarization, pushes irrelevant products, spreads social bias, and surveils our lives. AI touches billions and sways more of us,  in more invasive and uncontrolled ways, every day.

AI came out of cybernetics, a practice that evolved from a series of trans-disciplinary conversations called the Macy Meetings. This history offers a way forward.

Macy Meetings –> #NewMacy Meetings
Click for PDF of presentation

Pangaro argues for a revival of trans-disciplinary conversations — for #NewMacyMeetings — to respond to the wicked challenges of  today’s AI. Beyond being trans-disciplinary, conversations for the 21st-century must also be trans-global and trans-generational. Only then can we prioritize our technology for universal human values.

Pangaro’s talk proposes how cybernetic models of conversation may enable the design of interactions that are cooperative, ethical, and humane, whether human-to-human or human–to-machine.

“I shall act always to create conditions such that others 
 may converse — with others and with themselves.”

Click for video of presentation.          Click for full abstract and slides.

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