Newsletter transfer 6 min read

Morals in the machine ⊗ Tree thinking ⊗ What does it mean to design urban technology?

Let me go right out and say it; I think this is one of the best issues of Sentiers. Or at least, one that almost perfectly displays the types of topics I want to include and the balance between them.

This week →{.caps} Morals in the machine ⊗ Tree thinking ⊗ What does it mean to design urban technology? ⊗ Artificial animals

Morals in the machine

For some obscure reason, I’d never read anything by jenny (phire) zhang before, and that’s a real shame. Fantastic piece, very clearly written. She starts from advice given to her as a manager; to delegate things she’s good at and work on the things she needs to practice. zhang then wonders why we would try to build moral machines, considering that ‘we’ are prone to very imperfect morals. It’s a well made point worth reading–integrating ideas from Safiya Noble, Virginia Eubanks, Ursula Franklin, and Ruha Benjamin in the process–and also a sharp look at AI in general, including great and very understandable definitions of machine learning and “trustlessness.” I wanted to write more but really, she’s got everything in the last paragraph, do click through.

There’s no such thing as a universal code of ethics; the concept of justice cannot be extricated from the contextual value system it’s applied in. It seems unlikely that machine learning engineers will be able to reconcile what moral philosophers have been yelling at each other about for thousands of years, with no consensus in sight. […]
The mere fact of technical systems seems to make us want to trust in their virtue, maybe even at the cost of our own judgment. It might be learned helplessness engendered by the complexity of computers, or it might simply be bias laundering: evading culpability for harms caused by machines by pretending the outcomes are neutral simply because they are digital, instead of taking accountability for the tools we build.{.highlight} […]
Our tendency to trust the decisions of computer systems as perfectly rational despite ample evidence to the contrary feels like an abdication of our responsibility to reciprocate. If our fear of the chaos raging around us leads us to put our trust in machines so that we don’t have to trust one another, we relinquish the reciprocity that lets us advance our shared humanity, and those bleak assumptions about humans being immutably selfish turn into self-fulfilling prophecy. […]
We are so excited by the idea of machines that can write, and create art, and compose music, with seemingly little regard for how many wells of creativity sit untapped because many of us spend the best hours of our days toiling away, and even more can barely fulfill basic needs for food, shelter, and water.{.highlight}

Tree thinking

I just love essays like this one by Shannon Mattern who goes on a very erudite tour of the influence of trees in a number of societies through history. “Trees have long served as models of intellectual inquiry and as sites of religious and civic deliberation. Now, as we learn more about plant intelligence, they are inspiring deeper forms of ecological investigation.”

Mattern groups her findings and lessons under decision trees, old and new; trees of ethical deliberation; and rooted knowledges. Weaving today’s data collection and data-based decision making, with historical touch points in science or culture, with philosophy, ethics, and indigenous knowledge. She shows us the great importance of trees in our cultures as well as some of the failings of our current focus on the socio-technical and the need to revisit and learn from the past and nature.

[S]uch approaches are efforts to frame (and tame) hard problems — wicked problems — in computational terms. Forest data sets in particular, she writes, tend to “present the problem of environmental change through … metrics that in turn legitimate specific technological interventions to meet targets for averting environmental catastrophe.” In other words, these technological tools promote techno-solutionist responses to problems that are simultaneously ecological, cultural, social, economic, and political.{.highlight} […]
But at best this is magical thinking, a crowd-sourced form of techno-vegetal solutionism — and as such a distraction from the large-scale, systemic transformations that are required to counter the impacts of global warming. […]
In Western cultures, the forest has traditionally symbolized the unconscious, the Kantian sublime, the chaotic — a primordial place, the opposite of civilization. And while individual trees might embody ideals of knowledge and enlightenment, their dense aggregation can provoke disorientation and confusion. […]
Traditional healing, historical memory, indigenous stewardship, subterranean communication networks: these are forms of arboreal agency and sylvan intelligence that can lead us to ways of “thinking with trees” that are more complex and nuanced, more grounded, more open-ended, messier and humbler, than the data-driven processing of decision trees and random forests.

What does it mean to design urban technology?

Bryan Boyer has been working on the creation of a new degree program in Urban Technology at University of Michigan that combines urbanism, technology, and design. I’ve linked to some of the ‘making of’ newsletter in the past, this article gives a thorough overview of why such a program is needed and how they are going about it.

Perhaps strangely enough, I’m not linking to it for the program itself (although it looks fantastic!) but because in the process Boyer explores in very relevant and useful manner this growing intersection of ‘tech’ and the urban, especially where the discipline of architecture encounters the data layer of cities, bouncing from shearing layers, to service design, feedback loops, and more. I’d like to draw your attention especially to the section on consequences and craft, which can be a good reference even beyond design, and the one on “what matters?” which talks about essential thinking around technology, not just in cities.

Finally–and Bryan alludes to something similar in the piece–I’d like to link back to [[seeing-without-looking|Seeing without Looking]] by M.R. Sauter, which I shared in last week’s issue. Both articles mention sensors that use onboard computing to “pre-process and then erase imagery, resulting in datasets that are anonymous and secure.” Sauter highlights the negative potential, and Boyer focuses on the potential of that data in feedback loops so cities can evolve in accordance to the needs of the citizens. Both writers are currently in academia, both angles are essential, and those discussions also have to happen outside of universities.

[W]hen we use the term urban technology we’re not talking about another smart home device or some autonomous dog taxi, but rather the transition of urban life from a time where computation and network connectivity are an exception to one where they are the default. […]
The work of this century is to build without fossil fuels, without systemic racism, without want.{.highlight} […]
[W]hen the presence of a specific technology multiplies in our current or near-future life, so too do questions about what happens next. The what that happens next is about economic, political, social, and cultural changes that are set in motion by technological development (and vice versa). […]
Want to change the world? Build the right feedback loops. Change behavior based on what you learn. Collaborate with people who know things you do not. Honor history. Embrace the possibility of change. Be human. Don’t lose sight of the mission that drives you.{.highlight}

Artificial animals

Grow, “a magazine that tells the unfolding story of synthetic biology,” is putting out some great articles with fascinating perspectives. In this piece Claire L. Evans starts from Kate Darling’s [[robots-animals-not-humans|The New Breed]] (which proposes that AIs should be seen as animals, not people) and attaches that with the views of multiple philosophers towards animals and how we treat them. Descartes’ bêtes-machines, Behaviorists, Sentientism, “speciesism,” and Tamagotchi are all part of Evans’ reflection.

[T]he very existence of the other—be it meat or machine—interrupts our own sense of moral superiority. How we choose to behave in relation to this other is a test of us, not them. The question is not only Can they suffer? It’s also: Do we want to cause suffering? […]
Treating things with dignity, even if they are not alive, imbues our own actions with meaning, and underlines the impact of our choices to affect others. Care is something we carry with us.{.highlight}

Asides

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