Not my problem ⊗ The radical optimism of David Graeber ⊗ On transitioning to a regenerative mindset

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Not my problem

Since leaving Hex a while ago, I haven’t formed another microblogging habit, which means I’ve “lost contact” with a number of people. Tim Maughan is one of them, and he just exploded back in my line of sight with this fantastic fiction / speculative scenario published at NOEMA. “It’s an AI’s vision of the future of AI art in the form of a timeline of the next decade.” Of course, this also being Tim (and this being, you know, our current predicament), it also features a hefty serving of bleak, of ironic, of sarcastic, of caustic, and quite a bit of humour. I’m not sure he’d like it, but you could probably insert 40 links in there, all going to signals of change worthy of a good foresight report. In other words, very fun read, lots of things to think about, and actually grounded in clear eyed observations.

Even its perceived pushback against generative art is seen by some as ineffectual: It doesn’t really matter if AI produces horribly generic work or sees less take-up than predicted by its corporate evangelists; just the hype around its existence and potential has devalued the work of professional artists, animators, designers and writers. […]

Meanwhile, a separate investigation by 404 Media reveals that 75% of the most popular AI-generated content on Spotify is owned by Spotify itself, which is intentionally flooding its own platform to avoid paying artists. […]

This sense of bland elitism is compounded by most Organic Art being visible only in real-life galleries — where cameras and social media are still banned, and entrance prices have soared – as its creators and dealers continue to demand it not be shared online. […]

“— the oil companies, the banks, the tech companies — all of you. We see you. We see you selling out our future from under us. The climate, our jobs, even art itself. We see you all, every one of you who thought you could use AI to make a quick buck, every one of you who thought you could get an advantage by using it to take shortcuts, every one of you who chose a quick fix over solidarity. We see you all. Remember that. Even if I — even if we don’t make it out of here, remember that there are others, many others — we all see you. And we are coming to —”

‘It does not have to be this way’: the radical optimism of David Graeber

There’s a new collection of David Graeber’s writing coming soon. In this excerpt from her foreword, “Rebecca Solnit remembers her friend, the late activist and anarchist who believed ordinary people had the power to change the world.” If you know his work and thinking, there might not be a whole lot of new for you in there, but if you also find yourself in need of optimism and a too uncommon perspective on the world, then you should visit, or revisit, this overview of some of his idea(l)s.

He insisted, again and again, that industrialised Euro-American civilisation was, like other societies past and present, only one way of doing things among countless options. He cited times when societies rejected agriculture or technology or social hierarchy, when social groups chose what has often been dismissed as primitive because it was more free. […]

We have to recognise that ideas are tools that we wield – and with them, some power. David wanted to put these tools in everyone’s hands, or remind them that they are already there. […]

Cynicism, though it’s often inaccurate about both human nature and political possibilities, gives the appearance of sophistication; despair is often seen as sophisticated and worldly-wise while hopefulness is seen as naive, when the opposite is not infrequently true. Hope is risky; you can lose, and you often do, but the records show that if you try, sometimes you win.

On transitioning to a regenerative mindset

Sarah Mineko Ichioka, “an urbanist, a strategist, a curator, a writer and the founding director of Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy firm” interviewed ahead of her keynote at the 2024 Climate Action in Cities symposium. She advocates for a shift from a sustainability mindset to a regenerative one in design, arguing that regenerative development must be fundamentally redistributive. Ichioka also highlights the importance of integrating First Nations knowledge and learning from less affluent regions, which often possess valuable insights into living within planetary boundaries. (Via Dan Hill.)

I would argue that even a sole focus on climate is too narrow, because – as urgent and terrifying as it is – climate change is not the fundamental problem to be solved, but rather a symptom of the dysfunctions of the broader socio-economic systems undergirding our globalised, industrial economy: extractive capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy and so on. […]

Wherever and at whatever scale it occurs – regenerative development should be fundamentally redistributive. At a local level, this can look like integrating the “fair share” principle (as articulated in permaculture teachings derived from Indigenous stewardship wisdom) when we design systems of exchange. […]

And when it comes to de-energising our economies to live within planetary boundaries, the “developed world” will have a lot to learn from places that haven’t had the lazy luxury of outsourcing work to fossil fuels.

AI’s “human in the loop” isn’t

Cory Doctorow critiques the concept of “human in the loop” in AI decision-making, arguing that it serves as a “moral crumple zone” rather than an effective oversight mechanism. While AI can process information rapidly and efficiently, it can also produce harmful errors that humans are ill-equipped to supervise. Research shows that human oversight often leads to automation bias, where people defer to flawed algorithms, thereby creating a false sense of security rather than addressing fundamental issues. In short; humans in the loop often lose their critical edge while also still injecting mistakes of their own.

Experts who are put in charge of overseeing an automated system get out of practice, because they no longer engage in the routine steps that lead up to the conclusion. Presented with conclusions, rather than problems to solve, experts lose the facility and familiarity with how all the factors that need to be weighed to produce a conclusion fit together. […]

Humans in the loop experience “a diminished sense of control, responsibility, and moral agency.” That means that they feel less able to override an algorithm – and they feel less morally culpable when they sit by and let the algorithm do its thing. […]

What if the accountability sink is a feature and not a bug. What if governments, under enormous pressure to cut costs, figure out how to also cut corners, at the expense of people with very little social capital, and blame it all on human operators?

§ I’m running out of ways to explain how bad this is. Timely. “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• Machine conquest: Jules Verne’s technocratic worldmaking. “This article reads Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages series (1863–1905) through a worldmaking lens. It argues that, rather than simply reflecting 19th-century ideologies of progress, Verne was engaged in creative global ordering. The article argues that Verne constructed global order as technocratic, anti-political, and necessarily violent. This space was ambiguously but persistently appropriated by white, male engineers and scientists.”
• The Hesitant Feminist’s Guide to the Future. “The monograph examines the current relevance and definition of feminism, and the degree of its inclusiveness, including the roles of boys and men within it. Additionally, it summarises how most feminists foresee a gender-equitable future and suggests cognitive strategies for facilitating positive social change toward such futures. The work begins with a historical overview, addressing some long-standing stereotypes and misconceptions about women’s and feminist movements.”
• Breaking Futures 2: 2024 Post-election breakdown. I haven’t had the wherewithal to watch this yet but will surely get to it. “Host Scott Smith and his panelists futurist Dr Jake Dunagan, author Dr Malka Older, and author Christopher Brown reflect on the recent political landscape, exploring the implications of the 2024 US presidential election and the shifting cone of possibility for future governance. They discuss the mindset of voters, the failures of information dissemination, and the historical parallels that inform current events.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• Meta AI can now be used by the US military for national security. Zuck gonna Zuck. “Under Meta’s ‘acceptable use policy,’ people can’t use the latest Llama 3 model for ‘military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, espionage.’ However, as explained by Meta, this update opens the door for the US military to use Llama to do things like ‘streamline complicated logistics and planning, track terrorist financing or strengthen our cyber defenses.’”
• This AI-powered invention machine automates eureka moments“The software’s primary purpose is to scan the literature in both the company’s field and in far-off fields and then suggest new inventions made of old, previously disconnected ones. Iprova has found a niche tracking fast-changing industries and suggesting new inventions to large corporations such as Procter & Gamble, Deutsche Telekom, and Panasonic.”
• What are AI ‘world models,’ and why do they matter?. “World models are trained on a range of data, including photos, audio, videos, and text, with the intent of creating internal representations of how the world works, and the ability to reason about the consequences of actions.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• Anti-fossil fuel comic that went viral in France arrives in UK. I recommended this after reading it in French, now available in English. “Part history, part analysis, part vision for the future, World Without End weaves the story of humanity’s rapacious appetite for fossil fuel energy, how it has made possible the society people take for granted, and its disastrous effects on the climate.”
• Half a pound of this powder can remove as much CO₂ from the air as a tree. “The powder was designed to trap the greenhouse gas in its microscopic pores, then release it when it’s ready to be squirreled away someplace where it can’t contribute to global warming. In tests, the material was still in fine form after 100 such cycles, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.”
• Migrating birds find refuge in pop-up habitats. “In the middle of a particularly punishing drought in California, a network of conservation organizations called the Migratory Bird Conservation Partnership tried a new strategy to help migrating birds: paying rice farmers to create “pop-up” habitat. The program, which is called BirdReturns and was initially funded by The Nature Conservancy, has since created tens of thousands of acres of temporary wetlands each year.”

Asides

• If you think you can hold a grudge, consider the crow. “The brainy birds carry big chips on their shoulders, scientists say. And some people who become subjects of their ire may be victims of mistaken identity.” … “Dr. Marzluff describes crows as ‘flying monkeys,’ because of their aptitude as well as their large brains relative to their size.”
• Visualizing ship movements with AIS data. “Explore the beautiful, intricate paths of ships over a year—tracked from America's busiest ports to the open ocean via AIS marine tracking data.”
• A new visualization of the atomic nucleus. “For the first time, the sizes, shapes and structures of nuclei in the quantum realm are visualized using animations and explained in the video.”