#autonomous creative intelligence

Last week, Artsy.net’s Izabella Scott wrote this piece about how and why the aesthetic of witchcraft is making a comeback in the art world, which is pretty pleasantly timed as not only are we all eagerly awaiting Kim Boekbinder’s NOISEWITCH, but I also just sat down with Rose Eveleth for the Flash Forward Podcast to…

Here’s the direct link to my paper ‘The Metaphysical Cyborg‘ from Laval Virtual 2013. Here’s the abstract: “In this brief essay, we discuss the nature of the kinds of conceptual changes which will be necessary to bridge the divide between humanity and machine intelligences. From cultural shifts to biotechnological integration, the project of accepting robotic…

This headline comes from a piece over at the BBC that opens as follows: Prominent tech executives have pledged $1bn (£659m) for OpenAI, a non-profit venture that aims to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit humanity. The venture’s backers include Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, Indian tech giant Infosys…

One of the things I've been thinking about, lately, is the politicization of certain spaces within philosophy of mind, sociology, magic, and popular culture, specifically science fiction/fantasy. CHAPPiE comes out on Friday in the US, and Avengers: Age of Ultron in May, and while both of these films promise to be relatively unique explorations of the age-old story of what happens when humans create machine minds, I still find myself hoping for something a little… different. A little over a year ago, i made the declaration that the term to watch for the next little while thereafter was "Afrofuturism," the reclaimed name for the anti-colonial current of science fiction and pop media as created by those of African descent. Or, as Sheree Renée Thomas puts it, “speculative fiction from the African diaspora.”

I cannot emphasize ENOUGH your need to be keeping an eye on the #Afrofuturism tag, in the coming days & weeks. http://t.co/cCD5Lj4TO9

— Damien (@Wolven) December 12, 2013

And while I certainly wasn't wrong, I didn't quite take into account the fact that my decree was going to do at least as much work on me as I'd   hoped it would do on the wider world. I started looking into the great deal of overlap and interplay between race, sociology, technology, and visions of the future. That term--"visions"--carries both the shamanic connotations we tend to apply to those we call "visionaries," and also a more literal sense: Different members of the same society will differently see, experience, and understand the potential futures available to them, based on the evidence of their present realities…

On what’s being dubbed “The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time” (Originally posted on Patreon, on July 31, 2014) So, a couple of weekends back, there was a whole lot of stuff going around about “Roko’s Basilisk” and how terrifying people are finding it–reports of people having nervous breakdowns as a result of thinking…