#algorithmicsabotage — Public Fediverse posts

[Publication] From Human to Binary and Back: On the Need to Explain and Understand Digital Machines in the Humanities

The issue vol. 5 no. 1 (2025), titled “Human-Centred AI in the Translation Industry. Questions on Ethics, Creativity and Sustainability”, of the Yearbook of Translational Hermeneutics is out. It is edited by prof. Katharina Walter and prof. Marco Agnetta, and it includes my article “From Human to Binary and Back: On the Need to Explain and Understand Digital Machines in the Humanities“, a paper that I first presented at the conference “Creativity and Translation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” at the University of Innsbruck in January 2024.

As the editors write in the introduction, “from different perspectives, the contributions gathered here aim to prevent the discussion on AI from being reduced to questions of technical feasibility. Instead, they frame the de-bate on AI as a profoundly human and societal one”.

In the article I argue that we need to deepen our knowledge of the digital machines we use and to develop critical approaches in our research, translation and creative practices, highlighting theoretical-practical uses from a socio-technical perspective.

Here is the abstract:

This article aims to bring attention to some usually overlooked aspects of the relationship between humans and complex digital technologies. Before engaging with artificial intelligence (AI), it is indeed pivotal to address some key questions about it. Specifically, I will try to focus on our ability to understand how AI technologies work and determine creative and critical uses we can make of them. To do so, I will first discuss problems associated with using the current definitions of AI and suggest that we should make a creative effort to re-translate these terms in order to find better-suited expressions. I will call attention to the need for a different kind of translation, which negotiates between what machines do and what we can understand about them, because one of the biggest challenges of machine learning is to make the internal processes explainable and understandable for us humans. I will close with elaborations on some creative forms of interaction with language models and image models which support artists, writers and creators (who do not want to see their work stolen by AI crawlers and used to train datasets), with the overall goal of building an ethical, critical and sustainable relationship between humans and digital machines.

#AI #algorithmicSabotage #antiComputing #artificialIntelligence #dataPoisoning #digitalHumanities #KatharinaWalter #MarcoAgnetta #translation #YearbookOfTranslationalHermeneutics

https://wp.me/pa8vBQ-nW

I got a little bit annoyed at a bot hoovering up all the large zip files of lossless music from various websites I run. I may have slightly overreacted...

https://evilgeniusrobot.uk/posts/an-evil-genius-robot.html

Still it's finally a good use of that domain name I've had for a few years now!

#AlgorithmicSabotage #NoAI #ThinkBot

« Le Manifeste sur le “Sabotage algorithmique” est composé de dix énoncés, numérotés de 0 à 9, qui définissent les principes sous-jacents, les approches stratégiques et les manifestations esthétiques de la notion critique de ”Sabotage algorithmique” dans le cadre de la culture numérique et de la technologie de l’information. L’objectif du texte n’est pas seulement une diffusion théorique de la résistance et du refus algorithmiques militants, mais la diffusion d'une théorie/critique radicale qui découle de l’énergie d’un désir insurrectionnel. Le Manifeste sur le “Sabotage algorithmique” représente la marche implacable d’une théorie politique qui transforme constamment et de manière bidirectionnelle le discours en praxis afin de déclarer sa présence dans la lutte de libération. »

⭕ https://algorithmic-sabotage.github.io/asrg/manifesto-on-algorithmic_sabotage/

#SabotageAlgorithmique #AlgorithmicSabotage #esthetique #resistance #liberation @asrg