Week 5: Algorithms and AI
Week 5 of Black Digital Studies is titled “In the Matrix like Morpheus”, an obvious reference to The Matrix film and in particular Matrix Philosophy. I was blessed to have become a student of Philosophy during the height of the popularity of the “Popular Culture and Philosophy” series so I was very excited to teach a little Plato and Baudrillard for this week’s discussion of human computer interaction, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.
Matrix Philosophy utilizes Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation as well as Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” to demonstrate an understanding of the nature of reality. In my own life and work, reality/representation plays an integral part in my understanding of the internet and identity. Recently, I have been thinking a lot more about Plato’s conception of the form of the Good when it comes to this understanding. In Plato’s work, the world of forms is that which is truly real or “really real” and everything that is not in the world of forms are shadows or representations of the forms. For Baudrillard we see a similar theory in the definition of simulations (reproductions of the real) and simulacra (copies of the reproduction). Baudrillard argues that American culture revels in the world of simulacra, mired in representations that are copies of a copy, twice removed from the reality of the real or as Plato might say, the world of forms. Recently I have been teaching/critiquing this as the way in which it is also common to teach knowledge through textbooks (simulation) and lecture on the textbook (simulacra) instead of working with primary sources/readings (the real).
The concept of simulacra as a not “real” space to which we escape is also the foundational theory behind many conceptions of virtual reality and cyberspace. In The Matrix we see this in the programmed simulation that is hidden to many of the characters until it is exposed. To me, algorithms are like the Matrix of digital tools and technologies. They are programmed and embedded with cultural codes and they structure the reality of our online experience in ways that aren’t always apparent to us. Especially in the 21st century, the online experience is also not wholly and completely separate from the offline experience, so this week I also focused on how algorithms complicate our understanding of the false binary between the virtual and the real. Algorithms don’t just structure the online world, they also influence our offline reality through things like agenda setting by way of hashtags which influence news selection and discourse, Amazon algorithms influencing consumer spending habits, and the role that recommendation systems play in structuring what’s popular within popular culture.
This week, I wanted to push the students towards rethinking what we know to be true and real about how technology works in order to think about what aspects of digital tools and technology are made visible and what aspects are hidden from us. We built upon the previous weeks by combining our understanding that tech is not neutral or objective with the role of a Black queer and femme digital praxis as a response to this reality. In lecture we discussed the latest news, such as Netflix’s The Social Dilemma and the concern about who gets to control the narrative on the technological form of the Good and what we consider to be Evil about Big Tech. In Black Digital Studies, we work through multiple scholars who have engaged with concerns around the tech space for years prior to the mainstream investment in these issues.
Specifically, the students read Safiya Noble’s “Missed Connections” article in preparation for a discussion on “Algorithms of Oppression”. In lecture I worked through Noble’s Google search exercise, but instead of searching for “black girls” I Google Image searched “Professor”, which returns images of mostly White men with beards, in glasses and tweed. I noted the irony of Google search returning a picture of a child dressed up as a professor before showing any women, and in particular any people of color. I unpacked how these search results were not only a reflection of the algorithm but what it has learned from users. We then talked through how much algorithms not only reflect sociocultural programming, but how they also influence our image of the world and what is popular and made visible to us. While it is easy to believe that we construct our social media feeds through safety settings, careful curation, and friend selection, the matrix of algorithms and recommendation systems continue to undergird and influence these daily interactions.
The workshop for the week then focused on algorithms and artificial intelligence, beginning with Joy Buolamwini’s poem “AI, Ain’t I a Woman” with the question: Where do you find moments of misrecognition in relationship to technology? In working through multiple examples of these moments, we then deconstructed the longing for recognition through Ramon Amaro’s “As If” essay, a response to Joy Buolamwini’s Aspire Mirror. In “As If”, Amaro critiques the interpellation of the “Black technical object” through facial recognition software and problematizes the logic of wanting to be recognized by algorithms and AI which are created to recognize and reinscribe a normative subject. Instead, Amaro offers us the potential of embracing misrecognition. Building on Week 3’s focus on the queer in Black Digital Studies, I asked the students to also consider: Thinking about Shaka McGlotten’s discussion of “Black data” and ”defacement, opacity, and encryption“, What is the radical potential of not being recognized by technology? In addition, How does misrecognition offer a queer logic or Black queer digital praxis?
At the same time, building on last week’s discussion of Surveillance, I also asked: What is the logic of seeking recognition from algorithms i.e. is there safety or benefits in this? In thinking about artificial intelligence I am always reminded of films such as The Matrix and iRobot, when we see technology turning against us in some way. I pondered the safety in recognition or misrecognition may also come in a future where we can, or cannot, be interpellated by the hail of the robocop, escaping or falling into criminalization through these technological glitches. Especially as the technologies of surveillance capitalism and carcerality continue to structure our world, the final question of lecture asked: If corporations and algorithms heavily influence our online experience, what’s really real about our current reality?
For many of the students there was much to be concerned about and in discussion they questioned the reality of their own feeds and the content that was recommended to them via various platforms and technologies. The role of suggestion and influence and the clear corporate logic and profit motivations embedded within these systems ended with many students wondering, Where are the laws? Why is it that tech corporations and digital tools and technologies have been given so much power to shift individual and collective opinion in this day and age?
These questions reframed my understanding of the ordering of the course as I had not anticipated how dystopian and heavy the initial content might be for those who were new to these issues that had become so commonplace to me. I am reminded of my own experiences in Philosophy courses where each week you would learn why something that you always believed to be true, right, or Good, was in fact socially constructed and in need of evaluation. As we move into next week’s discussion of Black Cyberfeminism and the following weeks which center digital research methods and later digital activism, I hope that we can begin to build from that which has been deconstructed in order to see the possibilities, in light of the pitfalls, of the digital realm.
Readings:
