Humour and morality; A social history of Artificial Intelligence
A conversation with David Shoemaker; an event with Matteo Pasquinelli; new edited collection
Dear all,
We are making good progress on an edited collection to be published towards the end of the next month. Provisionally title Science, Anti-Science, Pseudoscience, Truth, it will feature ten interviews with awesome thinkers like Nima Bassiri, Ian James Kidd, Tracy Llanera, C. Thi Nguyen, Naomi Oreskes, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, and many more. We’ll keep you posted!
Your Sunday Read
“Living a Wisecracking Life”
David Shoemaker in conversation with Will Franken
In this conversation with comedian Will Franken, philosopher David Shoemaker explores wisecracks, the kind of humour that is essentially interpersonal, that are part of our conversations with each other in everyday life. As he argues, while wisecracks may be ever-present in our lives, they may also generate moral trouble, as sometimes what contributes to their funniness are things that we ordinarily think call for moral anger or blame, things like deception, meanness, cruelty, and the exploitation of problematic stereotypes. In the course of the conversation, Shoemaker considers philosophical questions raised by absurdism, mockery, shaming, and “punching down”. You can read the conversation here.
Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK
“The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence”
Matteo Pasquinelli in conversation with Audrey Borowski and Andrés Saenz de Sicilia
A dominant view describes AI as the quest “to solve intelligence” – a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or in the deep physiology of the brain, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli’s 2023 book, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations, as it is found in Charles Babbage’s “calculating engines” of the industrial age as well as in the recent deep neural networks for face recognition. In this event, Pasquinelli will discuss his reading of the “labour theory of automation” in the age of AI. You can find out more and register here.
Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.
Andie Cook and Anthony Morgan
Newsletter Team