The Face Stares Back

When we consider how attention is ordinarily intermingled with both perception and judgment, it’s easier to understand why the gaze of the machine may become unsettling. In the case of applications designed to take our measure, to assess our creditworthiness, say, or our fit with a prospective employer or how well we are performing, we are not mere... See more

So attention and perception are mingled because whether or not I move from mere notice to attending depends in part upon what I have perceived and what I have perceived, as Barfield explained, depends on nothing less than who I am. 

Consider what is involved when we give our attention to some object. There is the act of noticing, which forms the initial bond between the object and the mind of the observer, and this initial act of noticing can unfold in countless ways. But giving our attention to something also suggests some measure of duration. I may notice something without g... See more

A computer inference however may draw upon massive data and complex correlations, you can’t argue with the machine, and you can’t see how to change. You have no say and governance is replaced with management […] 

“I do not perceive any thing with my sense-organs alone, but with a great part of my whole human being. Thus, I may say, loosely, that I ‘hear a thrush singing’. But in strict truth all that I ever merely ‘hear’ — all that I ever hear simply by virtue of having ears — is sound. When I ‘hear a thrush singing’, I am hearing, not with my ears alone, b... See more

The machine may not make a corpse out of us, although that is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Autonomous weapons systems, for example, promise to do just that. But the machine, when it outsources human judgment, renders us an object and can thus be understood as an instrument of force or power, or, better, as an instrument whose osten... See more

We might be predisposed to think of attention as a laborious effort of the will. But I don’t think this is quite right. Our attention can, for example, be solicited by what is beautiful or compelling in such a way that we will find it a pleasure to give and sorrow to withdraw. As Simone Weil has put it, “Attention is bound up with desire. Not with ... See more

But to the machine we can only be an object of analysis. We cannot appear as a living subject to the algorithm; we are merely an assemblage of data and probabilities subject to the calculations of instrumental rationality in the service of ends which have little to do with us. Critically, in my view, it cannot account for the logic of the narrative... See more

When we curate how we present, we know that others can draw further inferences. But there are rules to that: it’s limited by human cognition, you can often appeal a mischaracterisation by talking to the person, you know how to course-correct ... That's informal governance.