The Uncanny Gaze of the Machine

Datasets aren’t simply raw materials to feed algorithms, but are political interventions. As such, much of the discussion around 'bias' in AI systems misses the mark: there is no 'neutral,' 'natural,' or 'apolitical' vantage point that training data can be built upon. There is no easy technical 'fix' by shifting demographics, deleting offensive ter... See more

To receive no one’s attention would be a kind of death. There are, of course, disordered ways of seeking attention, but we need the attention of the other even if only to know who we are. This is why I recently wrote that “the problem of distraction can just as well be framed as a problem of loneliness.” Digital media environments hijack our desire... See more

It does seem as if the primary work of attention, so to speak, is done not by the person but the machine, and this qualitatively changes the experience of being noted and attended to. Perhaps one way to say this is that when we are attended to by (or through) a machine we too readily become merely an object of analysis stripped of depth and agency,... See more

They exist, that is, only in the sense that someone designed a technology to discover them and the search amounts to a pursuit of immanentized Platonic forms. 

Prospective employees have come to terms with the idea that employers will scan their profiles as part of the hiring process, so they have conducted themselves accordingly. But they are discomfited by the possibility that their digital “impression management” can be seen through to some truer level of the self. As Mayert put it, “respondents believ... See more

I suppose it is better to say that the machine mediates the attention of others. But there is something about the nature of that mediation that transforms the experience of being the object of another’s attention to such a degree that it may be inadequate to speak merely of the attention of another. By comparison, if I discover that someone is usin... See more

Hiring algorithms are but one example of a larger set of technologies which promise to disclose some deeper truth about the self or the world that would be otherwise unnoticed. Similar tools are deployed in the realms of finance, criminal justice, and health care among others. The underlying assumption, occasionally warranted, is that analyzing cop... See more

“They weren’t taken by humans, and they weren’t taken for humans. They are by AI, for AI. They thus lack any sense of human composition or human audience. They are creations of utterly bloodless industrial logic. Google’s CAPTCHA images demand you to look at the world the way an AI does.”

From this perspective, one striking feature of our techno-social milieu is that it has become increasingly difficult both to receive the attention of our fellow human beings and to refuse the attention of the machines. The exchange of one for the other is, in certain cases, especially disheartening, as, for example, when surveillance becomes, in Al... See more