Anatomy of an AI System (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Anatomy of an AI System (2018)

#11

Post by uoaei » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

nickelpro wrote: post #3

Reading this I constantly find myself asking, so what? It feels like each little vignette ends before managing to substantiate its point, consider the concluding sentence in the early section on lithium mining: > Your smart-phone runs on the tears and breast milk of a volcano. This landscape is connected to everywhere on the planet via the phones in our pockets; linked to each of us by invisible threads of commerce,…

If it feels obvious, you may be missing the point. Or else, you may simply be rationally contemplating the existence of the lesson without actually considering the lesson itself.

If the document is "supposed" to be anything, it is as an entryway into contemplative empathy with the full-scale complex system we inhabit, the wonder that a civilization can be organized to the point where this is possible, and the explicit recognition of what experiences a loss when you want a gain. It is to understand that the comforts we've come to feel entitled to are built by extractive processes, whether material (mining, etc.) or otherwise (labor exploitation, opportunity costs, etc.).

Re: Anatomy of an AI System (2018)

#12

Post by drc500free » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

Really enjoyed poking around the graphic and diving into all the interlocking systems. Really didn't enjoy the prose below it as much. Rather than adding to it, it seemed to drown out other ways of consuming the information.

I think I learned a lesson about how a heavy-handed POV can push the audience right past the ideal zone of understanding. Or maybe I didn't learn that lesson, and I will continue to write primarily to show off how insightful my insights are.

Re: Anatomy of an AI System (2018)

#13

Post by xpe » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:31 PM UTC

From the text:

> Our exploded view diagram combines and visualizes three central, extractive processes that are required to run a large-scale artificial intelligence system: material resources, human labor, and data.

Also:

> Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Nielson use the term ‘extractivism’ to name the relationship between different forms of extractive operations in contemporary capitalism, which we see repeated in the context of the AI industry. 10 There are deep interconnections between the literal hollowing out of the materials of the earth and biosphere, and the data capture and monetization of human practices of communication and sociality in AI.

What are the arguments both -for- and -against- a claim that "data" is an extractive process as used here?

Re: Anatomy of an AI System (2018)

#14

Post by xpe » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

rland wrote: post #10

I only got partway through this. I want to say to the author: Oh my god just stop taking yourself so seriously. Really. You don't need to do this. You're trying waaaay too hard. It's opaque and mysterious and lovecraftian to you because you clearly spend all of your time making cool graphics and drawing tenuous metaphors between 16th century monks, pharaohs, and jeff bezos. I assure you, for everyone who works in a l…

Taking oneself too seriously? Or a pair of authors building on top of a rich history of economic and social theory to make sense of an immense technology tree that affects millions?

It is all in how you look at it.

Criticizing is easy; we all do it sometimes.

I do it too -- I'll take a negative interpretation and make uncharitable assumptions. Then it snowballs and out pops a not very nice thought which might end up as a HN comment.

It seems that something grabbed you about the content. Perhaps if you look again and investigate the lens of the author you will find more to appreciate in it?

I wonder if you would be willing to examine your claim that "it is all obvious to those who do it". Is it really? All parts of how things fit together are obvious? Am I misunderstanding you?

Re: Anatomy of an AI System (2018)

#15

Post by kelseyfrog » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #11

nickelpro wrote: post #3

Reading this I constantly find myself asking, so what? It feels like each little vignette ends before managing to substantiate its point, consider the concluding sentence in the early section on lithium mining: > Your smart-phone runs on the tears and breast milk of a volcano. This landscape is connected to everywhere on the planet via the phones in our pockets; linked to each of us by invisible threads of commerce,…

If it feels obvious, you may be missing the point. Or else, you may simply be rationally contemplating the existence of the lesson without actually considering the lesson itself. If the document is "supposed" to be anything, it is as an entryway into contemplative empathy with the full-scale complex system we inhabit, the wonder that a civilization can be organized to the point where this is possible, and the explici…

The real point of it for me is the framing. It's the idea that any object, tangible or intangible, and be analyzed in this way because everything has multiple dimensions of relations linking it to every other thing eventually. It's the equivalent of being able to pick up the graph of human relations by a single point and letting all other relations branch from that point like a tree. There's obviously root nodes that are more interesting than others just as there are more spanning trees more interesting than all the others.