K Allado-McDowell, author of Pharmako-AI, offers five essential reads about weird AI — the fevered dreams of the gods in our machines. How can we make sense of artificial intelligences that we’ve built but can’t fully comprehend?
🐬🌱🚀 On Monday 16 November, join K Allado-McDowell, Nora N. Khan and Emily Segal to celebrate the launch of Pharmako-AI, the first book to be co-created with the emergent AI GPT-3. Emily Segal will give an astrology reading for Pharmako-AI, followed by a conversation with K and Nora N. Khan and music by Qenric, K's musical project. Book here.
This paper by the Indigenous Protocol and AI Working Group is an important and illuminating precedent in imagining AI through indigenous epistemology and practice — a necessary step in building a viable future for AI and the planet.
Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom
A few years ago, this book was standard reading in AI research circles. If you want to know why machine learning specialists talk about paper clip maximizers, find out here.
Compasses by Allison Parrish
This project by AI poet Allison Parrish explores quadrant concepts (like spring/ summer/ winter/ fall, or North/ South/ East/ West) by interpolating neologisms for the spaces between words, in novel and memorable ways.
Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal
If you want to understand the cosmological background beliefs of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area (and their influence on AI development) you have to understand Esalen and the history of the human potential movement. Jeff Kripal maps the often contradictory East/West relations and countercultural movements that formed much of the west coast technosphere.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The imperial world of this SF space opera is seen from the perspective of a colonized body inhabited by a sentient spaceship, and explores a ritualistic culture with a unique gender formation.
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