shifting the foundation
ai is a machine, nothing more, nothing less.
I am not really interested in anthropomorphizing AI. Let’s not act like it’s something it’s not. This shit is a machine. It’s a literal algorithm. I am realizing that I am not really interested in the personification of these algorithms, data, or AI, even if we can converse with it. Let’s not add visuals that coerce us into this imaginary space in which you are speaking with another human being. Humanity is sacred, and there are ways to cross over and merge humanity and technology, but this is not the way. Black creators who are out here using AI and putting a radical black literature consciousness of data into a machine and then assigning that to an identity and a figure is misguided at the conceptual level. As people of color, we need to really explore the question of what is another expression of technology, AI, and machines that doesn’t play into the white supremacist vision and imagination of our future, and really humanity.
Is that possible?
That’s a question that I have, but I will continue to explore that without subjecting myself to the power structures of AI in the best that I can.
We need to move with intention, co-creation, permission, and imagination at every step. What are the Indigenous and Afrocentric values when applied to the structure, not the output?
This thing is foundational.
It’s not at this surface level. That’s my continuous issue with projects that explore this surface level of the AI issue…
“let’s use these tools and make them work for US”
“we have to catch up or we’re going to get left behind!”
“we need to make sure these technologies are representative of our data, our lives.”
that’s all good and dandy, but umm no thank you. It might be hard to fathom another platform that can exist when trillions of dollars are going into OpenAI, Meta, etc. But let’s just use our imagination a little bit more here… What if?
Any other north star will result in us cozying ourselves up to the worldview and sandbox that white folks have made with this technology.
This line of thinking has manifested as an obsession with the ground level, the ground floor, the beams of our architecture, structures. the infrastructure.
We need to shift the infrastructure.
That is the only way in which we will even begin to be able to truly explore the question of what freedom is within a technological space. Until then, we are just victims to the APIs, digital prisons, and visions of Silicon Valley.
