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OF DJINN AND DIGITAL ANGELS
Religious perspectives, myth, and magic are not merely evocative lenses by which to understand the work done by algorithms and "AI" in the present day- though they are indeed that. And they're not merely the historical underpinnings of the practices of technology in general and the dream of "AI" in particular- though they are that, too. Rather, these elements resonate and recur throughout the past and present practice of "AI" development-and those practices then act as new inputs, foundations, tinting lenses from and through which those systems and artifacts learn. These are ways of living in the world which don't simply exist at the margins or the periphery of our social interactions -rather they're foundational and central to the goals, the aims, the practice of these techno-scientific projects, and especially "AI." Indeed, these religious foundations are crucial to our understanding in a way that is often under-interrogated -not to say uninterrogated.
While social scientists and humanities scholars increasingly point to the role belief plays in "AI," social and experiential knowledges are still among the most difficult things to get technoscientific researchers to consider as knowledge at all, much less discuss and account for. Many still feel that values and religious beliefs are and should be separate from technoscientific inquiry. I argue, however, that by engaging in both the magico-religious valences and the lived experiential expertise of marginalized people, "AI" and other technological systems can be better understood, and their harms anticipated and curtailed.
Since the 1940's, "AI" researchers have sought to create machines which "think" "like human minds." In the 1960s, there was a rift within Dartmouth's "AI" research team; one group favored informational feedback loops mimicking but distinct from nature, the other designed digital computers specifically to emulate human brains. But neither camp considered physical embodiment, emotions, or socialization important; rather they believed the key to "AI" was in supposedly unfeeling and impartial intellect, removed from the messiness of life.2 Put another way, these humans attempted to create beings of pure rationality, moving at the speed of light and thought-messengers which were meant to act as pure algorithmic task solvers, extensions of their will: Angels. But perhaps these algorithmic agents -electronic avatars of our biases and desires -more resemble...
