Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Work, and Algorithms | Matteo Pasquinelli and Richard Hames

What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence"—a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations. Here he is interviewed by Richard Hames, audio producer at Novara Media.

Matteo Pasquinelli is associate professor in Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. His writing has appeared in AI and Society, e-flux, Multitudes, Radical Philosophy, and the South Atlantic Quarterly, amongst other journals.

0:00 Intro
0:39 What is an algorithm
6:03 Algorithms are social not natural
8:56 Large language models (ChatGPT)
13:09 AI and the social division of labour
16:26 Babbage and machines
18:00 IQ tests and psychometrics
19:39 AI and automation
26:39 All labour is logic
29:30 Measuring intelligence is reductive
35:07 What is the political response? Provincialising AI
37:59 AI as a snapshot
43:32 AI vs actual humanity
45:41 Connectionism and AI utopianism
49:58 Research, regulation and risk

[rjrobinson]

Having spent several decades staring at computer languages, I'm not at all convinced that we should be using the term 'language' at all in the same sense as for human languages. Computer languages do not seem to me to have the essential features of natural languages except insofar as they are simulated by language designers. For example, they have an extremely formalise syntax, a negligible semantics and no pragmatics at all!

[GrumpDog]

The problems with AI, are problems with capitalism and a class-based system. AI wouldn't be the thing to force people to work more.. It's owners will.
We should declare AI be collectively owned by society, because vasts amounts of data and content created by all of us went into training it. We should have say over how it impacts society, not just a small class of owners.

[rjrobinson]

A good idea of what AI is really doing can be found in Michael Frayn's The Tin Men (1965), chapter VII.

He opened.-the filing cabinet and picked out the first card in the set. "Traditionally", it read. Now there was a random choice between cards reading "coronations, engagements, funerals, weddings, comings of age, births, deaths, or the churching of women". The day before he had picked "funerals", and been directed on to a card reading with simple perfection "are occasions for mourning". Today he closed his eyes, drew "weddings", and was signposted on to "are occasions for rejoicing". "The wedding of X and Y" followed in logical sequence, and brought him a choice between "is no exception" and "is a case in point". Either way there followed "indeed". Indeed, whichever occasion one had started off with, whether coronations, -deaths, or births, Goldwasser saw with intense mathematical pleasure, one now reached this same elegant bottleneck. He paused on "indeed", then drew in quick succession "it is a particularly happy occasion", "rarely", and "can there have been a more popular young couple".

From the next selection Goldwasser drew "X has won himself/herself a special place in the nation’s affections", which forced him to go on to "and the British people have clearly taken Y to their hearts already".

Goldwasser was surprised, and a little disturbed, to realise that the word “fitting” had still not come up. But he drew it with the next card — "it is especially fitting that".

This gave him "the bride/bridegroom should be", and an open choice between "of such a noble and illustrious line", "a commoner in these democratic times", "from a nation with which this country has long enjoyed a particularly close and cordial relationship", and "from a nation with which this country’s relations have not in the past been always happy". Feeling that he had done particularly well with “fitting” last time, Goldwasser now deliberately selected it again. "It is also fitting that", read the card, to be quickly followed by "we should remember", and "X and Y are not merely symbols—they are a lively young man and a very lovely young woman".

Goldwasser shut his eyes to draw the next card. It turned out to read "in these days when". He pondered whether to select "it is fashionable io scoff at the traditional morality of marriage and family life" or "it is no longer fashionable to scoff at the traditional morality of marriage and family life". The latter had more of the form’s authentic baroque splendour, he decided. He drew another "it is fitting that", but thinking three times round was once too many for anything, even for a superb and beautiful word like “fitting, ” he cheated and changed it for "it is meet that", after which "we wish them well" followed as the night the day, and the entertainment was over.


What a piece of work had the school of Goldwasser wrought here! What a toccata and fugue! How remote it was from the harsh cares of life!

[carljacobs]

It will force us to work far more to find some fleeting competitive edge TO TRY TO MAKE MONEY, which will become nearly impossible. For example, user acquisition costs with marketing are already skyrocketing due to an endless flood of rapidly generated make-me-easy-money AI content, all clamoring for your attention. My SPAM box is fully than ever with desperate marketers trying to sell me their AI made crap.

[ShaneNull]

everyone needs to support open source ai and abandon closed source

[wlxlhmk]

*Matteo and Richard- This is the most important issue concerning all these topics:*
All types of intellectual property (IP) laws must be fully abolished immediately, in any and all jurisdictions worldwide.
As an aside, IP laws were relatively young at Karl Marx’s time. He was unaware of how they worked, so he didn’t address them at all or about how they negatively affect the working class.
Against Intellectual Monopoly is the most informative book humanity has on the subject now. Against Intellectual Property is another incredible essay, but it’s written from a right-libertarian perspective so if you’re leftist like me you’ll have to read with an open mind and extract what’s helpful. _Only_ these two texts are the gold standard when it comes to intellectual property.

[proximacentaur]

Going forward our teams commitment to using Excel badly for everything should remain intact. I do however think it will place new demands on maintaining the illusion of productivity.

[rjrobinson]

26:30. "All labour is logic." All activity presupposes the structuring of that activity. Not even the simplest labour is lacking in structure. This structure is the logic of labour. It's present in the activity of the smallest child. This idea that labour is to be opposed to logic is frankly surreal and could only be made by someone who has no experience at all of human activity. The fact that people are surprised by such a proposition tells us exactly how little they have understood human activity generally and labour in particular. It would take a bigot of the first order to denigrate labour by proposing that it lacks logic!

[jayd]

In a capitalist society, technology and efficienfy imrpove owners' profits, not workers' lives. If that were the case we would all be working 4 hours by now.

[rjrobinson]

Re: Natural versus social interpretations f algorithms. He's right about algorithms being non-natural, but the only argument Pasquinelli gives for their social basis is for whether or not an algorithm will be preferred to another means of production (eg, a human worker), namely that it is cheaper. Insofar as they simulate work processes, they are also conditioned by their social context. But this does not really imply that algorithms are profoundly social in nature.

[rjrobinson]

19:30. The Moravec's Paradox - the allegedly counterintuitive idea that the tasks human finds easy are actually quite difficult for the robots - is driven by the fact that areas AI finds hard to grasp have not yet reached the level of formalisation. That is, they're still a mess. It's not because they are implicitly particularly cognitively hard or that truck drivers need to be especially clever. Highly formalised areas such as coding or law or medicine were always going to be easier, precisely because they are highly theorised and highly formalised. Current AI systems are in fact extremely limited by this constraint.

[rjrobinson]

A true artificial intelligence will be a person.

[silberlinie]

Ich denke, dass die eigentliche wichtigste und auch
die anspruchsvollte Arbeit zur Herstellung des
LLMs die Fage der Auffindung und sodann der Aufbereitung
der Rohdaten ist, um damit das Training des
Modells machen zu können.

Das ist keine brutale Anwendung technologischer Macht.

Das, was Matteo aufführt, Computing power, facilities,
data centres und clouds ist frage nach der
ökonomische Stärke dafür, jetzt die Maschinerie mit
dem mühsahm hergestellten Treibstoff ihre Arbeit
verrichten zu lassen.

42:42

[rjrobinson]

13:14. AI is no more the transformation of the relations of production into means of production than the mechanisation of any other skill. Skill and organised knowledge in general are always means of production (ie, technically necessary for production to happen), whereas relations of production are there for economic reason (ie, to ensure that exploitation and surplus extraction happen). You could automate relations of production only in the sense that you can so overwhelm the worker with the means of production that they have no choice but to worker harder, but that is a different thing.

[toi_techno]

Interesting interview
I think the interviewer eagerly awaits the rise of The Technium

[thespacecowboy]

Correction: Idiots will choose the abuse off the oligarchy over their own rights, and will then have to work more.

[yvonbrousseau]

To overcome the mental reduction built by AI, we must go beyond the limitations of deductive and inductive reasoning. Instead, we must improve our understanding and harness our intuition resonance. That’s why we are invited to master the intuition’s psychic energy of L’Intelligible, which is crucial to navigating the Zone de l'Impensée’s Terra incognita fulfill of disruptive Ideas.

[BrightMatolo]

°•°•°• I believe we are meant to be like Jesus in our hearts and not in our flesh. But be careful of AI, for it knows only things of the flesh which are our fleshly desires and cannot comprehend things of the spirit such as true love and eternal joy that comes from obeying God's Word. Man is a spirit and has a soul but lives in a body which is flesh. When you go to bed it is the flesh that sleeps, but your spirit never sleeps and that is why you have dreams, unless you have died in peace physically. More so, true love that endures and last is a thing of the heart. When I say 'heart', I mean 'spirit'. But fake love, pretentious love, love with expectations, love for classic reasons, love for material reasons and love for selfish reasons those are things of the flesh. In the beginning God said let us make man in our own image, according to our likeness. Take note, God is Spirit and God is Love. As Love He is the source of it. We also know that God is Omnipotent, for He creates out of nothing and He has no beginning and has no end. That means, our love is but a shadow of God's Love. True love looks around to see who is in need of your help, your smile, your possessions, your money, your strength, your quality time. Love forgives and forgets. Love wants for others what it wants for itself. However, true love works in conjunction with other spiritual forces such as patience and faith - in the finished work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, rather than in what man has done such as science, technology and organizations which won't last forever. To avoid sin and error which leads to the death of your body and your spirit-soul in hell fire (second death), you must make God's Word the standard for your life, not AI. If not, God will let you face AI on your own (with your own strength) and it will cast the truth down to the ground, it will be the cause of so much destruction like never seen before, it will deceive many and take many captive in order to enslave them into worshipping it and abiding in lawlessness. We can only destroy ourselves but with God all things are possible. God knows us better because He is our Creater and He knows our beginning and our end. The prove text can be found in the book of John 5:31-44, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, Daniel 2, Daniel 7-9, Revelation 13-15, Matthew 24-25 and Luke 21.

*HOW TO MAKE GOD'S WORD THE STANDARD FOR YOUR LIFE?*
You must read your Bible slowly, attentively and repeatedly, having this in mind that Christianity is not a religion but a Love relationship. It is measured by the love you have for God and the love for your neighbor. Matthew 5:13 says, "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." Our spirits can only be purified while in the body (while on earth) but after death anything unpurified (unclean) cannot enter Heaven Gates. No one in his right mind can risk or even bare to put anything rotten into his body nor put the rotten thing closer to the those which are not rotten. Sin makes the heart unclean but you can ask God to forgive you, to save your soul, to cleanse you of your sin, to purify your heart by the blood of His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ which He shed here on earth - "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed", Isaiah 53:5. Meditation in the Word of God is a visit to God because God is in His Word. We know God through His Word because the Word He speaks represent His heart's desires. Meditation is a thing of the heart, not a thing of the mind. Thinking is lower level while meditation is upper level. You think of your problems, your troubles but inorder to meditate, you must let go of your own will, your own desires, your own ways and let the Word you read prevail over thinking process by thinking of it more and more, until the Word gets into your blood and gains supremacy over you. That is when meditation comes - naturally without forcing yourself, turning the Word over and over in your heart. You can be having a conversation with someone while meditating in your heart - saying 'Thank you, Jesus...' over and over in your heart. But it is hard to meditate when you haven't let go of offence and past hurts. Your pain of the past, leave it for God, don't worry yourself, Jesus is alive, you can face tomorrow, He understands what you are passing through today. Begin to meditate on this prayer day and night (in all that you do), "Lord take more of me and give me more of you. Give me more of your holiness, faithfulness, obedience, self-control, purity, humility, love, goodness, kindness, patience, forgiveness, wisdom, understanding, calmness, perseverance... Make me a channel of shinning light where there is darkness, a channel of pardon where there is injury, a channel of love where there is hatred, a channel of humility where there is pride..." The Word of God becomes a part of us by meditation, not by saying words but spirit prayer (prayer from the heart). When the Word becomes a part of you, it will by its very nature influence your conduct and behavior. Your bad habits, you will no longer have the urge to do them. You will think differently, dream differently, act differently and talk differently - if something does not qualify for meditation, it does not qualify for conversation. Glory and honour be to God our Father, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and our Helper the Holy Spirit. Let us watch and pray... Thank you for your time.

[philipganchev]

Most of this interview is completely baffling to me. In aiming to demystify LLMs, isn’t Matteo simply projecting his own lack of understanding of them?

Matteo’s one important point is that LLMs are trained on data created by many people. Although the training is done by private companies, these LLMs and the techniques for creating them (e.g. transformer architecture) would not exist if this publicly created data was not available. In that sense, LLMs are a crystallization of human collective wisdom. Of course, science, math and engineering are social processes, and algorithms, AI and as special cases of those, so LLMs, are a social product also in that way. But their training data does not fully capture human intelligence. And the crystallization process is just one possible process that seems useful; there are other algorithms that produce very different crystals from the same training data.

But how is AI a crystallization is social *relations*?

[philipganchev]

AI will be an aid as Matteo says but only until they become better than humans. Then they will replace them.

Until they replace them, how would these new tools lead to us having to input more work than before?