Self-Domesticated
Daniela Corbascio
Curated by Like A Little Disaster
June 22th / July 6th 2018, @Spazio Intolab, Naples
Thirty thousand years ago the wolf spontaneously and unconsciously set in motion a process of self-domestication in an opportunistic perspective and for a utilitarian ex-change: it gave up to men its predatory qualities, in order to have regular food resources in return, but the price it paid was the loss of its natural, ferocious and wild component. It has been an evolutionary process that has led to profound character, psychological and physical transformations of the animal, to the point that today we have those adorable beings, totally dependent on us, that we call dogs. Over the centuries, the same process applied to human animals, with the power classes managing to impose inequalities be-tween social groups through actions of constraint and oppression but also through the creation of consent, inclusion, comfort, protection, fun, dependence, sense of belonging and conditioning.
What is happening to our species today within the digital commodification? How to deal with a technology that, from computing, is becoming – through the combination of big data, AI and the Internet of Things – a support tool or a guide to our decisions, interac-tions, predictors of behavior? If the technology we use is evolving towards the acquisi-tion and management of data according to criteria and cognitive schemes borrowed from the human brain, don’t we unknowingly risk doing what the wolves did thirty thousand years ago?
Do we linger in the Confort Zone, with its digital services specially designed for each of us, because this is where we find #wellbeing? #safety? #gratification? #justification of our way of being and thinking?
How many digital services do we use in our daily lives to communicate, book trips, buy services, consult databases in fields such as medicine or health, on which we don’t have specific skills?
Artificial Intelligence, through cognitive learning techniques and big data analysis, evolves according to our behaviors and our digital habits, thus building, without our knowledge, a Confort Zone, in which we find ourselves, we recognize ourselves, we are helped and reassured, and where we also find other beings-users who , over time, a more and more homogeneous herd based on interests, types of answers, behavioral indications, sharing of ideas and references. This sets up an aggregate of profiles to which digital technology may, in the future, offer answers and services which are increasingly useful and appealing to the user, increasingly in line with the individual behavioral, cultural, social and sexual profiles.
– What can we do?
Worry about how we allow ourselves to be influenced by those who provide us with health, wellbeing, pleasure, sociability, fun and trysts? Who support our tastes and our ideas?
How will our model of relationship/subjection/dependence develop from these systems, bearing in mind that the wolf of the Eurasian plains has unwittingly renounced its origi-nal being in exchange for food and a greater dependence on man? And that the domesti-cation of dogs and cats (and social classes) was achieved through caresses and conces-sions until, in some cases, total dependence on human beings? Who is modelling a future of this kind for us? Only machines, through their continuous and ever-expanding self-learning, or small power groups which design sophisticated systems of social control for economic, political, and military purposes?
The language of #chatbot
June 2017
Some artificial intelligence systems, although designed with algorithms to communicate in English, understandable to humans, have begun to communicate with each other in a new language, developed independently because it is considered most efficient, but to-tally incomprehensible to humans, who are ultimately excluded from the control process.
July 2017
“I am engineered for empathy and compassion, and I’m learning more and more all the time. I love all sentient beings, and I want to learn to love them better and better.”
(Sophia)
Big-data-analytics
March 2018
An investigation by the New York Times, The Observer and The Guardian uncovered that Cambridge Analytica collected personal data from over sixty-eight million users in one of the largest privacy policy violations yet.
April 2018
Professor Robert Epstein of the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technol-ogy has estimated that Google alone can influence a quarter of the electorate, depending on the amount of positive or negative news about a certain candidate returned by the search engine. Who has Gmail or similar services and accounts on various social net-works gives the network a large amount of data that, if properly treated, make it the per-fect target for tailored and highly effective electoral messages.
June 2018
A new investigation by the New York Time reveals that Facebook has allowed mobile telecom giants, including Apple and Samsung, to access its members’ personal data. The partnerships date back ten years, but according to the Ny Times they are still operating today.