🔆✨The Nexialist #0231

#tnwconference | post-ai-hype? | ai governance&strategy | human-centered ai | gen-ai art movement? | ai-regulation | chagall | council of impulse liberation | welfare ai | death of a fantastic machine

welcome to your weekly nano-batch of ai (apocalyptic inspiration), the nexialist

hey, you! i hope this message finds your beautifuk eyes, despite the mess happening around us. this weekend, i’ll dj some brazilian music at tropikali and i’m super excited. last week, we passed the summer solstice, and these days we’re having sun until after 10pm, which is still surreal to me. also, last week it was #tnwconference, so today i dedicate the newsletter pretty much to share some things i learned there, in the offline world, plus some related content. please, watch the last one if you don’t have time to read the whole thing. enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

1 year ago » 🦿✨The Nexialist #0179 : #tnwconference | cyborg art | artificial imagination | collective intelligence | social health | data-driven DEI | genAI in education | healthtech | capitalism 2.0 | urban future | decarbonizing earth

2 years ago » 🧚‍♂️✨The Nexialist #0127 : self-fulfilling cyberpunk | cypherpunk, solarpunk and lunarpunk | gambiarra > kludge | beyond the sea | the alpha male myth | colonial masculinity | male objectification through the ages

3 years ago » i was on a break 👙

4 years ago » 👁✨The Nexialist #0026 : Discriminator | Cyberpunk in Brazil | Third Eye(lid) | Eye Floaters | Distorted Light Beam | Shygirl's BLU | Sad and Horny | More Rita Lee

🎤#tnwconference

last week i went to #tnwconference with my nexialist badge, so i wanted to bring you some insights of what i saw there. if last year the presentations had more slides with frameworks, quotes and learnings, i felt this year was more focused on panels and talks, not necessarily on formed frameworks (at least the moments i chose.) the focus, to nobody’s surprise, was overwhelmingly, artificial intelligence. so here it is:

🔨post-ai-hype?

while some are still discussing if ai is hype or not, it was interesting to see real world applications of ai and how we’re starting to see impact. gartner’s hypecycle says that after the hype comes disillusionment, enlightenment and productivity, and this isn’t so linear (yes, there can be hype around all the promises that are made, and all the superintelligence talk, but the fact is, the curve of adoption and shows real utility for different things).

• monumental: a dutch company already using ai for construction, not to substitute workers, but to do the repetitive tasks. also, an interesting talk about the challenges to develop software and hardware in robotics).

• open food chain: how the food chain can benefit from technologies like ai and blockchain, for more transparency and traceability, but the industry is still slow and manual, and data quality is low.

• banking: some interesting discussions about the arms race with ai in the future of money: while it accelerates frauds, it also accelerates finding fraudsters. also big tech (example used was meta) is not collaborating as much as they could to help. a plot twist i was not expecting: with more fraud victims, banks don’t seem to be ready to support victims psychologically.

• defense: one of the main talks on the first day was a call to action to go in the defense industry, and while i was sitting uncomfortably through it, it dawned on me that someone needs to do it. just like in banking, there will be people using it to deceive, so the other side also needs to “fight back.”

brainsparks: #tnwconference 2024 (tn#179), ai: hype or the real deal? (tn#149), anatomy of hype (tn#217)

🧠ai governance & strategy

on a panel with large companies from different industries, they discussed how they are (or not) using ai. here are my three highlights:
- start small > test > prove roi > then roll out
- be transparent with your customer about data use: what data is being used, how, is it retained, what are the risks?
- people in your company are using ai, even if it’s not allowed. c-levels need to be informed, give options of tools, explain what data cannot go in these engines. (i thought of hard reduction as an analogy).

brainsparks: strategy in the era of ai (tn#165), ai-powered stingray model (tn#157)

🧍human-centered ai

i know this term keeps being thrown around (and honestly it gives me the ick at this point… we need to get over ourselves and think of life-centered, more-than-human-centered tech). but stanford professor james a. landay brought one of my favorite talks in the program: a 3-layer process to help us think about human-centered ai: user, community and society. he used the example of a tesla self-driving car:
- user: what are the user needs when using this? i.e. a screen to visualize what is happening, in order to feel safe. it seems most companies stop here, at the user.
- community: how are the people around affected, pedestrians, bikers, drivers and other people in self-driving cars?
- society: how does this affect traffic? gentrification? use of urban land? the plot twist here was that maybe (just maybe) we don’t need more self-driving cars, but better public transport systems.

brainsparks: more-than-human aesthetics (tn#200), more-than-human rights (tn#131), umwelt, non-human perceptions (tn#86), nature disconnection (tn#137)

🎨gen-ai as an art movement?

artist and researcher cecilia lascialfari (area6dof) planted this seed in my head. she compares what is happening with gen-ai to movements like dadaism, surrealism, pop art and hyperrealism, as each of them defied artistic conventions of its moment. dada means nothing, surrealism is psychic automotism, pop art is popular, ready made, hyperrealism pushes reality to the extreme to the point it gives a sense of abstraction. and all of them pissed off artists and critics at the time. (she did not answer the question, fyi, but it’s still in my head)

brainsparks: new aesthetics of slop (tn#215), synthetic media (tn#18), anti-design (tn#169), glitch nostalgia (tn#34), the cult of ugly aesthetics (tn#134), model collapse (tn#211)

⚖️ai-regulation

the eternal (and necessary) talk about regulation. does it hinder or promote innovation? also split opinions about the eu artificial intelligence act. for instance, even with artists being so affected by the technology, they were not invited to the table.

cristina criddle from the financial times was usually moderating panels about ai and she was asking good questions. when eoghan o’neill, the senior policy officer of the eu commission, started saying the eu ai act is the best thing since sliced bread (my words), she quickly challenged him on its shortcomings: does it scare away innovators/investors from the eu? (there were other important questions, but i forgot). cradle’s co-founder elise de reus said something that stayed with me: sometimes the focus is on regulating the technology (just like happened to crispr), and it should be more focused on its applications.

brainsparks: web summit takeaways (tn#149), vectors of intelligence (tn#194)

🔆chagall

chagall opened the tnwconference and it was mesmerizing. she’s a dutch artist, music producer and music technology innovator. she has gloves and a full body suit that responds to her movements: harmonizations and distortions to her voice, drums that beat when her knees move, and other changes with hand and finger movements. in the back, 3d avatars/background dancers replicate her movements live on screen. she also is the founder of the lovelace.lab, that “support female identifying artists to apply technology in their live music experiences.” the full package.

‘Unlocked’ is singer/producer Chagall’s latest live music performance in which she explores her relationship with a reactive light-art installation called B.A.B.Y. (Bionic Assistant for Becoming Yourself). As Chagall controls all elements in the show in realtime through sensors in her costume, audiences witness an organic and intimate interplay of the human body, voice, light and music.

brainspark: cyborg art (tn#179), neil harbisson, vibration cyborg (tn#11)

✨council of impulse liberation

jason silva was at the conference (he’s a fellow amsterdammer) and he went to show his new series with brad necyk: council of impulse liberation. i used to watch his shots of awe videos, one of them i posted here, about ontological design.

Episode Two of The Council of Impulse Liberation opens with a clinical impasse: the epidemic of soul sickness has outpaced the conventional pharmacopeia. Anxiety, depression, and the psychic rot of repetition are no longer best met with biochemical dampeners but with ruptures in ontological continuity—mythopoetic shock therapies designed not to medicate but to metamorphose. Enter the puppets, surreal clinicians of the imagination, who prescribe not Paxil, but pilgrimage—to the cracked carnival of Burning Man, where identity liquefies, ego evaporates, and delirium becomes diagnostic.

brainsparks: ontological design (tn#3), ARTificial (tn#123), artificial imagination (tn#179)

🇳🇱welfare ai

this is not from the conference, but in theme, as it shows how amsterdam is trying to fix discriminatory algorithms in the welfare system. if you need a real-world example of algorithmic bias, how it affects real people and accountability, you must read this:

“Inside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI: The Dutch city thought it could break a decade-long trend of implementing discriminatory algorithms. Its failure raises the question: can these programs ever be fair?” by Eileen Guo, Gabriel Geiger and Justin-Casimir Braun.

it shocks me people don’t hear about these things, but if the dutch are quiet and discreet about their global relevance, they wouldn’t be boasting about their shortcomings (and most importantly, learnings) for everyone to hear. so i was pleasantly surprised to find this article and how didactic it is at explaining how it all happened unintendedly, despite good intention and following all the ethical-ai playbook and involving different people.

In 2019, it was revealed that the national government had been using an algorithm to create risk profiles that it hoped would help spot fraud in the child care benefits system. The resulting scandal saw nearly 35,000 parents, most of whom were migrants or the children of migrants, wrongly accused of defrauding the assistance system over six years. It put families in debt, pushed some into poverty, and ultimately led the entire government to resign in 2021.

brainsparks: ai’s ethical compass (tn#114), risk zones in ethical operating systems (tn#168), fairly trained (tn#157)

🤖death of a fantastic machine

if you watch one thing in this newsletter, it should be this video (thank you, juan). this video causes so many thoughts and brainsparks. it ties together the history of photography and film to our incredibly visual culture, now with the addition of ai, and mainly, the incentives behind this. while i’m excited this material exists (i always love to see eadweard muybridge’s photos) and it is so well done, i had knots in my stomach by the end. “the camera is a machine that shows our world, but the business model is leading us somewhere else”

Film and text by Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson:
The camera is a tool — but to do what? Images shape our daily life, yet we rarely question how they’re made or why. As filmmakers, we’re fascinated by how humans use cameras and by the immense influence images have. For 15 years, we’ve investigated the history of the camera, and we’ve turned the material we gathered into a feature documentary, chronicling how people behind the camera went from capturing the image of a backyard to today’s multibillion-dollar content industry.
The video above, “Death of a Fantastic Machine,” is a shorter version of that documentary, and here we focus on something that emerged as the key factor: how economic forces have shaped what we see, from the earliest photography to the algorithms and A.I. of today. Some say there are an estimated 45 billion cameras on earth today, giving humankind access to perspectives far beyond our own reach. But the very tool that could help us understand the world is increasingly used to distort it. With A.I., this distortion has reached a new level. When any photo or video can be manufactured, what happens to the camera’s credibility? Can we still trust what we see?

brainsparks: when images matter more than reality (tn#155), deep doubt era (tn#193), the anti-social century (tn#229), addictive intelligence (tn#186), super industry of the imaginary (tn#28), counter-culture x counter-futures (tn#10), context collapse (tn#25), personal machines and portable worlds (tn#132), quantitative validation (tn#199), dopamine culture (tn#164), a blurry jpeg of the web (tn#111)

see you next week, nexialists 🫀✨

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I truly believe innovation comes from bringing improbable areas together, and that’s why I called this project The Nexialist. Some sectors are known to be self-referencing and hermetic. Sometimes, teams are on autopilot mode, focused on the daily grind, which hinders innovation. As a Nexialist, I like to burst these bubbles, bringing references from different areas, and maintaining teams inspired and connected to the Zeitgeist. 

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