Abstract
This paper examines a case where Amazon’s cloud-based AI assistant Alexa accidentally ordered a dollhouse for a 6-year-old girl. In the press, the case was defined as a technical recognition problem. Building on this idea, we argue that the dollhouse case helps us to analyze the limits of current AI applications. By drawing on the writings of Gilles Deleuze and François Laruelle, we argue that these limits are not merely technical but more deeply embedded in the structures where the thinking of AI can potentially happen. We point out that AI research has been compromised by the concepts of what constitutes both ‘artificial’ and by what constitutes ‘intelligence’. First, we use the notion of artificial non-intelligence to explain how different modes of digital capitalism such as voice commerce establish limits for AI. Second, we use the notion of non-artificial intelligence to illustrate the limits of associating AI’s modes of thinking with human thought.
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Notes
“Current Alexa voice-recognition technology cannot distinguish between multiple user voices, so a command or a user interaction can be easily interrupted or misinterpreted,” Irene Lopatovska et al.(Lopatovska 2018, p 2) point out. This is true to the case which we examine, however, it should be noted that currently Alexa already supports voice profiles from different users (Martin 2017). We focus on the event of the dollhouse incident including the discussion that surrounded it and hence we have delimited this new technical feature from our analysis.
A detailed account of the connection between thinking and recognition in the history of philosophy is out of the scope of this article. See Deleuze (2004).
This non-commercial example shows how the sensory wake word functions: https://github.com/Sensory/alexa-rpi and how the recording/listening happens in ‘background’ http://www.sensory.com/products/technologies/trulyhandsfree/.
The republication of the Darthmouth proposal in the AI Magazine (2006) includes the first 5 pages of the original proposal and does not include the “qualifications and interests of the four who proposed the study” (p. 12). The complete proposal which includes Rocherster’s text can be found from John McCarthy’s website maintained by Project JMC (see Rochester 1955).
Deleuze and Laruelle agree on what does not encompass thought, and agree that thought is immanent to its conditions, or that ‘conditions’ and contingency are what structure thought, but they then part ways in how they conceive further of thought and the way it operates on a higher level. The similarity and divergence of Deleuze and Laruelle’s philosophies stems from their concern as philosophers of ‘immanence,’ but diverge drastically regarding the ontological stance of Being and being, which henceforth shapes the premise of how each conceptualizes the role and possibilities of thought and philosophy. Tracing both Deleuze’s and Laruelle’s ontology requires considerable amount of discussion, but has been addressed by many contemporary scholars. For example, Marjorie Gracieuse (2012, 42) writes, ‘Laruelle’s and Deleuze’s common struggle against transcendence should not prevent us from appreciating their radical divergence when it comes to their account of what they both call “immanence” . . . if Deleuze practices a form of “metaphysical entryism,” believing in the possibility of creating new modes of existence by getting out of philosophy by philosophy, Laurelle refuses either to enter philosophy’s speculative and specular circles as well or to adopt a prescriptive standpoint’. Alexander Galloway (2014, 6) has also charted the similarity and divergence of the ontologies of Deleuze and Laruelle in his book Laruelle: Against the Digital, noting “Deleuze’s one is ultimately not differentiated from Being. Rather for Deleuze, a good materialist, the oneness of the one is expressed in all the multiple permutations of Being. Whereas for Laruelle it is impossible for the one to “appear” or even be “voiced” across all multiplicities of being”. Thus, Deleuze and Laruelle have a similar starting point of the immanence of thought, but depart in the manner in which they describe thought ultimately because of their divergent ontologies.” See also Brassier (2003) and Mullarkey (2006).
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This research project was supported with a grant from the Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo.
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Karppi, T., Granata, Y. Non-artificial non-intelligence: Amazon’s Alexa and the frictions of AI. AI & Soc 34, 867–876 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-019-00896-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-019-00896-w