Intertwined Feedback Loops
- A series of intertwined feedback loops that unfold from several interrelated briefs, which are designed to facilitate intellectual and practical exploration.
- Posted: Jun 13, 2024. Modified: Aug 30, 2024
Context #
The Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group (ASRG) has drawn a series of intertwined feedback loops that unfold from several interrelated briefs for intellectual and practical exploration. These critically subversive flowcharts have been informed by research on digital labour exploitation, invisible infrastructures, techno-colonialism, automatised technologies of tracking, monitoring, and surveillance, and many other contemporary phenomena at the intersection between technology and society.
* Please be advised that this page is currently the subject of active research and will be updated in a timely manner as new information emerges. The following seven abstract diagrams represent a small sample from a larger series of forty.
ABOLISHING AI #
This is a preliminary version of an intertwined feedback loop that promotes an AI abolitionist praxis by exposing the multiplicity of its harms and its irrevocable entanglement with various registers of violence, its nationalist, authoritarian and fascist logics, and its ideological commitment to algorithmic cruelty on a grand scale.
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/ts0tiWAKkphB5yhEkd3bEhDv/
AI DISSIDENTS #
This intertwined feedback loop serves to illustrate the inherent constraints and obfuscations associated with AI within the context of “Algorithmic Empire.”
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/xoK2qrqbuUwwV57HfVk12HVi/
ALGORITHMIC EMPIRE #
This visual representation provides an illustrative overview of the framework of “Algorithmic Empire,” delineating its fundamental origins, operational mechanisms, and prevailing practices.
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/Xfn7sBZ8sBdeJhEDaPswn-Ik/
TECHNOPOLITICS OF REFUSAL #
An intertwined feedback loop between the technopolitical strategies of refusal, the techniques of disruption and the potentialities of resistance in the context of “Algorithmic Empire”.
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/+Q3LBu5wMSSwfJfK8XtdASo1/
ALGORITHMIC SABOTAGE #
This intertwined feedback loop examines the underlying principles, strategic methodologies and aesthetic dimensions of “Algorithmic Sabotage”.
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/oBrgH8sY9GdGv8Anpi7-iHpR/
AI’S ALGORITHMIC VIOLENCE #
This is an initial version of an intertwined feedback loop that illustrates the various manifestations of algorithmic violence perpetrated by AI in epistemic, administrative, and structural forms.
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/HlQw9BYZPRBP9FyCzipqKIWy/
TECHNOPOLITICS OF FRONTS #
This is a preliminary version of an intertwined feedback loop that illustrates the procedures, aesthetic qualities, and functions of the critical concept of ‘Technopolitics of Fronts’. * Further information can be accessed via the following link: https://algorithmic-sabotage.github.io/asrg/technopolitics-of-fronts/.
Diagram: © Algorithmic Sabotage Research GroupThe diagram is available for download in PDF format via the following link: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/yE4q4zLF7GRQnsRw4dQaKzCl/
Supplemental Information #
Please find below a preliminary reading list, which will be updated on a regular basis.
Preliminary Reading List
Crawford, K. and Paglen, T. (2019) Excavating AI: The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Sets, excavating.ai. Available at: https://excavating.ai/.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2013). A Thousand Plateaus. Bloomsbury Academic.
Ekbia, H. and Nardi, B. (2017) Heteromation, and other stories of computing and capitalism. The MIT Press.
Fricker, Miranda (2007): Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Mbembe, A., & Corcoran, S. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University.
Mcquillan, D. (2015) Data Luddism, danmcquillan.org. Available at: https://danmcquillan.org/dataluddism.html.
McQuillan, D. (2015). Algorithmic states of exception. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(4-5), 564-576. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549415577389.
McQuillan, D. (2018) People’s Councils for Ethical Machine Learning. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118768303.
McQuillan, D. (2022). Resisting AI. Available at: https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529213522.
Pasquinelli, M. (2023) The Automation of General Intelligence, Journal #141. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/141/577253/the-automation-of-general-intelligence/.
Pasquinelli, M. and Joler, V. (2021) The nooscope manifested: AI as instrument of knowledge extractivism, AI & society. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680082/.
Spade, D. (2015) Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. Durham, NC; London, UK: Duke University Press.
Tacheva, J., & Ramasubramanian, S. (2023). AI Empire: Unraveling the interlocking systems of oppression in generative AI’s global order. Big Data & Society, 10(2). Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517231219241.
Woodcock, J. (2021) Towards a digital workerism: Workers’ inquiry, methods, and Technologies - NanoEthics, SpringerLink. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11569-021-00384-w.