AI Design, Design AI, Human-Centred AI and the Theatre of the Absurd the language, life and times of a UX designer

This article connects the concepts and phenomena of Design AI, AI in creative industries and AIs capacity for creativity. It links Design AI to UX design and UX designer discourse. Its vagueness and the prominence of UX designers as speakers and writers in the spectacle of cultural AI discourse. The article then, draws comparisons between the Theatre of the Absurd and the UX designer performances of design AI. It additionally sheds light on ToA and the human condition in terms of existentialism, present within the practice of engaging in design that intends to link human experience to technological system logic. This is a theoretical article that utilises examples from UX events published on Youtube, as well as UX designer blogs, in order to illustrate the mechanics of the ToA present within contemporary AI and UX designer discourse.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, Nordic network for research on communicative product design (Nordcode) seminar 201

Minds, Brains and Programs

This article can be viewed as an attempt to explore the consequences of two propositions. (1) Intentionality in human beings (and animals) is a product of causal features of the brain I assume this is an empirical fact about the actual causal relations between mental processes and brains It says simply that certain brain processes are sufficient for intentionality. (2) Instantiating a computer program is never by itself a sufficient condition of intentionality The main argument of this paper is directed at establishing this claim The form of the argument is to show how a human agent could instantiate the program and still not have the relevant intentionality. These two propositions have the following consequences (3) The explanation of how the brain produces intentionality cannot be that it does it by instantiating a computer program. This is a strict logical consequence of 1 and 2. (4) Any mechanism capable of producing intentionality must have causal powers equal to those of the brain. This is meant to be a trivial consequence of 1. (5) Any attempt literally to create intentionality artificially (strong AI) could not succeed just by designing programs but would have to duplicate the causal powers of the human brain. This follows from 2 and 4

STRATEGIES ON REQUEST IN GORONTALO AND ENGLISH: A SPEECH ACT

The aimed of this study was to investigate the speech act methods on request in Gorontalo and English (comparative study). The descriptive qualitative method was utilized by the researcher. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the division of request technique in the Gorontalo and English speech acts using Brown and Levinson's theory. Observation and interviews were used as research tools in this study. According to the findings of this study, bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record are all acceptable. The study discovered that people from Gorontalo used a variety of tactics in making the Speech Act

A Priori Problems with the Metaphysical and Causal Reduction of Consciousness

Consciousness exists, or so it seems to us most of the time. However, consciousness is unlike your car-keys or your cell-phone in that it is not located at a specific point in space and time. The applicability of physical laws like gravity seem moot at best when it comes to consciousness. What is desirable is an explanation of consciousness that allows it to exist and be part of the very same reality as the car-key or the cell-phone, a ‘philosophy of immanence’ as Gilles Deleuze would put it.  I prefer a view that construes consciousness as causally-efficacious (having material effects upon one’s body in real time) and metaphysically separate from the brain. In essence, to say that the mind is metaphysically separate from the brain is to deny the proposition that there is nothing more to our subjective experience of mind than the mere activity of the physical brain. This paper looks at a view proposed by John Searle and tries to show that there are empirical problems with a consciousness that is causally inefficacious (unable to cause material changes) and metaphysically identical (not separate from the brain)

Proximal intentions intentionalism

According to a family of metasemantics for demonstratives called intentionalism, the intentions of speakers determine the reference of demonstratives. And according to a sub-family I call proximal intentions (PI) intentionalism, the intention that determines reference is one that occupies a certain place—the proximal one—in a structure of intentions. PI intentionalism is thought to make correct predictions about reference where less sophisticated forms of intentionalism make the wrong predictions. In this article I argue that this is an illusion: PI intentionalism also suffers from predictive inadequacy. In Sect. 1, I present the problem of predictive inadequacy for intentionalism and an ad hoc response to it. In Sect. 2, I sketch a version of PI intentionalism that aims to provide the most principled response to this problem. In Sect. 3, I explain why PI intentionalism cannot solve the problem after all. In Sect. 4, I indicate where I think metasemanticists should go next.Peer reviewe

Enhancing Workflow with a Semantic Description of Scientific Intent

Peer reviewedPreprin

Hate speech

Hate speech - communication that attacks a person or a group on the basis of identity factors, such as gender, race, or religion - is one of the main digital threats to democracy. Hate speech has manifold, empirically evidenced consequences for targeted individuals and groups experiencing systematic discrimination and for social cohesion as a whole. Yet, while the upheaval of social media has put the concept in the spotlight, such attention has also structurally transformed its meaning, turning hate speech from a concept with clear defining properties into a family resemblance comprising all kinds of online abuse. This process is far from causing only academic issues. It also sidesteps historical oppression as a defining property and as the reason for which one is targeted by hate speech. Thus, the process has been belittling public animosity against historically oppressed groups, reducing hate speech merely to a matter of offensive language on social media. This chapter shows how and why this conceptual change has taken place and the consequences it unleashes. It specifically addresses the problems of concept stretching, concept shrinking, and the inflation of concepts. Finally, it concludes that such conceptual issues jeopardize the potential that digital media research on hate speech has to provide guidance to a broad range of social actors

Agency and choice in evolution

Denis Noble has produced a succinct analysis of the ‘Illusions of the Modern Synthesis’. At the heart of the matter is the place of agency in organisms. This paper examines the nature of conscious agent action in organisms, and the role of affects in shaping agent choice. It examines the dual role these have in shaping evolution, and in the social worlds of scientists that shape evolutionary theory. Its central claim follows Noble, that agency is central to the structure of organisms, and raises careful consideration for the role animal agency and affective evaluations in biology, and in biologists