GMU:AI beyond mystification – an introduction to the discussion on machine learning

Due to constant metaphorization, the public debate on "artificial intelligence" is separated from its technological reality and is lost between speculation, PR campaigns, and personal opinions.

The seminar aims to differentiate the underlying discursive fields and define terms derived from their technical context without creating new tropes.

Therefore ”AI beyond mystification” focuses on the theoretical and practical foundations of "Artificial Intelligence" and explores the subfields of Machine Learning by penetrating its ”black box” and deriving the terms directly from the technical spheres of knowledge (textbooks, papers, and programs). This knowledge, that emerges from statistics (data science) and network technology (the internet of things and cloud-computing), which always tries to keep itself "up to date" and thus strips away any historicity, gets recontextualized and transferred into different theoretical discourses (Philosophy of technology and critical theory). The course imparts both technically sound knowledge and philosophical reflection on the same. Thereby, no static discourses are set, but technology itself is understood as an operative-rational reality, which is not least expressed in the constitution of media in relation to the human subject.

With such technologies, it is possible to create media environments or digital milieus that are highly user-specific. This digital milieus separate its user from the outer world, in the sense of ramifications and references, and keep him/her isolated in a homogeneous information structure.

An analysis of pure media artifacts such as image, sound, text, etc. without illuminating the technological ideas behind them is thus of little use since these pursue a purely ideological purpose, leading to a surveillance capitalism. Therefore, the seminar follows the subject's relationship to the self-shifting media fields, which directly affect his/her behavior, exterior, and position, leading to the reconstitution of his/her communication.

To understand this novel form of media generation, an ontology is needed which does not constitute the relevant fields of discourse, in the form of a common critique of technology. In contrast, the Seminar will expose the formal and static structures, to an open, pluralistic discourse which, while remaining argumentatively coherent in itself, does not lead to a dogmatic point of view.