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Technological Agorism Part III: AI & the Agora

There are two types of artificial intelligence: the rules-based, & the neural network-based approach. To illustrate the differences, I'll borrow an example from AI blogger Janelle Shane's book, You Look Like A Thing & I Love You, & pretend we're training an AI to recognize dogs.



Using a rules-based approach, we’d create parameters which the AI would then use to determine whether or not the thing it’s looking at, is in fact a dog. Our rules would include things like “must have four legs” & “must have tail,” etc. When all of our conditions have been satisfied, the AI will recognize a dog.

With a neural network-based approach, we show the AI images of dogs & it learns to recognize patterns. The more pictures of dogs we show it, the more accurate the AI becomes. Nowadays, this is usually the preferred approach & will be the subject of this article.

The interesting thing about the neural-network approach to AI - as we’ve already noted, is its reliance …
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Thinly veiled Tyranny


The sheep in the herd, the voters, are more than willing to hand out whips to anyone "in charge." Nobody is free from sin in a democratic environment and that kind of structure teaches participants to punish behavior you oppose by appealing to the structure itself. It is a weird practice. You can stick your nose in anyone's business without having to actually do much more than writing an e-mail or gather with like-minded around a digital campfire somewhere and hope some of it will reach the political class. 


"There should be a law!" Heard that one before?

The right-wing part of Swedish Twitter built a dog-pile over an article that a local Green Party politician wrote. An article where he had the audacity to suggest that parents rule over their children.[1]

When you hear it like that it doesn't make sense, right? Why would right-wingers be against that? Don't they understand parenting and parental rights in the Swedish conservative movement? Ah, but I intentionally left out the full range of the topic by choice. I only revealed the part I cared about. Here is the rest: It was about the be or not to be of veils (hijabs) on kids.

Once you see the full picture you get the outrage.

It is a lot easier to express "I don't like this, I want it gone!" through a proxy structure that does all the hard work for you than having to take the hard road of change through interacting with real human beings. Once the chain of command of the Government gets ahold of the idea and transforms it into a public prohibition that is supported by force and an unsympathetic system.

"We did it! We outlawed hijabs! We freed the children!"

You also made ski masks, diver suits, traditional folk dresses, bandanas and everything else you can think of that a kid could cover her hair with illegal, genius.


"Oh, snap. Ok, we can fix that with some revision. After all, there should be a law!"

And that is how a detail-controlling silly law meant to prevent behavior X is born and mutated into a monster of a law text. Linguistical experts sit down and try to write down magic and get nothing but tragedy. Or tyranny, if you will.

It is not what is on the head of children that is the issue. The issue is how it got there. Was it placed with force?

We already have a law against that. Even if you are not a fan of state-monopolist law, I am sure you can agree on that forcing someone (kid or not) to do something against their will is bad. I don't know a single person that would be okay with that, at face value. Granted, it is a lot harder to punish bad behavior through social means, but it is necessary to keep freedom as a concept living.

And then we have those that turn into little tyrants as soon as they see something they don't like and as a rule of thumb, I let those people play Stalin all by themselves.

- Alex Utopium.
Anti-Establishment blogger at Utopium. Living on a steady diet of coffee and whiskey. Want to lend a hand in the coffee department? Click here to send coffee money. Click here to send curse words.

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[1] You can read the article in question here - Text in Swedish.


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