A few thoughts, then.
One, there's a school of psychology which holds that the most telling, information-rich aspects of a psyche, a society, a system of any sort, are its pathologized elements:
So, sharing the minstrel show's stage with the cakewalk, we have the image of a physically handicapped stable hand upon whom the Jim Crow character is based. It's an image that survives into the poses Donald Glover strikes in This Is America.
On the AI side, the "medical model of disability" is upheld to such a grotesque extent that it's taboo to even recognize AI researchers and developers *as* autistic.
In all the breathless coverage of AI here in Q2 anno Domini 2023, I challenge you to even find that word. Autism is so pathologized, so stigmatized even here, that it's kept entirely *off*stage.
Always a bridesmaid, that autism.
Two, if the pattern is "X imitating Y imitating X," how does AI chat equate to neurotypical-style speech? Why are they the same X?
Because that's the fantasy being sold by the AI industry, that they're doing some sort of Mary Poppins over the Uncanny Valley, propelled by supercalifragilistic math ever closer to duplicating neurotypical cognition.
Selling this fantasy, as it happens, requires an erasure of autistic culture.
The inferiority of the black "race," remember, is just as much a fantasy. And selling *that* fantasy required an erasure of black humanity.
The cakewalk was a sly reassertion of that humanity, by way of making fun of white "superiors."
What sly reassertions will be made in the face of the AI sales and public relations onslaught remain to be seen.
#AI #RhymesWithCakewalk #BlackHistory #autism #AutisticCulture
More effective AI, after all, could well end up regarded as a cursed development for centuries to come. Much like the New World marriage of Capitalism and Chattel Slavery.
In the meantime, the familiar divide-and-conquer regime remains, with some autistics pitied, pathologized, or outright dehumanized, and the rest thus incentivized to count their blessings quietly. To keep their neurotype and culture on the down low.
To be clear then, my contention, not as an AI researcher but as an autistic person, is that:
Autistics' contribution to AI has been the self-hosted workaround we use in order to communicate with those who can't otherwise understand us.
That workaround is NOT how we *are* or how we *think*. It's simply the approach we've come up with, generation after generation, as we are compelled, again and again, to *accommodate* neurotypical expectations.
Should it turn out that AI is in fact a discovery on the order of Fire or Physics, well, who do you think likely bootstrapped *those* tools into use in the first place?
Autism, I suggest, has been the engine that drives cultural evolution all along.
Black people? Built America.
Autistics?
*Still* catalyzing cultural change.
Both populations essentially farmed in recent centuries, uncredited and in plain sight, for the benefit of capital.
A final rhyme, then:
Consider that the minstrel show's Jim Crow character was invented by copying the dancing of a physically disabled individual, and passing it off as authentic black dancing.
As Dr. Lori Brooks of the African-American Studies department at Fordham University says,
"It was not authentic."
Then consider industry players inventing AI speech by scaling up and automating the autistic approach to "passing for neurotypical," and passing it off as, what?
Teaching sand to think?
Time will tell, but we know it will be well laundered of autism, and that autistic culture will not be associated with AI in the mind of the public.
Most of us, in time, managed to recognize Jim Crow as offensive.
Whither AI, then, eh?
#AI #RhymesWithCakewalk #BlackHistory #autism #AutisticCulture
Everything here that's tagged #RhymesWithCakewalk, for me, flows directly from the tartness of @nttakes's comment, "We are not shocked." (https://maly.io/@[email protected]/110178169352730623)
Whether or not she'd agree, her observation is sharply drawn and worth reflecting on on its own terms.
When I read it, I just felt something catch, somewhere beyond her intended context window.
It was a rhyme.
AI, it rhymes with cakewalk
GDTRhymes #AI #RhymesWithCakewalk #BlackHistory #autism #AutisticCulture
A week later, @autismcrisis shares: ... retraction notice for egregious baseless "autism tsunami" paper claiming dire consequences ("a serious threat to the economic future of the U.S.") if autism is not prevented
And a reply, from @KatyCycles: Gosh, best not tell them that Autism has already happened and they probably wouldn’t have modern software & data security let alone any number of other brilliant contributions to the world without it.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-023-06016-4
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A colleague of mine just referred to ChatGPT as an "NT simulator", and now I can't stop thinking about it.
— @NTtakes
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