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Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence
A proposal that we think about digital technologies such as machine learning not in terms of artificial intelligence but as artificial communication.
Algorithms that work with deep learning and big data are getting so much better at doing so many things that it makes us uncomfortable. How can a device know what our favorite songs are, or what we should write in an email? Have machines become too smart? In Artificial Communication, Elena Esposito argues that drawing this sort of analogy between algorithms and human intelligence is misleading. If machines contribute to social intelligence, it will not be because they have learned how to think like us but because we have learned how to communicate with them. Esposito proposes that we think of “smart” machines not in terms of artificial intelligence but as artificial communication.
To do this, we need a concept of communication that can take into account the possibility that a communication partner may not be a human being but an algorithm—which is not random and is completely controlled, although not by the processes of the human mind. Esposito investigates this by examining the use of algorithms in different areas of social life. She explores the proliferation of lists (and lists of lists) online, explaining that the web works on the basis of lists to produce further lists; the use of visualization; digital profiling and algorithmic individualization, which personalize a mass medium with playlists and recommendations; and the implications of the “right to be forgotten.” Finally, she considers how photographs today seem to be used to escape the present rather than to preserve a memory.
Algorithms that work with deep learning and big data are getting so much better at doing so many things that it makes us uncomfortable. How can a device know what our favorite songs are, or what we should write in an email? Have machines become too smart? In Artificial Communication, Elena Esposito argues that drawing this sort of analogy between algorithms and human intelligence is misleading. If machines contribute to social intelligence, it will not be because they have learned how to think like us but because we have learned how to communicate with them. Esposito proposes that we think of “smart” machines not in terms of artificial intelligence but as artificial communication.
To do this, we need a concept of communication that can take into account the possibility that a communication partner may not be a human being but an algorithm—which is not random and is completely controlled, although not by the processes of the human mind. Esposito investigates this by examining the use of algorithms in different areas of social life. She explores the proliferation of lists (and lists of lists) online, explaining that the web works on the basis of lists to produce further lists; the use of visualization; digital profiling and algorithmic individualization, which personalize a mass medium with playlists and recommendations; and the implications of the “right to be forgotten.” Finally, she considers how photographs today seem to be used to escape the present rather than to preserve a memory.
200 pages, Hardcover
Published May 24, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 25, 2022
Sometimes, you read a book where the content is so interesting and important that it's necessary to disregard the fact that it's not a great piece of writing - this is such a book. The fundamental point being made here is that the concept of 'artificial intelligence' is mislabelled. What a smart speaker or AlphaGo or an autonomous vehicle does has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence implies understanding - but the algorithms of AI have no understanding of the data they handle. Instead, sociology professor Elena Esposito suggests, what they are capable of is artificial communication.
We see this most clearly with those smart speakers, or voice assistants on smartphones. I ask Siri a question and she responds - it is a form of conversation, and one that mimics intelligence, but it is based on something totally different from understanding. The same can be said when using a search engine. These are no longer mere indexes - we ask them questions and they reply with answers. But even in a less obvious application, there is a form of conversation going on between the AI and its environment - enabling it to carry out actions that in a human require intelligence, but don't in the way that the software/hardware is implemented.
For me, this is absolutely fascinating - a necessary adjunct to reading about AI to understand its limitations and how to deal with those limitations better. That's why the book gets four stars. Unfortunately, though, it would have been a lot better if Esposito had taken on a co-author. The text is highly repetitive, making some points repeatedly, and that's in a book that's already short at 111 pages before hitting the notes. It is also frustratingly vague. Many of the aspects of AI it talks about are covered in a broad, high level fashion without clear examples. The writing sometimes has the feeling of the kind of soft (indeed, squidgy) social science paper that was the target of the Sokal hoax.
The worst example is a chapter on data visualisation and visual text analysis which does not contain a single specific example. The only illustration in the whole chapter (indeed, pretty much the only one in the whole book) is a picture of a house to illustrate the high bandwidth of a picture. But in a chapter crying out for some actual visualisations (and more of an explanation of what digital text analysis actually does with clear examples) there is no assistance for the reader.
Frustrating in some ways, then, but a book I still heartily recommend because the topic itself is so illuminating, even if the approach taken sadly isn't. We can't expect every academic to be a great writer - many aren't - but when that's the case, a much better book could have been produced if they had paired up with a professional.
We see this most clearly with those smart speakers, or voice assistants on smartphones. I ask Siri a question and she responds - it is a form of conversation, and one that mimics intelligence, but it is based on something totally different from understanding. The same can be said when using a search engine. These are no longer mere indexes - we ask them questions and they reply with answers. But even in a less obvious application, there is a form of conversation going on between the AI and its environment - enabling it to carry out actions that in a human require intelligence, but don't in the way that the software/hardware is implemented.
For me, this is absolutely fascinating - a necessary adjunct to reading about AI to understand its limitations and how to deal with those limitations better. That's why the book gets four stars. Unfortunately, though, it would have been a lot better if Esposito had taken on a co-author. The text is highly repetitive, making some points repeatedly, and that's in a book that's already short at 111 pages before hitting the notes. It is also frustratingly vague. Many of the aspects of AI it talks about are covered in a broad, high level fashion without clear examples. The writing sometimes has the feeling of the kind of soft (indeed, squidgy) social science paper that was the target of the Sokal hoax.
The worst example is a chapter on data visualisation and visual text analysis which does not contain a single specific example. The only illustration in the whole chapter (indeed, pretty much the only one in the whole book) is a picture of a house to illustrate the high bandwidth of a picture. But in a chapter crying out for some actual visualisations (and more of an explanation of what digital text analysis actually does with clear examples) there is no assistance for the reader.
Frustrating in some ways, then, but a book I still heartily recommend because the topic itself is so illuminating, even if the approach taken sadly isn't. We can't expect every academic to be a great writer - many aren't - but when that's the case, a much better book could have been produced if they had paired up with a professional.
May 27, 2023
another shallow book about Technology and The Future; barely about communication; inconsistent use of terminology throughout
March 28, 2023
As a not english native reader i’ll give my opinion. The book, his main topic, especially, it seemed me so interesting and usefull. I apreciate when in our time someone decide to write a book. Go beyond far the articles is a good indicator that we’ll obtain an overview more complete, therefor, less obscure. I tell you about the topics that involve:
🔶 What’s mean comunication and how the participation of not concious partner are involve in any comunicative act
🔶How algoritms works? and why they works in these form?
🔶How algoritms shifts our manner of interation on social media? and which are the four ways to achive it ?
🔶How and why there was a change on the nature of takes photos in a comunicative performan? (identities and selfie)
Ethics issues on the 'Right to be forgotten' in the on going record of internet(refletion about how the human mind can produce new knowledge and how this posibility of human mind could be translated in realiable algorithms)
🔶How the visialitation of data’s sets produced by algorithms yield new knowledge (only the image)
And (i admitt don’t understood many things) which is our relationship whit the future (statistic approches and marching learning approches )
🔶 What’s mean comunication and how the participation of not concious partner are involve in any comunicative act
🔶How algoritms works? and why they works in these form?
🔶How algoritms shifts our manner of interation on social media? and which are the four ways to achive it ?
🔶How and why there was a change on the nature of takes photos in a comunicative performan? (identities and selfie)
Ethics issues on the 'Right to be forgotten' in the on going record of internet(refletion about how the human mind can produce new knowledge and how this posibility of human mind could be translated in realiable algorithms)
🔶How the visialitation of data’s sets produced by algorithms yield new knowledge (only the image)
And (i admitt don’t understood many things) which is our relationship whit the future (statistic approches and marching learning approches )
December 6, 2023
First of all, this book is a sociology book, and so that does not deal with how AI works. As usual, it's very well written and very well documented but lacks a deep interpretation of the subject, the title proposes strong ideas, but I couldn't find them, at least nothing breakthrough. Chapters 3, 5, and 7 are good descriptions, but nothing more.
Intelligence is and remains a mystery, but communication, which we can observe and about which we already know a great deal is not. Shouldn't be called Artificial Communication instead of Artificial Intelligence?
Digital AI Art is merely building things based on existing art, i.e. cats with amazing skin sets, etc., not nothing new and is constructed from human descriptions of what they want, not out of thin air.
It's interesting that in a book about communication, most of the links to web pages are broken, even when the book was written a couple of years ago.
What I didn't like is that 40% of the book is devoted to references, she should have spent more space on interpretations, and less on re-writing previously published articles. The real rate would be 3.5 stars as it describes and explain very well the different subject but doesn't propose any new.
Intelligence is and remains a mystery, but communication, which we can observe and about which we already know a great deal is not. Shouldn't be called Artificial Communication instead of Artificial Intelligence?
Digital AI Art is merely building things based on existing art, i.e. cats with amazing skin sets, etc., not nothing new and is constructed from human descriptions of what they want, not out of thin air.
It's interesting that in a book about communication, most of the links to web pages are broken, even when the book was written a couple of years ago.
What I didn't like is that 40% of the book is devoted to references, she should have spent more space on interpretations, and less on re-writing previously published articles. The real rate would be 3.5 stars as it describes and explain very well the different subject but doesn't propose any new.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews