Whose Time Is It? Asocial Robots, Syncholonialism, and Artificial Chronological Intelligence

by Stamatia Portanova

How do the two technologies of blockchain and artificial intelligence actualize and, crucially, automatize the cognition of time? These kinds of machines are increasingly part of both our contemporary present and our prospective future, but how do we really define a present and a future? And more importantly, how do these machines themselves understand, know, and sense time? Can machines really think about the present and dream the future in an autonomous way? In order to unravel these questions, this book follows the “emerging life adventures and experiences” of Sophia, a robot animated by blockchain and AI, to present a study in temporal automation.

104 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2021

Reviews

[pugs · Rating 4 out of 5]

cool cover, cool concept of book series, cool title, and under 100 pages, sounds like a nice little romp of a read. dear lorde, it took me months to finish, not in a bad way, portanova dilutes these sentences with galaxy brain, literally and figuratively. science head on with philosophy, this - really - got me thinking about what time is, but even more out of the box - where - time is. blockchain is great at keeping specific time, but only in relation to how its applied, compare that to a less "accurate" water clock or hyper specific atomic clock. if ai is deep learning and constantly rewriting itself, in the timeline the programmer is watching must then also contain infinite micro-temporalities, ai running millions (or more) of simulations...of simulations to determine what is optical? "best?" for the algorithm or programmer? plus who "owns" the "right" to determine what time is for everyone else-- if we want to decolonize, degender, decapitalize the global temporal axis to something impersonal and objective, we must shatter the clock of capitalism -- we agree to suspend time as we know it, but now are completely lost. this is just a fraction of the ideas throughout 'whose time is it?' fascinating read, even if i don't understand the entire point. i'm not informed enough to go 5 stars, so let's go 4 for now. and what - is - now? what is a universal now? einstein, physics, headache.

[Dorine Ruter]

Really, really don’t know what to think of this little book. The underlying philosophical questions are very interesting, but most of the tech talk on AI and blockchain was lost on me. That is ok, but I felt sometimes conclusions or statements came out of nowhere or.. were very obvious without all the tech elaborations. A large portion of the book felt very optimistic (especially considering what we see happening in opposite directions), sometimes even felt like propaganda, but then again, because there was so much tech talk, I may have just misunderstood much of it.. There was definately critique of colonial, capitalist and neoliberal worldviews, but it also seemed to miss some obvious points. But like I said… maybe I just missed a lot because I didn’t understand..? Ome thing for aure that was never mentioned was the gigantic environmental impact of the ever expanding technological innovations but perhaps this is considered as something a hyperintelligent machine would solve in the blink of an eye..

[Jonathan Groen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just wish i understood more of it