http://conferences.au.dk/robo-philosophy-2018-at-the-university-of-vienna/
Notes from workshops/talks February 2018

Guy Standing

Having an argument with a robot in ‘singularity university’.
“ask the robot to do a tai chi”, better than I could. “I will take away jobs from the precariat”.

A global transformation

3 revolutions:


Neo-liberalism, commodify everything; individualise. Dismantle institutions of social solidarity. Empathy and agency. Seen as protections/hindrance from markets.
The corporation/the firm becomes a commodity itself.
Mergers + acquisitions – monopolies

5 superstar platform corporations / GOFEM
519 corporations eaten up by GOFEM
plutocratic corporations

Financialisation – from 100% GDP (US) to 350% GDP
Global architecture, enabling rentier capitalism – intellectual property. Linked to technological revolution.

Less money to work, more to capitalism

Ideological revolution – neo-lib was dominant in 80s, rejecting social democracy. 
Neo-lib replaced by rentier capitalism
Old left collapse, insecurity, … neo-fascism!

Libertarian paternalism: economist Nudge – 
An architecture of choice, so you make the right choice. Architecture is algorithmic.

Megatrends
division of labour
relocation
component trading

labour brokers – ie app – return of the middlemen
rental income for doing nothing

wages – productivity disconnect: the jaw
wages on average have been stagnant for three decades
faustian bargain – debt

global class structures
apple patented big data thing to see class background

top plutocrats
servicing elites
below: xxx
below: proficients at risk
proletariat – relied on full time stable income (disappeared)
precariat – 30%


you cannot assure against unknown unknowns


Aliens in their own society. Asking for favours, nothing is given

precariat is dangerous – neo-fascists
precariat is dangerous – detached
precariat is dangerous – progressives that are angry

potentially liberate
go ahead robot, take the jobs.

Q: would basic income challenge GOFEM
Zuckerberg, Musk support basic income. Helps legitimise. Basic income is part of a strategy of reforms. Reverse plunder of the commons. Get voice back/strong collective voice. A strategy for redistribution. Reconceptualise work.
Q: Automation and ecology
        You need basic security in order to have voice (and ot worry about the rest of the world)

precariat needs to develop their capacity to articulate their futures/imaginaries
beginnings of a counter-attack

ref to podemos, green left, … 

Q: heteromation and basic income (if GOFEM is going to support basic income .. what does it mean)

Need to tax the rent of GOFEM – sovereign wealth funds. 
Anti-trust legislation
Roll back intellectual property rights
BI is not the end of it, but would strengthen bargaining. 

Decrease NF
What to put in the package? Motivation?
Feeling secure but useless

work – labour
poverty trap
“it would liberate us for work”
GOFEM: not us vs them, they played by the roles
we need to solve it together

“are you saying the system is rigged for us”. “you are right to be attacking us” 
… it is not acceptible anymore.

Uber and security and the burden put on the state.
Old labour brokers vs Uber
Uber is deliberately making loss, private companies – hedge funds

from the enemy that is the boss vs the existing state.

Revolt, not revolution
join associations, put pressure
recapture democracy

role of trade unions – where unions are strong, ambivalence towards basic income
unions are part of the problem
you cannot turn precariat into proletariat

guilds meet trade-unions
“occupational citizenship”
collaborative bargaining

basic income and free play/labour
salariat

complicit in wrongdoing when reading on a kindl?
Not using technologies but because of undercurrents
unethical practices (but not wanting roll back technology)



AI have and have nots

AI is a blackbox, innovation hidden
openAI – “safe”

technology could belong to the world

– 

recreating discrimination
the machine must make a decision

“algorithmic justice league”

I am AI song

guattari script for science fiction, antonioni
machinic subjectivity
should there be psychotherapy / should robots be served by psychotherapist
interpassivity
Robert Pfaller https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-interpassivity.html

delegating enjoyment, rather than having it themselves – “have a drink for me”
living by caring for others 
delegating not responsibility, but pleasure
levels of interpassivity have changed

usually: delegate to free up time for enjoyment. Interpassivity challenges that.
People that photocopy without reading, recording tv programmes
social media is interpassive!

Hitchhiking robots
city dwellers in 4x4s – outsourcing pleasure to the car
interpassivity and cultural capitalism – platform capitalism appropriates the desire.
Threatens divide between work and leasure
psycho-analysis is important – to analyse where the enjoyment is; passion interpassively acting within the platforms
how do we work as subjects
question
Alfje Brown

Peter Rantasa 
Distributed robots

post-phenomenology
re-politizising word “robot”

mind/slave
Carl Capek 1920
Rpossumove

“robots are bought and sold”

ownership/property in the core
“to be like people it is necessary to dominate and to murder”

property – comon law. 
Guide the flow of power over tools and resources
property delimits or widens viable options
- ref: human rights have property inside
collecting societies and universities

copyright: monopoly!

SACEM AI – recognised
signature
“creator can profit”
are we up to decide?
Openai is not open source


James A. Smiths
The idea of the postwork utopia

necessity of bringing together identity and politics

Cultural Spaces and humanoid (s)care

architecture

Martina Mara

problems with human likeness
paradox

interest in well-being of robots and/or people
how can we 'not feel dominated'

robots should be working out of space or out of space
[EU public attitudes towards robots http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/archives/ebs/ebs_382_en.pdf]

David Hume :-/

General Motors' super bowl commercial
antropomorphism

Heider + Simmel
perceived animacy

two reasons:
- making social connection
- effectance [project familiar concept]

"people who have a personal tendency to anthropomorphize more strongly more likely to trust technologies"

cuteness, head tilt
"it really works" but is it appropriate?

"something people really want"

sophia Hanson Robotics

uncanny valley: hypothesis (no empirical data)
mainly: appearance
uncanny valley of the mind

tool / agent / experiencer [anthropomorphism]

using empathy instead of anthropomorphising
are we projecting?

should we prevent companies/... to use anthropomorphism
ref. buying bottled water

"I am a machine"

Oliver Schuerer

Artificial phronesis (AP)
moral trust in relationships

moral trust not without risk!
phronetic trust -- [delegation?!] 

trusting technologies - technological optimism

'trusting ourselves to technologies'
it is something separate from you.

not utopia/dystopia

how to humanize technology (sigh)

technological essentialism
if we accept this, we can do better

"i know what a machine is, and i know what a tool is. robots are not machines? they are operatives/agents"

i am a mechanist. people are machines.
trust/confidence

Christoph Hubatschke

robot = exploited, capitalism
slavery

mashimo mori:
    non-human body as uncanny because of not being the norm

does not want to learn what is human through uncanny valley!!

what is looking back at us?
derrida - non-human animals
naked in front of the cat
feeling observed
animals looking in the face
robots built to look us in the face
haraway: you did not see the potential
becoming with - companian spaces
problematizes what is human

to become with many
ethics of shared responsibility

com-panis = sharing bread at the table
care

species = looking, looking again

responsibility is relational

human-robot companians
it is not anthropomorphism but 
'konfidenz' trustworthiness, in confidence
mutual confidence - it is not one way
trust in the capability, more than comfort. assymetrical, but intra-active

slaves do not have agency of their own

mutual responsibility to open up for caring for each other

not enough to do away with fear, build trust

looking at each other
questioning what it means to say 'uncanny'
what can be called human

breaking with stereotype

confidence: can be across different positions/capabilities

always already part
instrumentality does not get us there. (hmmm)
with Haraway, so I do not think technology is completely different; we are already entangled
For me, using the term 'alien' means it would be too different. I think it is somewhere in-between

[but we are untangled with aliens already? This does not mean we are not entangled?]
[is this the problem with Parisi, that she backgrounds the entanglement, through forwarding its alienness?]
[try to understand instrumentality vs agency]
[instrument - tool - agent - xxx]
http://figureground.org/interview-with-luciana-parisi/

http://h-a-u-s.org/