---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Krystian Woznicki <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 5:02 PM Subject: [bgcon] SILENT WORKS · Winter School · Projects · Online Now! To: <[email protected]> Hi, undoubtedly the heart of the SILENT WORKS conference, five workshops brought activists, researchers, and cultural workers from more than 20 countries together. To tackle the hidden labor in AI-capitalism, the workshops took five different approaches: AAI; CAPTCHA Factory; Dull, Dangerous + Dirty; Logistical Noir; and Invisible Organization. Using Big Blue Button, an open source alternative to corporate ‘data surveillance’ tools like Zoom, participants of the three-day online workshops (November 12-14) were invited to come up with cooperative projects. The workshop projects are now available as online resources and include multimedia stories and utopian scenarios. Please check out the projects by scrolling down. *AAI* The term Artificial Artificial Intelligence (AAI) is intended to shed light on the fact that AI only appears to work autonomously. In reality, human labor is required to create this magical appearance of technological autonomy. For this purpose, millions of micro tasks are distributed to workers via platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. Their flexible ‘daily work’ impels one to think about the future of labor as such. Is a liberation from rigid structures under way, or are new forms of instrumentalization and control emerging? Felix Diefenhardt, Aslı Dinç, Gosia Jagiello, Holger Kral, Nelli Kambouri, Katrin Kämpf, Aude Launay, Darija Medic, Shintaro Miyazaki, Felix Nickel, Andreas Schneider, Catherine Sotirakou, Mira Wallis, and Jutta Weber looked for answers to this question. The resulting workshop projects are bundled under the title “The Hidden Human Labor Behind AI.” https://projekte.berlinergazette.de/workshops/2020/11/14/aai-human-labor-beh... *CAPTCHA Factory* It has become a daily routine that users of ‘free web services’ have to identify themselves as human beings. You are tested as to whether you are not a bot by being asked to identify hardly legible words (e.g. “type the letters above”), blurred pictures (e.g. “select all squares with traffic lights”) or faces (e.g. “identify these people”). Such a “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” (CAPTCHA) silently enables the outsourcing of tasks that AI cannot yet do (well enough). Jose Miguel Calatayud, Géraldine Delacroix, Monisha Caroline Martins, Julia Molin, Rebecca Puchta, Lira Ramadani, André Rebentisch, Sotiris Sideris, and Cagri Taskin responded to this practically uncontested regime of labor with a project entitled “I Swear, I am not a Robot!” and – in French translation – entitled “Plaidoyer pour des captchas éthiques.” https://projekte.berlinergazette.de/workshops/2020/11/15/captcha-past-presen... https://blogs.mediapart.fr/geraldine-delacroix/blog/181120/plaidoyer-pour-de... *Dull, Dangerous + Dirty* One hundred years ago, robots were supposed to take over jobs from humans that were considered dull, dangerous, and dirty. However, automation during the industrial revolution did not accomplish this promise; until the present day, humans are doing “inhuman labor” – either because machines require their assistance (even to the degree that humans become an integral part of a machine’s mechanism) or because humans are still cheaper and more efficient than costly and maintenance-intensive machines. How will this situation look twenty years from now? Sana Ahmad, Desmond Alugnoa, Sabrina Apitz, Miriam Arentz, Susanne Braun, Masha Burina, Kerstin Guhlemann, Friederike Habermann, hvale, Kevin Rittberger, Martina Staneva, and Dzina Zhuk responded to this question with a movie pitch, asking in return “What if Invisibilized Workers Reclaimed the Future?” https://projekte.berlinergazette.de/workshops/2020/11/14/what-if-invisibiliz... *Logistical Noir* AI-savvy companies are expanding their logistical networks into every corner of the world. Increasingly, they rely on their employees to become assistants of intelligent machines that keep immaterial and material products, goods, and resources moving – like workers at Amazon warehouses who are subjected to the instructions of self-learning algorithms. In this context, possible futures of work are negotiated through new forms of refusal to work (loosely based on the motto: I am not a robot!). Which labor struggles bring light into logistical noir? Jochen Becker, Niccolò Cuppini, Régine Debatty, Katharina Höne, Ela Kagel, Tanja Krone, Jacopo Ottaviani, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Juliane Rettschlag, Gabriele Schliwa, Nicolay Spesivtsev, and Mathana Stender looked for answers to this question. One of the resulting workshop projects is entitled “They Don’t Give You Tips Anymore.” https://projekte.berlinergazette.de/workshops/2020/11/17/logistical-noir-the... *Invisible Organization* Well-organized workers are the nightmare of capital because laborers are supposed to be docile not demanding, for the sake of frictionless production and circulation. This is why corporations and states have continuously been trying to suppress, combat or co-opt unions and similar kinds of worker organization. Today, capital’s desperate quest for frictionlessness is mirrored in self-learning algorithms that detect the word “union” in workers’ private communications. Is this reason enough to abandon the union model and resort to forms of invisible organization? Lara Luna Bartley, Mika Buljevic, Juan Caballero, Alina Floroi, Clara Gambaro, Max Haiven, Yonatan Miller, Barbara Orth, Zoran Pantelić, Marta Peirano, Jaron Rowan, Gustavo Sanroman, Brett Scott, and Laura Wadden looked for answers to this question. You can access the resulting workshop project by clicking on the title “Work, Care, and Invisible Organization.” https://projekte.berlinergazette.de/workshops/2020/11/16/invisible-organizat... Please spread the word widely about these projects! You will all of these projects also presented at https://silentworks.info where you also find an archive of video-talks, artworks, and audio documents. Best wishes, Krystian (for the BG team) -- -------------------------------------------------------------- BG – Berliner Gazette | since 1999 | https://berlinergazette.de -------------------------------------------------------------- SILENT WORKS – The Hidden Labor in AI-Capitalism BG Project 2020: Exhibition, Conference + Text Series https://silent-works.berlinergazette.de -------------------------------------------------------------- MORE WORLD – How Can We Cooperate Across Borders to Tackle Climate Change? Results from BG’s 20th Anniversary Event: Videos, Audios, Projects + Texts https://more-world.berlinergazette.de -------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list %(list_address)s https://ml-cgn05.ispgateway.de/mailman/listinfo/digi-yards_berlinergazette.d... -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/