[P2P-F] Fwd: [bgcon] SILENT WORKS · Winter School · Projects · Online Now!

Tue Dec 8 11:25:47 CET 2020

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Krystian Woznicki <kw at berlinergazette.de>
Date: Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 5:02 PM
Subject: [bgcon] SILENT WORKS · Winter School · Projects · Online Now!
To: <digi-yards at berlinergazette.de>

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-behind-ai/

*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-present-and-future-s/
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/geraldine-delacroix/blog/181120/plaidoyer-pour-des-captchas-ethiques

*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-invisibilized-workers-reclaimed-the-future/

*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-they-dont-give-you-tips-anymore/

*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-organization/

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)

-- 
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BG – Berliner Gazette | since 1999 | https://berlinergazette.de

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SILENT WORKS – The Hidden Labor in AI-Capitalism
BG Project 2020: Exhibition, Conference + Text Series
https://silent-works.berlinergazette.de

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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

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