The movie takes place in a Lithuanian Jewish community where people were very religious. The first theme that pops up is the idea of gender discrimination as only men were allowed to attend the lessons given by the Rabbi because women were considered unable to comprehend religious content. The main character, Hannah, refused this idea and kept going to those lessons secretly without anyone watching and she appeared to have a deeper understanding of the concepts than most men. Hannah was also studying books concerning the Kabbalah which is a group of sacred texts that contain writing similar to enchantments that deal with the mystical parts in Judaism. Hannah had lost her son, Joseph, and was not intending on giving birth again because of the effect his loss had on her. The village’s community was peaceful and even though the plague was rampant at that time, the villagers were all healthy which attracted barbaric invaders to the village. The invaders took control of the village and forced lock downs every night and Hannah was not willing to give in. She had been read a lot of Kabbalah books and she was finally able to create a Golem. She constructed the Golem’s body with mud and with some religious words, she was able to give him the breath of life. The Golem resembled her son very much and she immediately felt attached to it. The power of the Golem and the connection between it and Hannah became clear when it murdered a lady who was constantly flirting with Hannah’s husband the night after Hannah saw her doing so. Hannah used the Golem to fight the invaders and kick them out of the village. Everyone in the village saw the Golem. The Rabbi and Hannah’s mother warned Hannah that the Golem is not as good as it seems. Hannah’s mother tried to kill the Golem but it was able to kill her first. The religious men of the village decided also on killing it using words from Kabbalah books as well but they weren’t able to since the invaders came back and were torching the village. The Golem heard Hannah screaming and here we can sense the deep connection between it and Hannah. It was able to fight the effect of the spell and go save her from the invaders. After witnessing its monstrosity, Hannah decides to kill the Golem in a rather emotional scene as if she was killing her son.The idea of people getting emotionally attached with their creations like Laodamia with her wax statue of her husband, is very prevalent here since Hannah got attached to the golem because it looked exactly like a human being and not any human being but her dead son. She played with the golem, showered it and treated it like her real son regardless of the barbaric things he did which was very troubling to watch. Another idea comes up which is that our creations might actually backfire as the golem was supposed to protect the village and its residents when in fact, it killed hannah’s mother and the other lady. This tells us that we should think wisely before creating something that is that powerful.

Who knows you more than you do? No, it’s not your parents nor your siblings, it’s most probably a multi- million dollar tech company. As technology advanced and became so easily available and readily accessible, people started sharing more than they think they do without noticing with a lot of the tech giants. In fact, now it is much harder to erase your online traces than it is to create them. The simplest example can be found in your own email’s inbox, it’s very common to see loads of emails from companies that you may not even remember how they got your email address. But your email address is the least of what they have, while most companies try to seek your information for their own benefits, some companies are actually information dealers, they job is to gather as much information as they can about people and group it, come out with relevant data and sell it to those who need it.

An example of such companies would be the British consulting firm “Cambridge Analytica”, they specialise in data mining and analysis, specifically for elections purposes. They have assisted political parties in India, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, UK and the US to reach their goal by telling them all about you. So how was all of this possible? By your own agreement, Before the latest US elections they released an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” which they used to collect data not only about you but by requesting access to your facebook friends’ data as well. The data would then be analysed in order to build detailed personality profiles for millions of users, the kind of data which is every politicians dream. Using such data they were able to send tailored targeted ads for each person depending on his personality profile and indirectly influence the user to vote for their political partner, which in that case was Donald Trump. The power of tailors advertisements that is sent at the right moment was able to earn Donald Trump a considerable number of votes that may have not been acquired if it wasn’t for “Cambridge Analytica”.

But the question remains, how can you protect yourself from such spying companies? Some illegally acquire your information while others do it with borderline legal methods. In fact, I believe that you you can never be fully incognito on the internet, you can only be cautious, for example, google goes to great lengths to track your location, they offer a bait setting that makes you think you turned off their tracking but there is other hidden settings buried deep into the options tree that gives them legal access to your location. As such one should always be extra vigilant of his online presence if he wishes to have a chance of avoiding the continuous surveillance attempts by the tech giants.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/02/cambridge_analytica_shutdown/

https://www.wired.com/story/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-awakening/

https://www.wired.com/amp-stories/cambridge-analytica-explainer/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica#Channel_4_News_investigation

https://www.wired.com/story/google-location-tracking-turn-off/

During our discussion of the reading about cochlear implant, the word Deaf culture came up and I wanted to more about it. So what is Deaf culture? They are a group of Deaf (capital D) people who use their own language (in America it’s ASL-American sign language) which turned out to be a language that’s complex and unique and it’s not just English translated into signs. The Deaf community refuse using the word “Disabled” to describe themselves because they believe that it implies that they’re “less” than hearing people which isn’t true. They actually believe that their communication is more deep and meaningful since they don’t rely on hearing. I don’t fully understand the idea of meaningful communication but I think it has something to do with the fact that it’s because they’re interacting with someone like them who understands what they’re experiencing. Even if they’re signing to a hearing person, I think that the effort done itself creates that “meaningful” communication. A clear distinction must be set between deaf and Deaf. Deaf are the ones who are proud of being deaf and don’t want to be “fixed”, they believe they’ve been created like this for a reason and that they’re unique because there’s more to a person that just what they can hear. The Deaf community disagree on the idea of cochlear implants. Some believe that if you’d like being able to hear then it’s your choice and you should get an implant. Others however, believe that a child who’s born deaf or became deaf MUST learn ASL as it’s a basic human right and that he must accept who he is and not try to change his identity. Those people are probably the ones who enroll their children in residential schools where they have a sense of belonging. It’s been proven that Deaf children in residential schools showed enhanced social skills, leadership skills and and self-worth compared to deaf children in mainstream schools who are usually singled out and have no room for development because they don’t feel the same sense of belonging. In a way, Deaf culture is just like any other culture which consists of language, values, traditions, norms and identity. The individuals belonging to that culture consider themselves unique and are proud of who they are.
 “Deaf culture is lived on a daily basis – like breathing”

https://deafculturecentre.ca/what-is-deaf-culture/

https://www.healthyhearing.com/report/52285-The-importance-of-deaf-culture

It is becoming widely accepted that technology is able to replace most of what humans can do now. Robots are replacing manual labor, AI is replacing data analytics, and driving your cars for you. However, it was usually thought that the capabilities of AI would be limited to the purpose it was programmed for by its designer. That is no longer the case, modern AI is now built using what is called deep learning; where a large neural network for the AI is trained by data supplied to it. The AI then takes the data and learns from it and modifies itself, it keeps exploring possibilities on its own and learning new things about what works and what doesn’t, similar to how a little child learns by experiencing the world around him. It was just a matter of time until an AI breaks loose and discovers something new, something that it wasn’t built to perform.

Facebook started an initiative of adding chatbots to it messenger to help pages automate their responses to the users. In an attempt by them to improve their chatbot’s negotiation skills, Facebook’s AI department pitted its 2 bots “Bob” & “Alice” into a bargaining challenge; where each bot would negotiate over a trade switching items such as balls, hats, books, etc. Bob and Alice started negotiating normally trying to improve their negotiating skills but after some time their chats started to take a left turn. Their chats started developing linguistic mistakes where it seemed as if a glitch has occurred, later on it turned into incomprehensive gibberish to the supervisors, yet Bob and Alice could understand each other and were still conducting trades. It turns out that Bob and Alice have developed their own language which can only be understood by them. What exactly are they saying and what are they communicating about remains completely unknown of us, humans, their creators. Which raises many question marks about the hidden strength embedded within AIs, or rather the hidden dangers. How can we trust technology anymore when it has actually happened that it surpassed us and turned into something that we can no longer understand nor control? Facebook’s researchers were intimidated by the incidence and decided to shutdown the project and put an end to Bob & Alice.

However, I believe that we should not be intimidated by such incidents, there remains a great power to be uncovered in the field of AI, one that can solve a lot of the world’s problems that are unsolvable otherwise; for example, it can develop better optimization ways for logistics which costs business millions of dollars. But with great power comes great responsibility, as such we should be proceeding with caution taking all possible measures such as proper testing in a controlled environment and careful developing with safety nets in case anything goes wrong.

References

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/openai-builds-bots-learn-speak-language/

https://www.cnet.com/news/what-happens-when-ai-bots-invent-their-own-language/

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-artificial-intelligence-ai-chatbot-new-language-research-openai-google-a7869706.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-chat-bots-created-their-own-language-2017-6

Ex-Machina is a sci-fi movie produced in 2014 that revolves around the idea of human and robot interaction and whether we can produce humanoid robots that are identical to humans in every way. The main characters in the movie are Caleb, a programmer who works for a company run by Nathan who is interested in building humanoids and Ava, the most advanced humanoid that Nathan built. Caleb wins a company contest and gets invited to Nathan private retreat in a remote place where he can study Ava carefully. Nathan asks Caleb to interact with Ava daily to find out whether he could mistake her for a human being as she had already passed a simple Turing test but he still needs to know whether she has a conscious. Ava is built in the form of seductive female who has a regular human face. Caleb starts to interact with Ava daily and begins to feel as if she is a regular human being and he falls in love with her. Caleb starts to spend more time with Ava and she shuts off the power so that she and Caleb could talk without Nathan listening.She starts warning him about Nathan’s actual intentions and that he actually abuses robots and that his mission isn’t what it appears to be. Ava asks Caleb to hack into Nathan’s computer and let her out of her cell so Caleb gets Nathan drunk and does so. Ava escapes, kills Nathan and abandons Caleb on the island.

The movie addresses several points which we’ve discussed in class. Mainly using automata for deception and the whole idea of gendering robots for the same purpose. It turned out that Nathan specifically created Ava’s appearance to attract Caleb. He used Caleb’s porn history to construct Ava’s appearance based on his favorite porn star. This is what mainly attracted Caleb to Ava at first. Nathan could’ve used this to affect Caleb’s decision on judging Ava’s AI which is a sort of manipulation. It later turns out that Nathan already knew Ava’s capabilities and that she was already conscious and his actual aim was to find out whether she could trick and manipulate Caleb to help escape. She did so by making Caleb think she actually loved him which wasn’t true. We’ve read about the Robotic doll which tricked an Asian artist and seduced him just for its creator’s amusement. This seems to be the same case here after all that time, we still use automata for manipulation. We can also relate to Laodamia who fell in love with a wax statue resembling her dead husband. This is similar to Caleb falling in love with Ava who was not a human being. The fact that Ava killed Nathan is also worrying since it warns us about what our creations could do to us in the future.

Kokoro is a Japanese word which describes the heart, spirit, soul, mind…etc all together. In Japanese language, the heart is divided into the actual physical organ (shinzou) and that concerned with love and emotions (ha-to). The idea in Japanese culture is that the mind and body are indivisible and intertwined and hence the term ‘Kokoro’. Kokoro can’t be translated into English since its translation would be ‘mind AND body” which implies that they are two different things. This is exactly the opposite of the purpose of the word which is unifying the body and soul. The Japanese claim that this concept enables human to look into spiritual aspects in a way they couldn’t have if the body and soul were treated as separate entities. They believe that looking into the more inclusive picture of humanity helps us understand what makes us humans. Testuya Sato, director of the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology says that humans used stored memories to anticipate what may happen and are usually clouded by desires. On the other hand, machines lack creativity. They are methodical and can never cause chaos since they are deterministic. This lack of chaos is what makes us unique and why Sato thinks that we still haven’t given robots a Kokoro. He states that this would never happen unless a robot displays spontaneity for instance if he hits his creator. Then and only then we can say that a robot has a ‘heart’.

The idea of kokoro in other organisms has already helped us in understanding some aspects about human behavior. For instance, through comparing chimpanzees’ drawings with that of young children, we were able to understand human personality traits. This wouldn’t have been possible unless we believed that chimpanzees had a kokoro.

https://qz.com/946438/kokoro-a-japanese-word-connecting-mind-body-and-spirit-is-also-driving-scientific-discovery/

In her article “Becoming Unmanned”, Mary Manjikan talks about drone warfare and how it can change major political gender concepts. The article basically divides acts and people into either male or female before and after the introduction of Drone technology. Before using drones, men went to war to protect women (inferior) and children. Men who fought in battles were considered honorable as opposed to those who weren’t willing to serve their country (were looked at as females). The physical act of taking prisoners in was considered both masculine for the taker and humiliating for the prisoners. Again the idea of gender being performative appears where prisoners are considered female for not being able to defend themselves and for being protected.

                Manjikan then shifts her attention on whether these concepts would change as a result of drone introduction. The first argument claims that this technology is emancipating as drones can be operated by either men or women. In addition, there are pieces of technology now such as HULC which is basically an exoskeleton (suit) that a soldier can wear to augment his/her physical abilities. This may lead to females participating in battle because physical ability is no longer a problem. Moreover, the idea of a drone doing all the fighting also relieves males from their inherent duty which is protecting women. Now, society can be less militarized and men, who don’t want to risk their lives, will not feel obligated to do so. The idea of a war hero may also disappear since a robot is the one doing the actual killing. I don’t really agree with the last point as killing a person is not all about who fires the shot but is all about making the decision to kill in the first place and I think that even drone operators still feel the guilt even if they’re not the ones who did the actual killing. This is probably the reason behind drone operators suffering from PTSD even though they weren’t on the battle field and were in a cubicle on some military base. Manjikan labels the drone operator as female for not doing the “dirty” work himself which I totally disagree with. On the other hand, military generals consider drone operators as “cyber warriors” who command technology to protect their country (male).

                Relating to posthumanism, it is believed that in the near future, in addition to HULC, soldiers will have chips embedded in them to allow them to communicate with other soldiers in the battlefield and with their superiors in the base. Donna Haraway argued that a cyborg is an inbetweener, a mixture between human and robot who is neither male nor female and would lead to acceptance and emancipation of women. The second argument in the article completely contradicts Haraway’s perception of a cyborg. Firstly, military officials still set a clear distinction between man and machine. They don’t consider cyborgs as a real thing. The soldier (man) is the one controlling the machine and there’s no fusion between them whatsoever. Secondly, it is mentioned that certain technologies are not available for female use in certain military divisions. This shows that even if women can use such technologies to reach equality, they won’t be able to because they’re not even allowed to use them in the first place. Again we go back to the whole gender issue where now such technologies only enhance the state of MALE soldiers only giving them more power and they become even more superior over women than before. I’m more convinced with this argument than the first one which was completely optimistic even though this is also slightly pessimistic.

                Another concept arises which is technosubjectivity which means empowering the state itself rather than any of the genders. It simply says that once the chip is embedded in a soldier, he basically becomes military (government) property. He’s subject to constant surveillance on and off duty. Every bodily function is monitored which is claimed to be a possible reason why such technologies can’t be used in female bodies because of issues of privacy and autonomy. Even if this is the case, I still think female soldiers should be given the choice of accepting or refusing such technologies in the hope of achieving equality, which Haraway argued in inevitable after the drastic enhancement in cybernetics. We can reach a conclusion that we can change the concept of gender being performative if we use the available technology correctly. It can be viewed as having emancipatory power but from what’s discussed in the article, it’s just a step further towards absolute patriarchy.

On Thursday during our class discussion, the question of whether evil is part of our human nature popped up.In the state of nature,during the absence of laws, humans’ only aim was self-preservation. Scarcity of resources at that time sparked off competition between individuals. Since each individual was only interested in preserving his own life, people were ready to kill each other because they feared getting killed first.Vengeance can now be described as “an animal desire that operates in the service of self-preservation” (Michael Schefczyk, 2018) . This simply states that vengeance is a drive that we’ve developed many years ago in order to simply survive.

I would like to go a bit off topic and discuss an argument about how humans developed a sense of justice. According to a philosopher named John Mill, people developed a sense of justice after they were able to socialize and form groups. Basically, he states that humans are born with two natural drives; sympathy and vengeance.I assume that we all agree on the idea that sympathy is in our nature. Our main aim at first was self-preservation, then we had to socialize in order to survive. We formed groups, and because of sympathy, our main aim became the preservation of our community. So what made us stop killing each other? A sense of justice developed because we wanted to protect our society and this wouldn’t happen unless we stop initiating attacks on others who then attack back and the cycle continues because they want to avenge their group members as well. To conclude, vengeance must have been prevalent in order to finally achieve peace and develop a sense of justice.