Re: <nettime> From Baudrillardian Superintelligence to Bifo's Pessismism

[Felix Stalder via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

On 2/13/25 16:01, Frédéric Neyrat via nettime-l wrote:
> If questioning the technology we use, when we use it and why, is
> meaningless, it confirms Bifo's point about AI & dementia.

Ah, I love these off-hand references, assuming that every understands them.

I googled it, and it refers to this article:

Beradi, Franco (Bifo). 2023. “Unheimlich: The Spiral of Chaos and the 
Cognitive Automaton - Notes - e-Flux (March 10).” 
https://www.e-flux.com/notes/526496/unheimlich-the-spiral-of-chaos-and-the-cognitive-automaton

It's well worth reading (as usual wit Bifo) and here are a few choice 
experts. My interpretation follows at the end.

<quotes>

"Chaos and the automaton are the opposite and mutually reinforcing poles 
of the current sinisterness of the world."

"As a process of evolution is taking place between chaos and the 
automaton, in our daily environment we are simultaneously experiencing 
the proliferation of technical devices that act as hyperintelligent 
humans, and human beings who act more and more as bearers of 
irredeemable dementia: the cognitive automaton is rising on the ruins 
that follow the explosion of psychotic chaos."

"The automaton is not the product of mere automation, but the point of 
arrival of the marriage of automation and cognition. Therefore 
artificial intelligence goes beyond mere automation: an intelligent 
automaton not only replaces the execution of tasks, but also the 
definition of goals."

"Ernesto De Martino defines the expression “end of the world” as the 
inability to interpret the signs that surround us. When societies are no 
longer able to interpret the world they are experiencing, we can speak 
of the end of the(ir) world."

"Thought is defeated by computational reason: the machine does not 
think, this is why it is more powerful. In the game of winning, thinking 
is less efficient than computing. Thinking can also be a drawback, in 
economic competition and more broadly in the competition for life. Once 
we have the set the goal of winning (maximizing profit, killing all 
enemies, and so on), thought may be detrimental."

"Cognitive technology is the implementation of Enlightenment utopia, but 
it operates at a transcultural level. [Yuk] Hui affirms that the 
implementation of technology happens inside the frame of different 
cosmologies, but technology has a transcultural scope, much more than 
the political rationality of liberal democracy."

"The realization of Reason results in geopolitical, environmental, and 
psychological chaos, as we are experiencing in the current decade. ... 
Digital networks (like the financial system) have penetrated the social 
organism and gained control of organic processes. But the two levels 
cannot synchronize. Digital exactitude (connection) is interacting badly 
with the random expression of organic intensity."

</quotes>

Bifo offers, as usual, a very dark reading. And there are reasons for 
that. But, I think, within the text, there are forks that could lead to 
a different perspective.

The first is the notion of "the end of the world" is a sign that a 
culture can no longer comprehend the world around it. This leaves open 
that, for other cultures, the current situation doesn't feel like this. 
So, perhaps the question is, what do these other perspectives comprehend 
that "we" (the liberal West) does not?

The other fork would be Yuk Hui's observation that cognitive technology 
represents genealogically an enlightenment utopia, but practically 
operates transculturally and within different cosmological frames. 
Again, this would to question what these other cosmologies have to offer 
that might put technology in the service of a project other than 
extractivism.



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