"Shitty Automation": Art, artificial intelligence, humans in the loop

Paulsen, Kris

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/112904 Copy

Description

Title

"Shitty Automation": Art, artificial intelligence, humans in the loop

Author(s)

Paulsen, Kris

Issue Date

2020-03

Keyword(s)

• Artificial Intelligence
• Art
• automata
• automaton
• Trevor Paglen
• GAN
• Generative Adversarial Network
• automation
• new media

Abstract

This essay adapts the concept of “shitty automation,” developed by Brian Merchant to name frustrating experiences with automated systems, to describe how human input—our labor, bodies, biases, prejudices, and desires—remains invisibly present in automated systems. Tracing a lineage of automation from Jacques de Vaucanson’s Canard Digérateur (1739) and Wolfgang von Kempelen’s mechanical Turk (1770) to contemporary artist Trevor Paglen, who uses Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to create artworks, this essay considers how humans “stay in the loop” in automation and what “shitty automation” reveals about human culture, our desires, and the evolution of AI.

Series/Report Name or Number

Media-N, vol. 16, issue 1

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/112904

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.median.v16i1.227

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2020 Kris Paulsen
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

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