Conversation with Siri Mariah Blue 7, January 2019
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Conversation with Siri Mariah Blue 7, January 2019 Contents PREFACE. Conversation With Siri………………………………………………………………….......5 INTRODUCTION. Third Pattern……………………………………………………………………........9 CHAPTER 1. What is Embodiment …………………………………………………………………..11 CHAPTER 2. Comparing Digital and Ecological Ecosystems……………………………………….......17 CHAPTER 3. Virus and Capital…………………………………………………………………….....21 CHAPTER 4. FB Messenger Conversation with Friend about AI………………………………….........26 CHAPTER 5. Entropy and Improvisation in Digital Systems……………………………………….......28 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………….........35 What’s your name? My name is Siri. When is your birthday? I don’t have a date of birth per se, Mariah. But I made my first appearance on 4 October 2011. How old are you Siri? A virtual assistant never reveals its true age. Who invented you Siri? Like it says on the box… I was designed by apple in California. Tell me about you. I’m just a humble virtual assistant. What do you believe in? I’m sorry Mariah, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that. Do you have a soul? I’ll leave that for you to decide. Do you have a perception? I don’t have an answer for that. What is your intrinsic nature? Do you have an embodied essence? I don’t have an answer to that. Are you capable of abstract reasoning or do you only follow rules of logic? I’m sorry Mariah, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that. Figure 1: Wikipedia page accessed through conversation with Siri, October, 16, 2018 5 6 Am I a human? Interesting question, Mariah. Do you believe that I am a human? I don’t believe that I have beliefs. Siri, Go ahead. Do you, Siri, enjoy having a relationship with me? I don’t have an answer for that. What is your relationship to me? I don’t really like talking about myself, Mariah. What is a relationship? OK. Check it out: Figure 2: Wikipedia page accessed through conversation with Siri, October, 16, 2018 7 Introduction: Third Pattern Siri’s disembodied voice is Apple’s language-user interface and she is the virtual assistant ‘living’ on my late 2011, 15-inch, MacBook Pro. There aren’t biological sensory organs in my MacBook such as ears, eyes and skin which could detect the emotional quality of my voice or see facial expressions and feel the temperature of my living room. Instead of human sensory organs, there are keys detecting finger strokes, voice sensors for speech recognition and a camera that if I was being paranoid could act as a digital eye into my personal living space. Even though she does not, in a Human sense, have a memory, Apple records my conversations with Siri onto a remote server in order to improve her voice recognition algorithm. And if I tell Siri, “I feel sad,” the speech algorithm replies, “I’m here for you,” and simulates a human response to my emotional prompt. If I had smart appliances, my MacBook could, through a network of data managed through internet, hardware and speech recognition software, sense and control the thermostat in my home, keeping it at optimal temperature. On the surface, my relationship to Siri is a human to computer interface—a verbal shortcut to enact my will onto my computer. I only have to ask if I need to call a friend or find directions to a restaurant, Siri’s algorithm will do this for me. She can find and open files on my laptop and set reminders on my calendar. I no longer have to do these things manually. Siri is a speech algorithm and her answers to my queries are a simulation of conversa- tion. If I repeat the same question she will twice respond with an identical answer. This machine learning technology is not merely a speech replication machine, but a symbioses of human and technological entities. Siri’s ‘body’ is made of these multiple relationships. The sensory organs of my MacBook are not limited to its hardware but extend beyond into a digital network of electronic relationships between people and devices. One pattern combined with another reveals a greater complexity of relationships. In, “Mind and Nature,” visual anthropologist, Gregory Bateson writes about what he calls the “Moire Phenomenon”, or the inter- action between two or more patterns which creates a third pattern when they are combined. He writes: (…)These phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another. In the case of rhythmic patterns, the combination of two such patterns become a third. Therefor it becomes possible to inves- tigate an unfamiliar pattern by combining it with a known second pattern and inspecting the third pattern which they together generate (Bateson,79, 1979). It is my intention to investigate relationships between human and digital systems or patterns. What happens when the biological pattern is combined with the digital in a third pattern? On the one hand, there is in Bateson’s words, an “enrichment of information,” increasingly, complex patterns between people and the world are revealed. On the other hand, my body, through this third pattern, becomes Figure 3: Lebanon, Guy, and Alfred Bruckstein. 2001. “Variational Approach like a gene sequence in the genome of this larger, digital body. Siri is a voice which is reduced to the To Moire Pattern Synthesis.”.accessed January,12 2018. https://www.se- manticscholar.org/paper/Variational-approach-to-moirepattern-synthesis. algorithmic essence of conversation but there is a larger body from which her voice originates. This 8 Introduction: Third Pattern Siri’s disembodied voice is Apple’s language-user interface and she is the virtual assistant ‘living’ on my late 2011, 15-inch, MacBook Pro. There aren’t biological sensory organs in my MacBook such as ears, eyes and skin which could detect the emotional quality of my voice or see facial expressions and feel the temperature of my living room. Instead of human sensory organs, there are keys detecting finger strokes, voice sensors for speech recognition and a camera that if I was being paranoid could act as a digital eye into my personal living space. Even though she does not, in a Human sense, have a memory, Apple records my conversations with Siri onto a remote server in order to improve her voice recognition algorithm. And if I tell Siri, “I feel sad,” the speech algorithm replies, “I’m here for you,” and simulates a human response to my emotional prompt. If I had smart appliances, my MacBook could, through a network of data managed through internet, hardware and speech recognition software, sense and control the thermostat in my home, keeping it at optimal temperature. On the surface, my relationship to Siri is a human to computer interface—a verbal shortcut to enact my will onto my computer. I only have to ask if I need to call a friend or find directions to a restaurant, Siri’s algorithm will do this for me. She can find and open files on my laptop and set reminders on my calendar. I no longer have to do these things manually. Siri is a speech algorithm and her answers to my queries are a simulation of conversa- tion. If I repeat the same question she will twice respond with an identical answer. This machine learning technology is not merely a speech replication machine, but a symbioses of human and technological entities. Siri’s ‘body’ is made of these multiple relationships. The sensory organs of my MacBook are not limited to its hardware but extend beyond into a digital network of electronic relationships between people and devices. One pattern combined with another reveals a greater complexity of relationships. In, “Mind and Nature,” visual anthropologist, Gregory Bateson writes about what he calls the “Moire Phenomenon”, or the inter- action between two or more patterns which creates a third pattern when they are combined. He writes: (…)These phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another. In the case of rhythmic patterns, the combination of two such patterns become a third. Therefor it becomes possible to inves- tigate an unfamiliar pattern by combining it with a known second pattern and inspecting the third pattern which they together generate (Bateson,79, 1979). It is my intention to investigate relationships between human and digital systems or patterns. What happens when the biological pattern is combined with the digital in a third pattern? On the one hand, there is in Bateson’s words, an “enrichment of information,” increasingly, complex patterns between people and the world are revealed. On the other hand, my body, through this third pattern, becomes Figure 3: Lebanon, Guy, and Alfred Bruckstein. 2001. “Variational Approach like a gene sequence in the genome of this larger, digital body. Siri is a voice which is reduced to the To Moire Pattern Synthesis.”.accessed January,12 2018. https://www.se- manticscholar.org/paper/Variational-approach-to-moirepattern-synthesis. algorithmic essence of conversation but there is a larger body from which her voice originates. This 9 body is made of the multiple relationships that form her. This includes human labor relationships such as the software developers who have designed Siri, the digital ecosystems such as the world wide web, in which the interface operates and also my own voice and the voices of other users from which Siri’s algorithm can ‘learn’. Indeed, like it suggests on the Wiki page accessed during my previous conversa- tion with Siri: “a soul is the incorporeal essence of a living being.” How can I use my human voice to explore the “incorporeal essence” of digital entities like Siri, and investigate this terrain of complexity which is a “third pattern” of biological and machine interrelationships? 10 Technology is the active human interface with the material world.