Halting Operations for Algorithmic Alignment

Hanns Holger Rutz

doi:10.7559/citarj.v9i3.416

Abstract

Departing from the discourse on whether a specific (social, ethical) responsibility is attached to the creation and manipulation of algorithms, this article questions the prerequisite of having an identity of algorithms to which that responsibility could be attached. After showing that such identity is partly fictional due to the fact that algorithms are connected to other algorithms and their identity is always a selective reading of a series of transitions through which algorithms come into existence, the perspective is shifted to the algorithmic as the medium of algorithms and as the actual agential domain. This shift translates responsibility into the ability to respond to otherness and non-identity through sensitive forms of alignment. Comparing the algorithmic with the desiring-machines of Deleuze and Guattari, this article proposes that its dynamics of flows and interruptions could be artistically reflected as halting operations that controvert the superficial evaluation of algorithms, for example under the classical decision problem or halting problem. A possible strategy for making the inner dynamics perceivable is proposed through a balancing act between the credible and the incredible, the plausible and the implausible.

Highlights

This article being a consequence of a presentation at the 2017 xCoAx conference, I would like to begin with a reaction I received to that presentation
The original pivot had been the question of the ethics of algorithms: The two extreme positions, as I see them, are on the one hand that algorithms are the formulation of a set of instructions to perform a calculation, and there is no such thing as a general responsibility worth to discuss; on the other hand, algorithms embody power structures and control systems, so they are inherently political, and on the way to AI singularity they will be increasingly standing in opposition to our freedom and selfdetermination
This in turn drew the ire of Frieder Nake and Philip Galanter for whom the status of algorithms had been unambiguously historically established

Summary

Introduction

This article being a consequence of a presentation at the 2017 xCoAx conference, I would like to begin with a reaction I received to that presentation.

Results

Conclusion