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An AI door, according to a generative AI
Written by David Lyreskog
In what is quite possibly my last entry for the Practical Ethics blog, as I’m sadly leaving the Uehiro Centre in July, I would like to reflect on some things that have been stirring my mind the last year or so.
In particular, I have been thinking about thinking with machines, with people, and what the difference is.
–
The Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics is located in an old carpet warehouse on an ordinary side street in Oxford. Facing the building, there is a gym to your left, and a pub to your right, mocking the researchers residing within the centre walls with a daily dilemma.
As you are granted access to the building – be it via buzzer or key card – a dry, somewhat sad, voice states “stay clear of the door” before the door slowly swings open.
–
The other day a colleague of mine shared a YouTube video of the presentation The AI Dilemma, by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin. In it, they share with the audience their concerns about the rapid and somewhat wild development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the hands of a few tech giants. I highly recommend it. (The video, that is. Not the rapid and somewhat wild development of AI in the hands of a few tech giants).
Much like the thousands of signatories of the March open call to “pause giant AI experiments”, and recently the “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, Harris and Raskin warn us that we are on the brink of major (negative, dangerous) social disruption due to the power of new AI technologies.
Indeed, there’s a bit of a public buzz about “AI ethics” in recent months.
While it is good that there is a general awareness and a public discussion about AI – or any majorly disruptive phenomenon for that matter – there’s a potential problem with the abstraction: AI is portrayed as this big, emerging, technological, behemoth which we cannot or will not control. But it has been almost three decades since humans were able to beat an AI at a game of chess. We have been using AI for many things, from medical diagnosis to climate prediction, with little to no concern about it besting us and/or stripping us of agency in these domains. In other domains, such as driving cars, and military applications of drones, there has been significantly more controversy.
All this is just to say that AI ethics is not for hedgehogs – it’s not “one big thing”[i] – and I believe that we need to actively avoid a narrative and a line of thinking which paints it to be. In examining the ethical dimensions of a multitude of AI inventions, then, we ought to take care to limit the scope of our inquiry to the domain in question at the very least.
So let us, for argument’s sake, return to that door at the Uehiro Centre, and the voice cautioning visitors to stay clear. Now, as far as I’m aware, the voice and the door are not part of an AI system. I also believe that there is no person who is tasked with waiting around for visitors asking for access, warning them of the impending door swing, and then manually opening the door. I believe it is a quite simple contraption, with a voice recording programmed to be played as the door opens. But does it make a difference to me, or other visitors, which of these possibilities is true?
We can call these possibilities:
Condition one (C1): AI door, created by humans.
Condition two (C2): Human speaker & door operator.
Condition three (C3): Automatic door & speaker, programmed by humans.
In C3, it seems that the outcome of the visitor’s action will always be the same after the buzzer is pushed or the key card is blipped: the voice will automatically say ‘stay clear of the door’, and the door will open. In C1 and C2, the same could be the case. But it could also be the case that the AI/human has been instructed to assess the risk for visitors on a case-to-case basis, and to only advise caution if there is imminent risk of collision or such (was this the case, I am consistently standing too close to the door when visiting, but that is beside the point).
On the surface, I think there are some key differences between these conditions which could have an ethical or moral impact, where some differences are more interesting than others. In C1 and C2, the door opener makes a real-time assessment, rather than following a predetermined cause of action in the way C3’s door opener does. More importantly, C2 is presumed to make this assessment from a place of concern, in a way which is impossible in C1 and C3 because the latter two are not moral agents, and therefore cannot be concerned. They simply do not have the capacity. And our inquiry could perhaps end here.
But it seems it would be a mistake.
What if something was to go wrong? Say the door swings open, but no voice warns me to stay clear, and so the door whacks me in the face[ii]. In C2, it seems the human who’s job it is to warn me of the imminent danger might have done something morally wrong, assuming they knew what to expect from opening the door without warning me, but failed in doing so due to negligence[iii]. In C1 and C3, on the other hand, while we may be upset with the door opener(s), we don’t believe that they did anything morally wrong – they just malfunctioned.
My colleague Alberto Giubilini highlighted the tensions in the morality of this landscape in what I thought was an excellent piece arguing that “It is not about AI, it is about humans”: we cannot trust AI, because trust is a relationship between moral agents, and AI does not (yet) have the capacity for moral agency and responsibility. We can, however, rely on AI to behave in a certain way (whether we should is a separate issue).
Similarly, while we may believe that a human should show concern for their fellow person, we should not expect the same from AIs, because they cannot be concerned.
Yet, if the automatic doors continue to whack visitors in the face, we may start feeling that someone should be responsible for this – not only legally, but morally: someone has a moral duty to ensure these doors are safe to pass through, right?
In doing so, we expand the field of inquiry, from the door opener to the programmer/constructor of the door opener, and perhaps to someone in charge of maintenance.
A couple of things pop to mind here.
First, when we find no immediate moral agent to hold responsible for a harmful event, we may expand the search field until we find one. That search seems to me to follow a systematic structure: if the door is automatic, we turn to call the support line, and if the support fails to fix the problem, but turns out to be an AI, we turn to whoever is in charge of support, and so on, until we find a moral agent.
Second, it seems to me that, if the door keeps slamming into visitors’ faces in condition in C2, we will not only morally blame the door operator, but also whoever left them in charge of that door. So perhaps the systems-thinking does not only apply when there is a lack of moral agents, but also applies on a more general level when we are de facto dealing with complicated and/or complex systems of agents.
Third, let us conjure a condition four (C4) like so: the door is automatic, but in charge of maintenance support is an AI system that is usually very reliable, and in charge of the AI support system, in turn, is a (human) person.
If the person in charge of an AI support system that failed to provide adequate service to a faulty automatic door is to blame for anything, it is plausibly for not adequately maintaining the AI support system – but not for whacking people in the face with a door (because they didn’t do that). Yet, perhaps there is some form of moral responsibility for the face-whacking to be found within the system as a whole. I.e. the compound of door-AI-human etc., has a moral duty to avoid face-whacking, regardless of any individual moral agents’ ability to whack faces.
If this is correct, it seems to me that we again[iv] find that our traditional means of ascribing moral responsibility fails to capture key aspects of moral life: it is not the case that any agent is individually morally responsible for the face-whacking door, nor are there multiple agents who are individually or collectively responsible for the face-whacking door. Yet, there seems to be moral responsibility for face-whacking doors in the system. Where does it come from, and what is its nature and structure (if it has one)?
In this way, not only cognitive processes such as thinking and computing seem to be able to be distributed throughout systems, but perhaps also moral capacities such as concern, accountability, and responsibility.
And in the end, I do not know to what extent it actually matters, at least in this specific domain. Because at the end of the day, I do not care much whether the door opener is human, an AI, or automatic.
I just need to know whether or not I need to stay clear of the door.
–
Notes & References.
[i] Berlin, I. (2013). The hedgehog and the fox: An essay on Tolstoy’s view of history. Princeton University Press.
[ii] I would like to emphasize that this is a completely hypothetical case, and that I take it to be safe to enter the Uehiro centre. The risk of face-whacking is, in my experience, minimal.
[iii] Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt here, and assume it wasn’t maleficence.
[iv] Together with Hazem Zohny, Julian Savulescu, and Ilina Singh, I have previously argued this to be the case in the domain of emerging technologies for collective thinking and decision-making, such as brain-to-brain interfaces. See the Open Access paper Merging Minds for more on this argument.
Increasingly, one finds scholars from various countries and nominally different theoretical traditions emphasizing the importance of the same three broad sets of factors in analyzing the origins of collective action. These three factors are: 1) the political opportunities and constraints confronting a given challenger; 2) the forms of organization (informal as well as formal) available to insurgents as sites for initial mobilization; and 3) the collective processes of interpretation, attribution and social construction that mediate between opportunity and action. (viii)
And McAdam holds that these three factors help to account for the dramatic rise in Civil Rights activism, protest, and strategic choices of the movement across the South in the 1950s into the early 1960s. He asks the key question: “What led normally accepting African-Americans both in Montgomery and throughout the South to risk their livelihoods and their lives in support of civil rights?”. This is the theoretically central issue of mobilization: what factors facilitate mass mobilization around a set of interests or grievances?
Given the diversity of local situations in cities, towns, and farms across the South, we can speculate that the answer to this question will be different in different locales. But significantly, McAdam provides very little "micro-sociology" of the development of engagement on the part of ordinary African-American people making their lives in various places. He writes about the significance of churches, colleges, and the NAACP as "the organizational base of the movement" (125), but he goes into little detail about the activities and resources associated with these institutions and organizations. He writes:
Representing the most organized segments of the southern black population, the churches, colleges, and local NAACP chapters possessed the resources needed to generate and sustain an organized campaign of social insurgency. (128)
But how did these organizations actually act during the critical period; how were their actions different in different settings; and how did this influence rising activism on the part of ordinary people? What were the local processes that led to local mobilizations? His answer is a general one:
On one level, then, the importance of the churches, schools, and NAACP chapters in the generation of insurgency can be attributed to their role as established interactional networks facilitating the "bloc recruitment" of movement participants. That is, by building the movement out of established institutions, insurgent leaders were able to recruit en masse along existing lines of interaction, thereby sparing themselves the much more difficult task of developing a membership from scratch. (129)
This is a general formulation of a social mechanism. But it is not a specific and factual account of "recruitment" in a particular time and place -- for example, Montgomery prior to the bus boycott. Rather, McAdam emphasizes the idea that ordinary people saw it as their church-created duty to participate in protest. McAdam treats the church, colleges, and local chapters of the NAACP chiefly as "network" sites, where potential participants in the activist movement were located, where they further developed their claims and commitments, and where they encouraged each other in protest.
The general hypotheses provided within the current literature of contentious politics is valuable enough. But we would like to know more about variation: were the dynamics of the Black church different in Montgomery and Little Rock? Were local NAACP chapters different in their behavior or engagement, and did these differences result in differences in level and kind of activism in their surrounding communities?
Social historians of the Civil Rights movement go into much more granular detail about the movement. In greater or lesser detail, the social historians provide readers with insight into specific episodes of mobilization, conflict, and adjustment. They provide us with relatively detailed case studies of these episodes, with a reasonable amount of detail about background circumstances, existing organizations, the leadership available to the black community, instigating events, and the level of grievance and activism present in the population. For example, Aldon Morris's Origins of the Civil Rights Movement provides substantial detail about the individuals, leaders, and organizations that played important roles in the mobilization of support for movement goals in a variety of locations; Hasan Kwame Jeffries' excellent book, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt describes the origins of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization among black rural "tenant farmers"; and Lance Hill's Deacons for Defense does similar work in his analysis of the mobilization of rural African-American people in organized self-defense. A detailed history of particular episodes -- the Montgomery bus boycott, voter registration drives in rural Mississippi, 1960 (link) -- would give the reader of McAdam's book a much more substantial understanding of the mechanisms and processes through which activism and insurgency worked out through ordinary people and local institutions. But there is very little of this kind of detail in McAdam's treatment of the Civil Rights movement. For all its emphasis on the need for accounts of the specific mechanisms through which mobilization, coordination, and protest occurred, not very much concrete detail is provided in the study. The level of aggregation at which McAdam's analysis proceeds is "the South"; whereas we might imagine that the real nuts and bolts of the movement took place in places as diverse as Selma, Little Rock, Montgomery, and the cotton fields and hamlets of Lowndes County.
This really is the point of the discussion here. McAdam's book functions largely to lay out "theories of the middle range" about the factors that facilitate or inhibit mobilization around shared grievances, and he illustrates these theories with examples from the history of civil rights activism in the South during the time period. The central interest of the book is theoretical and explanatory, and it is illuminating. But we can imagine a different kind of study that would incorporate much more attention to the specifics of the processes and events of mobilization in various places across the South. Such a study would result in a book consisting of a handful of moderately detailed case studies, along with sociological commentary on the events and processes that are uncovered in these various episodes.
It is suggestive that Dynamics of Contention, co-authored in 2001 by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, takes just such an approach -- sociological theorizing embedded within detailed exposition of important case studies of contention. And given the emphasis that McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly give in the 2001 book on contingency and variation across cases, we might argue that McAdam's study of the Civil Rights movement is couched at too high a level of generalization after all. It would be more instructive if it provided a more granular account of a number of episodes of mobilization, including successes and failures. (This is the reason for returning to Alain Touraine's research on the Polish Solidarity movement (post): Touraine's team did in fact engage in a granular and disaggregated study of the many strands of organization and activism that contributed ultimately to the national Solidarity movement.)
Increasingly, one finds scholars from various countries and nominally different theoretical traditions emphasizing the importance of the same three broad sets of factors in analyzing the origins of collective action. These three factors are: 1) the political opportunities and constraints confronting a given challenger; 2) the forms of organization (informal as well as formal) available to insurgents as sites for initial mobilization; and 3) the collective processes of interpretation, attribution and social construction that mediate between opportunity and action. (viii)
And McAdam holds that these three factors help to account for the dramatic rise in Civil Rights activism, protest, and strategic choices of the movement across the South in the 1950s into the early 1960s. He asks the key question: “What led normally accepting African-Americans both in Montgomery and throughout the South to risk their livelihoods and their lives in support of civil rights?”. This is the theoretically central issue of mobilization: what factors facilitate mass mobilization around a set of interests or grievances?
Given the diversity of local situations in cities, towns, and farms across the South, we can speculate that the answer to this question will be different in different locales. But significantly, McAdam provides very little "micro-sociology" of the development of engagement on the part of ordinary African-American people making their lives in various places. He writes about the significance of churches, colleges, and the NAACP as "the organizational base of the movement" (125), but he goes into little detail about the activities and resources associated with these institutions and organizations. He writes:
Representing the most organized segments of the southern black population, the churches, colleges, and local NAACP chapters possessed the resources needed to generate and sustain an organized campaign of social insurgency. (128)
But how did these organizations actually act during the critical period; how were their actions different in different settings; and how did this influence rising activism on the part of ordinary people? What were the local processes that led to local mobilizations? His answer is a general one:
On one level, then, the importance of the churches, schools, and NAACP chapters in the generation of insurgency can be attributed to their role as established interactional networks facilitating the "bloc recruitment" of movement participants. That is, by building the movement out of established institutions, insurgent leaders were able to recruit en masse along existing lines of interaction, thereby sparing themselves the much more difficult task of developing a membership from scratch. (129)
This is a general formulation of a social mechanism. But it is not a specific and factual account of "recruitment" in a particular time and place -- for example, Montgomery prior to the bus boycott. Rather, McAdam emphasizes the idea that ordinary people saw it as their church-created duty to participate in protest. McAdam treats the church, colleges, and local chapters of the NAACP chiefly as "network" sites, where potential participants in the activist movement were located, where they further developed their claims and commitments, and where they encouraged each other in protest.
The general hypotheses provided within the current literature of contentious politics is valuable enough. But we would like to know more about variation: were the dynamics of the Black church different in Montgomery and Little Rock? Were local NAACP chapters different in their behavior or engagement, and did these differences result in differences in level and kind of activism in their surrounding communities?
Social historians of the Civil Rights movement go into much more granular detail about the movement. In greater or lesser detail, the social historians provide readers with insight into specific episodes of mobilization, conflict, and adjustment. They provide us with relatively detailed case studies of these episodes, with a reasonable amount of detail about background circumstances, existing organizations, the leadership available to the black community, instigating events, and the level of grievance and activism present in the population. For example, Aldon Morris's Origins of the Civil Rights Movement provides substantial detail about the individuals, leaders, and organizations that played important roles in the mobilization of support for movement goals in a variety of locations; Hasan Kwame Jeffries' excellent book, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt describes the origins of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization among black rural "tenant farmers"; and Lance Hill's Deacons for Defense does similar work in his analysis of the mobilization of rural African-American people in organized self-defense. A detailed history of particular episodes -- the Montgomery bus boycott, voter registration drives in rural Mississippi, 1960 (link) -- would give the reader of McAdam's book a much more substantial understanding of the mechanisms and processes through which activism and insurgency worked out through ordinary people and local institutions. But there is very little of this kind of detail in McAdam's treatment of the Civil Rights movement. For all its emphasis on the need for accounts of the specific mechanisms through which mobilization, coordination, and protest occurred, not very much concrete detail is provided in the study. The level of aggregation at which McAdam's analysis proceeds is "the South"; whereas we might imagine that the real nuts and bolts of the movement took place in places as diverse as Selma, Little Rock, Montgomery, and the cotton fields and hamlets of Lowndes County.
This really is the point of the discussion here. McAdam's book functions largely to lay out "theories of the middle range" about the factors that facilitate or inhibit mobilization around shared grievances, and he illustrates these theories with examples from the history of civil rights activism in the South during the time period. The central interest of the book is theoretical and explanatory, and it is illuminating. But we can imagine a different kind of study that would incorporate much more attention to the specifics of the processes and events of mobilization in various places across the South. Such a study would result in a book consisting of a handful of moderately detailed case studies, along with sociological commentary on the events and processes that are uncovered in these various episodes.
It is suggestive that Dynamics of Contention, co-authored in 2001 by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, takes just such an approach -- sociological theorizing embedded within detailed exposition of important case studies of contention. And given the emphasis that McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly give in the 2001 book on contingency and variation across cases, we might argue that McAdam's study of the Civil Rights movement is couched at too high a level of generalization after all. It would be more instructive if it provided a more granular account of a number of episodes of mobilization, including successes and failures. (This is the reason for returning to Alain Touraine's research on the Polish Solidarity movement (post): Touraine's team did in fact engage in a granular and disaggregated study of the many strands of organization and activism that contributed ultimately to the national Solidarity movement.)
The Solidarity Movement was a remarkable instance of broad popular mobilization within a Communist dictatorship. As students of contention are common to point out, grievances and discontent are to be found almost everywhere; but organized protest, struggle, and resistance are rare. Successful concerted collective resistance is the exception rather than the rule. So the key scientific problem is to try to discover how this successful mass mobilization came about, and that means conducting investigations to --
Or in short, how, why, and through what mechanisms did mobilization and protest emerge?
The approach that Touraine's group took in attempting to discover answers to these questions was a deliberately granular approach. Rather than focusing on high-level statements of grievances, exhortations, and proposed plans of actions by nationally recognized leaders, the Touraine group recognized that this movement took shape through activist participants at the factory and local levels, and that the ideas, grievances, and mental frameworks about possible reforms that would ultimately become the "Solidarity Manifesto" took shape through conversations and debates at the local levels. Accordingly, the research teams gave significant weight to the processes of thought-change that were underway in six industrial centers: Gdansk, Katowice, Warsaw, Szezecin, Wroclaw, and Lodz.
Solidarity was not simply a social and political force which modified the course of Polish history. It was, and is, a movement, a collective will, and its significance goes far beyond the results it has obtained. When the dominated protest and seek liberation, their hopes are never entirely realised: the shadows cast by history remain. But great upsurges like Solidarity bring with them at least the certainty that the behaviour of the dominated is never totally determined by the dominant forces. (5)
The research also paid attention, of course, to the leadership conversations and debates that were occurring within the national movement. But the heart of their analysis derives from the "sociological interventions" at the level of the regional groups of activist workers. Touraine writes,
Because a social movement challenges a situation, it is always the bearer of normative values and orientations. Rather than enclosing the group in a reflexion upon itself, the technique involves opening it up so that it can experiences, in conditions which one might describe as experimental, the practices of the social group or movement to which it sees itself as belonging. (7)
This method resembles the use of focus groups to sort out attitudes, beliefs, and values within a target population; but it is more than that. It is critical and constructive, in the sense that it seeks to elicit from participants the more articulated versions of their beliefs, goals, and grievances. And Touraine suggests that this method is especially relevant for treatment of a social movement, because the ideas and values of participants in a social movement are themselves in a process of change and articulation. The method involves several "discussion leaders" who work to elicit ideas from the group; articulate those ideas in writing; and come back for further discussion and debate in a subsequent meeting. Here is how Marcin Frybes describes the method of "sociological intervention" (link).
The sociological intervention consists in organizing meetings of groups (composed of eight to fifteen people) in order to discuss a specific issue (which had been proposed and formalized by the sociologists). The group of intervention is not a real group of militants. It brings together individuals who share either the same commitment or the same kind of experience, but who, if it is possible, do not know other members of the group. The Sociological Intervention involves having the same group meet in a neutral area on several (ten or more) occasions in order for them to be able to propose some analytical schemas representing the historical dynamics and the different components of the action (the logic of the action and the levels of the action). During every sociological intervention, the sessions (which take 2 or 3 hours) could be open or closed. (72)
There are two noteworthy aspects of this method.
First is the localism that it supports. It is entirely possible that the articulations of grievance, goal, and values that emerge from Gdansk will be different from those that emerge from Warsaw. And this is a sociologically important fact; a social movement is not homogeneous across regions and workplaces.
The second is the interactiveness that the method implies between researcher and "subject". Touraine's view appears to be that the results of these "interventions" come closer to a truthful reflection of the political perceptions and values of the participants than would a survey instrument or a traditional focus group. It is analogous to an in-depth conversation with a group of men and women on the subject of gender equality -- superficial views may be expressed to start, and then more considered and reflective views emerge. But the critic might argue that the investigators have injected their own frameworks into the conversation in ways that lead to a less authentic representation of the political consciousness of the workers of Gdansk or Warsaw. (Frybes refers to subsequent criticisms along these lines; 77.) But Touraine justifies the validity of this method in these terms:
This work of self-analysis does, however, have its limits. Every actor is an ideologist, in the sense that he produces a representation of the situation in which he finds himself, and that that representation corresponds to his own interests. No actor can become a disinterested analyst. The researcher must therefore intervene more directly. But at this point a double difficulty arises. On the one hand, if he adopts the attitude of a remote and objective observer, he cannot reach the very thing which he seeks to understanding: the coldness of objectivity will hold him back from the heat of the social movement. Conversely, if he identifies with the actors' struggle, he ceases to be an analyst and becomes nothing more than a doctrinaire ideologist; in this case, his role becomes entirely negative. The method's response to this difficulty is to say that the researcher must identify not with the actors' struggle in itself, but with the highest possible meaning of that struggle, which is nothing other than the social movement. (7)
The method is defended, that is, because it helps to elucidate the process of the formation of the collective will that eventually characterized the movement. And this implies that Touraine believes the active and critical nature of the research -- the open-ended discussions with the various groups, and the effort to formulate these ideas in writing -- illuminates the processes through which the agency of workers and other participants in a social movement find their ground in the processes of contention in which they are involved.
The Solidarity Movement was a remarkable instance of broad popular mobilization within a Communist dictatorship. As students of contention are common to point out, grievances and discontent are to be found almost everywhere; but organized protest, struggle, and resistance are rare. Successful concerted collective resistance is the exception rather than the rule. So the key scientific problem is to try to discover how this successful mass mobilization came about, and that means conducting investigations to --
Or in short, how, why, and through what mechanisms did mobilization and protest emerge?
The approach that Touraine's group took in attempting to discover answers to these questions was a deliberately granular approach. Rather than focusing on high-level statements of grievances, exhortations, and proposed plans of actions by nationally recognized leaders, the Touraine group recognized that this movement took shape through activist participants at the factory and local levels, and that the ideas, grievances, and mental frameworks about possible reforms that would ultimately become the "Solidarity Manifesto" took shape through conversations and debates at the local levels. Accordingly, the research teams gave significant weight to the processes of thought-change that were underway in six industrial centers: Gdansk, Katowice, Warsaw, Szezecin, Wroclaw, and Lodz.
Solidarity was not simply a social and political force which modified the course of Polish history. It was, and is, a movement, a collective will, and its significance goes far beyond the results it has obtained. When the dominated protest and seek liberation, their hopes are never entirely realised: the shadows cast by history remain. But great upsurges like Solidarity bring with them at least the certainty that the behaviour of the dominated is never totally determined by the dominant forces. (5)
The research also paid attention, of course, to the leadership conversations and debates that were occurring within the national movement. But the heart of their analysis derives from the "sociological interventions" at the level of the regional groups of activist workers. Touraine writes,
Because a social movement challenges a situation, it is always the bearer of normative values and orientations. Rather than enclosing the group in a reflexion upon itself, the technique involves opening it up so that it can experiences, in conditions which one might describe as experimental, the practices of the social group or movement to which it sees itself as belonging. (7)
This method resembles the use of focus groups to sort out attitudes, beliefs, and values within a target population; but it is more than that. It is critical and constructive, in the sense that it seeks to elicit from participants the more articulated versions of their beliefs, goals, and grievances. And Touraine suggests that this method is especially relevant for treatment of a social movement, because the ideas and values of participants in a social movement are themselves in a process of change and articulation. The method involves several "discussion leaders" who work to elicit ideas from the group; articulate those ideas in writing; and come back for further discussion and debate in a subsequent meeting. Here is how Marcin Frybes describes the method of "sociological intervention" (link).
The sociological intervention consists in organizing meetings of groups (composed of eight to fifteen people) in order to discuss a specific issue (which had been proposed and formalized by the sociologists). The group of intervention is not a real group of militants. It brings together individuals who share either the same commitment or the same kind of experience, but who, if it is possible, do not know other members of the group. The Sociological Intervention involves having the same group meet in a neutral area on several (ten or more) occasions in order for them to be able to propose some analytical schemas representing the historical dynamics and the different components of the action (the logic of the action and the levels of the action). During every sociological intervention, the sessions (which take 2 or 3 hours) could be open or closed. (72)
There are two noteworthy aspects of this method.
First is the localism that it supports. It is entirely possible that the articulations of grievance, goal, and values that emerge from Gdansk will be different from those that emerge from Warsaw. And this is a sociologically important fact; a social movement is not homogeneous across regions and workplaces.
The second is the interactiveness that the method implies between researcher and "subject". Touraine's view appears to be that the results of these "interventions" come closer to a truthful reflection of the political perceptions and values of the participants than would a survey instrument or a traditional focus group. It is analogous to an in-depth conversation with a group of men and women on the subject of gender equality -- superficial views may be expressed to start, and then more considered and reflective views emerge. But the critic might argue that the investigators have injected their own frameworks into the conversation in ways that lead to a less authentic representation of the political consciousness of the workers of Gdansk or Warsaw. (Frybes refers to subsequent criticisms along these lines; 77.) But Touraine justifies the validity of this method in these terms:
This work of self-analysis does, however, have its limits. Every actor is an ideologist, in the sense that he produces a representation of the situation in which he finds himself, and that that representation corresponds to his own interests. No actor can become a disinterested analyst. The researcher must therefore intervene more directly. But at this point a double difficulty arises. On the one hand, if he adopts the attitude of a remote and objective observer, he cannot reach the very thing which he seeks to understanding: the coldness of objectivity will hold him back from the heat of the social movement. Conversely, if he identifies with the actors' struggle, he ceases to be an analyst and becomes nothing more than a doctrinaire ideologist; in this case, his role becomes entirely negative. The method's response to this difficulty is to say that the researcher must identify not with the actors' struggle in itself, but with the highest possible meaning of that struggle, which is nothing other than the social movement. (7)
The method is defended, that is, because it helps to elucidate the process of the formation of the collective will that eventually characterized the movement. And this implies that Touraine believes the active and critical nature of the research -- the open-ended discussions with the various groups, and the effort to formulate these ideas in writing -- illuminates the processes through which the agency of workers and other participants in a social movement find their ground in the processes of contention in which they are involved.
In this series, I want to give you a peek inside my collection of vintage fountain-pen-related items. Today we’re going to look at some of the vintage non-metal pencils that I’ve collected. These include plastic, celluloid, and hard rubber pencils. I have never gone out of my way to collect vintage pencils, but am always happy to pick one up ... 
The new Kori lighting collection, designed by Stockholm-based TAF Studio, is a welcome contemporary addition to Finnish design brand Artek. Its essence captures everyday beauty in a five product series that creates a diverse array of light and atmospheres. Three pendant light models, a table light, and a floor light feature modular design and pared-back aesthetics displaying the best of form and function. At the core of the design is a “basket” (kori in Finnish), a unique element that’s key to blending direct and indirect light – like sunlight filtered through trees.
Gabriella Lenke and Mattias Ståhlbom of TAF Studio shared, “With Kori, we wanted to achieve an atmospheric and glare-free light with different models adjusted to different spaces and contexts. The diffuser around the light source became very central, and through lots of experiments with shades and reflecting parts the different characters in the family appeared.”
Table Light
Kori’s compact floor light provides great reading light in larger spaces, while the table light works well for bedside tables, sideboards, or shelves. The pendant light is arguably the most versatile, available in three models. When paired with a shade it provides a direct downlight and diffused uplight, ideal for smaller spaces. Add the Dune shade and illuminate the surface beneath while spreading glare-free light across a wide area. Or, choose the inverted Disc shade that reflects a soft cone of diffused light downward, good for smaller tables and sideboards.
Table Light
The entirety of the energy efficient Kori collection occurs within a 200km radius in Italy, and the die-cast “light basket” is made from 100% recycled aluminum. A universal E27 socket ensures longevity, that bulbs are easy to replace, and the ability to choose from a full range of bulbs.
Table Light
“Color-wise, we were inspired by the way light hits the matte white texture of an egg, and the thinness of an eggshell,” said TAF Studio. “Kori comes in extra matte white and a color that reminds us of egg yolk.” The Kori collection comes in a matte white powder coating, and the floor and table lamps are also available in a matte orange.
Table Light
Table Light
Table Light
Pendant Light
Pendant Lights
Pendant Lights
Pendant Light with Desc Shade
Pendant Light with Disc Shade
Pendant Light with Dune Shade
Pendant Light with Dune Shade
Floor Light
Floor Light
Floor Light
Floor Light
Table Light + Floor Light
Gabriella Lenke and Mattias Ståhlbom, TAF Studio
To learn more about the Kori collection, visit artek.fi.
Written by David Lyreskog
‘Hivemind Brain-Computer Interfaces’, as imagined by the AI art generator Midjourney
A growing number of technologies are currently being developed to improve and distribute thinking and decision-making. Rapid progress in brain-to-brain interfacing, and hybrid and artificial intelligence, promises to transform how we think about collective and collaborative cognitive tasks. With implementations ranging from research to entertainment, and from therapeutics to military applications, as these tools continue to improve, we need to anticipate and monitor their impacts – how they may affect our society, but also how they may reshape our fundamental understanding of agency, responsibility, and other concepts which ground our moral landscapes.
In a new paper, I, together with Dr. Hazem Zohny, Prof. Julian Savulescu, and Prof. Ilina Singh, show how these new technologies may reshape fundamental components of widely accepted concepts pertaining to moral behaviour. The paper, titled ‘Merging Minds: The Conceptual and Ethical Impacts of Emerging Technologies for Collective Minds’, was just published in Neuroethics, and is freely available as an Open Access article through the link above.
In the paper, we argue that the received views on how we (should) ascribe responsibility to individuals and collectives map poorly onto networks of these ‘Collective Minds’. The intimately collective nature of direct multiple-brain interfaces, for instance, where human minds can collaborate on and complete complex tasks without necessarily being in the same room – or even on the same continent! – seem to suggest a collectivist moral framework to ascribe agency and responsibility. However, the technologies we are seeing in R&D do not necessitate the meeting of criteria we normally would turn to for ascription of such frameworks; they do not, for instance, seem to rely on that participants have shared goals, know what the goals of other participants are, or even know whether they are collaborating with another person or a computer.
In anticipating and assessing the ethical impacts of Collective Minds, we propose that we move beyond binary approaches to thinking about agency and responsibility (i.e. that they are either individual or collective), and that relevant frameworks for now focus on other aspects of significance to ethical analysis, such as (a) technical specifications of the Collective Mind, (b) the domain in which the technology is deployed, and (c) the reversibility of its physical and mental impacts. However, in the future, we will arguably need to find other ways to assess agency constellations and responsibility distribution, lest we abandon these concepts completely in this domain.
The pet industry grew rapidly over the past three years as people, stuck at home during the pandemic, decided to add a furry friend to their families. Analysts say this industry, where spending was $118 billion in 2019, isn’t done with big growth and predict it will more than double by 2030 to $277 billion.
This category is very dog-dominated — dog owners spend, on average, $1,480 per year, while an average of $902 is spent annually by cat owners; therefore, there are a lot of dog-focused products, including food.
Some startups in the pet space have tried to give equal footing to both dogs and cats, for example, The Farmer’s Dog, which direct-to-consumer cat food brand Smalls co-founder and CEO Matt Michaelson says is a close competitor. However, there are relatively few that cater just to cats. Smalls is among a small group that includes Cat Person, Ziggy, Made by Nacho and KatKin.
“It became really clear that during the pandemic, adoption was skyrocketing,” Michaelson told TechCrunch. “Cat adoption really outpaced dog adoption, so we expected the category to heat up and that there would be more innovation at this point. However, we’re still really alone in bringing fresh food to the category and to cat parents. That was a surprise to us. We think there’s a continuing manifestation of the cultural bias against cats and toward dogs in the U.S.”
Five years and over four product introductions later, Michaelson and co-founder Calvin Bohn are guiding the company to take matters into its own hands and expand by opening a first-of-its-kind cat café and launching into retail, Michaelson said. This was buoyed by $19 million in Series B funding in a round that closed in mid-2022.
The company has now raised a total of $34 million, which includes a $9 million Series A that TechCrunch covered in 2020. Michaelson didn’t disclose valuation for the most recent round, but did call it an “up round.”
The Series B is led by existing investors Founder Collective, Companion Fund and Left Lane Capital and also includes new investors like Valor Capital, 301 INC, General Mills’ venture capital arm and The Ohio State University’s endowment fund.
In addition to the cat café, which will open in New York in the fall, and retail launch, the new capital enables Smalls to grow its headcount by 25%. The company has 50 people currently.
The brand has doubled year over year in both customers and revenue since 2017, growing to eight figures in sales to feed more than 100,000 cats. Amid all that growth, Smalls also has a path to profitability, Michaelson said.
“We are still a tiny sliver of a $12 billion category,” Michaelson said. “Anyone can advertise on TV or the subway, but only Smalls could open a cat café and it make sense. That’s one example of many things we want to do to build the brand. The other piece is continuing to invest in product innovation. Fresh food is a very fast-growing category, and we think there’s plenty of room in it, but we need to stay one step and two steps ahead of the category to continue to bring healthier food and healthier products to market.”
Fresh funding gives cat food brand Smalls avenue into retail for the first time by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch
Enlarge / I mostly recognize this early laptop from its resemblance to a similar-looking computer in the film 2010. It's up for auction along with hundreds of other old Apple computers. (credit: Julien's Auctions)
If you've been thinking your home or workspace is perhaps deficient when it comes to old Apple hardware, then I have some good news for you. Next week, a massive trove of classic Apple computing history goes under the hammer when the auction house Julien's Auctions auctions off the Hanspeter Luzi collection of more than 500 Apple computers, parts, software, and the occasional bit of ephemera.
Ars reported on the auction in February, but Julien's Auctions has posted the full catalog ahead of the March 30 event, and for Apple nerds of a certain age, there will surely be much to catch your eye.
The earliest computers in the collection are a pair of Commodore PET 2001s; anyone looking for a bargain on an Apple 1 will have to keep waiting, unfortunately.
Matriarch is the sixth and final addition to the In Your Skin upholstery collection, a collaboration between HBF Textiles and product and interiors designer Erin Ruby. Aptly named, Matriarch is a twill weave with strong color combinations that evoke wisdom and experience. Visually, the twill blends bold complementary colored yarns to create a subtle melange and moire effect.
The six sensorial textiles in the woven fabric collection celebrate being comfortable in your own skin, inspired by the human experience and the ephemeral nature of life. Tactile with a handmade quality, In Your Skin looks like a residential product, yet has the durability for contract and hospitality environments. Each of the fabrics are certified Indoor Advantage Gold (SCS), woven and manufactured in the United States with wool locally sourced from the Midwest, and most patterns are made using post-consumer and/or recycled materials.
In Your Skin marks Ruby’s third collaboration with HBF Textiles. “Sometimes contract textiles can tend toward being cold or lifeless for pragmatic reasons, but this collection is so warm and tactile even with its high performance functionality. It’s full of life – imbued with optimism and aspiration, which I think will resonate within a space,” she shared.
The collaboration continues HBF Textiles’ focus on supporting women-owned businesses. “I love promoting talented female designers. It gives me a sense of pride to utilize the HBF Textiles platform to share their story and creative vision to a wider audience,” says Mary Jo Miller, Vice President of Design and Creative Direction at HBF Textiles. With like-minded mills and collaborators locally and globally, the brand continually explores the possibilities materiality can offer and how it can further connect us with other people and our environment.
Ultra Violet
Cernelion
Labradorite
Cernelion
Rose Quartz
Ultra Violet
Aura
To learn more about Matriarch, visit hbftextiles.com.
There’s something new this spring at Vipp, the brand’s first outdoor furniture collection – Open-Air – has been released! Like its name, the design of the furniture visually depicts the lightness and soft shapes of durable materials that are meant to be used outdoors. The collection includes a chair, a dining table, a lounge chair, lounge tables, and sofas that pull directly from Vipp’s refined indoor furniture pieces. Open-Air matches the same durable craftsmanship, timeless design, and attention to detail that can be found throughout the brand’s history of molded metal.
The collection is characterized by strong, lightweight grey powder-coated aluminum. The strong silhouette created is then complemented with rattan, teak, and outdoor-friendly textiles. Details in teak will naturally age to a soft grey with time, fitting in well with the existing neutral palette. The seats are filled with quick-dry foam and covered in an Italian Ten Stars yarn textile that is water and UV resistant.
To learn more about the Open-Air collection, visit vipp.com.
The Wheel of Features is a retro toy that can make over 10,000 silly faces. In the days before kids were glued to screens, mixing and matching facial features on a paper wheel was enthralling to many. Just spin the mouth, nose, eye sections of the wheel to generate new faces. — Read the rest
Enlarge / A view of Brian Green's home computer lab, full of vintage treasures. (credit: Brian Green)
In a world where millions of people carry a 1990s-grade supercomputer in their pockets, it's fun to revisit tech from a time when a 1 megahertz machine on a desktop represented a significant leap forward. Recently, a collector named Brian Green showed off his vintage computer collection on Twitter, and we thought it would be fun to ask him about why and how he set up his at-home computer lab.
By day, Green works as a senior systems engineer based in Arkansas. But in his off hours, "Ice Breaker" (as he's often known online) focuses his passion on a vintage computer collection that he has been building for decades—and a bulletin board system (BBS) called "Particles" he has been running since 1992.
Green's interest in computers dates back to 1980, when he first used an Apple II+ at elementary school. "My older sister brought home a printout from a BASIC program she was working on, and I was fascinated that you could tell a computer what to do using something that resembled English," recalls Green. "Once I realized you could code games, I was hooked."
Twenty years ago, Italian designer Stefano Giovannoni debuted ILBAGNOALESSI, a modern bathroom collection designed for Laufen in collaboration with Alessi. The series garnered mass attention and acclaim for its reinterpretation of typical bath products as the designs were soft and sculptural, like objects of art instead of just objects of necessity. With the evolution of materials and technology, Giovannoni decided to revisit and innovate upon the collection.
Since the collection’s original debut, Laufen has continued to conduct ongoing research and evolve its technology and materials. A new ceramic material named Saphirkeramik has made it possible to create thin, malleable forms that are still extremely durable. Giovannoni used Saphirkeramik to reinterpret the Tuna washbasin which now features a slimmer profile, a reality that would not have been possible two decades ago.
The new freestanding tub is made with Sentec, a mineral composite that feels velvety to the touch. In a manner similar to the washbasin, the tub has a subtle asymmetry as its borders widen on one end to provide a headrest or surface for objects.
To learn more about the ILBAGNOALESSI collection, visit laufen.com.
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