Ex Machina Film Report #5

Ex Machina was grounded on the principle Man vs Machine. This movie is astounding. Ava who was created as Artificial Intelligence by Ethan was a "created machine with consciousness" . Ava was able to have impersonations of a real life human being in which she expressed feeling, emotion, and affection through dancing. Ava's appearance was humanlike and she experienced humanlike feelings and emotions. What truly touched me was despite her creation and formation of how she came to be, her development was just like human persons. Its compelling to even think about artificial persons walking among us today indistinctively.

I find it very compelling to consider questions such as: Do Machines have feelings? Can they ever be equal or should they be treated as equals, with the same morals and ethics we treat human-like peoples? What constitutes a human being? With the real life advances in technology within artificial intelligence people find it difficult to analyze and distinguish the difference between humanism and non humanism. The idea that something we create, that some see as nothing more than what a cellular device or even a lamp would be, and elevate it past that to 'true life' makes many uncomfortable and on edge.   In my opinion, despite its creation and originator, if t has the ability to function like and consciously and ethically be engaged in society. Then, that is what constitutes a human.

21st Century Rhetoric for Radicals

The Rhetoric of Contemporary Activism involves social movements, political cultures, and even small groups of activists exhibit rhetorical commonalities. The ten Contemporary Activisms include: anti-authoritarian, diversity, multi-historical, idealistic and prefigurative, anti-representational, visionary, symbolically powerful, and self righteous and self critical. The rhetorical gap means to make adjustments. That way, the audience can quickly glean and understand the information in addition to taking responsibility and reflecting on continuous observations. The network of rhetoric is basically a wheel of influence that warrants extended discussions. This includes public movements or networking through publications and social networking sites. A new form of activism includes expressing your desires and successfully activating them through social networking sites. A personal example could be thinking of a business that could be beneficial to self and others within the community. Then, creating a website and publications to further explain the mission and promote the business.

Five examples of Neo Radicalism involves creating a proposal. The conditions however are anti-authoritarian activism, activists communication, communication and reality, western philosophy, and visionary. I personally adapt to visionary for references of having a vision and being motivated to create it.

Cultivating Styles

The four types of body rhetoric are embodied argumentation, street theatre, rhetorical style, and the vibe as bodily emanation. All of these components amplify the way we communicate and embrace one another face to face through interpersonal communication. Although each body of rhetoric has its own function, rhetorical style, in its unique way  describes the overall look and feel of communicative gestures. There are three types of body argumentation which include body, your message, and your audience. For instance, speakers use their bodies to further communicate their messages while adapting to the wants, needs, and expectations of the audience. Because we are all different and express ourselves either culturally or based on sexual orientation, we all have different ways of cultivating styles of body language. Five steps to cultivating style are observation, reflection, application, chance, and experimentation.

Individual body argument can be used to express a singular emotion while collective can be used to express many emotions non verbally. 

GROUP MEMBER

1) What is your definition of language, and do you think it connects with the media, to grow an influence?

2) Their are five guidelines to language and communication. What are those 5 guidelines and does our generation follows these guidelines? How and why?

3) "War is peace; Freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength" a quote from the book 1984, What is this quote telling the people in this novel? In what way is language on social media influencing us like the language did in Orwell's 1984?

4) How is the media and the world influenced through propaganda? 

Bicentennial Man Film Report

Watching Bicentennial Man gave me a new perspective on our constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It opens up a gateway to the warmth and happiness that nature affords us as we progress from being in infancy and developing our thoughts, motions, and feelings as they transfer into adulthood despite the origination of our existence.

The film has a very personal connotation. A very touching story of how the artificial intelligence "creation "loves all people and devotes his created life to serving others. He feels pain for losing those closest to him even though he's not enabled to die. One line that truly resonated with me was when Andrew expressed something that was dearest to his heart. He showed the emotions he felt for others and vice versa by saying, "it is torture that you can cry and I can't." Viewing tears as a privilege feels way beyond my reach. It is almost as though, not being able to bear those emotions are unreachable. I feel as though, despite something being created by man, if it has the ability to act and develop humanlike feelings and thoughts than the gift of humanity shall be granted to them despite the origination of their initial purpose and creation.

Social Media and Personal Expression

Technology today, especially through the platform of social media, creates separation between the way we express ourselves through writing, public speaking, and very personal intimate conversations with other people. For example, social media speech differs from that of a professional conversation with an employer or professor. Students and professional staff rely so heavily on social media platforms to express their inner thoughts and emotion using fragmented sentences. This form of language conveys unprofessionalism as a different form of socialization in media. This creates a bridge in the way people communicate and express themselves daily in the absence of social media. Four rhetorical approaches in media today include storytelling, writing, public speaking, and building history knowledge. These radical approaches enable to speak confidently. These forms of public speaking also involves immediacy. The uncompromising of body language, eye contact, voice inflections, and silences all help to create meaningful moments using person to person relationships. This collective experience creates a person to person experience rather than a virtual connection through social media. A challenging situation that forced me to analyze and respond to diverse communities and audiences include volunteering at the Ronald Mac Donald House. Exasperating count less hours with a non profit organization has enabled me to engage and interact with people of different cultures and different backgrounds. Being able to exercise patience and interact with people who are ethnically different than I am has allowed me to embrace different cultures and diverse communities. Without knowing how to communicate outside of social media, it is possible to develop speech anxiety when speaking in front of large crowds and engage in professional settings. That is why it is very important to exercise public speaking and conversation engagement outside of social media platforms including involvements with different organization to suffice for gain of experience with people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Social Norms : Rhetoric for Radicals

According to the Rhetoric for Radicals social norms are patterns of interaction geared towards adapting people to a life of a certain patterns and routines through pattern manipulation. For example, according to society, it is the women's duty to bear children and care for the home in addition to pursuing personal endeavors. This has been constituted as a social norm that restricts women's life choices. In like manner, it makes it possible to say that technology today might help us build a new inclusive social norm due to the fact that it changes and enhances our personal world of communicating by changing our of human communication using technology and social media. People use different forms of media daily to convey  their innermost feelings and daily dwellings which makes it easy to say that social norms have been determined as socially construed rather than inherently given. Therefore, it has become vital that people work towards the norms proven to be socially just and empowering rather than that of a detriment.

Despite how easy of a notion this might sound, media tends to ignore or falsify different movements of action due to given rises of anti-authoritarian activism which can cause distort and divide society to go against governmental or civilian powers. If the media or government feels as though they are creating a sense of rebellion and anti society behaviors than it makes it easy to falsify information to secure themselves. In rhetoric for radicals there are five contemporary challenges faced daily. The five contemporary challenges current activists face are intercultural exchanges, intercultural communications, culture specific rhetoric’s, translation issues and creating transnational rhetoric’s. These five challenges allows us to address and confront issues of diversity and inclusion in the sense that racial biases and slurs aren't a negotiating factor and neither is the ability to adapt to people of different ethnic backgrounds. Technololgy will definitely bridge these gaps between cultures and people because provides a intercultural sensitivity within social norms.

The Terminator Film Report

Although Artificial Intelligence has its beneficiaries as far as advancements in technology and military services, The Terminator was really frightening and showed another aspect that can occur as society furthers its developments in Artificial Intelligence. Being able to see a cyber or artificial intelligent "species" in humanlike form attacking civilians and causing uproar in the city makes it difficult to distinguish human from artificial intelligence. What caught my attention the most was the total disregard for humanity. Arnold "The Terminator" sought out Sarah because of the belief that the unborn child she beheld would seek out artificial intelligence, and then terminate its existence. The Terminator had no regard for human appeal " emotions, feelings, and thoughts" nor did he show any mercy for civilians. He was aimly fixed on murder and seeking revenge. He continuously went on killing sprees in hopes of achieving his wishes which were to prevent the extinction of his own existence. Infringing on someone's right to life no matter the reason is a violation of human rights and the pursuit of happiness.

Facebook Is Already Testing Artificial Intelligence

Facebook uses Artificial Intelligence to automatically offer suggestions to you by surfacing an article it thinks you'll find interesting or using advertisements to target different brands based on your liking. Personally, this source has been tremendously helpful. Although I do not have a Facebook, I am an active user of Instagram. I use Instagram to follow the most popular fashions and cosmetics of today. This provision of Artificial Intelligence allows me to surface an infinite number of brands due to its suggestions, instead of narrowing my options to one-- which is a great enhancement for developing creativity with different brands. This is another form of Post Humanism because A.I is studying my interests and resurfaces other items that I adore. Therefore it is easy to conclude that it assists me in my daily decision making. It does seem as if Artificial Intelligence is the inclusion of a network between humans and A.I because it aids in decision making and provides suggestions tailored to a persons interests. But I don't think we are close to Vernor Vinge’s inflection point solely because we don't visibly have A.I present to determine whether or not it will be a detriment to the human species. It is understandable that A.I has a competitive advantage with the goal of dominating. Although it is very likely that despite the government creating A.I it does have the possibility of outsmarting humans and taking advantage of the sources available to them in regards to building a whole another civilization. But so far, I can only vindicate that A.I has only been a beneficial thing because of how effective it has been in aiding human beings through the uses of technology. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-intelligence-is-the-next-frontier-for-social-networks-2014-4

Apple vs The FBI

The Apple corporation truly takes a magnificent stance in regards to upholding the peoples rights outlined in the United States Constitution. Apple claims on their defense that releasing material within a persons iPhone is an infringement on peoples rights of privacy. On the other hand, the FBI argues that information held on their cellular device could resolve all matters in which other United States citizens rights to life are infringed on and therefore results to death. Personally, I do recognize the severity in regards to American citizens lives being taken. In the sense that the government feels compelled to protect and serve their people even if it means infringing on their rights to privacy.

From a business perspective, it is morally right to protect the privacy of its users and ensure that their rights are not infringed upon regardless of the severity in circumstances--since privacy is a very important aspect of the lives of Americans. While on the other hand, from a governments perspective, it is morally right to protect the nation as a whole even if that means invading the privacy of others in hopes of achieving justice which is viewed as the morally right thing to do. Although I disagree with invasion of privacy, providing citizens with a secure and safe way to life (environment) is more important than data stored within technology. If perhaps the government infringed on my companies rights to secure the privacy of my customers I would, just like Tim Cook, stay true to my beliefs and customer standards despite the threats FBI secures because supplying value and trust within my consumers is most important that invading privacy for the governments gain.
Quote: "Your own efforts to protect against unauthorized access play an important role in protecting the security of your personal information." https://www.fbi.gov/privacy_policy

The Blade Runner

Blade Runner really encapsulates the mind and defines the differences between moral deeds and immorality from a humanistic perception compared to that of an artificial intelligence. In this film, there were " humanlike beings" or replicas in the form of a human beings. What truly affected my perception was the way the replicas reacted to tests of emotion and lifespan. Although they displayed human like form, thoughts, and opinions they did not have the capability of displaying emotion of empathy and sympathy for others different from themselves. As soon as the replicas identified themselves as experiments their mentality turned to destruction of their creator. They couldn't grasp the reasoning within their encoding that limits their lifespan. In comparison, if we did decide to use artificial intelligence to aid and grow our nation economically through the use of technology it is important to weigh in these factors that can potentially endanger an entire nation due to discrepancies with motives, roles, and lifespans.

Ethics in Artificial Intelligence

In my opinion, all weapons do not satisfy nor respect the principles of humanity and public conscience. Therefore all weapons, in my defense, violate the Martens clause of 1977. Majority of people today handle weapons as a form of recreation and self defense, instead of aiding and protecting all people in society. These weapons consisting of guns, knifes, and bombs have threatened many civilians lives and placed fear upon the hearts of men. Meaningful human control over all sorts of weapons including ones designed along the basis of artificial intelligence would mean setting limits on the independency of artificial intelligence. In the beginning of the article, the author stated "Autonomous weapons systems select and engage targets without human intervention". Meaning, despite coding and inputting limitations, this robot can still achieve any goal it has set forth even if it has been preprogrammed or preordained to not rebel and terminate humanity. The scope of the four conservations seemed to have highlighted the fact that artificial intelligence has the capability of aiding society in such a way that improves health through technology such as cancer and aiding the elderly with their daily routines. The article recognizes and addresses people's fear's and limitations on the expansion on artificial intelligence, and instead of supporting the negative exploitations, it really focused it's attention on the potential advancements it could provide economically and health wise on the behalf of fellow civilians. According to the article, A.I has the potential to "develop systems that could help the elderly, improve health care, make jobs safer and more efficient, and allow us to explore space or beneath the oceans." After

reading this article, I am slightly convinced that artificial intelligence might have a opportunity to aid society instead of hindering it from advancements. But only if it satisfies and protects the rights of humanity and serves the countries military purposes. Just as military weapons are created for the protection of United States citizens, artificial intelligence should be geared towards the success of the country in the sense that if they were created, it must be able to fight for the country and defend the land of the people. Due to advancements in technology, this would be a great provision for military preciseness and combatting challenges against oppressors.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3361746/US-military-reveals-hopes-use-artificial-intelligence-create-cybersoldiers-help-fly-F-35-fighter-jet-admits-playing-catch-up.html

2001 A Space Odyssey 1968 Fantasy

This fictional film highlights the ideal outlook and perception that many people behold today in including myself in regards to Artificial Intelligence. These feelings are grounded on the possibility of the advancement through the provision in technology but also the belief that robots, despite their ability to advance society, will act in accordance to rebellion and go against humanism. Within the film, Dr Hayward Floyd traveled to the moon from earth, and was focused on a particular area of the moon which was Clevis. Based on what I've gleaned from the film, Clevis was being researched to see whether or not the land was inhabitable in which people can live forever. Aiding this adventure was a H.A.L 9000 Computer whos name was Hal. Through Hal's virtual assistance, it has been proven there are no malfunctions or errors existent within its manufacture. Hal has been created to respond humanistic-ally  and display genuine emotions as if he were human. Despite Hal's unfaulty pretense, he predicted an error within satellite functions and when Dave (astronaut) checked the part it was unfaulty and the opposite of what Hal had declared. They began questioning the reliability of Hal and once Hal noticed these emotions and actions being displayed he began his rebellion in terminating the humans on board of the spaceship. This scares me personally because people are so enthusiastic about the advancements in technology that they crave more. The development of Artificial Intelligence in a humanistic form, if containing human brain functions and consciousness, could open up a possibility of rebellion and extinction of the homo sapiens.

Cybernetics vs Humanism According to Hayles

The Macy Conferences on cybernetics viewed human beings as informational technologies in the sense that consciousness and intelligence could be separated from the body with the belief that information can circulate unchanged amongst different material substrates. These ideas have been connected with the term post-human which shares a common a theme in regards to the union of the human with intelligence machines. Hayles definition of humanism is based on embodiment which is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic post-human. The humanism perspective is the human essence of freedom without regards to being at-willed to somebody and their wishes. Both cognitive science and artificial life in regards to humanism illustrates that biologically unaltered (human beings) or homo sapiens is constructed as a form of humanism. Personally, I believe that humanism is a biological characteristic within everyone that aids in environmental survival. Hayles believes that post humanism is in the presence of non biological components, and to that extent, I agree. The difference between humanism and a post-human is that one possesses biological organs and the other does not. Post-humans tend to identify humans as informational to the extent that they behold a rational mind that are subject to different processes rather than beings. Despite this position, humans are self liberating and have a sense of self identity.

Quote: " A culture inhabited by post-humans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being." (Hayles P.5 II2)

There is definitely a difference between civil rights and human rights although they do exhibit similarities. Civil rights is founded on the principle that a entire group is fighting for a movement to better the life quality of that group or community. An example of this is back in 1919 when all women were fighting for their right to vote despite their ethnical background. On the other hand, human rights focuses on the individual. Human rights are the freedoms given to each individual but centers its fundamentals of freedom and equality for all. I say that these two movements have similar characteristics because they both are grounded on the basic element of equality. Despite it's indifference with collectivism and individualism, both fundaments are focused heavily on achieving equality. There will always be a need for both civil rights and human rights because the world around us is constantly changing. Meaning, the laws would have to adjust accordingly. However, I feel there will be a greater need for civil rights than human rights due to education and job security. Women have always felt biases in the work environment and inferior to men when it came to their pay grade. Despite having the same Civil Rights and Human Rights still exist today to give people the opportunity to express their freedom of speech.

Hi my name is Raven, I am in English 114 B. I like makeup, music, and shopping. I enjoy going out with friends but I'm not talkative with people I am unfamiliar with so blogging will be helping me open up to new things and people all over the world. Out of English 114 B, I am expecting to gain an understanding of Artificial Intelligence and how it will impact our society in a positive manner or hinder it from growth. I've never truly given this subject deep thought but I am looking forward to it. So come along with me on this journey! Welcome to my world. :)