Considering Religious Robots
Week 1
Miracles and the Mundane
Assignment #1
Awe: is defined as a feeling of great respect sometimes mixed with fear or surprise, and is most often associated with religion or nature. What is a piece of technology or an experience intersecting with tech that inspires a sense of awe for me?
Everest Pipkin’s Lacework is a project that recently inspired awe for me. In this project they watch a million three-second videos from MIT’s Moments in Time dataset, which is used to train AI to categorize actions.
I’d say what I experience is a similar kind of awe to the one I experience when I think about the sheer endurance it takes to summit a mountain.
Like my reaction to the Mechanical Monk in class last week, I was struck by human capacity, not as much machine potential.
Let me end with a work that once had elicited awe for me, but doesn’t seem to any longer: Refik Anadol’s Melting Memories. I think I used to feel that way because I didn’t know how machine learning worked, and even though I had read some vague articles, hadn’t worked with it hands on. The images were tantalizing and mysterious, though.
But it certainly didn’t make me cry, not like Pipkin’s project did.
But maybe if I think about the aggeregate of human work that it took to get there then I feel something like it.
That’s a similar kind of awe to looking at the pyramids in Egypt; or if I’m feeling a certain kind of way, a little out of time and out of place, like walking down the street.
Assignment #2
Reading Response
Robots, Religion, and Animism in Japan
From Why are Robots Part of Religion in Japan?
“First, necessity is the mother of invention. Japan is a quickly greying society; by 2040 more than one Japanese in three will be over 65. Faced with a choice, Japan prefers automation to immigration. “
A lot of the literal roboticization of religion seems to be out of a necessicity to automate labor. I can’t say I agree with that.
This, however, I am trying to really take myself out of my own shoes to understand:
The Western concept of “humanity” is limited, and I think it’s time to seriously question whether we have the right to exploit the environment, animals, tools, or robots simply because we’re human and they are not. Joi Ito, “Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not” at Wired
To some extent I can put myself in those shoes, but I wonder how much of religion is used to control.
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Found these ML generated Tarot Cards in my GANs class - another intersection between machine learning and belief.