Abstract
Artificial intelligence is one of the most widespread and discussed mechanisms of the current post-globalization situation. AI has impacted medicine, sports, education, and more. With the proposal to discuss what it means to feel in the era of digital experiences managed through AI, this chapter intends to briefly analyze three practices of feeling that find in artificial intelligence a mechanism that generates “mirror experiences.” Firstly, the chapter reviews different approaches to the connection between AI and emotions, and secondly, what we will call experiences of sexualization will be examined through an exploratory observation of The Rrrealist on Instagram and Twitter. This experience implies a set of emotional ecologies that make up a geometry of enjoyment, pleasure, and jouissance in terms of a sociology of the virtual/mobile/digital world with important consequences for the structuring of society and its politics of sensibilities.
TopIntroduction
Artificial intelligence is one of the most widespread and discussed mechanisms of the current trans-globalization situation. AI has impacted education, medicine and sports. In this direction, the OECD in its report on AI affirms:
As artificial intelligence (AI) integrates all sectors at a rapid pace, different AI systems bring different benefits and risks. In comparing virtual assistants, self-driving vehicles, and video recommendations for children, it is easy to see that the benefits and risks of each are very different. Their specificities will require different approaches to policy-making and governance. (OECD, 2022: 3)
The idea of a mechanism that reproduces ideas, sensations, or works of human beings is very old. In 1842, mathematician and computer pioneer Ada Lovelace programmed the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine. Ada speculated that the machine “could act on other things besides more than the numbers... the motor (the machine) could compose elaborate and scientific musical pieces of any degree of complexity or length”. Decades later, Ada's vision is a reality thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Abeliuk, 2021: 26).
Moreover, today AI is a reality with global scope and whose geopolitics exceeds institutional limits. In this direction, the AI Index maintains: “Despite rising geopolitical tensions, the United States and China had the greatest number of cross-country collaborations in AI publications from 2010 to 2021, increasing five times since 2010. The collaboration between the two countries produced 2.7 times more publications than between the United Kingdom and China—the second highest on the list”. (Zhang et al, 2022: 10)
This chapter seeks to discuss what it means to feel in the era of digital experiences managed through AI. It is intended to briefly analyze three practices of feeling that find in artificial intelligence a mechanism that generates “mirror experiences”.
Firstly, the chapter reviews different approaches to the connection between AI and emotions, and secondly, what we will call experiences of sexualization will be examined through an exploratory observation of The Rrrealist on Instagram and Twitter. This experience implies a set of emotional ecologies that make up a geometry of enjoyment, pleasure, and jouissance in terms of a sociology of the virtual/mobile/digital world with important consequences for the structuring of society and its politics of sensibilities.
The chapter aims to draw attention to three aspects of the impacts of AI on society: the limits and possibilities of AI to produce sensations, the emotional content made from inputs managed by AI, and the meaning of learning processes generated by the interaction between human beings and learning machines.
The chapter is divided into five parts) Feel, make feel and AI; 2) Some academic clues about AI and emotions; 3) Sex and AI, a theoretical approach; 4) Photos, women's digital world and AI; and 5) Sexualization and algorithms consequences for a sociology of digital emotions. The text seeks to systematize a reflection on digital emotions from a particular experience but that allows us to think about the sociology of emotions in a general way.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Politics of Sensibilities: “A set of cognitive-affective social practices aimed at the production, management and reproduction of horizons of action, disposition and cognition. These horizons refer to: 1) the organization of daily life (day to day, wakefulness/sleep, eating/abstinence, etc.); 2) information to classify preferences and values (adequate/inappropriate, acceptable/unacceptable, bearable/unbearable) and 3) parameters for time/space management (displacement/location, walls/bridges; enjoyment)” (Scribano, 2018, p. 10 AU54: The in-text citation "Scribano, 2018, p. 10" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).
Emotions: “Sensations as a result and as an antecedent of perceptions give rise to emotions as an effect of the processes of adjudication and correspondence between perceptions and sensations. Emotions understood as consequences of sensations can be seen as the puzzle that comes as an action and effect of feeling. Emotions are rooted in the states of feeling the world that allow us to hold perceptions associated with them. socially constructed forms of sensations” (Scribano, 2013: 102 AU53: The in-text citation "Scribano, 2013: 102" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).
Emotional Ecology: “An emotional ecology can be characterized by three factors: first, in each policy of sensibilities a set of emotions connected by family lines, kinships of practice, proximities and emotional amplitudes are constituted. Secondly, this set of emotions constitutes a reference system for each of these emotions in a particular geopolitical and geocultural context that gives them a specific valence. Thirdly, they are groups of feeling practices whose particular experience regarding an element of life can only be understood in its collective context” ( Scribano, 2020 : 4).