This is the first English translation of “Die beweinte Zukunft,” a retelling of the story of Noah and the flood by Günther Anders (1902–1992). The German original was written in 1961 and first published in 1962 in the journal Alternative: Zeitschrift für Literatur und Diskussion in a slightly longer version, which also carried a subtitle that translates to “from the Molussian Apocrypha, translated by Günther Anders.” This link to Molussia, a fictious land of Anders’s invention that is frequently evoked in (...) his writings, was dropped upon the text’s republication in the shorter version included in the volume Gegen den Tod. Stimmen deutscher Schriftsteller gegen die Atombombe (1964). It was this publication that placed the story into the context of the anti-nuclear movement, a connection further strengthened when Anders selected “Die beweinte Zukunft” as the opening text in his 1971 collection Endzeit und Zeitenende: Gedanken über die atomare Situation. It was via this volume, which was republished in eight editions under the title Die atomare Drohung: Radikale Überlegungen zum atomaren Zeitalter, that the text found a wide readership. Today, this remarkable short parable is finding renewed interest in the context of discussions of the Anthropocene, the climate crisis and ongoing destruction of the ecosphere. (shrink)

In this paper I take a philosophy of technology approach to so-called “creative AI.” In light of the disruptions promised by generative AI systems, I explore the way AI may give cause to develop a philosophical concept of creativity for the new technological milieu, beyond those often found in AI models, based on human psychology alone. Largely framed by the process thought of Alfred Whitehead, the paper first engages in a critique of human-centric accounts of creativity that are dominant in (...) the AI field, and then explores the way a process philosophy of technology can describe emerging creativity-technology relationships. The conclusion of the paper is twofold: the first is that creative AI systems should embrace a more contingent and complex concept of creativity in order to produce “new, surprising, and valuable” objects in the world. The second is that one of the key roles of contemporary philosophy of technology is to rethink creativity as artificial in light of the potential of AI. (shrink)

Indigenous cultures have an immanentist ontological basis, as opposed to the largely Western ontology of transcendence. We explore the implications for this assertion in the different ways that technological artifacts can be seen to articulate with human and non-human bodies in extended ecologies. Our method is one of an Indigenous critique of modernity, which aims iconoclastically to deflate the faith, hope and idealism often invested in technologies. Our (counter) examples emerge from the TV series Bush Mechanics, where practical skills are (...) articulated with blackfella magical powers. These illustrate how bush ecologies are vastly different from suburban car cultures, such that what really matters in people’s coarticulations with machines is now open to philosophical speculation via an Indigenous critique of Western modernity. (Indigenous) powers of immanence can be opposed to (Western) powers of transcendence, we argue, through disclosure of the operations of the ecologies that sustain them. (shrink)

Most approaches to artificial moral agents (AMAs) apparently take it for granted that a machine could be moral. However, to think that the categories of morality or immorality apply to machines seems like a category mistake. This paper inquires into the conditions necessary for a machine to be moral. In order to do this, it first addresses the question what is a machine? It then argues that a form of agency is characteristic of machines in contradistinction of other technical objects (...) and that given their particular characteristics as machines artificial agents fail to satisfy one of the basic pre-conditions of moral agents. In conclusion, I ask what would be necessary for an artificial agent to be a moral agent. (shrink)

The outputs of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) are often called “synthetic” to imply that they are not natural but artificial. Against that use of the term, this article focuses on a different denotation of synthesis, stressing the unifying and compositional aspects of anything synthetic. The case of large language models (LLMs) is used as an example to address synthesis philosophically alongside notions of representation in contemporary computational systems. It is argued that synthesis in generative AI should be understood as (...) a search for unity that is fundamental to the making of a representational reality. This representational reality, internal to computation, is a stable (if imperfect) whole, a togetherness of distributed representations. The article thus demonstrates that developing the philosophical concept of synthesis to investigate today’s generative AI involves examining how structuring occurs in LLMs and studying the kinds of forms that structuring results in. (shrink)

This paper will study the Hanian critique of technology and dataism, as well as its implications. For this purpose, we will investigate the Heideggerian bases on which his thought is based, which show the modern essence of technology as a current stage of the metaphysics of presence. It will then be shown how the Hanian thesis accepts these premises in order to present dataism as an intervening agent in our horizons of understanding, as well as an element of contemporary systems (...) of control. Despite the value of this contribution, which challenges the alleged neutrality of technology, its adherence to the Heideggerian thesis prevents us from conceiving of other modes of uncovering and unfolding the poietic facet of technique. (shrink)

This article explores the consequences for music of its entry into the machine-age of sound, which involves, among other things, the de-instrumentalization of the ears and the possibility of an analytical listening ushering in the invention of digital tools that allow for a new graphic projection of musical time. Referring to important texts, notably by Bartók and Adorno, on the consequences of analogue sound reproduction for listening habits, musical analysis and even for the concept of writing, it looks at the (...) ways the science of music in general has been and will be transformed by its digitalization, and notably, by a new epoch of musicality. (shrink)