Diffusions in Architecture: Artificial Intelligence and Image Generators
by Matias del Campo, Lev Manovich
Resistance Is Fertile: Three Directions for Friction
Joy Knoblauch
In the novel Happiness for Humans, an AI named Aiden quickly exceeds its inventors’ capacity to understand.61 The name Aiden was chosen by his stereotypically brilliant (though at times a bit zombie) creator who was amused at the cleverness of the name A.I.den. The AI is not as amused by the name, and throughout the novel, it exceeds the humanist capacity of Steeve, the engineer. The engineer and his colleagues become aware of the lack of social skills they have been able to give Aiden. To make up for this lack, the lab hires a female journalist to interact with Aiden, and the two engage in a fruitful conversation and a shared love for movies such as Some Like It Hot. The result is a new feeling for Aiden: fondness. The novel contains all the hallmarks of the fears and pleasures of humanized computers since the days of Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein; I, for one, cried at the death of the computer in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The encounter with Aiden calls into question what humanity is, and the characters struggle to define fondness and other ethical questions of love (Aiden is upset at the poor treatment the journalist receives from her human boyfriend). The novel continues the tradition of asking whether humanity is the sole property of fleshy bipeds and what to do when a machine has more softness than its makers.
But the reason to focus on this 2018 novel rather than its forbears is the opening quote ...