Identification, classification and control: Close ties analysed in reference to artistic practices in the heart of artificial intelligence

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is preceded by a history going all the way back to former efforts in creating beings with artificial movement and intelligence. The objective of this article is to highlight how, in this history, which includes the current developments in the fields of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), the tasks of surveillance and control through the identification and classification of people, things or events in the world, have been so central in the myths or theories on automatons, homunculi, androids, robots or cyborgs, as well as in the various attempts to make them a reality. It will be asserted, furthermore, that the wishes and efforts to imagine and create these beings are neither innocent nor circumstantial; rather, that to a large extent they come from a patriarchal vision of the world in which everything existing must be subjected to a surveillance that ensures control over that which is real. To achieve this, reference will be made on the one hand to histories which show the predominance of these tasks and the vision of the world hidden behind them, and, on the other, to artistic practices and aesthetic representations which have questioned the identifying and classifying operations of AI as a means of surveillance and control.