Halting operations for algorithmic alignment

• Main Author: Hanns Holger Rutz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Católica Portuguesa 2017-09-01
• Series: Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts
• Subjects: Algorithms; Identity; Alignment; Desiring-machines
• Online Access: https://revistas.ucp.pt/index.php/jsta/article/view/7291
• ISSN: 1646-9798; 2183-0088

Departing from the discourse on whether a specific (social, ethical) responsibility is attached to the creation and manipulation of algorithms, this article questions the prerequisite of having an identity of algorithms to which that responsibility could be attached. After showing that such identity is partly fictional due to the fact that algorithms are connected to other algorithms and their identity is always a selective reading of a series of transitions through which algorithms come into existence, the perspective is shifted to the algorithmic as the medium of algorithms and as the actual agential domain. This shift translates responsibility into the ability to respond to otherness and non-identity through sensitive forms of alignment. Comparing the algorithmic with the desiring-machines of Deleuze and Guattari, this article proposes that its dynamics of flows and interruptions could be artistically reflected as halting operations that controvert the superficial evaluation of algorithms, for example under the classical decision problem or halting problem. A possible strategy for making the inner dynamics perceivable is proposed through a balancing act between the credible and the incredible, the plausible and the implausible.