Direct Manipulation

The consumer algorithm (artificial intelligence) frenzy of early 2023 illustrates how complex, profit-driven technologies are mystified—presented as autonomous, divine forms of higher thinking that obscure the human and institutional forces behind them. The illusion of a divine power of higher thinking crafted by what Marco Donnarumma calls the ‘AI industrial complex, an intricate configuration of different powers; it entangles corporations, rich individuals, universities, governments, culture, and people in interacting feedback loops’—is reflected in the name itself.

Steven Johnson references stained-glass windows illustrating stories of the Bible in cathedrals as a medium of communication in a time where literacy rates were low. Johnson draws the likeness between how we interface with reality through screens today to how people would interface with their systems of belief, their understanding of reality, through stained-glass windows in the past. What can the illusion around consumer algorithms reveal about the relationship between people, technology, and connection (love)?