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Shawn Graham: Do It Yourself Digital Golems. Experiments with various AI, neural networks, and other technologies for archaeology

The golem is a creature animated by the words in its head. Emerging from Jewish traditions, the words that did the animation had connections with divinity, but the golems themselves despite this spark of the divine toiled at mundane chores. But sometimes, the golems would get out of control, and become figures of terror. My none-too-subtle analogy is this: animated by the ‘words in their heads’, the anthropomorphized neural networks of contemporary ‘ai’ (and ‘agi’: artificial general intelligence) are similar figures, with similar connections to the divine (we are told: ‘agi’ will transcend us; ‘agi’ will bring about the singularity; ‘agi’ will make us all posthuman). In this talk, I will explore some of my experiments trying to teach these technologies ethically and critically. I will explore some of the ways I have been trying to raise my own digital golems for my mundane archaeological needs. This is a talk filled with failure and experimentation. But maybe, also, something useful.

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