Intelligent Agency

Working Algorithms: Software Automation and the Future of Work

“…In the most general sense, computer scientists agree that AI aims “to simulate [the] intelligence and rationality of humans” (Zackova, 2015, p. 32) or to create “systems that can reasonably be called intelligent” (Russell & Norvig, 2010, p. 34). Yet, scientists and practitioners have long debated the boundaries of “intelligence,” with their positions shifting over time as expectations for AI have ebbed and flowed along with the field’s successes and failures (Ekbia, 2008; Wise, 1998). For example, the first computer programs capable of simulating human chess players were widely hailed as “intelligent”; today, the architecture behind early programs would be viewed as nothing more than rudimentary decision trees.…”

The use of library and information resources by research staff at Glascow Caledonian University

“…In rclation to the dnternet, we saw that one researckrer krere would like to have help in customising brcwsers or creating'intelligent agents' (Ansari 1998;Aradhye 1998;Doyle 2000;Hsieh-Chang and Jeih 2000;Wise 1998) while another wondered if the iibrary might offer training in software such as Endnote" Although fi-rnding is a recognised problem the provision of decentralised library staff, the 'barefoot librarian' as suggested by Jacotrs ( 1 998), operating at depar"trnent/diseipline level moving avuay from a reactive centrally based infonnation service, might impaet positively on the daily r.vork erf researehers. trn saying tlais, the work of the academic liaison tribrarians r,vas liighly praised in the interviervs.…”

The active audience, again: Player-centric game studies and the problem of binarism

“…Player practices may be creative and intentional, but the complexity of a gaming assemblage’s effectivity is not reducible to them. Agency is distributed unevenly across gaming situations through complex and mutual processes by which human and nonhuman bodies rely upon, fold back on, and transform one another – processes difficult to represent as ‘a stand-off between a person and a machine’, processes that resist attempts ‘to determine on which side lies the central point of agency, the fulcrum of power on which the social rocks’ (Wise, 1998: 424). Gaming structures do not unilaterally determine players’ actions, and players cannot transcend, overcome, or dominate a game-structure; rather, gaming situations are articulations of bodies, technologies, codes, practices, affects, and other materials that have been brought together to constitute ‘player’ and ‘game’ as such, as elements with characteristics and abilities made to seem natural and eternal.…”