Philip Agre
Philip Agre
Philip E. Agre is an American artificial intelligence researcher and humanities professor, formerly a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known for his critiques of technology and for introducing critical technical practice. Agre was reported missing on October 16, 2009. He was found on January 16, 2010, but never returned to public life.
"AI people find it remarkably difficult to conceptualize alternatives to their existing repertoire of technical schemata. The idea that human beings do not conduct their lives by means of planning, for example, is just short of unintelligible."
"AI…consists precisely in the deployment of… technical schemata to translate, or gloss, selected features of a given domain in terms that can also be interpreted as the operation of a computer program. The vagueness of AI vocabulary is instrumental."
"sociological descriptions that seem perfectly neutral to their authors can seem like personal insults to their subjects if they presuppose forms of social order that exist below the level of conscious strategy and choice."
"space for critical reflection on its methods and concepts. Critical analysis of others’ work, if done responsibly, provides the field with a way to deepen its means of evaluating its research."
"Research could proceed in a cycle, with each impasse leading to critical insight, reformulation of underlying ideas and methods, fresh starts, and more instructive impasses."
