Notes on Yuk Hui's lecture: "(Quantum(Quantum(Quantum())): Artificial Imagination"

 Below are just some notes I have written to myself about this lecture, which was given at Tongji Universities' "Art and Artificial Intelligence" conference in may 28-29 2022. I make these available publicly not for any particular reason, the Enterprise Student license for MS Office I was on finally kicked me off and so this website is currently my only word processor.

Yuk Hui's lecture attempts to define a phenomena of "Artificial Imagination" that is categorically different and separate from our human one. Within this lecture, the concept of an Artificial Imagination is precluded by and heavily related to Artificial Intelligence. Hui makes this connection and guides the conversation back to the Critique of Pure Reason (a book I haven't read).

Hui takes the given distinctions within CPR of Intelligence (which I believe is being used interchangably with Kantian "Knowledge") to first construct a model of artificial intelligence as part of a series of processes within which knowledge is constructed. Kant's writings on imagination within CPR are also important because they form the bridge between this concept of intelligence and imagination.

At this point in the lecture, Hui briefly changes subjects to discuss mathematics. He believes that Leibniz's concept of infinity is important because it denotes a process of eternal calculation that is somewhat similar: "Whereas a human's imagination is considered infinite, machine's imagination is limited and finite... however I argue that it is by no means a good demarcation to make the difference".

In his concept of an Artificial Imagination, Leibniz's infinite is analogical to Imagination. Like an infinite fraction between zero and one, imagination is an intangible thing that exists within the realm of the real but is never in the state of actually "being". it is a never ending series of calculations, a state of "constant rippling... that cannot produce a concept". Product of the imagination can only manifest when it is interrupted in a "violent" act by reason, interrupting and halting the process of imagination to produce. This violent act is what creates the sublime, what Hui also calls a sort of "aesthetic infinity within the finite'', the representation of imagination within the real.

Hui's most interesting statement is the one that is left unfinished at the end of his lecture, but it ties the lecture into the greater project of his philosophy and aesthetic. Because the job of an endlessly calculating imagination can be left to machines, it fundamentally changes the relationship between rationality and feeling. Through Schiller, Hui then asks us to consider the state as the outside, rational force which constantly interacts with our individual feeling. He believes that this opens questions about the role of "aesthetic education", one where a student doesnt study towards the goal of being able to complete papers and assignments but are instead trained on their raw skill of intuitive feeling, building faculty for feeling and creativity and establishing the parameters where this happens.

I sense the influence of East Asian education traditions within this last statement. He argues that it undermines the way we have come to understand freedom in our societies, and possibly he is arguing to redefine this word. In a political sense, he is asking us to consider what freedom means and he personally believes that our common conception of freedom in a capitalist and predominantly western (a communist may say U.S. Neo-Imperial) system is inadequate. Specific references are made to Trump v Biden 2 party state elections, and "choosing what to eat on the McDonalds menu" as examples of the arbitrariness of "freedom of choice", remarks that also remind us of the geopolitical games of our time, the domain which all great thinkers still need to operate within. Still, I believe this argument holds up. There is perhaps a strong opportunity at this time where we can seek better topologies of the function of these concepts through the bronze mirror of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps within this domain we will learn more about the parameters of freedom, and the condition in which it can flourish: "freedom is not about what we can choose, but rather the space which allows us to exercise our reason...
...freedom is imagination rationalized".