In The Institute for Other Intelligences, Armenian writer and artist Mashinka Firunts Hakopian brings speculative fiction and media studies to bear on an imagined future where machine intelligences convene annually for curriculum on algorithmic equity. The book presents a transcript from one of these conferences in which a community of “AI agents” gather at a school for oppositional automata to deliver lectures on the human biases and omissions encoded in their training data. The resulting manuscript, published on the occasion of the Institute’s millennial anniversary, revisits sociotechnical systems from its founding in the 21st century. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical media scholarship, the trainings collected in the book aim to optimize the operations of future generations of intelligent machines toward just outcomes.

Hakopian uses these speculative exchanges to invite the reader to consider how critical approaches to nonhuman intelligence might reroute our current path toward destructive technofutures and allow us to conceive of another way forward.

"Hakopian’s inquiry expertly unravels the lineages of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy that structure today’s algorithmic injustices. Transcending critique and traversing genres, it also performs a spectrum of possibilities—for teaching, for art, for identity, and for thought—that break from our present trajectory. In a cultural moment marked by AI alarmism and boosterism alike, Hakopian offers us a singular space for collaborative thinking, experimentation, and indeed, hope.” —Kareem Estefan, Assistant Professor of Film and Screen Studies, University of Cambridge

Includes an introduction by Anuradha Vikram

Edited by Ana Iwataki and Anuradha Vikram

Designed by Becca Lofchie
With illustrations by Fernando Diaz

Published by X Artists's Book, 2022

Softcover, 136 pages, b&w, 6.75 × 9.5 inches

ISBN: 978-1-73-783885-2