About
Background
In the early 2010’s, Artificial Intelligence was gaining prominence and, as with any powerful technology, it was perceived as a potentially serious threat.
Distilled to its essence, this was fear of “Autonomous Intelligent Entities, acting beyond human control”.
The fear was justified, and the threat is real: A.I.’s could be up to all sorts of mischief if ‘going rogue’ while in charge of weapons, medical systems, banking systems, water supplies, etc.
Strangely though, there is more panica in the media, and even in ‘Big Tech’, about the dangers of A.I. than for corporations who can legitimately be described in exactly the same way, already doing harm and already beyond human control.
Describing corporations in these terms is not as far-fetched as some may think, particularly looking at the situation through a cybernetic lens (e.g. W. Ross Ashby’s “Design for a Brain”).
Beltis Steamburton
The prospect of autonomous machine or organisational intelligence, or even consciousness, raised interesting questions and, in 2015, Beltis Steamburton was conceived as a thought experiment for testing these abstract concepts.
The scope evolved over time and became more tangible - an ‘organisational entity’ in his own right; a vehicle to explore matters such as:
- How organisations are controlled, how they make decisions, sustain identity, and communicate internally and externally
- How people, processes and technology can operate as a coherent and integrated ‘whole system’, including with A.I.
- Using Art and visual modelling to promote Systems Thinking and to convey complex ideas to, and within, organisations
- ‘Fringe’ notions such as consciousness in machine and organisation; self-actualisation in Systems
Summary
Beltis Steamburton can be seen as an art project, an organisational entity or even a synthetic persona.
Alongside advocacy for Systems Thinking are practical business services, such as organisational analysis and media production.
As an Art project, Beltis benefits from the freedom to delve into related but speculative or less conventional territory (the fun part).
