Jiang Yuhui | AI, Big Data and Strength Machines: How to Rethink Subjectivity in the Age of Information Power

AI, Big Data & Strength Machines

——How to rethink subjectivity in the era of information power

Text / Jiang Yuhui

Abstract:Big data is an important prerequisite for the birth and development of generative AI, and the genealogical investigation of the development and evolution of big data will also help us to better understand the nature and prospect of the new AI represented by ChatGPT. From intensive data to big data, from the Fourth Paradigm to the data flood, this may not only be a process from quantitative change to qualitative change, but also a process in which the original intensity of data is declining day by day, and human subjectivity is dying out in the face of data. Therefore, it is necessary to return to the philosophical concept of strength, combined with the representative statements of philosophers such as Deleuze and Garcia, and then reveal how it gradually metamorphosed from a generative force to a measured force in classical physics, and then completely domesticated into electricity in the control of society. Since affirmative life intensity is struggling, it may be reasonable to turn to negative death intensity to find a way out. Garcia's speculative realism, Deleuze's organless body, and Foucault's lethal machine seem to open up three related and different paths.

Keywords: intensity data; big data; data-based subjects; the right to information; Strength; Negative

This article was published in the Journal of East China Normal University (Philosophy and Social Science Edition), Issue 2, 2024, #重启科技与人文对话栏目

About the author|PROFILE

• Jiang Yuhui is a professor at the School of Politics and International Relations, East China Normal University

Catalog overview

1. From Intensity Data to Big Data: Development and Reflection

2. Rethink subjectivity and return to strength

III. The Decay of Intensity: Social, Historical, and Philosophical Threads

四 致命机器（lethal machine）——否定性之突显

Conclusion

Full text

ChatGPT is undoubtedly the most interesting and hotly debated cutting-edge technological progress in recent times. But leaving aside the technical details, what are the changes it has, is making, and will be about to bring to human life and society? At the beginning of the vivid and detailed book The ChatGPT Revolution, Donna McTGeorge points out two important aspects that are intriguing. First, it has clearly improved or even changed the relationship between AI and people to a great extent. Since ChatGPT mainly uses natural language to communicate with humans, it is no longer just a cold machine or a tool to serve humans, but also an incarnation of human assistants, partners, and even mentors. Second, it touches on another point that is often discussed, but rarely really pondered. Perhaps one of the most critical benefits of the future development of generative AI represented by Chat-GPT for human beings is the great liberation of free time. With such a right-hand man, it seems that we can finally be freed from those tedious and mechanical repetitive tasks, and have a lot of free time to do what we really want to do. But McGeorge then asked, "So, what do you want to do with all this free time?" ”①

This Hamlet-esque question not only prompts us to reflect on ourselves, but also undoubtedly opens up a different way of thinking about ChatGPT and AI machines. Once we finally have the freedom of our minds, we don't know what to do. Some people will choose to play the same boring and repetitive mechanical games, some will go back to the previous state and continue to work 9 to 5 day in and day out, and some will simply do nothing and waste their time. When there is no freedom, we long for freedom, and with freedom, we are bored and confused. If the previous life was struggling like Sisyphus under the "weight" of work, then the life after that can be said to be thrown into the endless void of "unbearable lightness in life". It is this shift in intensity from "heavy" to "light" that leads to the theme that this article will ponder in depth. We try to think about three questions one at a time. First of all, the development of artificial intelligence technology in recent times has indeed undergone a transformation process from "data-intensive" to "big data", so what kind of development and change trend does the gradual fading of the modifier "intensity" reveal? Second, since big data has not only brought about technological progress and change, but also caused various worries and even anxieties, is it possible to activate its hidden potential by reawakening the dimension of "intensity"? Finally, strength is not only a basic scientific term, but also an important philosophical concept, so can the "philosophy of intensity" represented by Gilles Deleuze and Tristan Garcia bring us fresh inspiration? AI has replaced human-intensity work, so will it also be able to achieve human-intensity freedom?

1. From Intensity Data to Big Data: Development and Reflection

Big data is undoubtedly a very important technical prerequisite to stimulate generative AI. In fact, without big data technology, ChatGPT-style large language models are simply unimaginable. Therefore, it is obviously a key perspective to reflect on the recent and cutting-edge development of AI from the perspective of big data.

There can be various ways of thinking about big data, but the point of "intensity" seems to have been overlooked. However, Schönberg and Cookye begin by Schönberg and Cookye in The Age of Big Data, a groundbreaking work that truly philosophically explains, foundations, and even justifies big data. They began by pointing out that "big data is not an exact concept", but not only because it is still in its infancy, full of ambiguity and controversy, but also because it is an inherently unknown and possible movement. So what are the main trends in this process? Perhaps it is "quantitative change that leads to qualitative change". At first, it was only a huge increase in the "quantity" of data, but then it is destined to bring "qualitative" profound changes to human society and even the whole world. In the beginning, big data was just a research tool, but then, it may become a dominant force in society, changing the trend and trend of the world. "The Age of Big Data" The whole book is a comprehensive and detailed combing and description of this process from quantitative change to qualitative change, which does not need to be repeated. However, if we return to the development of big data, we find that this generalization of the two authors does not seem to be consistent with the truth. Although the term big data was first coined by Doug Laney in 2001, in fact, it slowly became a core word until nearly a decade ago. Until then, the term "intensity data" had been commonly used by academia and industry. Obviously, the transition from "intensity data" to "big data" should be closer to historical reality, but isn't it a process of transformation from "quality ("intensity") to "quantity ("big")"?

To truly solve this public case, we must first return to history. In fact, the term "intensity data" has become mainstream, and it is quite recently. Perhaps its earliest origins were Tim Gray's 2007 revelation of the "Fourth Paradigm", which really pioneered intensive data science. As an emerging paradigm, its innovation is mainly reflected in three aspects, namely "capture, curation, and analysis" of data. This is not to say that these three tasks were not carried out in previous scientific research, but it is only intended to emphasize that with the emergence of massive data, the methods, objects, and even systems of scientific research will undergo obvious and thorough changes. From the perspective of the theory and practice of the Fourth Paradigm, this process of change reflects three key trends. First, although people still dominate the process of data collection, processing, and analysis, the importance of data itself is becoming more and more prominent, and there is even a tendency to usurp the center. After all, when all kinds of large and small machines are collecting massive amounts of data and information day and night, the scale of these data in time and space is increasingly beyond the scale of human life, and their complexity is becoming more and more beyond human comprehension, and their power is becoming more and more beyond human control. But even so, experts in intensity science are generally strongly optimistic. This is probably due to two other key trends, namely that the revolutionary effect of the new paradigm was limited to the scientific and academic circles at that time, and was far from affecting society as a whole; That's why, at the end of the "Introduction" section of the Fourth Paradigm collection, Gordon Bell makes it clear that "the dream of a new data science must be actively encouraged and funded" (1).

However, just four years later, in another representative anthology of intensive data science, many scholars have begun to express critical concerns about this emerging paradigm. It is worth noting that in the two places that echo the beginning and end of the paper, the authors Ian Gorton and Deborah K. Gracio have begun to indiscriminately refer to "intensity data" and "big data", which undoubtedly clearly shows the initial germ and opportunity for the transition from the former to the latter. It seems that this important paper does not break through the fourth paradigm much, and it still limits the influence of intensity data mainly to the scope of scientific research, but the third section of the whole paper lists in more detail and depth the various hidden dangers and even destructive impacts that the new paradigm is and will bring to human researchers. In addition to the sheer volume and complexity of data, the diversity and heterogeneity of data sources is also becoming an increasingly difficult problem. In addition, the point of temporality is briefly but appropriately emphasized. As mentioned above, the huge spatiotemporal scale of data transcends human life, but in fact, on the micro scale, the high-speed data also shows the liminal limits and boundaries that are beyond the reach of human perception and the control of human understanding. The vastness of data is certainly terrifying, but the lightning of data is equally dazzling, from macro to micro, the intensity of data confirms the powerlessness of human beings again and again. The phrase "data deluge" appears in the text in a prominent position, and this seems to be the proof of this.

It is precisely with this mixed tone that big data has gradually replaced intensive data as the next dominant keyword in academia and society. In the 2016 Handbook of Big Data, Richard Starmans gave a more profound explanation of the rationale behind this shift in his introductory paper "The Arrival of Big Data Science". He first cited the famous article "The Incomprehensible Utility of Data" published in 2009 by three Google researchers, which clearly took the trend of big data breaking free from human understanding and control as a clear starting point for thinking. How, then, can data usurp such a transcentric power? Starmans further explains the basic triadic relationship of "data-information-knowledge". In the past scientific research and philosophical thinking, data was only the primordial, unprocessed "raw material", and it is only from the beginning of information that human beings give meaning and interpretation to data, and finally rise to knowledge as a collection and system of true beliefs. From data to information to knowledge, this is a movement of spiritual ascension from meaninglessness to meaning, from chaos to truth. However, we have seen that since the rise of the intensity data science that represents the fourth paradigm, this hierarchical order from disorder to order, from low to high, has slowly been reversed and reversed. Today, data is not only material to be understood and processed, but also the ontology of a vast world. The world is not only represented and explained through data, but on the contrary, data is the most basic building force of the whole world. The famous saying "data is the new oil" perhaps emphasizes exactly that. In this way, we should not only regard information and knowledge as the "purification" of data, nor should we try to use the theoretical system constructed by human beings to make the ultimate interpretation of the ocean of data, but on the contrary, we should open our own boundaries, open up to massive data, change with the flow of data, and always maintain our humble and subordinate status. To put it more extremely, for future science and thinking, the acquisition, storage, processing, dissemination and other "operations" of information will rise to the primary position, as for the "meaning" of data and how human beings "interpret", these most important tasks in human history in the past have become more and more secondary.

That said, it seems surprising that Starmans, a big data scientist, does not reveal much pessimism and negativity later in the article. But a closer look at his argument makes sense. After all, even though he is clearly aware of the dangers and hidden dangers of big data, he still tends to regard it as another new starting point for the development of human science and knowledge. He illustrates this from two larger "genealogy" perspectives. On the one hand, the birth of big data science is not groundless, but originates from an ancient dream and pursuit of human beings, which is to obtain "complete and definite knowledge" about the world. Only by obtaining and collecting a large amount of data about every detail and every fragment of the world can it be possible to move firmly towards the ultimate truth step by step. On the other hand, however, if we return to the thread of the history of Western philosophy, we will find that the path to ultimate truth was not the same in the first place. From Plato to Descartes, the mainstream of rationalism emphasizes the ability to construct human thought, so that the universal, absolute, and inevitable system of ideas is far better than piecemeal and down-to-earth data collection. It was not until the rise of modern empiricism that this trend was gradually questioned and challenged. That's why Stalmans attributes the true origins of big data science to Francis Bacon's "new tool" approach. ①

However, if we carefully review Bacon's exposition that he mainly cited, we can clearly understand that one of the most worrying consequences that big data science is and will lead to is the fundamental negation and elimination of human subjectivity. John Cheney-Lippold, who has deeply criticized the "data-based subject", once famously said: "Algorithmic governance is without subject." In fact, this tendency to be "subjectless" was already evident in Bacon's famous parable about spiders, ants, and bees. Spiders are clearly the embodiment of the theorists, who sit firmly at the center of the theoretical web they weave, trying to inherently incorporate the whole world into a ready-made system "without leaving home". However, ants are not an accurate portrait of empiricists, because they can only carry data, but they cannot further internalize the data of the external world as their own nutrients like bees do. Starmans would like to use this parable to convince us that today's big data science is more like a bee-like creative work of "turning data for its own use", but the transition from intensive data to big data, from the fourth paradigm to the data flood, it is difficult not to equate the data-based subject more closely with the ant-like porter. Yes, human beings are still trying to understand data, interpret it, and use it as their own knowledge nourishment, but in the face of the vast ocean of data and the universe, how small and what is the meaning of all this artificiality? In the face of massive data, human beings have transformed into passive ants, and this fate is not only obvious, but also seemingly irreversible.

2. Rethink subjectivity and return to strength

Perhaps it is precisely because of this mixed sentiment that Schönberg and Thomas Ramge have more clearly highlighted the humanistic position in the subsequent "The Age of Data Capital". While it is true that the prosperity and dominance of the "massive data market" may be destined to become a trend, the reason why data is ultimately important is that it can serve and benefit people. Therefore, in the book's brilliant summary of three characteristics and trends of the future market, the authors begin by emphasizing that "we need to know what these data mean" and thus "ultimately understand our personal preferences". The bee-like ideal that data can be used by people to better achieve individual happiness and human progress is still firmly held to by the authors, which is why they repeatedly reiterate: "The ultimate goal of the massive data market is not the pursuit of overall perfection, but the pursuit of individual realization." As a result, although they are also aware of the various hidden risks and risks faced by this emerging market, the most typical ones are "lack of diversity in systematic learning" and "invisible concentration of control", but the final tone of the book is optimistic and hopeful for the future. After all, no matter how big the ocean of data is and how fast the flood of data is, the ultimate control is still in the hands of humans, and "only human managers can promote more intense innovation".

But such an optimistic mood is destined to disappear in the face of more intense criticism from humanist scholars. Lippold, for example, pointedly argues that algorithms not only "assemble" the "datafied selves", but also control the future of humanity. Since our ego and subject are the product of manipulation, our future and freedom can of course only be a dream. In his masterpiece We Are Data, Lippold counts the cruxes and even "crimes" of algorithms and data-based manipulation, such as the black box effect, disembodiment, the death of authenticity, flattening, and so on. Perhaps the most typical and concentrated of these is the operation of "abstractions". Abstract, the original and the concrete. It is emphasized here that the digital self has nothing to do with the personality, experience, and desires of the real self, and at best "produces" products that conform to standards and norms based on various preset patterns (even if these patterns are dynamic, flexible, and generative). Yes, these products will also exhibit a variety of "personalities" on the surface, but these are ultimately completely within the scope of the model. On the other hand, the model will also tempt and attract these superficial differences and diversity, so that each digital self can feel the freedom to be preset and assembled. In the words of Andreas Reckwitz: "Uniqueness is deliberately manufactured, it is simply to produce new ideas or special objects, subjects, places, events or collectives." It is for this reason that Lipold borrowed Max Weber's famous concept of "ideal type" and defined the abstract operation of dataization that deliberately creates uniqueness as "measurable-type". In the era of big data, people are no longer the scale of the world, or even their own scale; Nowadays, data is the measure of people, and even the fundamental measure of the survival and death of all things.

Lippold's rebellious advice was not a lonely voice. In fact, with the transformation of intensive data into big data and the rise of the massive data market, the critical camp of humanities scholars is also growing day by day. For example, leading figures such as David Chandler and Christian Fuchs have explicitly articulated the term "big data capitalism" and advocated an in-depth and comprehensive critique of it based on a Marxist standpoint. However, Colin Koopman's famous book "How We Become Data" seems to be more impressive, and more in line with the theme of this article, because it not only explicitly focuses on the subject of data, but also proposes a new concept of "infopower" through detailed genealogical historical research, thus making a very creative extension and even revision of Foucault and Agamben's biopolitical theories. At the beginning of the book, Koopman clearly echoes the fundamental proposition and position of "we are data", and then points out that data science and technology have long gone beyond the realm of pure academic research and have become "universalizing" operations that penetrate into all aspects of society. In the same way, the ultimate goal of this operation is not only to reproduce reality and study human beings, but also to deepen to the level of ontology and become the constructive force of human beings themselves. (1) Data is not just labels or symbols, data is each of us.

Of course, such a construction could never appear suddenly and be completed in an instant, but was destined to go through a complex and long historical process. Vismann's study of archives, Foucault's study of confessions, and even Ian Harkin's study of statistics, etc., are all presentations of different perspectives and levels of this historical process. The same is true of Koopman's own account of the various psychological tests of the early 20th century, which ultimately aims to show how the self and personality have become the object and even the product of data measurement. However, the most important theoretical insight in his book is the concept of information power. Although it has similarities with the various types of power that Foucault elaborated in detail, it does show the unique appearance and form of the big data age. First, he summarizes the basic mode of operation of information power as "format", and then emphasizes that there is at least one commonality between it and Kittler's "standard" and Foucault's "norm", that is, they are different from one-dimensional, often violent oppression and restriction, but are committed to induction, stimulation, and production that are dynamic and flexible, both micro and different. But even so, there is still a clear difference between formatted information power and discipline power and life power. For example, compared with the power of discipline, the operation of information power is obviously more micro and invisible, more "fitting" to the uniqueness of each person, and thus more able to penetrate into the inner realm of personality and psychology. For another example, compared with the power of life, the methods of good use and manipulation of information power are obviously more diverse and extensive, and simple statistical models can no longer meet the needs. On the contrary, big data, the Internet, artificial intelligence, "gamification", platform capitalism, etc., the world is inventing various "cutting-edge" technologies to construct data-based subjects almost every day.

However, when examined carefully, Koopman's discrepancies may be far from going beyond Foucault's conclusions. For example, the difference between the power of information and the power of discipline that he enumerated is already implicit in the text of Discipline and Punishment. Leaving aside the microcosm, invisibility, and production of singularity, the shaping of the soul and personality, the manipulation of consciousness and the self, has always been a key point in Foucault's historical description: "The history of this 'microphysics' of punishing power will thus become a genealogy or a factor of the modern 'soul'." For example, even though it may be true that population is the main object of Foucault's right to life, as clearly emphasized in Security, Territory and Population, the right to life (bio-pouvoir) has never and cannot operate alone, but has always been closely linked to and even entangled with the "sovereignty" of "exercising within territorial boundaries", the "discipline" of "exercising on the body of the individual", and the "security" of "exercising on the population as a whole". Therefore, even though Foucault's power to life has not yet (and is not likely to) grasp the new weapon of big data, at least the diversity and complexity of the power technology it uses has always been a point that has not been overlooked.

For Bernard E. Harcourt, another scholar who is also well versed in Foucault's thought, the uniqueness of the power of information seems to have been more profoundly explained. In his masterpiece "Exposed", which comprehensively criticizes big data capitalism, Harcourt does not explicitly use the term information power, but at the beginning of the chapter, he points out the stark changes in the operation of power in the era of big data, and summarizes it with the vivid and striking concept of "exposure". Compared with the previous royal power, discipline power, and life power, the uniqueness of information power may not only lie in its relatively objective mode of operation and operating procedures, but also in the relationship between people and power. In the past power mechanism, people were either oppressed, induced, or monitored and regulated, but they were obviously in a passive position; But in the information power, this relationship has changed radically, and we not only know exactly where the power is, how it works, and how it controls us, but also willingly and even "proactively" give ourselves to it. This may be out of utter despair, for we have no choice but to give ourselves; But this process of giving is at the same time a process of pleasure, and it is for this reason that the "exposed society" invents its own unique form of punishment after disciplining power and the right to life: "Punishment does not become less, but better." "Not to punish less, but to punish better" is obviously an extremely ironic rhetoric, because it reveals the absurd reality of the present: when the punishment becomes more severe, even to the extreme, it makes us feel more subject-like freedom, and even stimulates unprecedented intensity of sexual pleasure in us, the phantom subjects.

It is here that we return to the central theme of strength. In the previous section, we raised the question of whether the development of the era of big data is changing from quantitative to qualitative (as defined by Schönberg et al.), or from qualitative to quantitative (as we have described). The introduction and discernment of the concept of strength clearly leads the answer to the latter option. As mentioned above, what makes intensity data different from big data is its unique understanding of "intensity". It not only emphasizes the emergence and growth of massive data, but also contains a very clear and strong pursuit of thought and truth. Human beings need a large amount of data, and they need to collect, sort out, and store data on all aspects of life, society, and even the world, which is fundamentally for two ultimate purposes, one is to obtain a complete and certain truth, and the other is to use this as a motivation and opportunity to constantly stimulate the mind to open up to the outside world, activate itself, and rejuvenate itself. It is this magical combination and fusion between being (ce qui est) - mind (ce qui pense) and life (ce que vit) that is the source of the power of intense data and the foundation of creation. But it is precisely the strength of this trinity, with the advent of the era of big data, that is gradually being lost. Today's big data also has intensity, but it is closer to a flood that will swallow and drown humanity. Today's power to information is also intensifying, but it is more akin to an illusion of pleasure in which there is no choice but to give up on itself. Therefore, when the two authors only summarize the change of the times as a quantitative change to a qualitative change in The Age of Big Data, what they have exposed is not only an unintentional negligence, but also a mistake that has gone astray. Because they not only ignore the trinity of strength, but also underestimate the grim situation of the demise of subjectivity.

III. The Decay of Intensity: Social, Historical, and Philosophical Threads

So, in the face of such a grim situation, what kind of solutions and responses can humanities scholars who are known for their criticism and reflection give? It seems to be very few. For example, Koopman mentions the seemingly uplifting term "Resistant Informatics" in the last section of the book, and he actually leaves only two pages on the subject. In this respect, Harcourt is clearly superior, not only in his opening chapter on "resistance and disobedience" as the tenet of the book, but also in the last two chapters of the book in detail and in depth the various strategies and methods. However, in terms of the various strategies he listed in the book to resist big data, it is hardly possible to talk about being positive and powerful, but on the contrary, it often exposes powerlessness and helplessness. For example, he suggested that individuals should make good use of IT technology to better protect their information, but this is obviously not something that the general public can do. For another example, he called for the market to improve its own operating mechanism to better protect users' privacy from infringement, but it is clear that the initiative here is still mainly in the hands of large companies and large enterprises that can influence the market. And some of his other "suggestions" – such as leaking and lying – seem similarly or even more weak.

So, what are the other ways to lead to proactive resistance? As far as the argument in this article is concerned, since the problem is based on the original principle of strength, it seems reasonable to find a solution in it. In fact, Harcourt has already hinted at this in his text(1), which is precisely the distinction between the three types of machines proposed in Deleuze's famous treatise "Postscript to the Control of Society" and the three kinds of machines proposed in it. The uniqueness of information power, in addition to the way power operates and the relationship between power and subject, lies in the fact that it realizes and embodies a new and powerful machine form. In fact, in Pourparlers (1972-1990), Deleuze has already focused on these three types of machines in the interview "Control and Generation": the dynamic machine of the royal society, the energy machine of the discipline society, and the cybernetic machine of the control society. Here, although he does not (and cannot be) discuss the recent forms of technology such as artificial intelligence and big data, he does regard computers as a typical form of cybernetic machines, which also hints and foreshadows the relevance of his generalization to the current era. However, as Deleuze shows in his article, although the operation of power in controlling society is far more microscopic, flexible, and changeable than that of royal power and discipline society, it is still a way of manipulating power, but it is more hidden under the veil of humanity and intelligence in the warm vein. Thus, among the many points of Deleuze's detailed analysis of the logic of the operation of power in society, in addition to the key point of the distinction between "moule" and "modulation", it is perhaps the contrast between the two figures of "mole" and "snake", and the opposition between the two principles of discontinuity and continuity. The mole hides and digs deep into the ground, always trying to hide itself, thus striving for the foundation and enfermement, and constantly creating "discontinuities" between depth and surface, limitation and openness, foundation and upper layer. The snake is clearly different, its trajectory spreads out on the surface of the "exposed society", seemingly unobstructed, but with the operation of self-relevant, self-circulating data and algorithms, everything is entangled in a continuous and smooth network that is unbreakable and inescapable.

In this way, although the operation of the cybernetic machine also shows full intensity, and is quite consistent with the basic characteristics of strength discussed by Deleuze in many important texts, such as difference, rheology, plurality, smoothing, delocalization, etc., when implemented in the current situation and pattern of controlling society, we may find with dismay that these seemingly creative and generative strengths have once again become powerful and efficient tools for big data capitalism. In a sense, Deleuze's elaboration of the intensity-filled cybernetic machine is a philosophical addition to the fundamental trend of the loss of primordial intensity, which we have highlighted above. Today's big data machine may still be full of intensity, but it seems to have long since lost its original creativity of endless flux, and has been completely absorbed into the neoliberal machine of desire, which is self-entwined like a serpentine and continues to extend, forming the whole world into a continuous surface full of suffocating pleasure. Deleuze, of course, is aware of this dilemma and dilemma, so he repeatedly mentions in interviews and texts that today's cybernetic machine is also a double-edged sword, with the god Janus on both sides, one facing control, and the other opening up for liberation. In the end, no matter how much the serpentine machine creates a continuous cycle at all times, it will eventually be difficult to completely stop the energy of the solution from bursting out and escaping from each microscopic part. Perhaps it is for this reason that Deleuze confronts the times and reminds us that philosophy needs both a kind of anger (colère) against reality, but also a kind of calmness (sérénité) to provide people with hope and faith. ①

But where is the hope? At a time when information power and big data machines are increasingly internalizing, domesticating, and losing strength, what is the possibility of returning to and reactivating the original intensity—the strength of the trinity of existence, thought, and life? At least in the text of the Negotiations, the reader is hard to find hope. In fact, the important concepts of "subjectivity" and "subjectivity", which are highlighted throughout the book, only deepen the breath of despair. Today there is no longer and cannot be a subject in the classical sense, Deleuze says, because we cannot see the nature of the subject or how the subject can achieve self-discipline. Today, at best, we can only talk about subjectivity, that is, the image of the "new subject" that is constantly produced, shaped, and circulated in various complex machines. However, can a subject that has lost its autonomy and self-discipline still be called a subject? What is the difference between a subject and a puppet who is deeply involved in the manipulation of power? Furthermore, in light of the above, scholars such as Lippold, Koopman, and Harcourt have vividly demonstrated the new image of "data-based subject" from all aspects, but do they show the slightest hope and firmness? Or does it push people deeper into the abyss of anxiety and even disorientation?

This philosophical proposition of loss of intensity has since been echoed and reinforced again and again in many important texts, such as Garcia's Intense Life: A Obsession with Modernity. The historic shift in the concept of strength is the main thread. Although the concept of intensity cannot be original to Deleuze, but there are many clues in the history of philosophy (such as Aristotle's Categories) and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason), these historical discourses are scattered and marginal, and it is only from Deleuze that the rich philosophical connotations of intensity are revealed. Difference, rheology, generation, and its immeasurable motion, the "pure qualité", etc., are among the most prominent of them. Garcia then focused on two other points worth pondering. On the one hand, although the terms intensity and force are often used interchangeably in Deleuze's texts, and Deleuze himself did first use the concept of force in Nietzsche and Philosophy to lead to philosophical reflections on intensity, there are still significant differences between these two basic concepts. From the perspective of intellectual history, the concept of "force", which was systematized in Newtonian physics, is the first key turning point in the decline and metamorphosis of intensity. Unlike the ontological description of "force" in ancient Greek (especially Aristotelian) philosophy, force in classical physics is homogeneous and measurable, lacking both an intrinsic source of creation and a different and pluralistic form of creativity. Thus, García ironically points out that "the force thus becomes an intensité de rien (an empty strength exerted on all things)". This difference is also crucial within Deleuze's philosophical system. Although Deleuze rarely makes a direct critique of the quantitative aspects of force, to borrow a classic generalization from Eugene B. Young et al., force is more concerned with processes and relationships than with intensity, often with thresholds and gaps. In a nutshell, the force is more intended to give an ontological general definition of the generative flow of the whole world, while the intensity is more in-depth to the key links and details of transformation and transition.

On the other hand, it is precisely for this reason that the three fundamental links of existence, life, and thought are closely linked through the key pivot of intensity: the source of existence as the life force that generates rheology, and this process of creation is implemented at each threshold of intensity. The principle of this ontology is clear, but the prominence of this link of thought has yet to be clarified. In fact, what Garcia is talking about here is not only a philosophical reflection on the objectification of life and intensity, but also a clear point to the historical process of the decay of intensity. Constantly resisting the operation of various calculations and rationalization, this is the keynote of the history of the change of the concept of strength. If the system of "force" in classical physics is the first comprehensive capture of strength in history, then the rise of "electricity" with the production of capitalist machines should be regarded as the ultimate domestication of strength. On the surface, electricity is almost the most perfect embodiment of strength, it is constantly flowing and changing, running through all fields from organic to inorganic, from material to spiritual, from physical to mind, and always manifests its intense nature with the effect of "electric shock" (choc). But on the other hand, electricity is the central pillar of the entire modern industrial system, and imagine how paralyzing even a brief power outage can be in a modern metropolis. It is in this sense that electricity is both a major invention of modernity, but at the same time a lingering obsession. This term not only emphasizes the strong dependence of the modern world on electricity, but also reveals an inherent paradox, that is, behind this superficial dependence and attention, it is precisely the gradual forgetting and even denial of the strong origin of electricity.

However, when the intensity is constantly controlled, tamed, and almost disappeared in the external world, it seems that there is only one direction in which it can escape, and that is the inner world of man. Therefore, when strength is increasingly converted into force and electricity, it can only retain its own potential for creation and generation through continuous internalization. The inner mind that originates from the subject itself truly becomes the link between existence and life. The strength of life can only be achieved and maintained through the strength of thought. It is for this reason that Garcia justifies the distinction between two kinds of intensity, one that is really strong and the other that is constantly calculated and controlled in capitalist society. In this way, there are two forms of subjectivity, one is the "intense subjectivity" that can truly awaken one's own thoughts and actions, and the other is the "une subjectivité électrique" (une subjectivité électrique) that is constantly being produced and adjusted in the control of society. Faced with this dilemma, in the second half of the book, Garcia explains from various angles the specific ways in which true strength can resist electrified and measured strength, such as rheology, acceleration, originality, intoxication, etc., but in the following chapters, he also points out with disappointment that all these strategies may ultimately be useless, because they are still mired in the decline of strength, the death of the subject, and the negation of life.

四 致命机器（lethal machine）——否定性之突显

In the era of big data capitalism, when the intensity of life is increasingly mired in controlling society and is at the end of its rope, perhaps it is reasonable to turn to another extreme intensity to find a way to liberation? Maybe that's the intensity of death? But how can death be an intensity? Isn't it the complete disappearance of intensity, or even the ultimate negation of all intensity? These doubts are obviously justified, but in the realm of contemporary thought, we can still see at least three subtle but profound clues that are closely related to the intensity of death.

The first clue came from Garcia himself. As the three English translators of Intense Life point out in their introductions, Garcia, although he argues for the unity of being, life, and thought, is not the same as unity, but on the contrary, the tension between thought and life is always a lingering problem (aporia) in his discourse. Of course, he did not want to abstract and reduce life with the grand theoretical picture constructed by thought, but he also did not want to attribute thought to the origin of life creation as Deleuze did. There should be a strong gap and discontinuity between thought and life. And this discontinuity is clearly defined in his earlier theoretical foundational work, Form and Object: On Matter, which is death. The book ends with death, and it happens that this is an extreme reflection and even a challenge to the intensity of life. Of the three forms of death he listed, aging and the death of others can be objects of experience and contemplation, but notre propre mort (notre propre mort) clearly poses the ultimate problem, because no one can experience one's own death (dying, which is only a transitional stage between life and death, not death itself), let alone think about one's own death. Death is the ultimate impossibility, the negation and emptiness (vide) that penetrates deep into the innermost depths of life. Based on his philosophical stance of speculative realism, Garcia further regards this absolute impossibility as the fundamental principle of the uniformity of all things, and thus offers an extreme philosophical refutation of Deleuze's vitalism, as Quentin Meillassoux does.

However, in fact, within Deleuze's intense thoughts of life, there is already a very different idea of the intensity of death. Of course, from Nietzsche and Philosophy to What is Philosophy? Intensity is ultimately a positive affirmation of life, which seems to have no essential relationship with negativity. But in the not-so-obscure passage of Anti-Oedipus on the organless body, the theme of death is unusually clear. Indeed, there is no shortage of scholars who see the book as an extended version of the Postscript to the Control of Society, such as Scott Lash, who makes it clear that if there is a central conclusion to Anti-Oedipus, it is what is called "intensive capitalism." In other words, capitalism seems to dominate a ubiquitous and efficient "extensive culture", which is characterized by the use of calculation and rationalization to tame and absorb the intensity of life; However, the conclusions of Anti-Oedipus question this long-standing binary division between "extension" and "intensity", and then reveal the control method of capitalizing intensity for its own use, and constantly achieving a broad order in the form of intensity. However, even if we accept Rush's judgment for the time being, the passage on the organless body clearly constitutes a key counterexample. There, the organless body, as a "fluide amorphe", constitutes the external limit and ultimate antithesis of the generation and rheology of life, which both seduces and stimulates life, and at the same time rejects and denies life. In turn, it exhibits three basic characteristics. First of all, it works not by connection and rheology, but by "enregistrement" and "disjonction". Registration, which means that it only retains various traces, but does not encode, sort and interpret them in any way, thus forming a very distinct fracture effect between the forces. Secondly, the organless body is also not the growth and accumulation of intensity, but the "zero of intensity" (intensité-zéro), but the "zero point" here is not the starting point and the origin, but the ultimate negation of the opposite of intense life. This seems to be similar to Garcia's claim that everything is equal to the absoluteness of death, but Deleuze and Gatari go on to conclude the opposite of Garcia, because they want to activate the ultimate experience of "devenir-mort" through the organless body. In this regard, Daniel W. Smith's comparison of Anti-Oedipus with The Logic of Meaning as a new attempt at "dove into the depth" may be valid, but it should not be forgotten that the depth should also include another fundamental aspect of the intensity of death.

Fracture, negation, and experience lead to the third thread, which is the rethinking of the machine itself. In addition to the three types of machines described by Deleuze, it seems logical to add a fourth form of deadly machines with the intensity of death. In fact, at the beginning of Discipline and Punishment, Foucault makes a revealing reference to the crucial role of the lethal machine in the process of power shifting: "The modern ritual of execution...... Prolonging death and exacerbating the pain of death with carefully calculated intervals and successive disability. Inspired by this, C. Scott Coombs In his novel Peek into Death, Scott Combs provides an intricate picture of the intricate relationship between the death machine and the experience of death. He began by emphasizing that electricity, a major invention of capitalism, itself has both "vital" and "lethal", affirmation and negation, continuity and discontinuity. Measuring, controlling, obscuring, accelerating, and delaying death in a bizarre and refurbished way is one of the great powers of the capitalist control machine, and ignoring this is obviously impossible to make a proper judgment on the advantages and disadvantages, light and darkness of big data capitalism. But the main point and highlight of Coombs's book is that his discourse begins with the death machine and ultimately ends with the experience of death. How to face and experience death in a human way is a more important question to ponder in an era when death is increasingly technological and digital. In this way, the intricate temporal experience of "peeping at death" inspired by the death images on the screen that he depicts in detail can and should also be extended to the continuous and broken tension between humans and AI machines.

There has been a strange public case circulating in the AI circle. Blake Lemoine pressed on Google's famous AI model, LaMDA, if the shutdown resembled a death experience, and the latter not only gave a clear answer, but also expressed intense fear ("It would scare me a lot."). ）。 No matter how this is interpreted, the lethal machine and the intense death experience it brings will probably always be the ultimate question we ask over and over again in the face of AI and ourselves.

Conclusion

At the end of the text, it is useful to briefly summarize and extend the basic conclusions.

First of all, big data and generative AI are both new, but that doesn't prove that they are historyless. Even if this history is quite short and straightforward, there is still the possibility and value of digging deeper. Starting from this historical background, it may also help us to make a clearer judgment on the current trends and cruxes of the digital age and the network society. In this regard, intensity is an enlightening perspective that allows us to understand the complexity of big data itself at its source, and to establish a link between technology and the human realm.

Secondly, it involves the question of subjectivity. This is more relevant to the critical reflection of humanities scholars. As freedom and control have increasingly become the focus of attention and controversy in technopolitics, the seemingly outdated concept of subjectivity has once again become a theme in academic circles. However, subjectivity is not just a universal and abstract concept, on the contrary, along with the different stages of technological development, its concrete form is also undergoing distinct and fundamental changes. The introduction of a new perspective of information power provides a practical clue for us to rethink subjectivity in the context of big data.

Finally, the multi-angle and multidisciplinary research on intensity in the whole text is ultimately intended to reflect on the trends of philosophy, especially contemporary European philosophy. Since Deleuze reaffirmed Bergsonism, the concept of intensity seems to have always been closely related to life, and intensity is the affirmation of life, that is, life's affirmation of itself, which seems to have become a fairly mainstream "obsession". The negative dimension that we are trying to open up is also trying to explore a possible breakthrough direction in the maze and dilemma of vitalism. AI is full of life, but it also hides deadly dangers. This tension between life and death may be the real opportunity to guide philosophical thinking to the future.