“[Dis]enchantment: A zine about Esoteric AI” invites you to reimagine what AI is, can be, and should be. It brings together creative contributions, thought-provoking exchanges, and discussions that delve into the relationship between magic and technology—a collection of strange encounters of Esoteric AI.

Esoteric AI disrupts mainstream perceptions of technology, exploring new and old ways of seeing, sensing, and knowing that transcend Western industrial narratives. It reclaims the predictive potential of AI to envision multiple futures, rather than the deterministic one envisioned by “Big Tech,” by asking:

• What is the lineage between fortune telling and our desire to predict the future with AI?
• How does AI shape the way we perceive and understand the world?
• Why do we trust AI systems despite their inner workings being hidden from us?
• What ideas about technology are based on faith more so than facts?

This zine is a hot compost pile of creative contributions, exchanges, and discussions from the Esoteric AI Zine-making Workshop held on July 6, 2024 and compiled by internet teapot as part of the Slow AI project by AIxDESIGN.

A big thank you to all the workshop participants for their amazing contributions! Abe, Dominique, Gabriela, Lena, Nadia Piet, Alexander, Gaby, Tejaswini, Harrie, Valentina, Nedinia, Daphne Palza, Charlotte Muniken, Yanthe, Chetana, Sybil, Will, and Natalia Stanusch.

The Slow AI project seeks to unpack and reimagine alternative narratives for AI, moving beyond Silicon Valley ideologies. Inspired by countermovements like slow fashion and slow food, it aims to subvert corporate-first thinking by collectively exploring new perspectives as pathways to ‘imagine and craft the worlds we cannot live without, just as we dismantle the ones we cannot live within’ (Ruha Benjamin).

Esoteric AI is one of three pathways designed to unpack and inspire alternative visions for AI. Explore the others too.