Chiang's work explores the interestingness of consciousness. His baseline is that robots don't have them. So, I think it's not surprising that he's not hot on AI. I'm interested in your defense of it. I wonder about the premise of "its labor-saving promises." This has not been my experience with the innovation. It's made me work much harder. I think the idea of "less work" is a white male (sorry!) fantasy, one which I heard especially around quarantine, when the idea of being served by first responders is kind of a childhood regression of the need for a mother. Most people who do the providing feel very differently about labor, myself included, which is that to have paid labor with integrity is the basis of self-esteem and community and connection. I don't think AI is incompatible with this need. But if it's not directed toward the needs of people who would least profit from the product, it will only become another capitalistic tool.
Thanks for reading and thinking this through and responding. I like what you have to say about labor, and I agree with you and the critics that AI will not be labor saving, just labor changing. (I'll take "less work" being a male fantasy; whether it's white is irrelevant in my opinion -- that's a whole different sociologial thread though.) Chat bots are already right now passing the turing test for many people who are developing affective relationships to them. When wedded to robots you may get uses that accord with your ideas of "providers" in the caretaking sense. For myself, I'm curious about what it looks like when those entities begin to "provide" for themselves, and will we recognize it when it happens?
I get where you're coming from and thanks for your reply. I think I stand by my statement that the wish for independence (as opposed to interdependence) is fundamentally privileged and possibly colonialist. I didn't know about the turning test news; I will have to explore!
Chiang's work explores the interestingness of consciousness. His baseline is that robots don't have them. So, I think it's not surprising that he's not hot on AI. I'm interested in your defense of it. I wonder about the premise of "its labor-saving promises." This has not been my experience with the innovation. It's made me work much harder. I think the idea of "less work" is a white male (sorry!) fantasy, one which I heard especially around quarantine, when the idea of being served by first responders is kind of a childhood regression of the need for a mother. Most people who do the providing feel very differently about labor, myself included, which is that to have paid labor with integrity is the basis of self-esteem and community and connection. I don't think AI is incompatible with this need. But if it's not directed toward the needs of people who would least profit from the product, it will only become another capitalistic tool.
Thanks for reading and thinking this through and responding. I like what you have to say about labor, and I agree with you and the critics that AI will not be labor saving, just labor changing. (I'll take "less work" being a male fantasy; whether it's white is irrelevant in my opinion -- that's a whole different sociologial thread though.) Chat bots are already right now passing the turing test for many people who are developing affective relationships to them. When wedded to robots you may get uses that accord with your ideas of "providers" in the caretaking sense. For myself, I'm curious about what it looks like when those entities begin to "provide" for themselves, and will we recognize it when it happens?
I get where you're coming from and thanks for your reply. I think I stand by my statement that the wish for independence (as opposed to interdependence) is fundamentally privileged and possibly colonialist. I didn't know about the turning test news; I will have to explore!