I think having a "pet" robot is another of those "infinite variety" promises that actually display only one world-view. I don't want to project onto a machine. I liked my dog because I did not control her. Yes, sure she was well-behaved, but she liked to run deer at night and come back half crazy and ready to be grounded. She was beautiful on the sofa, with crossed paws. She fought with raccoons over who owned the garbage can. She was by turns warm and cozy and brave and feisty. She was not the invention of some 25-year-old white guy. Must my whole life be taken over by these already-imagined routes of life experience-- routes not imagined by someone like me?
On reflection I think you've captured the essence of people's unease with AI -- this sense that our lives are being reshaped by people with a limited sense of what a human life can be. The intrusion of supposed rationality into more and more of our experience. Maybe part of why this feels like a new Industrial Revolution. The first one did the same thing -- changing daily life, family structure, people's sense of what what was possible for the worse. That revolution reached into people's homes. This one is reaching into their heads.
I agree. It does feel like the disruption of the Industrial Revolution. The Spinning Jenny has a lot to answer for. Take a look at the political mess of Africa, and then realize you are looking at the long-term effects of the Industrial Revolution. What are the long-term effects of having machine friends rather than human friends? So much easier. So much more predictable. So ridiculously one-dimensional.
I am writing my comment in a pink dialogue box. It has rounded corners. I hate rounded corners. But I have been forced to look at them for years because someone decided, after much research, that they keep the reader reading. Everywhere I turn, my world is being shaped by rounded corners, and right now I can either learn to ignore them, or I can live in a hut wearing home-woven textiles. Increasingly, we live in a world of unseen rounded corners.
But, on the up side: Do you know the work of Heather Snyder Quinn? She's punching back with her future-casting. But she is way outnumbered.
I actually wrote a piece about this some years ago, which the magazine in question never ran. I wanted to understand design decisions that made our experience worse -- not a matter of taste, but rather things like having to type your email address twice or give your state to a website that has already collected your zip code. Or be forced to identify the fire hydrants before you can pay your bill.
Some of these frustrations are deliberate manipulations, like making it easy to subscribe and hard to cancel, or putting the thing you want far from where your eye goes, so you spend more time on a site. Those are what they call "dark pattern" strategies. But others are simply the inertia and grit that all human institutions develop. We type our emails twice because someone in 1991 decided that would prevent errors. Did they have evidence? Who knows? We have to identify our state *and* our zip code because it's cheaper for the company to ask than it is to maintain a huge database of zip codes. Mediocrity and unwillingness to rock the boat have been digitized along with everything else.
I don't know Heather Snyder Quinn. I'll look her up. In turn, you might be interested in Chris Nodder's "Evil By Design."
I am sure many an economist would tell us that the first IR was a success, because today billions of people are alive and not dying of starvation or plague or cholera, and maybe even experiencing some contentment. It wasn't a great deal for the first generations to experience it, though.
I think the machine substitutes will appear after our lifetimes. And one of the obstacles will be the difficulty of creating surprise and even defiance. Because we can't love something that always does what we expect. I was surprised to learn recently that people in robotics are already studying how and when to make a robot that won't just do what we say. Ie, more like a real animal. But, again, this is a long way off. I am not sad that I will miss it. I like my rambunctious cats as they are.
I think having a "pet" robot is another of those "infinite variety" promises that actually display only one world-view. I don't want to project onto a machine. I liked my dog because I did not control her. Yes, sure she was well-behaved, but she liked to run deer at night and come back half crazy and ready to be grounded. She was beautiful on the sofa, with crossed paws. She fought with raccoons over who owned the garbage can. She was by turns warm and cozy and brave and feisty. She was not the invention of some 25-year-old white guy. Must my whole life be taken over by these already-imagined routes of life experience-- routes not imagined by someone like me?
On reflection I think you've captured the essence of people's unease with AI -- this sense that our lives are being reshaped by people with a limited sense of what a human life can be. The intrusion of supposed rationality into more and more of our experience. Maybe part of why this feels like a new Industrial Revolution. The first one did the same thing -- changing daily life, family structure, people's sense of what what was possible for the worse. That revolution reached into people's homes. This one is reaching into their heads.
You have put your finger on it.
I agree. It does feel like the disruption of the Industrial Revolution. The Spinning Jenny has a lot to answer for. Take a look at the political mess of Africa, and then realize you are looking at the long-term effects of the Industrial Revolution. What are the long-term effects of having machine friends rather than human friends? So much easier. So much more predictable. So ridiculously one-dimensional.
I am writing my comment in a pink dialogue box. It has rounded corners. I hate rounded corners. But I have been forced to look at them for years because someone decided, after much research, that they keep the reader reading. Everywhere I turn, my world is being shaped by rounded corners, and right now I can either learn to ignore them, or I can live in a hut wearing home-woven textiles. Increasingly, we live in a world of unseen rounded corners.
But, on the up side: Do you know the work of Heather Snyder Quinn? She's punching back with her future-casting. But she is way outnumbered.
I actually wrote a piece about this some years ago, which the magazine in question never ran. I wanted to understand design decisions that made our experience worse -- not a matter of taste, but rather things like having to type your email address twice or give your state to a website that has already collected your zip code. Or be forced to identify the fire hydrants before you can pay your bill.
Some of these frustrations are deliberate manipulations, like making it easy to subscribe and hard to cancel, or putting the thing you want far from where your eye goes, so you spend more time on a site. Those are what they call "dark pattern" strategies. But others are simply the inertia and grit that all human institutions develop. We type our emails twice because someone in 1991 decided that would prevent errors. Did they have evidence? Who knows? We have to identify our state *and* our zip code because it's cheaper for the company to ask than it is to maintain a huge database of zip codes. Mediocrity and unwillingness to rock the boat have been digitized along with everything else.
I don't know Heather Snyder Quinn. I'll look her up. In turn, you might be interested in Chris Nodder's "Evil By Design."
I am sure many an economist would tell us that the first IR was a success, because today billions of people are alive and not dying of starvation or plague or cholera, and maybe even experiencing some contentment. It wasn't a great deal for the first generations to experience it, though.
I think the machine substitutes will appear after our lifetimes. And one of the obstacles will be the difficulty of creating surprise and even defiance. Because we can't love something that always does what we expect. I was surprised to learn recently that people in robotics are already studying how and when to make a robot that won't just do what we say. Ie, more like a real animal. But, again, this is a long way off. I am not sad that I will miss it. I like my rambunctious cats as they are.
Glad to miss that!