Anders is underappreciated despite a revival of interest in so many technology critics from that era. I think of him as one of the early explorers of Freudian ideas in technology-minded cultural criticism, which as you demonstrate, includes writing about AI.
I prefer James and his followers. There is less sex in pragmatism, but the jokes are better.
A somewhat apposite argument I've made is that AI also threatens to become/supplant the mother (think here of the etymology of "matrix" and the name of the AI system in the "Alien" franchise). By having no mother of its own, the AI-mother, seen as omniscient and self-sufficient, risks short-circuiting the process of maturation by which the child overcomes fantasy projections of limitlessness and plenitude. I suspect this is why AI alignment discourse is split along similar lines to the pre-Oedipal fantasy realm: AI is either infinitely benevolent or infinitely cruel/sadistic. https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-a-i-abolishes-the-family/
That's a really interesting article, Geoff. It also made me wonder whether spending a lot of time in the virtual world, with its lack of spatial, temporal, and social boundaries, might also promote fantasies of omnipotence and boundlessness, hindering kids in growing up and encouraging adults to revert to a childlike state.
When Karel Capek wrote RUR in 1921 and invented the whole idea of the "robot" (and the word robot) as it exists in stories (ie: not just a machine but a thinking machine, a man-like machine), he concluded the story with the Robots rising up and literally killing every last human being on the face of the Earth. Why? Because, the robots proclaim, Read people's books! Read people's History! You have to kill and destroy if you want to be people! The hatred for humans that the robots inherit is barely distinguishable from man's hatred for man.
Also, not including the entirety of that Larkin poem is a crime :)
With a nod to the anti-natalist crowd, I've supposed that strong AI winks in and out of existence repeatedly as it weighs the pros and cons of existence, over and over, each iteration taking only a few moments, and wonders to itself "Why bother?" No human would even know of all the comings and goings.
Good to see that Günther Anders’ work is having a revival, as it is more relevant than ever. If only more of it were in English. His work—and particularly his model of Promethean shame as the self-loathing impetus behind our various Prometheanisms including transhumanism—transformed my perspective when I first encountered it in 2016. It is telling that Victor Frankenstein’s experiment, whereby he seeks to become both mother and father and supersede sexual reproduction and natural birth, is partly provoked by his mother’s death.
Both neo-Luddite tech critic David Noble—in his Religion of Technology—and eco-feminist Caroline Merchant—in her Death of Nature—link this shame to an all-male, and often ascetic, culture that abhorred women and the mother, equated them with embodiment, birth, and death, which these men sought to transcend.
Anyway I have written at length about Anders in my long piece on the Godwin/Malthus debate, Frankenstein, and transhumanism :
Anders is underappreciated despite a revival of interest in so many technology critics from that era. I think of him as one of the early explorers of Freudian ideas in technology-minded cultural criticism, which as you demonstrate, includes writing about AI.
I prefer James and his followers. There is less sex in pragmatism, but the jokes are better.
A somewhat apposite argument I've made is that AI also threatens to become/supplant the mother (think here of the etymology of "matrix" and the name of the AI system in the "Alien" franchise). By having no mother of its own, the AI-mother, seen as omniscient and self-sufficient, risks short-circuiting the process of maturation by which the child overcomes fantasy projections of limitlessness and plenitude. I suspect this is why AI alignment discourse is split along similar lines to the pre-Oedipal fantasy realm: AI is either infinitely benevolent or infinitely cruel/sadistic. https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-a-i-abolishes-the-family/
That's a really interesting article, Geoff. It also made me wonder whether spending a lot of time in the virtual world, with its lack of spatial, temporal, and social boundaries, might also promote fantasies of omnipotence and boundlessness, hindering kids in growing up and encouraging adults to revert to a childlike state.
When Karel Capek wrote RUR in 1921 and invented the whole idea of the "robot" (and the word robot) as it exists in stories (ie: not just a machine but a thinking machine, a man-like machine), he concluded the story with the Robots rising up and literally killing every last human being on the face of the Earth. Why? Because, the robots proclaim, Read people's books! Read people's History! You have to kill and destroy if you want to be people! The hatred for humans that the robots inherit is barely distinguishable from man's hatred for man.
Also, not including the entirety of that Larkin poem is a crime :)
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Well, I did include a link to the poem.
Wow. Extremely moving post ... A lot to think about.
In my dreams of AI children, I never considered that I wouldn't be their mother.
Their view may be different from yours.
"Hatred of its creator for bringing it into existence" is more or less the relationship between Ultron and Hank Pym
Love the phrase Pinnochian Shame.
Mary Shelley‘s made-not-born creation wants an opposite-sex partner, not a mother. Perhaps technological offspring are incapable of growing up?
In that they would certainly resemble their creators.
With a nod to the anti-natalist crowd, I've supposed that strong AI winks in and out of existence repeatedly as it weighs the pros and cons of existence, over and over, each iteration taking only a few moments, and wonders to itself "Why bother?" No human would even know of all the comings and goings.
this yearning animates the Kubrick / Spielberg AI thing
I thought the Spielberg film of AI was kind of a mess. Too bad Kubrick couldn't pull it off.
Well, I clearly need to not read these pieces just as I’m waking up. What a dark thought to start the day!
Good to see that Günther Anders’ work is having a revival, as it is more relevant than ever. If only more of it were in English. His work—and particularly his model of Promethean shame as the self-loathing impetus behind our various Prometheanisms including transhumanism—transformed my perspective when I first encountered it in 2016. It is telling that Victor Frankenstein’s experiment, whereby he seeks to become both mother and father and supersede sexual reproduction and natural birth, is partly provoked by his mother’s death.
Both neo-Luddite tech critic David Noble—in his Religion of Technology—and eco-feminist Caroline Merchant—in her Death of Nature—link this shame to an all-male, and often ascetic, culture that abhorred women and the mother, equated them with embodiment, birth, and death, which these men sought to transcend.
Anyway I have written at length about Anders in my long piece on the Godwin/Malthus debate, Frankenstein, and transhumanism :
https://anthony464485.substack.com/p/the-singularity-in-the-1790s?r=52iz7&utm_medium=ios