Tag: capitalism
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Cold equations in the care vacuum
In a nutshell, over-reliance on computer ‘carers’, none of which can really care, would be a betrayal of the user’s human dignity – a fourth-level need in Maslow’s hierarchy. In the early days of AI, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum made himself very unpopular with his MIT colleagues by saying as much. ‘To substitute a…
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There are no valid futurisms or futurologies
The science fictional project is mainly a historical project, and to the extent there is any such thing as a futurological project, that would also be a historical project, so this isn’t a good distinction to try to make. I don’t think there are any valid futurisms or futurologies. I think most people who describe…
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One discipline seeps into another
Rejecting the traditional Marxist idea that the working classes were the seedbed of change, [Deleuze and Guattari] wanted a broader umbrella under which to unite all marginalised groups. They claimed that those oppressed by patriarchy (women), racism (people of colour) and heteronormativity (what we’d now call the LGBT community) were all suffering thanks to the…
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Recognise the firm beyond the corporation
Firms are best understood as political entities, rather than merely economic organizations. Of course they have economic dimensions. But saying that they are merely economic organisations would be as reductive as to say that states are merely economic organizations. A firm certainly contains the legal structures of capital investment – this is what the legal…
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Systematized instrumental rationality
So AI and capitalism are merely two offshoots of something more basic, let՚s call it systematized instrumental rationality, and are now starting to reconverge. Maybe capitalism with AI is going to be far more powerful and dangerous than earlier forms – that՚s certainly a possibility. My only suggestion is that instead of viewing superempowered AIs…