"[The obsession with AI] fundamentally has to do with power, and certainly with the power to make life... The people involved in this are men and that they have very idealistic fantasies about creating thinking robots that will ... reach a human level within the next 40 years, quickly become superior to us, and finally realize that they can get along much better without us, and they will take over and we will disappear... This is an expression of a uterus envy." - Joseph Weizenbaum, 1996
@zephoria Yes! See also Mary Baine Campbell's feminist reading of the historical figure of the homunculus https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/publications/rofl/issues/volume-1-issue-2/artificial-men-alchemy-transubstantiation-and
⁂ @zephoria as resources dwindle the rich will want to control them e.g water. And will want to replace humans with robots.
@zephoria I feel like what I'm seeing is much more bleak.
The quote is saying that AI obsession is powered by desire of a few to feel like gods. And that may be so, for a while, when it was within academia. But similar to how the obsession with cryptocurrencies was not about freedom from regulations or anonymity, I think the current AI obsession boils down to a much simpler greed – the same one as the gold rush one.
In their Future
houses will be wired
to spy:
“No thought crimes allowed, sir.
You’ll be coming with us
for regrooving.”
Cats and mice shall play nicely,
or feel the juice
from which none come back
the same.
This is the way the world turns
away from sanity or compassion
as we adapt to be cheaper than robots.