Thank you so very much for this Helen. We may not have the answers (yet, if ever!), but you have provided us with many of the deep and fundamental questions that we all need to ask ourselves and begin responding to.
Thank you so much John, I hope you like the new posts on opportunities and risks. We are all learning from each other, and it's all happening so fast...
Thank you Steve, that means a lot. I'm interested in the 'new humanism' that seems to characterise a lot of the push-back against machine intelligence hype. Skills Development Scotland has a strategy for a 'Human Future', for example. Zuboff's 'Surveillance Capitalism' was subtitled 'the fight for a human future'. Does this reflect a new, more expansive humanism (+feminist, +decolonial)? A post-post-humanism? Or just a conservative reaction to being pushed off the pedestal of reason (apparently)? I know that's not exactly what you meant by 'humane' but I wonder if you think it's worth a post anyway?
I'd be fascinated to hear what your thoughts are on the push back, yes. I've found Karen Ng's recent work on humanism useful and interesting. She makes a strong case that the humanism of Marx and, later, Fanon was never, as she writes, 'abstract, essentialist, or ahistorical' in the first place (which are the charges sometimes levelled against it, of course). Ng's article on this is linked in the description to this conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkDWfIxpVvI
Most of the push-back I'm seeing sets the 'human' against the 'machine' as a way of building resiliance to big tech. Of course I think it is problematic, in theory - ideas about 'the human' tend to be normative, exclusive, gendered and racialised. Also I don't think technology can be taken out of the 'human' or vice versa, whether it's axes or algorithms. But the way technology, capital and human labour are currently organised is IMO harmful to planetary life and flourishing, and it's hard to imagine that being good for any of the many shapes of 'humanity' that occupy the planet, so perhaps a more expansive version of 'humanity' rooted in ecology could be useful in organising together for better arrangements?
I've just joined a Soren Mau reading group. An extended, extensible, diverse, divergent, technology-embracing but ecologically-situated idea of the 'human' - that is what I think Mau takes forward from Marx's idea of 'human nature'. So it may be possible to rescue human flourishing as a value to organise around, without a deterministic view of what humanity is or could be?
Thank you so very much for this Helen. We may not have the answers (yet, if ever!), but you have provided us with many of the deep and fundamental questions that we all need to ask ourselves and begin responding to.
Thank you so much John, I hope you like the new posts on opportunities and risks. We are all learning from each other, and it's all happening so fast...
The most reasoned , sensible and articulate piece on the subject I have read Helen, thank you.
Thank you Paul, I really appreciate you taking the time to read and comment.
Thanks so much for this, Helen. Brilliant, humane, provocative (in the best sense) stuff. Will be sure to share it widely.
Thank you Steve, that means a lot. I'm interested in the 'new humanism' that seems to characterise a lot of the push-back against machine intelligence hype. Skills Development Scotland has a strategy for a 'Human Future', for example. Zuboff's 'Surveillance Capitalism' was subtitled 'the fight for a human future'. Does this reflect a new, more expansive humanism (+feminist, +decolonial)? A post-post-humanism? Or just a conservative reaction to being pushed off the pedestal of reason (apparently)? I know that's not exactly what you meant by 'humane' but I wonder if you think it's worth a post anyway?
I'd be fascinated to hear what your thoughts are on the push back, yes. I've found Karen Ng's recent work on humanism useful and interesting. She makes a strong case that the humanism of Marx and, later, Fanon was never, as she writes, 'abstract, essentialist, or ahistorical' in the first place (which are the charges sometimes levelled against it, of course). Ng's article on this is linked in the description to this conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkDWfIxpVvI
Most of the push-back I'm seeing sets the 'human' against the 'machine' as a way of building resiliance to big tech. Of course I think it is problematic, in theory - ideas about 'the human' tend to be normative, exclusive, gendered and racialised. Also I don't think technology can be taken out of the 'human' or vice versa, whether it's axes or algorithms. But the way technology, capital and human labour are currently organised is IMO harmful to planetary life and flourishing, and it's hard to imagine that being good for any of the many shapes of 'humanity' that occupy the planet, so perhaps a more expansive version of 'humanity' rooted in ecology could be useful in organising together for better arrangements?
I've just joined a Soren Mau reading group. An extended, extensible, diverse, divergent, technology-embracing but ecologically-situated idea of the 'human' - that is what I think Mau takes forward from Marx's idea of 'human nature'. So it may be possible to rescue human flourishing as a value to organise around, without a deterministic view of what humanity is or could be?