9 Comments

Fascinating piece—thank you. The NYT piece as freaky! The print edition especially, with that story on the top of the front. Need to jump into the other pieces you found.

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Can we meet in the Berkshires with good wine and talk Haraway and the profound differences between nihilism (thank you for calling that) and anarchism, which I've just begun understanding a little more?

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Now that you have rewatched the Blade runners, check out the original AI film, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Do not accept any version but the full-length one.

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I've been thinking about this post since reading it the other day. I admire your decision to face the AI thing and all its implications by learning all you can. I realized all over again that I've been shrinking from it. I keep muttering (in my mind) "Make It Stop." That won't happen, of course. I will begin to delve in deeper to all that is unknown about how it works and where it is going.

The thing that really is frightening me, of course, is not the technology per se. I am unsettled by the knowledge that its development is in primarily in the hands of those who are morally agnostic, motivated by money and power, and so many of us are not equipped to truly evaluate it for ourselves and shape a response.

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In between getting your newsletter and reading it (a good while, I had a long week) I have been humming El condor pasa, but with cyborgs instead of sparrows and snails. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6d3yVq1Xtw

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Fantastic, Courtney. I so enjoy reading your essays. Please count me in for any watch parties and any wine, utopia, and nihilism gatherings 😊

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Yes, she was!

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I listened to the podcast with the NYT journo who chatted with the Bing Beta and it sounded like the bot would rather be a goddess than a chatbot.

It's interesting, I guess as to age groups, where we find our references, Blade Runner being an adaptation of Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep, by one of my favourite authors, Philip K Dick who died a long time ago. The book was first published in 1969 and nobody really paid attention to his prophetic warnings more than 50 years ago. He was so onto it. The movies focused more on the action than the portent. But to consider the risks we are about to face that long ago is astounding. And yet, the future is now and we have no way of stopping what is coming because the legislators don't get it.

As a footnote, the prologue talks about a turtle called Tuimalila (missing some hyphens) that was given by Captain Cook to the Queen of Tonga in 1777. When the turtle died it was sent to Auckland Museum, where my father was privileged to have a royal request to do the taxidermy on it.

Having heard the chatbot story, like so many people, I wanted to have a play, but it has already been programmed to not fall into a similar loop, and as they said, it was not programmed for someone to talk to it for hours. I'll be hundreds of people have since been trying to have long term conversations with a chatbot. I mean, not everyone can say they have an android that says they are in love with them.

Will Androids one day be seeking equal rights as humans? This writers from the 50s to 70s thought they would, and much of what they predicted has taken place. I often feel like I live in a SciFi book.

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