The human-car gestalt, for example, experiences life and has opinions that are quite different from the human-bicycle gestalt, the human-train gestalt or even the bare human with no mode of transportation. What’s possible and what’s desirable for a driver is pretty radically different even to what’s possible or desirable for the same human outside of a car: in individual instances of this happening, we call it road rage, and on a policy scale it leads to things like people getting extremely angry about bike lanes even when said bike lanes would benefit them at all times when they’re not in their car. The human-car gestalt has interests and opinions that are separate from the human in the gestalt, often opposed to them and able to assert them over the human part of the gestalt.
It is an unfortunate fact that, when faced with such an analysis of technology, tech people will often think that for whatever reason the considerations that apply to literally the entire rest of the world of technology somehow don’t apply to them. This kind of overweening arrogance is, of course, why we find ourselves in so much of the shit that we’re in, but nonetheless, to really get my point across it’s probably a good idea to spell out how these dynamics operate in the tech world specifically.
She’s not saying we won’t survive, she’s saying using the technology will change the person using it, software and software culture, and the motivation of people. For the worse, given the nature of them. We’ve survived heaps of shit that made the world worse, maybe we should have resisted cars more? or the machine gun? or leaded petrol?
On this instance right now lots of people are claiming they’re “just a tool” so clearly the idea of gestalts (which can be seen as far back as homer with the famous translation “the blade itself incites to deeds of violence”) bears repeating. Especially given the arrogance of tech and it’s subservience to capital.
The Ukraine thing is whatever, it has no bearing on her actual point.
Did the invention of agriculture change human civilization for the worse because it lead to the establishment of class society? I don’t know, maybe? Thing is it happened and it’s not going away, same as AI (well maybe AI is a bubble and it is going away who the hell knows at this point). Moralizing about this kind of stuff is not something Marxists should do, it’s part of the progression of history whether we find it personally appealing or not, the point is to struggle to steer it into a positive outcome.
Morphine exists and has uses but that doesn’t mean Marxists should use it uncritically or regard its applications in arresting boredom through the same lens as its applications in treating people with physical trauma.
Iris even says that she has found it useful for certain things, but that isn’t an argument for using it uncritically or regarding widespread use as inevitable.
The text is very specifically against the framing that it is some neutral tool.
Yeah, you also shouldn’t turn on your stove and put your face on it but should rather use it to cook food, I feel like this kind of stuff goes without saying. I’m not sure who you’re arguing with here, I don’t think many people on this site would say AI use is always completely neutral and harmless, when people say it’s “just a tool” they mean that it’s not ontologically evil as some people like to portray not that it’s entirely harmless and outside of political consideration, I think we’re just arguing semantics here.
we don’t live metaphysically enough to justify our ethics on this “not ontologically evil” technicality. they’re tools fascists built for us to use so we’d waste our brains away. that’s all that’s available to us, not some utopian worker’s owned singularity.
Tools change how we think and what our motivations are. The very use of morphine sociologically creates recreational morphine users, motivates us to farm poppies and guard the fields with violence and shit. You can’t have one without the other.
A human-stove gestalt isn’t motivated to put their face on it. But they are motivated to desire fire codes, home kitchens, exhaust fans, and in older times a right to absolutely fuck air quality. Or consider how the human-gas stove gestalt is motivated to push back against air quality safety regulations given the academic evidence that they cause harm. It should be a no brainer to just not hurt yourself and your family and change technologies, but habituation has changed motivations to the extend that the human-gas stove gestalt wants things that actively harm the human.
It’s not some abstract point. A human-llm gestalt will want different things, many of which may be harmful and if you use these things you need to be aware and avoid it. Like avoiding becoming carbrained when using a car. Idealistic vibes aren’t enough, we need systems and rules and politics or it will be the motor vehicle again.