The AI Mirror: Reclaiming our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

The new interdisciplinary field of AI ethics has revealed the extent to which AI systems tend to reflect back and amplify human vices: our unfair biases and discriminatory behaviours, our penchant for consuming and spreading misinformation, and our tendency to pursue narrow gains while losing sight of the bigger picture. While this is true, the mirror metaphor conveys the misleading and dangerous impression that AI merely captures and replicates our humanity in software. Yet we all know that a mirror does not capture the embodied human presence. Glass mirrors erase and occlude much of our material and conscious reality. Mirror images convey no smell, no depth, no softness, no fear, no hope, no imagination. What does the AI mirror occlude? In this talk I explore the dimensions of our humanity that AI's transformation of the socioeconomic and moral order makes it harder for us to see in ourselves and in one another, and why our futures depend upon bringing these vital aspects of our humanity back into view.