Age of Invisible Machines

CHAPTER 4The Ethics of Experiential AI

I had the extremely good fortune of growing up under the tutelage of family friend (and renowned Canadian philosopher) Marshall McLuhan. A man who more or less predicted the World Wide Web 30 years before it emerged, McLuhan uttered countless powerful and prophetic statements. Here's one that applies readily to experiential AI:

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

”Marshall McLuhan

I thought of this quote recently when I overheard my kids lightly tormenting Alexa for not delivering reasonable answers as quickly as they wanted them. There was nothing particularly alarming about it—after all, Alexa has no feelings to hurt—but it inspired yet another ethics discussion with colleagues.

On one hand, why should we care about how kids treat an inanimate presence that has no semblance of emotion (and really only a semblance of presence)? On the other hand, what does it say about our species if we default to rude or impatient behavior with a conversational interface simply because it can't be offended? Well, we are what we repeatedly do, so we shouldn't get out of practice of being tactful. It's also possible that 50 years from now we will be interacting with machines that do have something approximate to feelings. Through the lens that we might be shaping tools that will end up shaping us, maybe we should at least be pleasant with the machines who assist us throughout the day.

Yet another way to interpret this quote in the ...