Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explains how today’s powerful AI technologies work like mirrors designed to show us who we are, and who we will become, while threatening the very self-knowledge and possibilities for the future that they promise to reveal. The companies that forge our data into these mirrors market them as windows into our future, predicting what we will do, what we will say, what we will consume, and what we will believe. Yet as this chapter explains, because the data used to make these predictions reflect the unsustainable patterns of our past, these mirrors don’t foretell the future; in fact, they endanger it. Dispelling overhyped fears of our extinction at the hands of malevolent AI overlords, this chapter outlines the real existential threat to our humanity posed by our increasingly distorted relationships to these tools. Taking inspiration from ancient mythology and modern philosophy, this chapter is a call to reclaim the humane potential of AI technologies—and our ability to make our own futures—by refusing to be captured in their frame.

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