Machines Like Us How Silicon Valley Monopolized Our Imagination
Dec 3, 2024
Ruha Benjamin, transdisciplinary scholar who studies the social impacts of science and tech, argues our collective imagination has been captured by Silicon Valley elites. She explores who gets to define progress and the costs of tech hype. Conversations range from alternative forms of intelligence and community VR projects to policy, grassroots imagination, and rebuilding futures centered on solidarity.
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Marketing Masks Concentrated Power
- Tech visions are often marketed as humanitarian while concentrating wealth and power.
- We must discern marketing from the actual redistribution of benefits and harms.
Technology As A Quest For Immortality
- Some tech visions aim to transcend human mortality by merging humans with technology.
- This quest for digital immortality shapes priorities and diverts resources from present needs.
AI’s Narrow, Eugenic Legacy
- AI's dominant definition privileges prediction, control, and a narrow mechanistic intelligence.
- That definition carries eugenic roots linking intelligence to hierarchies of race and class.
