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"The bargain we are being asked to ratify" – AI as technological bribery
“The bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent bribe.”- Lewis Mumford (1964) Something has changed. At least in the way that AI is publicly discussed. Where for a …
Provided the consumer agrees to accept what megatechnics offers, in quantities favorable to the continued expansion of the whole power system, he will be granted all the perquisites, privileges, seductions, and pleasures of the affluent society. In his expounding on the “bribe,” Mumford recognized that it was a dead end to pick apart the pros and cons of each particular doodad on offer—and that engaging in that kind of evaluation ultimately redounded back to the benefit of the power system itself. For Mumford the point was not so much to blast the various goods doled out by the bribe as cheap consumer grade garbage, but to highlight how these things derived their value from genuinely embodying some small share of technological power.
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