“When people try to sell you on the idea that the future is already settled, it is because it is deeply unsettled. And I think about this a lot right now because I think that, you know, this promise of an artificial intelligence future is really just a collective anxiety that very wealthy powerful people have about how well they’re going to be able to control us in the future. If they can get us to accept that the future’s already settled, AI is already here, the end is already here, then we will create that for them. My most daring idea is to refuse.
I mean, their proposal for a post-human future is one where there will be human beings who will just be treated inhumanely. We’re not going to stop making people or humans. They’re just saying we are not going to treat you as humans. And I refuse.”
— Tressie McMillan Cottom