Episode 2 UberTherapy
Alex “A lot of the definitions of intelligence, including AGI , have this history and often reduced to eugenics….the slippage that we see is when intelligence is equated with levels of consciousness, when some people are considered sub-human. In the discussions around intelligence many people have never been ‘human’ and we know those are people who have been subject to colonisation, black and brown people, people with disabilities. Eugenicist history started in the UK, got taken up in the US, got copied in Nazi Germany and now we’re trafficking in so much more of that as we have these conversations [about AI].”
Elizabeth “….I really admire the way you traverse these huge areas of thinking in your book and are brave to make these connections because this is about political economy. It’s also about eugenics, its about race and about discrimination and about the weaponisation of mental health during austerity where a lot of these systems were designed precisely for attrition. They were designed precisely not to give people the treatment and care they needed.”
Amy “….I appreciate that and also we’re not alone in that and to give your audience some other pointers. So I’m thinking of Ruha Bejamin’s book Race After Technology which is a fantastic resource. To me Timnet Gebru and Emile Torres document these connections to today’s AGI discourse and eugenics in their paper on the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies and there’s the recent film The Ghost in the Machine…..not just the connections between what we call artificial intelligence and eugenics but going all the way back to the founding of statistics which is an important input into AI and its roots in eugenics.”
Stories of UberTherapy is a series of six recorded conversations with therapists, social justice activists, trade unionists and progressive tech campaigners to ask if a MuchBetter.Help is possible.
In Episode 2 UberTherapy Alex Hanna (DAIR) & Emily M Bender (University of Washington), authors of The AI Con, explore the hype around AI.
Hosted by James Farrar, Linda Michaels and Elizabeth Cotton on 11 September 6.30-7.30pm you are invited to attend the launch of our podcast series based around the six chapters of UberTherapy: The new business of mental health.
To read about the podcast series & book your tickets go to www.muchbetter.help
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Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into how to understand so-called AI technologies.
Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, a proponent of community-based uses of technology, and a highly sought-after speaker and expert who has been featured across the media, including articles in the Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Time.
*GabSpace graphics designed by Austin Hughes, The American Psychoanalyst tapmagazine.org
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