Are we the robots? Finding human connection in a digital world

There is a lot of dystopian fiction that imagines a future where artificial intelligence enslaves or erases humanity. It’s not just fiction writers either. The late Professor Stephen Hawking interviewed by the BBC in 2014 said: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”; and the definitely-not-late Elon Musk has said AI is: “our biggest existential threat”.

But maybe we have become the robots? with an increasing dependency on the digital world we have created?

We have been thinking a lot about this, especially in the world of work in 2020 and 2021, when coronavirus booted us out of The Curiosity Society offices into a cycle of nomadic, home-based, digital working. It means we’ve tried extra hard not to become the robots by being politely rebellious with the digital platforms we use, preserving the humanity of our connections and our sanity as social, three-dimensional creatures.

This is one of our favourite ways of thinking about what makes our connections human:

With thanks to everyone at DeeprDesign, you can play with making your own version here https://app.mural.co/t/hollymaymahoney4872/m/hollymaymahoney4872/1589293949558/a9002705c2dacac9f0361bb7bf77cd6900aa66f4

And, here’s a longer read about the future of remote digital work and how we might do it better by making it more, well, human. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remote-work-be-fixed