new thoughts:
What are the Alternative Feminist’s scenarios?
By reading the book Artificial Knowing and recognizing the narrative of the of modern society, industrialization and development of technology is told by specific dominant group/attribute human, namely “white male”, I wonder what could be the alternative scenario of the rest. Of course it is not the war of female v.s. male, and we should not simplify the society by gender category. But what feminist approach points out is the inclusion of everyone and thinking beyond the categorization. As Haraway mentions in her essay “Cyborg Manifesto”, there always exclusion occurs as soon as one tries to categorize. It is not about categorizing who is in what group, and it is not about excluding “white male”. But instead, try to think about the possibility of a society without dominant group, without competing or oppressing the others. From East to West, our society has for long time been operating with this idea of group, class, competition and hierarchy: from Caste systems in India to Slaves in ancient Greeks, Class society in England. It is deep in our mind and not easy to get rid of this ideas. But what if we let ourselves free from this idea and think of alternative?
The current narrative of using A.I. in automation of labor is tied to the idea of industry replacing the labor force with automation, therefor freeing the people from working. This is not only the working class in factory assembly line, but also white collar administrators in offices. This is the idea of industry 4.0. But, isn’t this the narrative of the dominant group, the ones who owns the industry? The promise of “less hours of working” and instead you can do more meaningful things in your freed time does not appear so real. After all the pyramid stays the same, and it is an attempt to replace the bottom layer people with machines/technology… but that does not provide a picture for where these people go.
Instead, I propose to think what if we had alternative history, society… a feminist society (that does not mean everyone is female) where there is no dominant group or category. Imagine if it did not make sense to enslave someone to wash my dishes or clean my house or grow food for me. I wash my own dishes and I clean my own house, because it is a part of me living. I wonder since when human had an idea to externalize these tasks and devalue these tasks? (Andrea Komolosy talks a lot about this history >> https://www.kobakant.at/false-lies/work-the-last-1000-years/)
Imagine if it did not make sense to wish for more or bigger if you already have enough. Why do we have this wired sensation of owning more clothes, owning bigger cars? what are we/you posing?? Why do we/you value this as more attractive? and if so, what is the point of being attractive, anyway?? Can we truly escape from the Capitalist’s Mantra?
Let’s think about the alternative scenario, my scenario. I do not want the others to do my work, I enjoy working, and perhaps, so do you.
But maybe there are also personal reasons why you are not happy with your job. Is it because the workers are compensated unfairly? Is it because the job is physically too strenuous, dirty, unhealthy? Is it because of the human relationships in the work place? Is it because you have something else you want to do?
What if we, each individuals could decide if one wants to automate one’s job with A.I.? and if you do, you get a wearable A.I. that learns how you work and eventually perform your task and replace you from your work. The wage of your AI is your income. In the mean time, you have to teach the A.I. how you do the job. It mimics you, machine learns you. It learns from situated knowledge based on your embodied experience, rather than big data from collective someone. Yes, there will be bias and mistakes and failure as much as we do. It is your apprentice. If it is true that we, the members of society are wishing to be freed from work to do “other things” then eventually we will see more A.I. in our work places. I wonder if I/you will choose to train the A.I.?