Presence Lost in a world of Automata

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Abstract:

What will day-to-day life feel like if AI triumphs?

I was walking along Carlton’s Rathdowne Street on a sunny but crisp lateautumn morning, enjoying the play of moist-aired light on its modern and ‘historic’ buildings, on the moving figures of other pedestrians, and on the yellowing foliage of the lines of plane and oak trees that flank and divide what should really be Rathdowne Boulevard. Traffic moved past me in a regular but not dense post-peak-hour flow. At this point a previous train of thought resumed and I imagined that the passing cars were driverless, robotic automata, a good few of them even without passengers. Phantasmal delivery drones peppered the sky above the roadway. The fantasy quickly passed, but a quiet creepiness had entered the scene.

Details / PDF:

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