Media practitioner, Communications consultant, Professor. I help you to engage credible with people. I'm committed to international and Indo-German relations.
“We need to develop empathy for machines!”, when I heard this postulate, I faltered in my steps. How about we turn this perspective around and first “stand up to our burdens", as a friend of mine recently put it. We were talking about corporate responsibility and how we can communicate this social responsibility. This would require going to a deeper level of thinking and asking uncomfortable questions. And, yes, that approach is rather on top of my mind too. But, the subordination of attention to externally controlled algorithms means that fewer and fewer citizens are willing to engage with the history of the concepts and causal relationships that shape our social and personal experience. Guys, don't forget, there is a huge treasure of analog knowledge out there and we humans are first and foremost analog humans in a physical reality. So, for only a glance at the long history of "empathy" tells us that "empathy" is a complex assemblage of human judgment and aesthetic imagination. In short, empathy is a "quasi-feeling", a complex mental state that is interwoven with that of another person. Note that “empathy” as a method is aimed at a single person, whereas algorithms and AI systems are aimed at generalized groups (aka filter bubbles). This is already the first major problem with this simple-sounding call to be empathetic with machines. And another, among others: Can we simply transfer our empathic imagination to a robot without human consciousness, and is that even desirable and why? I doubt it, however, but all these deep questions would first have to be discussed and researched. I therefore think it is premature to talk about empathy for machines while we manage the lack of human empathy and conceal the costs of AI farms, blockchain mining, energy hunger and migration caused by global climate extremes and wars. After all, we see how people and societies today are overwhelmed by algorithm-driven attention machines, powerless and frightened in the incessant feeding of short content, unable to distinguish between true and false, analog and synthetic world experiences. Bottom line Before we think of developing empathy for machines, we should be able to rethink and understand how empathy works and how and why we first would need to empower ourselves to be empathetic towards ourselves, other people, living beings and nature. Therefore, I am in favor of first re-learning the concept of "moral empathy". Empathy for robots and machines follows then, maybe, like the cherry on the cake. It tastes best when it's there (at all). #Empathy #Communications #Digitalethics
Solidity Labs
3mo
I appreciate your thoughtful reflection on empathy and its implications for our relationship with technology. #solidity #soliditylabs #blockchaindevelopment
Zertifizierte Coach und Medienfrau
3moDear Marie Elisabeth, you have described it fantastically! I fully agree with you and I thank you for the differentiated view of this topic and the apt arguments you are offering here!