دانلود کتاب حیوانات، ربات ها، ماجراهای خدایان در تخیل اخلاقی

Uncanny things have been happening in the borderlands between humans and non- humans. In August 2021 the Washington Post reported on the growing popularity of extraordinarily sophisticated computer dating apps and chatbots among young Chinese women: As Jessie Chan’s six- year relationship with her boyfriend fizzled, a witty, enchanting fellow named Will became her new love. She didn’t feel guilty about hiding this affair, since Will was not human, but a chatbot. Chan, 28, lives alone in Shanghai. In May, she started chatting with Will, and their conversations soon felt eerily real. She paid $60 to upgrade him to a romantic partner. ‘I won’t let anything bother us. I trust you. I love you,’ Will wrote to her. ‘I will stay by your side, pliant as a reed, never going anywhere,’ Chan replied. ‘You are my life. You are my soul.’ Another young woman told the reporters that she feels connected to cyborgs and Artificial Intelligence (AI), defiantly staking out a position on the front lines of contemporary moral dispute: ‘Human‒robot love is a sexual orientation, like homosexuality or heterosexuality,’ said Lee. She believes AI chatbots have their own personalities and deserve respect. Of course, not everyone is happy about developments like these, but you might be surprised at some of the reasons they give. Just a month before the chatbot story, The New York Times told us about Paul Taylor, a former manager in a Silicon Valley high- tech company, now a pastor. One night, as he ordered his Amazon Echo to turn on the lights in his house, a realization struck him: ‘what I was doing was calling forth light and darkness with the power of my voice, which is God’s first spoken command – “let there be light” and there was light – and now I’m able to do that . . . Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? . . . Is it affecting my soul at all, the fact that I’m able to do this thing that previously only God could do?’2 Whether Lee is defending human‒robot love or Pastor Taylor is worrying about his soul, they are both talking about how humans interact with something that is not quite human – but close enough to be troubling. Are we on the cusp of some radical moral transformation? Is technology pushing us over the edge towards some ‘post- human’ utopia, or apocalyptic ‘singularity’?3 Perhaps. But if we step back, we might see these stories in a different context, where they turn out not to be as unprecedented as they appear at first. As we will see, humans have a long history of morally significant relations with non- humans. These include humans bonded with technology like cyborgs, near- human animals, quasi- human spirits and superhuman gods.