The Good Robot
Join Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney as they ask the experts: what is good technology? Is ‘good’ technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? Each week, they invite scholars, industry practitioners, activists, and more to provide their unique perspective on what feminism can bring to the tech industry and the way that we think about technology. With each conversation, The Good Robot asks how feminism can provide new perspectives on technology’s biggest problems.
The Good Robot
Transhumanism and Existential Risk with Josh Schuster and Derek Woods
Ever worried that AI will wipe out humanity? Ever dreamed of merging with AI? Well these are the primary concerns of transhumanism and existential risk, which you may not have heard of, but whose key followers include Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence. But Joshua Schuster and Derek Woods have pointed out that there are serious problems with transhumanism’s dreams and fears, including its privileging of human intelligence above all other species, its assumption that genocides are less important than mass extinction events, and its inability to be historical when speculating about the future. They argue that if we really want to make the world and its technologies less risky, we should instead encourage cooperation, and participation in social and ecological issues.