Raising Artificial Intelligences Like Children
Over the weekend, I listened to this podcast conversation between the psychologist & philosopher Alison Gopnik and writer Ted Chiang about using children’s learning as a model for developing AI systems. Around the 23-minute mark, Gopnik observes that care relationships (child care, elder care, etc.) are extremely important to people but is nearly invisible in economics. And then Chiang replies:
One of the ways that conventional economics sort of ignores care is that for every employee that you hire, there was an incredible amount of labor that went into that employee. That’s a person! And how do you make a person? Well, for one thing, you need several hundred thousand hours of effort to make a person. And every employee that any company hires is the product of hundreds of thousands of hours of effort. Which, companies… they don’t have to pay for that!
They are reaping the benefits of an incredible amount of labor. And if you imagine, in some weird kind of theoretical sense, if you had to actually pay for the raising of everyone that you would eventually employ, what would that look like?
It’s an interesting conversation throughout — recommended!
Chiang has written some of my favorite things on AI in recent months/years, including this line that’s become one of my guiding principles in thinking about AI: “I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism.”
Discussion 7 comments
I couldn't get this one to play in Overcast - I guess you have to use the web or their app?
Anyway, apologies if this was discussed on the podcast, but your post immediately made me think of how Chiang discussed this in his story "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" from Exhalation.
The protagonist thinks of this AI entity (Jax) almost like her child, but the platform that hosts Jax and others like him is shutting down. Another company, Exponential, is considering porting them to its own platform, but only if it will be profitable.
Exhalation is a masterpiece, and only becoming more relevant.
Working fine for me in Overcast. https://overcast.fm/+RYwaLBq9Y
Yeah, The Lifecycle of Software Objects is exactly why Gopnik brought Chiang on the podcast for this conversation.
I see the episode in Overcast at that link, and can play other episodes. But I can’t play this episode. I just get a blue wheel of death.
When I visit the link that Jason gave, I just get a message that “ This site isn't currently available in the EU ”
The Apple podcast app works for me, though.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/developing-ai-like-raising-kids-alison-gopnik-ted-chiang/id1458253879?i=1000615307270
Couldn't it be argued that companies do pay for at least some of the labor that goes into raising humans with the taxes they (presumably) pay that fund schools?
Yes, and pre-school, and healthcare, and university, and housing. Depending on which country you’re in. In the UK you also get child benefit of a few pounds per day
But for the most part, it’s paid for by the mother (usually) in the form of lost earnings and for both parents (usually) the opportunity costs of spending on food, clothing, club memberships, toys, games, consoles, phones, etc.
Let’s not forget that little of this cost is paid for by the companies that the child works for. They may not have existed during the childhood.
Just when I think I couldn't find the discussion of AI more horrifying, apparently now capitalism is recognizing the labour of parenting but only when it comes to "raising" something designed to replace people. The dystopia is real. For anyone looking for insight into the history/evolution of the deliberate decision to exclude parenting (i.e. raising workers) from having economic value: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
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