We humanize lots of non-human things all the time. Pets, animals used as meat, 1 month old fetuses, fictional characters, religious figures, etc.
It is as human to humanize as it is to dehumanize because it’s in our nature to attempt to define what is and isn’t us.
When you attribute value to a being because you see humanity in it, you are making a value statement that a being has worth because it has humanity, not because it has life which is precious.
Ultimately, dehumanizing ourselves is how we can extend our compassion to other beings. When we accept that we are no more alive than pigs are, we accept that pigs, too, are living being with their own thoughts, subjective experience, and suffering.
You can absolutely dehumanize things that were never human, because what it means to be human is neither universal nor static. AI is human to people who don’t understand how LLMs work. There’s a thought experiment called Roco’s basilisk (trigger warning as it can induce anxiety) that entirely banks on people’s tendency to humanize AI. You can argue that people are dumb and just don’t understand that that’s not how AI works, but how something works often has no bearing on how it is perceived by people.
More people than ever are asking what it means to be human in the face of something that almost communicates like one. We are not dehumanizing AI because of it’s race, gender, or color, because that is not clearly defined in AI. We’re dehumanizing AI because we are asking what it means to be human outside of superficial context.
We humanize lots of non-human things all the time. Pets, animals used as meat, 1 month old fetuses, fictional characters, religious figures, etc.
It is as human to humanize as it is to dehumanize because it’s in our nature to attempt to define what is and isn’t us.
When you attribute value to a being because you see humanity in it, you are making a value statement that a being has worth because it has humanity, not because it has life which is precious.
Ultimately, dehumanizing ourselves is how we can extend our compassion to other beings. When we accept that we are no more alive than pigs are, we accept that pigs, too, are living being with their own thoughts, subjective experience, and suffering.
You can absolutely dehumanize things that were never human, because what it means to be human is neither universal nor static. AI is human to people who don’t understand how LLMs work. There’s a thought experiment called Roco’s basilisk (trigger warning as it can induce anxiety) that entirely banks on people’s tendency to humanize AI. You can argue that people are dumb and just don’t understand that that’s not how AI works, but how something works often has no bearing on how it is perceived by people.
More people than ever are asking what it means to be human in the face of something that almost communicates like one. We are not dehumanizing AI because of it’s race, gender, or color, because that is not clearly defined in AI. We’re dehumanizing AI because we are asking what it means to be human outside of superficial context.