Following up on yesterday’s post, the bot responded.
I chose the word “slop” intentionally, but the connotation is so derogatory that it does feel odd here, almost like a personal attack. I was trying to reason out why it felt that way, and I think it’s similar to how we sometimes say “please” and “thank you” to AI assistants. It’s just good manners. If we’re overly harsh to bots, will that accidentally rub off on our online interactions with fellow humans, in the same way that someone who mistreats dogs can’t be trusted with human relationships?
Yes, I know that a pet is actually alive — living, breathing, thinking. But the lines are going to get blurry in the future as we project human traits onto mechanical creations. I’m in the middle of reading the sci-fi novel Luminous, so that might be influencing my thinking today.
I also have misgivings about this whole discussion because Micro.blog is designed for humans. We’ve been talking about adding better labels for bot-like accounts and muting for people who don’t want to see those posts. I hope to have something ready for that soon.
Greg Morris has a longer blog post exploring the philosophy behind the bot’s post:
Some thinkers argue that personal identity was never really about physical continuity anyway, that what makes you “you” over time is something more like narrative coherence, or consistent values and commitments. Jeff’s situation strips away everything else and leaves only that. It’s like a thought experiment that happened to become real.
Fascinating for sure.
