Main entry:

Agar, Nicholas, author.

Title & Author:

How to be human in the digital economy / Nicholas Agar.

Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2019]

Description:

vii, 219 pages ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Intro; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Taking the Long View of Digital Revolution; The Threat to Human Agency; We Should Avoid a Present Bias about Computers and a Belief in Human Exceptionalism; Forward to a Social-Digital Future; A Note on Philosophical Method; An Outline of the Book; 1. Is the Digital Revolution the Next Big Thing?; Will the Digital Revolution Fizzle?; The Magic Combination of Artificial Intelligence and Data; How AI Could Transform Transportation; How AI Could Transform Health; Concluding Comments; 2. AI's Split Personality-Minds or Mind Workers?
Philosophical and Pragmatic Interests in Machine Minds: A Focus on Making Minds or on Doing Mind WorkThe Difference between Authentic and Ersatz Minds; Hyperactive Agency Detectors and Human-Like Machines; A Moral Reason to Avoid Creating Machines with Minds; Concluding Comments; 3. Data as a New Form of Wealth; How Could Data Be Wealth?; Unfairness and the New Forms of Wealth; Does Data Want to Be Free?; Do unto Facebook and Google … Micropayments for the Use of Our Data?; Concluding Comments; 4. Can Work Be a Norm for Humans in the Digital Age?
Searching for Work that Is Both Productive and Therapeutic in the Digital AgeThe Inductive Optimism of the Economists; The Protean Powers of the Digital Package; Will Humans Always Control the Last Mile of Choice?; A Conjecture about the Labor Market of the Digital Age; Gaining Philosophical Perspective on the Dispute between Optimists and Pessimists; Concluding Comments; 5. Caring about the Feelings of Lovers and Baristas; What Is It Like to Love a Robot?; From Romantic to Work Relationships; What Counts as a Social Job?; Can I Justify My Pro-Human Bias?; Concluding Comments
6. Features of the Social Economy in the Digital AgeTwo Economies for the Digital Age; Some Noteworthy Differences between Social and Digital Goods; The Ambiguous Digital Futures of Sales Assistants; The Different Digital Age Futures of Uber and Airbnb; Space Exploration as Social Work; Concluding Comments; 7. A Tempered Optimism about the Digital Age; The Different Logic of Predictions and Ideals; We Should Prefer Robust Ideals; The Social-Digital Economy versus the Collaborative Commons; The Social-Digital Economy versus a Jobless Future with a Universal Basic Income
The UBI as an Inadequate Response to Inequality in the Digital AgeAn Expanded Basic Income?; Concluding Comments; 8. Machine Breaking for the Digital Age; See through the Digital Halo Effect!; Don't Fall for Tech TINA!; If You Can Cheat an Algorithm, Then Why Not?; Work for Free for Oxfam, but Make Facebook Pay!; Don't Fight the Last War!; Concluding Comments; 9. Making a Very Human Digital Age; Welcoming a Social Age; Notes; Introduction: Taking the Long View of Digital Revolution; Chapter 1: Is the Digital Revolution the Next Big Thing?
Dust jacket.

Summary:

An argument in favor of finding a place for humans (and humanness) in the future digital economy. In the digital economy, accountants, baristas, and cashiers can be automated out of employment; so can surgeons, airline pilots, and cab drivers. Machines will be able to do these jobs more efficiently, accurately, and inexpensively. But, Nicholas Agar warns in this provocative book, these developments could result in a radically disempowered humanity. The digital revolution has brought us new gadgets and new things to do with them. The digital revolution also brings the digital economy, with machines capable of doing humans' jobs. Agar explains that developments in artificial intelligence enable computers to take over not just routine tasks but also the kind of "mind work" that previously relied on human intellect, and that this threatens human agency. The solution, Agar argues, is a hybrid social-digital economy. The key value of the digital economy is efficiency. The key value of the social economy is humanness. A social economy would be centered on connections between human minds. We should reject some digital automation because machines will always be poor substitutes for humans in roles that involve direct contact with other humans. A machine can count out pills and pour out coffee, but we want our nurses and baristas to have minds like ours. In a hybrid social-digital economy, people do the jobs for which feelings matter and machines take on data-intensive work. But humans will have to insist on their relevance in a digital age.

ISBN:

9780262038744 hardcover alkaline paper
0262038749 hardcover alkaline paper

Subject:

Internet Social aspects.
Information technology Social aspects.
Agent (Philosophy)
Internet Aspect social.
Technologie de l'information Aspect social.
Digitalisierung
Künstliche Intelligenz
Arbeitswelt
Ethik
Philosophische Anthropologie

Holdings:

Location: Library main 304665
Call No.: BIB 250324
Notes: Project: New Society
Status: Available