Tom Ellis
2 min readApr 19, 2023

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Thank you for sharing this deeply insightful analysis of AI and its implications for a society that is still very much addicted to defining ourselves by devaluing and oppressing others, whether by class, nationality, ethnicity, gender identity, religious affiliation, or anything else. My own view is that AI, like all technology, can only mirror and amplify the presuppositions of the people and cultures that created it. And all such presuppositions are pathetic (in the connotatively neutral Greek sense of the word)--that is, rooted in basic emotions, such as love and fear. So we need to take care that fear-based premises (such as fear of the Other, however defined) must not displace our capacity for love--for seeing others as no different, essentially, from ourselves.

My one minor critique of your otherwise astute and morally lucid analysis may seem trivial, but here it is: please stop capitalizing "White." Or "Black" for that matter. These are both toxic, socially and historically constructed identity labels that we reinforce, by capitalizing them. But neither actually exists, as any logically coherent category of humans. "Whites" refer to everyone of European descent, from Irish to Scandinavians to Italians to Ukrainians. And "Blacks" refer to all of African descent, even though there are (at least) five distinct primary ethnic categories of Africans, each as genetically distinct from the others as "blacks" are from "whites" or Asians.

As Bob Marley succinctly put it (quoting Haile Selassie's famous UN address), "Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significant than the color of his eyes...the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality--will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained..."

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Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis

Written by Tom Ellis

I am a retired English professor now living in Oregon, and a life-long environmental activist, Buddhist, and holistic philosopher.

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