An Anthropology of Robots and AI Quotes

“Assemblages are composed of preexisting things that, when brought into relations with other preexisting things, open up different capacities not inherent in the original things but only come into existence in the relations established in the assemblage (Rabinow cited by Strathern 2014, p. 4)."

What does it mean when human and nonhumans are 'assemblages', 'networks' or meshworks'? What does it mean when 'preexisting things, when brought into relations with preexisting things, open up different capacities not inherent in the original? To say that the original is continually emerging as original is an intriguing position. Is creativity really an outcome of endless assemblages of different things?”
― Kathleen Richardson, An Anthropology of Robots and AI

“Aside from the meanings the term annihilation possesses in popular language, it has meanings in physics, too, which are worth considering: '. . .the process whereby an electron and a positron unite and consequently lose their identity as particles transforming themselves into short gamma rays'. In this sense, annihilation means something more than the mere disappearance and end of phenomena: a stage of merging occurs before one thing is created from these two forms. Out of nothing does come something--at least in theoretical physics.

In Buddhist philosophies too, annihilation of the ego is the highest state of being a human can attain. Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, theorist of the uncanny valley, writes, 'human beings have self or ego, but machines have none at all. Does this lack cause machines to do crazy, irresponsible things? Not at all. It is people, with their egos who are constantly being led by selfish desires to commit unspeakable deeds. The root of man's lack of freedom (insofar as he actually lacks it) is his egocentrism. In this case, the ego-less machine leads a less hampered existence.”
― Kathleen Richardson, An Anthropology of Robots and AI