In short, tech companies get the power of being the master and they get the epistemic advantage found in being the slave. Users get nothing but illusions. It happened with digital assistants, and its happening again with generative AI. 3/3

But their tools do an excellent job of making the user feel in control. It makes us feel like we are the masters. And that feeling of being in control is very effective for the companies that use it to gain all the knowledge Hegel predicted the slave would have access to. 2/3

I actually wrote about this back in 2022 with regards to digital assistants (like Siri and Alexa). I think the point is not quite to be a master, but to feel like a master. Because we, the users, are not the masters. The tech companies are the masters. 1/3

Yes, that's exactly what I thought! Both the workers and the end users are trained to conform to the system.

The work of training ourselves to interact with bots has been going on behind the scenes for a long time, as workers trained themselves to be the bots. Your wonderful post points to the way the users are affected, too! But it made me think of this article:

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/ess...

Skrenta employs the language of robots having the right to read as justification for violating copyright laws but. . .

1) People don't have the right to violate copyright laws

and

2) Robots are not people