The Cogito in the Machine : On Being Human in the Age of the Algorithm
Language: English
Published by Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp Jul 2025, 2025
- Softcover
- New
Seller: AHA-BUCH GmbH, Einbeck, GermanyAHA-BUCH GmbH
AbeBooks seller since August 14, 2006
Condition: New
£ 17.99
Quantity: 2 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Neuware - The danger is not that machines conquer us. It is that we become like them, one default at a time.The Cogito in the Machine: On Being Human in the Age of the Algorithm starts from Descartes and asks what remains of a thinking self when the thinking is handed off. Its claim is that the difficult parts of life, learning, craft, relationships, judgement and accountability, are where a self gets formed, and that we are removing them because each removal is convenient. Useful and good are not the same word.What the book walks through: - A short history from Dartmouth 1956 and Turing's imitation game to ELIZA, and why the machine did not become intelligent, it became large- The interface: the command line and its priesthood, the graphical desktop, the touchscreen and the tethered self, and the blank box that asks what you want- Work: the de-skilled hand, the invisible foreman when the manager is an algorithm, and AI in medicine, the classroom, transport and media- The algorithmic conscience: privacy as a reader with infinite patience, the biased machine, the price that knows who you are, and the black box- The algorithmic oracle and why a human in the loop can be a rubber stamp with a pulse, with four conditions for oversight that is real- The empathetic machine: creativity, the digital doppelganger and the voice that sounds like you- The Cartesian ghost, the augmented self, and a chapter titled The Best Argument Against This Book- Education, policy and organisations that change the tool and not the work, and a closing section on a more humane futureThe book argues with itself. It takes on the extended mind thesis and Socrates's worry about writing, then says where it still disagrees. Its closing point is that what separates us from the machines is not intelligence, creativity or empathy but that things matter to us.The book is concrete. It cites data centres drawing roughly 1.5 percent of global electricity in 2024, the FDA's list of AI-enabled devices passing a thousand by late 2025, and about seventy percent of US teens having used an AI companion. It tells how ELIZA's creator watched his own secretary ask him to leave the room, and borrows Taylor's stopwatch to explain algorithmic management: the stopwatch is the work. Where it recommends something it is plain: preserve difficulty in education, require real oversight or drop the claim, and regulate by consequence, not by technique.Why now: AI companions, voice cloning, entry-level jobs that disappear, personalised pricing and agents acting on our behalf are already here. The slow, uneven future is the likelier one, and the choices that shape it are being made as defaults today.For professionals, managers, educators and students who use AI every day and want to keep their own mind in the loop.Buy now and read the whole book and decide which choices you will make on purpose.…
Seller Inventory # 9798292347422
- Title
- The Cogito in the Machine : On Being Human in the Age of the Algorithm
- Author
- Trung Duong Vo
- Publisher
- Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp Jul 2025
- Publication year
- 2025
- Condition
- Neu
- Binding
- Taschenbuch
- Language
- English
- ISBN 13
- 9798292347422
- Item weight
- 227 grams
- Dimensions
- 229x152x9 mm
The dream of a perfect servant, an animate instrument that anticipates our needs and tirelessly carries out our wishes, is as old as civilization itself. It is a dream born of our own physical and mental limitations, of the nagging sense that our days are too short and our minds too cluttered to accomplish all that we desire. From the golem of Jewish folklore to the loyal valet of the English country house, we have long been captivated by the idea of an external agent that can bring order to the chaos of our lives, freeing us for higher and more noble pursuits. Today, that ancient dream is being given a new and a powerful, if ethereal, form: the AI Agent.
The prophets of Silicon Valley, our new generation of utopian dreamers, tell us that the AI Agent will be the culmination of the long history of personal computing. It will be our tireless assistant, our brilliant collaborator, our digital doppelgänger. It will manage our schedules, answer our emails, book our appointments, and even, we are told, anticipate our desires, serving up precisely what we want before we have even had a chance to formulate the thought. It will, in the jargon of the trade, bring a new and a sublime “frictionlessness” to our lives, smoothing away the grit and the inefficiency of the everyday. It will, in short, handle the tedious business of living, leaving us free, at last, to be ourselves.
It is a seductive vision, and a familiar one. It is the same vision that was offered to us with each new wave of automation, from the factory to the office. And it is a vision that, time and again, has proven to be a kind of "innocent fraud," a comforting narrative that obscures as much as it reveals. For what is truly revolutionary about the AI Agent is not that it is a new kind of tool for doing our work, but that it is a new kind of manager for overseeing our lives. When we delegate to a machine the intimate and often-unseen tasks of orchestrating our days, we are not just offloading labor; we are offloading judgment. We are ceding to an algorithm the very choices and decisions that give shape and meaning to our existence.
The AI Agent is not a neutral and a benevolent servant. It is a software program, and like all software programs, it embodies a particular intellectual ethic. Its values are not the human values of contemplation, of serendipity, of the messy and often-inefficient business of living, but the machinic values of speed, of efficiency, of optimization. The agent’s purpose is not to enrich our lives, but to streamline them, to turn our days into a series of perfectly executed routines, to make us more predictable and more profitable cogs in the great data-processing machine of the digital age. As we come to rely on these new agents to script our lives, we risk losing our own capacity for agency, for the kind of deep, critical, and creative thought that can only arise from the friction and the frustration of genuine engagement with the world. The delegated self is a diminished self. And that is a price for convenience that we should be very wary of paying.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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last update: 01/06/2022
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Contact us on request. The contact details can be found in our imprint.
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last updated: 01/06/2022