3 ms·

What if the machine says on the box: system for manipulating human emotions using really cool algorithms.

• jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Michael Pollan makes such a case for plants in his book, Botony of Desire. [..] Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?[..] If AI became sentient and were ‘artificial intelligence’ to ‘evolve’, it will most definitely likely start by trying to seduce us. Not necessarily sexually always.