Chris Hables Gray on AI and the Singularity: We Need Strong Citizenship!

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Prof. Chris Hables Gray is someone whose work on both war and the cyborg is a must-read for anyone interested in those topics. I have followed Gray’s work for over 10 years and have read at least 3 of his books. So when I discovered that Chris will be one of the speakers for the upcoming ISTAS2013 conference in Toronto, which I can’t wait to attend this June 27-29, I decided to use it as an excuse to get him for an interview on Singularity 1 on 1.

During my conversation with Chris Hables Gray we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: how Chris got interested in issues related to war and cyborg; the definition of cyborg and why the term has been actively avoided by both NASA and the US military; the difference between a drone and a robot; cyborg society and the politics thereof; why cyborgization is as overdetermined as it is a political process; human nature, nurture, competition and cooperation; Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto; mind-reading, mind-control, and neuro-marketing; philosophy and death; transhumanism and the technological singularity; artificial intelligence and hubris; Gray’s upcoming book on Infoisms…

My favorite quote that I will take away from this conversation with Chris Hables Gray is:

We need good citizenship, strong citizenship like Socrates had when he went and risked his life to fight for Athens. […] We can’t be just people who vote. […] We must be really engaged citizens like our hero Socrates and risk all, risk our lives to make the world better – for our children and our friends.

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

Who is Chris Hables Gray?

Chris Hables Gray, Ph.D., lectures at the University of California at Santa Cruz and California State University at Monterey Bay in the Cultural Studies of Science and Technology. His particular interest is how information technologies shape contemporary war and peacemaking and the politics of our ongoing cyborgization. He is the editor of The Cyborg Handbook and author of Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen, and Peace, War and Computers. Currently, he is researching social media and social change and finishing a book on information theory entitled Infoisms: Aphorisms About Information.