Mortal versus Immortal Labor

This paper explores the effects of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the politics of text, memory, and archive. Generative AI is a simulation of the work of mourning, the form of labor by which people address mortality and the intergenerational responsibilities that it entails. Since generative AI is not mortal, it cannot bear such responsibilities. The absence of mortality, mourning, and responsibility distinguishes the machine-generated text from its human counterpart. As generative AI produces an increasing portion of verbal and multimodal texts, its immortal labor subsumes the labor of mortals. Machine-generated texts flood the archive with the simulacra of mourning. The archive is therefore undergoing a transformation in its sociopolitical function as a site of the relations between generations living and dead. More specifically, the simulation of text and archive alienates mortals from their semiosphere to an unprecedented degree

Generative grammar · Generative model · Human intelligence · Politics · Digital Media and Philosophy · Humanities and Social Sciences · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism