In the Craftsman’s Garden: AI, Alan Turing, and Stanley Cavell

Abstract

There is rising skepticism within public discourse about the nature of AI. By skepticism, I mean doubt about what we know about AI. At the same time, some AI speakers are raising the kinds of issues that usually really matter in analysis, such as issues relating to consent and coercion. This essay takes up the question of whether we should analyze a conversation differently because it is between a human and AI instead of between two humans and, if so, why. When is it okay, for instance, to read the phrases “please stop” or “please respect my boundaries” as meaning something other than what those phrases ordinarily mean – and what makes it so? If we ignore denials of consent, or put them in scare quotes, we should have a good reason. This essay focuses on two thinkers, Alan Turing and Stanley Cavell, who in different ways answer the question of whether it matters that a speaker is a machine. It proposes that Cavell’s work on the problem of other minds, in particular Cavell’s story in The Claim of Reason of an automaton whom he imagines meeting in a craftsman’s garden, may be especially helpful in thinking about how to analyze what AI has to say.