Audrey Tang on AI and Democracy: The Right to Resist Optimization
marigo · x · 2026-08-13
The Humanist Review of AI published an article by Audrey Tang, exploring the impact of artificial intelligence on democracy and humanism.
Key insights:
- The deeper threat of AI predates generative models, originating when digital systems learned to sort human attention at an industrial scale.
- Humans have long been trained to behave like components inside ranking systems: always visible, always reactive, and always measurable.
- The real danger is not machines imitating humans, but humans adapting their behavior to suit machines.
- She emphasizes that in the face of algorithmic optimization, humanity must retain the "right to resist optimization."
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