DWebYVR reading group - Shannon Vallor's The AI Mirror
What does it mean to be human and what does AI have to do with it?
Our next reading, Shannon Vallor's The AI Mirror - How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, offers an investigation into that question.
Join us on Wednesday, February 25th for our discussion of the first half of the book, the introduction and the first three chapters (pp. 1-101).
The second half we will tackle on Wednesday, March 25th 2026:
The book can be found here:
OUP Link
Vancouver Public Library Link
An excerpt from the Preface:
One cannot heal what one does not know. It has always been, and will always be, a struggle to know what and who we are. We ask the question of what it means to be human, again and again, without ever hearing a definitive answer. That’s because to be human is to have to answer that question yourself, and then do it again, over and over, with every choice that you make or unmake. Yet there are always more choices open in the future. Humans endlessly make ourselves anew: we are always more, always unfinished—and for this reason, always uncertain of ourselves and one another.
Artificial intelligence is not the first technology to place our future in jeopardy; nuclear weapons hold that dishonor. But AI, or rather the particular form of it that is the subject of this book, is the first technology that can place our future in jeopardy by preventing us from knowing how to make a future at all. AI is the first technology that can make us forget how to answer our own question. This book is about how to keep from losing ourselves and our futures in the AI mirror. It’s about how to remember ourselves, and our power and responsibility to make a world for one another.
You do not need to have read the whole thing to attend. If the reading sounds interesting to you, please come and hang out and share in our conversation around it.
Happy reading!
The DWebYVR reading group meets monthly, and the idea is to read something together loosely related to DWeb themes – anything from technical or policy papers and essays to philosophy or sci-fi imagining better futures or offering cautionary tales. Future readings are chosen by attendees at the end of each meeting concluding a current reading.
Our past readings:
Jo Freeman - The Tyranny of Structurelessness
David Graeber - The Utopia of Rules