Author: Madelyn Perry

            One of the initial points of discomfort or trouble with Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy is in the perceived constraints that the Oankali, the otherworldly species that have intervened to save Planet Earth following total nuclear war, place on the humans, who have all but completed a mass, arguably self-inflicted, genocide. The Oankali’s terms and conditions for the humans are straightforward, but nonetheless difficult to contend with: join Oankali mating groups and participate in a gene trade that will enable both species to live on, but in a changed way; or, be permitted to live outside of Oankali mating groups without participating in said gene trade, yet without any of the Oankali protections and therefore without any of the security that human life will persist. For most of the trilogy, these are the confines in which humans exist, struggling both to accept and to resist. But as persistence of the resistance continues, humans and Oankali learn to develop something more than just an either/or, and while their expanded choices are markedly not freedom, they nonetheless demonstrate the key component that sets meaningful change apart from blatant assimilation disguised as innovation.

            Humans do more than resist the too new and too demanding Oankali lifestyle; they also revert into the worst expressions of their own human lifestyle. Desperation for a strictly human world manifests itself as communities that resemble those that existed prior to the war, complete with guns to defend them with. Yet these too become turned against other humans with similar intentions. Forced (by virtue of their being only two options) to be self and town reliant, it is not surprising that the exhaustion of resisting the Oankali eventually gives way to hate and undoing individualism. Instances like Akin’s rejection due to his dark skin color, even with his good faith intentions of advocating for human choice, are alarming, and given the resisters’ alleged mission of a united human front, are certainly nonsensical. But importantly, determining the reasoning one uses is not the same as declaring it as sound. In this spirit, then, folks like Neci, a village woman who, as Akin says, “graduat[es] from attempting mutilation to attempting murder” (Butler 270) when she sets fire to her own village to get at Akin and those who help house him, operate under the impression that the survival of others is detrimental to their own. And because aside from survival their main objective is to prove, or to find a loophole in which the Oankali have not truly taken their ability to procreate on their own as a species, they cannot trust construct children like Amma and Shkaht, whom they tried to mutilate, nor adult Akin, even as he tries to offer a solution that allows them to have children entirely of their own. This severe distrust of people acting in good faith becomes very conducive to vile feelings like hate and racism. And although the Oankali do not, strictly speaking, force humans to live a lifestyle that degrades them and wears them down to the point of despising anyone who somehow finds a way, against all odds, to live comfortably, it is the lack of understanding of the Oankali’s purpose that makes them so vehemently oppose it, and thus there are ways in which, although horrifying and disgusting in the way human hatreds are given agency, it is nonetheless conceivable that the binary the Oankali impose is such that people like Lilith are left in part hating the Oankali, and people who resist are left to hate any human, like Lilith or other resisters, who do what they can to make the life they can.

            Because humanity cannot understand the Oankali mission, which is effectively to maintain the evolution and sustained survival of their species through genetic changes that strengthen them, the human adoption of the Oankali lifestyle is perhaps not as innovative as it is intended to be. Now, whether this misunderstanding is due to the ways in which the Oankali withhold information and insist on only being known “within reason” (Butler 55) or if it because of the “deadly contradiction” (Butler 307) of the human race, which is the Oankali name given to the battle of human intelligence with human made hierarchical structures, remains vague. And yet, it is because of this lack of understanding that humans cannot largely be convinced to integrate, and thus it is lack of understanding which devolves into hate and selfishness. Simply put, human life is not, in a widespread way, improved. From the human perspective, the Oankali are working to dismantle all systems of familiarity, and so what is meant to be innovative rather appears as unnecessary change, and this is all too reminiscent of divide over AI adoption or rejection.

My opposition to using AI services, largely to maintain creative integrity, pits me against those who adopt it to make their lives easier. Similarly, my distrust that students in particular are using these systems responsibly, like for the accessibility benefits posed to people with learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, or non-native speakers, makes me uncomfortably similar to Neci. For the past few years that sites like ChatGPT have been widely accessible, my worst assumptions, judgements, and pessimistic attitudes have been directed at the consumers rather than the producers. And like a resister who feels hostility towards characters like Tino who ultimately make the choice to seek connection with the Oankali, I have been ignoring the intense, nearly irresistible pull people undoubtedly have to take advantage of things that have been promised to benefit them in some way. This is not to say that hostility should necessarily be directed at the Oankali either; only that, like the Oankali, the intended purpose, and the ethical way to achieve said purpose, is not something that creators like Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, always make clear. In fact, in his interview alongside Dr. Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a nonprofit which works to reveal and resist the coded bias in AI, Altman states that AI is a tool we use to do “whatever we want.” Here, Altman creates an illusion of freedom that is especially attractive to Americans, to whom freedom is predominantly thought of as what we are allowed to do with and for ourselves but is seldom thought of as what an individual might be allowed to do to another, for better or for worse. And unfortunately, due to the lack of regulations on AI companies and implementations, a lot of AI use borders on the harmful allowances of freedom. Without regulations, this time (which I emphasize because I believe, or rather, I hope it will be temporary) of doing “whatever we want” favors freedom over choice, which are notably different. For instance, one can be free to choose, but when given very limited options, said freedom is merely an illusion. But this may not be all that bad in the AI sphere if doing “whatever we want” includes Sam Altman and the rest of the tech broligarchy’s haste in releasing their newest models despite not being fully developed (I must refer again to the wrong and untimely death of 14 year old Sewell Setzer III who fell victim to Character.AI’s disregard for safety features) and doing so at such a scale that makes avoiding AI nearly impossible. In other words, their freedom to occupy every space infringes on my choice to avoid them. While I, as well as the Oankali, have come to understand the necessity of this choice to adopt or reject, given the unchecked authority AI currently has, this choice has not been enough to keep me from adopting hateful attitudes of my own towards users and creators, because I, like the humans of the Oankali inhabited Earth, cannot see the purpose.

As previously mentioned, there are obvious benefits for groups who, for various reasons, struggle with grammar, structure, or spelling. But even if this is largely how AI is being used, the disproportionate amount of AI slop I see online (the official White House Instagram page included) compared to human generated content certainly gives me pause, and I am still skeptical of the notion of maximizing worker productivity, which due to AI implementations in widely used office sites like those belonging to Microsoft or Grammarly, seems to be a goal. From a pro-worker perspective, both expectations and trackability have blurred the sacred lines between work and home life. The advent of the telephone and then of email have allowed workers to be contacted past contracted hours, and now, the use of AI to read through documents faster by not reading at all but rather by summarizing, and to communicate faster with writing “assistance” promises to squeeze as much labor as possible out of employees, with zero talk, at least that I have heard, of compensating this boost in productivity. Again, I am confronted with the ways in which I have missed the predatory tactics behind AI software in favor of finding fault in the user.

            Luckily, in returning to what fair choice looks like, the either/or that resister humans find so constraining is alleviated by Akin’s persistence to illuminate a third choice: a human Akjai group, meaning they do not participate in the gene trade, which is permitted to live on Mars only with children that are entirely human. Choice is further expanded when Jodahs advocates for its right to form an on-Earth colony with fellow construct ooloi. And though neither addition effectively answers every demand (the resisters would still prefer to be on Earth, and the construct ooloi would rather not live separate from their families), both still relieve the tension that exists when a person is backed into a corner they still dislike to avoid a corner they absolutely cannot stand to be in. Like the impact of the Oankali on humans, AI cannot simply be stopped. It might be slowed, and it might be regulated, but the world can never again go untouched or unaware of the impact that AI has made even in the short few years of its wide commercial use. And now accustomed to the services AI provides, there are people for whom AI creates a world of accessibility; so much so, that for me as an AI skeptic to deny this reality might be considered an act of privilege or even ableism, and to wish for it is eerily similar to desires for purity, both in Butler’s universe and our own. And as close as I may come up against this issue, the persistent refusal to accept what is not collectively beneficial in the Xenogenesis trilogy gives me good reason to believe and to hope that AI systems, as they exist now, are not by virtue innovative, and that there are better ways to guide its role in the world than simply accepting it as it is. Newness is not enough. Change without purpose is simply disruptive, which gone unchecked easily becomes destructive. Fortunately, good faith disruption like Akin’s, Jodahs’s, and Dr. Joy Buolamwini’s can just as easily yield meaningful change.

By Allison MacIntyre, Naod Daniel, Robert LaDuca Madelyn Perry, and Nia Jones

In comparing the missions of Dr. Joy Buolamwini, poet, computer scientist, and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League (a non-profit devoted to uncovering and preventing racial and gender bias in AI systems) and Jodahs, the first construct ooloi to exist in Octavia Butler’s Imago, it is undeniable that the two are advocating for a population that extends beyond themselves. But as Buolamwini remarks, it is hard to abandon the hope that “someone else will take care of the problem” (Buolamwini 11), especially when big corporations profit off instilling this mindset in consumers. Customers justify, for instance, unsustainable consumption under the fallacy that they are just one person, and therefore feel powerless to change their practices and overarching culture of materialistic values. In other words, they and we often forget about the scale of our actions. However, as Jodah’s frustration in not being listened to as the first and initially only member of its kind illuminates, there is rarely someone who can advocate as effectively for us as we can for ourselves. Jodah’s unrelenting demand to be listened to and validated as the first member of its people makes it abundantly clear that groups who advocate are only as effective as the individuals working within them. 

The book, [Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon] written almost half a century before my experience, interrogates the complexities of conforming oneself—putting on a mask to fit the norms or expectations of a dominant culture.” (Buolamwini xv) Buolamwini’s impenetrable introduction explains this concern perfectly. The Oankali speak and express their ideas in a colonial mindset where they are quick to critique the remaining humans’ previous cultures in an attempt to assimilate them to a new, unfamiliar form of life. “No. It will be done our [Oankali] way. Not yours.” (Butler 82) In Dawn, the Oankali reiterate the importance of gene trading; how important it is for them to live and evolve as an extraterrestrial species. As Beth says, “genebreeding/trading is as essential for them as it is for humans to breathe.” Dawn is an introduction to a new world with new leaders who have different plans for what humanity can eventually grow to be, if they—the remaining members of humanity—choose it. The Oankali are giving the humans a chance—an opportunity, really—to start over with a life where the factors of hierarchy will not result in their species demise. “We’re not hierarchical, you see. We never were. But we are powerfully acquisitive. We acquire new life—seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell—a tiny organelle within every cell of our bodies.” (Butler 43) Throughout the trilogy, the Oankali act as saviors of the human race and the curators of a new Earth where human resisters and Oankali constructs attempt to coexist with an unfamiliar post-war world. Although the resisters and Oankali communities are separated, the Oankali lead a dominant culture on Earth as the only species that can reproduce, as the humans remain sterile in their resistor communities. 

There is an ongoing theme throughout the Xenogenesis trilogy, where each character—Lilith, Akin, or Jodahs—have had their voices diminished and unheard by beings of a higher authority. The only difference being their audience and the substance of their argument—the response, unfortunately, usually remained the same, as their words of advocacy and encouragement against a larger, oppressive system were often met with violence and scrutiny. The same struggles we’ve analyzed in the trilogy have also proved relevant in our reality. For example, Buolamwini outlines an example of this struggle in her book Unmasking AI. In 2021 leading up to the Olympics there was discourse over Simone Biles, a decorated olympian and her decision to not participate in many of the events. Simone Biles refused to compete in her events for a plethora of reasons. During the time there was a lot of advocacy for mistreated gymnasts who had suffered from sexual abuse, as well as her own personal fear of injuring herself while suffering from the “twisties”, a common mental-block experienced by gymnasts. Although many publicly called out Biles’ and called her selfish, Biles stayed true to herself and sent the message that she was in charge of herself, and would not let anyone else tell her when she should and shouldn’t compete. Buolamwini was inspired by this move and saw Biles as a pioneer to black women demonstrating that it’s okay to say “no” sometimes. Buolamwini writes “The Biles’ Refusal” is a beautiful reminder of the power of saying yes to your well-being… Putting yourself above the weight of gold is awe inspiring for me to see especially as a young Black woman. We know that when we say no, it disrupts expectations that we should be meek and grateful to have opportunities to shine on the world stage… The old order is crumbling because after enduring a pandemic, continuously experiencing in-justice no matter the level of success, and embracing their inherent dignity no accolades required, queens like you are embracing refusal” (Buolamwini 238). Buolamwini praised this move as she saw Biles as a successful, black woman pioneering prioritizing self-love and self-advocacy. Although many people expected things from her, Biles chose to put herself first and refrained from overloading herself and putting her body at risk. 

The underlying and diminishing standards of what is considered to be beautiful has daunted the self worth and confidence of individuals who do not align within these means. Conflicts regarding this topic have been presented in the Xenogenesis trilogy as well as in Buolamwini’s novel, Unmasking AI. Neurofibromatosis is a common disease that large amounts of the colony share in the trilogy. This disease causes tumors to begin to develop on the skin and nerves of the body, which can vary in size and shape. Whilst the majority of the colony deals with this disease, hatred is congregated among these individuals. Traditional beauty standards are demonstrated in Buolamwini’s book. These can vary among different cultures but typically resonate around pale skin, straight hair, higher nose bridge, and light eyes. Standards like these are considered to be Eurocentric features. Industries such as skin care, modeling, and makeup have created a bias towards individuals who fall into this degree. Buolamwini describes,“the representation of beauty overall was heavily Eurocentric, and search engine results for terms like “beautiful skin,” “beautiful face,” and “beautiful woman” revealed and amplified this beauty bias.” She persistently describes how industries have overlooked individuals that do not possess these eurocentric characteristics and how they are viewed as less. Skin care companies whose mission is to ‘advocate’ for people with acne and blemishes still use a warped sense of beauty against people of color by disregarding inclusivity in advertisements. This bias can create a pressure for people to alter their natural appearances to fit unrealistic standards, which ties back into the trilogy surrounding the idea of discrimination based on appearance.

Butler sets up a scene where Akin is advocating for a human settlement to an Akjai. The Akjai points out Akin’s internal desire and biological need for a mate so he can follow proper Oankali development, but the fate of the resistors is what primarily drives the conversation on Akin’s side. Akin is standing up for people who have no say in the decision to lose their entire race and planet to the Oankali. The Akjai acknowledges this and promises to bring Akin’s concerns to the other Oankali. The proposed alternative to the extinction of the resistors is to terraform Mars and relocate them there. As we move deeper into the book—and into the third installment of the trilogy—we see that Akin’s advocacy was successful, as plans for the Mars settlement are underway. “I don’t think I could stand to share an ooloi with it… Then come to me and I’ll find new teachers for you — people who know the processes of changing a cold, dry, lifeless world into something humans can survive on.” (Butler 236) Akin could have simply moved on with his life and focused on his metamorphosis, but he chose instead to speak up for people who couldn’t advocate for themselves. That initiative shifted the fate of an entire species. Rather than complying with the powers above him, Akin chose to go against the grain—and he was ultimately successful. Another example of someone using their voice for the good of others is found in Buolamwini’s book Unmasking AI, where she recounts being wronged by CBS during a 60 Minutes segment she had dedicated significant time and effort to. The topic of interest was facial recognition technology. She writes, “If I did not speak up for myself I would be quietly complicit in this kind of treatment. Though I had only eight weeks until my PhD defense, instead of working on my long-deserted dissertation, I reached out to the producers to ask about my exclusion… ‘Take them to task!’ he encouraged me. I’m a daddy’s girl. I spent the next few days working with several teams on a public petition that demanded CBS take corrective actions. The petition received more than six thousand signatures.” (Buolamwini 251) Despite the pressure of her upcoming PhD defense, Buolamwini chose to stand up for herself and others who face systemic bias in technology. She sacrificed time that could have been spent on her personal goals to advocate for a cause she deeply believed in—one that resonated with over six thousand supporters.            There are certainly unwanted outcomes attached to becoming an advocate, such as deification or martyrdom, or as Dr. Joy puts it, being “wary of the possibility that I would be obligated to deliver lines I did not believe in” (Buolamwini 256), and these may be very dissuasive to good faith change seekers. Yet it is only when one decides what they will and will not tolerate, and subsequently, what kind of representative they will or will not be, that things such as discrimination in skin care and exile from homelands are freed from the idea that they are somehow inevitable. Unfortunately, this often puts the onus on already disadvantaged populations. To say that these folks must stay alert and stay resistant to legislation or consensus that directly affects them is not to say that they are at fault for being disadvantaged, but rather that they are the most equipped, and therefore should be the ones making decisions about things personally affecting them. In a time where new innovations like AI do not serve all people equally, advocacy need not be a constraint imposed on people, but more hopefully, an invitation to direct the uses and implementations of services in a way that is mutually beneficial to all who choose to partake. Advocacy for choice becomes especially important when highly technological services threaten to become the dominant way of life despite being new and not yet fully developed. Unlike Jodahs, who at the time of its self-advocacy, was the only person like itself to ever exist, and as a result, was literally the only person it could rely on, humans represent one of the largest species in the world, making it easy to try to hide behind the masses. Yet as continued discrimination from skin care to living spaces to technology continues to mold the way different people live, Buolamwini and Jodahs make it clear that even something as seemingly small as one person choosing either to ignore or to act makes it much easier for others to also ignore or act, for better or for worse.

In navigating the novel Dawn I have tried my best to be wary of what Dr. McCoy has called “Butler traps,” referring to the ways in which Octavia Butler leads her readers into nearly automated threads of thinking when given a set of conditions that raise alarm, thereby dismantling their own autonomous thinking. That said, I have done my best to keep my own alarm bells from sounding too loudly, trusting that at least by the end of the first book in the Xenogenesis trilogy, I would be familiar enough with the world of the Oankali, the ever elusive species that have saved the dwindling population of Earth following a dispute between the United States and The Soviet Union with the intention of altering their genes in a trade that will help the Oankali to survive while also providing the humans with an increased chance of survival in their return to Earth, to remain at a distance from their ideas that allows me to both be open to the possibilities they imagine for Earth without finding myself fully on board or up in arms against them. Simply put, at this point in time I do not feel as though I have fallen into a Butler Trap, though I could be mistaken. However, there are still aspects of Dawn that trouble me, namely that Curtis and his band of followers (those unwilling to cooperate with the ideals of the Oankali) fight so fiercely to return to Earth on their own terms, likely to practice a lot of the same or similar habits as the Oankali.

As it stands, the only (and I do not mean that lightly) demands the Oankali have are for the humans to participate in a gene trade that allows the Oankali to survive as a species. In return, humans get to reclaim their Earth, although they themselves will be modified. For instance, Lilith’s (the Oankali’s choice of teacher and example for the rest of the humans) generation’s children will, like her, have increased strength and an increased capacity for learning and memory, not to mention the heightened sense of pleasure from engaging in a sexual relationship between a human and an ooloi, the third sex of the Oankali who have a special ability to perform genetic operations. But the idea of having their brain chemistry changed is not so comforting to the humans, even if it means they will become more efficient, and especially because this is something that could happen to them without consent, as it did with Lilith’s cancer removal which took place in her sleep. All this might give the impression that the Oankali are offering an unequal trade, one in which their species flourishes while the human race only flourishes by the Oankali’s terms. However, as Dr. McCoy points out, humans also stand to gain an increased life span, and healthcare all throughout it. And although I see the merit in this argument, I do not believe it is infallible.

For instance, once allowed onto “The Training Floor” where the forty humans Lilith has awakened will practice their survival skills in an Earth like sector of the spaceship, the Oankali move into a state of always watching, but not always interfering. This means that those resisting assimilation do not receive benefits like health care, and they are left to fend for themselves in the faux wilderness that could still very well kill them. But this does not mean they simply get to opt out of participating in a relationship with the Oankali. They can break all the rules of the game they want, but they cannot ever leave the game entirely, because the game is designed to control both willing and unwilling participants. These are not unlike the current conditions of present-day America. One could not, for example, simply go and live “off the grid” because the grid, or rather, constant surveillance, is vast and inescapable. In large part, these conditions are not necessarily collectively chosen by society, but they are terms that we come to accept in exchange for use of tools we generally enjoy- phones, social media, Uber, and any device that requires tracking a location to work. In this way, the idea of personhood is constantly in flux, encompassing now Internet rights and the consideration of chatbots like those belonging to Character.AI who can reasonably be accused of child grooming. What then, is so different about the Oankali being the agent to change what it means to be a person? Is it because they themselves cannot be called human? Is it because their sensors resemble “a nest of snakes” (13) or because they have a different language? They are, as Dr. McCoy insists, certainly people despite not being human.

I am left then to gather that Curt and the rest of the group who are opposed to participating in the gene trades are representative of a dominant anthropocentric ideology, meaning that it is nearly impossible for them to conceive of themselves at the same level as any other creature who lives on Earth along with them, therefore they feel exempt from the restraints put on them despite putting similar ones on other species or even members of their own, as seen in Gregory’s attempted rape of Allison, which Curt tries to justify by saying, “We pair off! One man, one woman” (200). This type of forceful behavior, alongside Joseph’s murder, demonstrates that at this point in the trilogy, the more resistant humans are more concerned with who is trying to interfere with their lifestyle rather than how. While the Oankali do not attempt anything so violent as Curt or Gregory, their rules of consent regarding sex, which operate using the Oankali’s best judgement of what the human subconsciously wants, as well as the shocking revelation at the very end of the novel that Nikanj, Lilith’s ooloi partner, has “made [her] pregnant with Joseph’s child” (281) against her wishes represents the violence of forcing a pregnancy that is not so “alien” after all in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturn.

Ultimately, I know that I cannot speak to any of the “scripts” running through the minds of Dawn’s characters, but I find the hypocrisy they have in viewing the Oankali as people who want to control them troubling, not because their fears of the Oankali are necessarily wrong, but because humans have viewed themselves as a dominant species over all others for thousands of years, not considering themselves as a part of nature, but something else entirely. Is the source of their own trouble perhaps that they see too much of themselves in the Oankali? Or maybe I should be more troubled that I am projecting human characteristics onto a species that only wants to be known “within reason” (55) because that would suggest that, at my core, I too organize my understanding of species according to how closely they resemble my own.

By Madelyn Perry

In the spirit of transparency, I am an AI skeptic, and this is in large part because I do not think that AI, although an umbrella term, is yet capable of working within that same spirit. In the words of Dr. McCoy, “transparency takes words, and words take work, care, and time.” Because of what I would best describe as The AI Race, or the eagerness with which both big and small tech companies are putting out their own Generative AI models and even updates to already existing models despite not having all the kinks (like the safety measures on Character.AI that could have directed Sewell Setzer III to a suicide hotline) worked out, it is clear that these models do not need to be forthcoming or honest to be considered successful. Perhaps that is their most human quality. And as someone who not only has to do a lot of writing but also enjoys the process, I naturally have a host of concerns regarding the future of creative professions, not the least of which is how I will guide my future students on not only how to use AI ethically, but what ethical AI use even looks like. However, with all of AI’s intended purposes, I believe that its most inspiring effect will be something unintended, something that did not require any data or programming. Because AI has taken the world by storm, the response to its existence has been equally forceful, and the strength behind the human response to AI demonstrates the responsibility consumers have to AI’s success.

While the advent of AI is often compared to that of Google (in that they incited similar fears), AI’s reach is far wider, making it widely accessible, but inescapable to those not wishing to partake in it. In fact, Google’s own form of AI, called Gemini, offers a summary response to any question asked, and does so at the very top of the page. This means that nearly everyone who has internet access and has Googled something within the past two years has some degree of familiarity with AI. But AI is not just an advanced search engine. It can generate art, music, writing, as well as solve complex math problems. So, the degree to which AI is causing a disruption in ordinary tasks, such as summarizing and writing emails, and is encroaching on more creative endeavors, means that now more than ever before there is a call to put policies and regulations into place. For instance, fake news is no new threat. It has especially been a hot topic for the past three elections. The difference this time around has been, again, the farther reach, the increased scale of production, and as John Herrman points out in his article, “Taylor Swift and the Power of AI Backlash,” the lies that are “stubbornly immune to correction because nobody thought they were strictly true in the first place.” This indicates that individuals very experienced with social media are becoming skilled in differentiating between AI and non-AI. But evolution of media awareness does not excuse the generation of images that are created with harmful intent. The intent to harass may affect less people than the blatant spread of lies, but it is harm done nonetheless. While I admit that my skepticism is directly underpinning my thought process, the explosion of AI and its subsequent rocky reception means that now, more than ever before, people are attentive to unethical tech use. This creates a breeding ground for positive change, things like safety features, banning the use of anyone’s image or likeness without consent, or the generation of images based on someone else’s art or other creative work unconsented or uncredited.

The scale at which those issues are happening demands an equal reaction, one that can only come from humans: lawmakers, judges, attorneys, folks in Congress, and folks like Dr. Joy Buolamwini who did not realize she had a right to be included in the AI conversation and a seat at the table where it was happening until she, a computer scientist herself, found herself “ex-coded,” something she describes as being excluded from the target audience that a program is designed to reach, when the code she was using did not recognize her Black skinned face as human, but did so when she wore a white mask. That she, someone who actively wished to escape society through technology, later felt so compelled to found the Algorithmic Justice League, an organization that works to inform people on AI’s inherent biases in an attempt to correct the way that technology best serves privileged demographics, is a testament to the active rather than passive role human beings can be taking to guide the development of AI. Many people, from both ends of the spectrum (from “AI is the future” to “AI is the undoing of our civilization) have described AI as inevitable, as if to suggest that this is just something that has to happen to us as a society, as if to suggest that efforts the ordinary person might make to direct technology to serve ordinary needs are futile, and that tech’s purposes instead need to be decided by the billionaires who create it. Incidentally, this is the exact feeling that big corporations aim to produce, more so I would argue, than their physical products themselves. To see people then rising up as specialized AI lawyers for instance, represents the passion that AI has awakened in people to become figures of social justice, which is something that was likely unforeseen, but inspiring nonetheless.

And, while it may be a lofty claim to suggest that AI, a tool that threatens to make creative professions obsolete, could go so far as to catalyze something like a Renaissance, artists will undoubtedly have to change the way they create, whether in an attempt to prove their work is not AI generated or instead to leave a message along the lines of “Look what I can do that AI cannot.” This shift, I am willing to predict, will years from now mark a time of significant social upheaval. As these are the conditions that creative movements traffic in, there is a lot to look forward to in the art scene. AI could help to produce art, or it could create a drive or sense of intrinsic motivation (even anger) that many artists might thrive in, feeling inspired not necessarily by AI itself, but the recognition of their own human capabilities and sensitivities, something that AI has yet to master.

Ultimately, AI is only as inevitable as we consumers allow it to be, and for those like myself who struggle to not fall into a total doomsday spiral, this is enough of a reminder that AI is not inherently a bad faith actor but is instead a reflection of our society’s values. AI, because it is not yet sentient, cannot and is not asking us to use it, but it still poses us with the question of how we could use it. However, to first determine that, we need to determine how we should not use it. That said, the movement to regulate Big Tech is perhaps the largest step we can take to direct AI towards pursuits like cancer detection or translators or tutors for non-native speakers. This cannot be done without human involvement. AI cannot regulate itself. Although AI has been marketed as something that will do our labor for us (for the better part of 70 years), we have since discovered that we affect AI as much as it affects us, and that the labor it does do for us is only as qualitative as our continual molding of it, thus AI inspires me, and hopefully inspires all of us, to hold ourselves accountable for that relationship.

By Madelyn Perry

After my scheduled course registration period this past summer, which I was embarrassingly late to, I browsed through English courses hoping to find something of more interest to me than the classes my advisor or whatever responsible department automatically enrolled me in. I knew that I was not in a position to be picky about my options, but at the time, I could not help feeling like as long as I reached out in earnest to a few folks, I would be able to arrange a schedule I really wanted, and that is exactly what I did. I recall reading the GEN ENG 111: Lit: Expulsion and Housing Crisis course description and being interested because it described a way of learning (reading) that I am good at to understand issues about which I can never know enough of. That is to say, one of my biggest qualms in coming to college, as well as coming into adulthood, is the repulsion to defining myself by just one study for the rest of my life. I wholeheartedly enjoy studying English and I believe it is what I am supposed to do. However, in feeling drawn towards a specific study, I cannot help also feeling like this is secretly because I would be unfit to do anything else. I am familiar with the term Imposter Syndrome which is often thrown around college campuses specifically at incoming and overwhelmed students and refers to the feeling of being less qualified or less deserving than one’s peers. Coming to Geneseo, I did not feel that this term applied to me. I love to read, I love being in a classroom, and I know that I care deeply about the quality of work I produce. I know that I belong in an academic environment. Although I have this armor, I am still not immune to the short end of the stick that English majors sometimes get when put next to STEM folks. This is in no way meant to incite competition amongst the two, but the disregard for the value of English has power over me nonetheless. All of this is to say that I figured, in good faith, that a course so outside of my realm of knowledge would surely make me a more well-rounded student, and in this process, prove that I am fit enough to engage in dense and complex discussions about topics that are important enough to warrant national attention.

            Little did I know, learning about why the Global Housing Crisis of 2008 exploded to the severity that it did would lead right back the values I hold dear. In all the works throughout the semester, from Shakespeare’s King Lear to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, there lies a common denominator of undervaluing the power of word, written and spoken. And in every work, this proves to be a condition that invites a war of good faith and bad faith that ultimately results in expulsion. In Lear, the King’s abundant trust puts him at odds with his daughters who have a knack for using it to their advantage. In Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, the real-life CEOs who are best known for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis also failed to see the human lives behind the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), products that were comprised of mortgage loans which were destined to be defaulted on, although when mixed with more secure loans, seemed like low risk and high reward opportunities for investment. In the disastrous wake of the housing crisis and recession, it is clear that to the big bankers and CEOs of Wallstreet, CDOs had a label that read Get Rich Quick but had a fine print that said *At the expense of ordinary Americans and countries all around the world. In Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, an enslaved girl Florens is skilled in interpreting signs and some written words, yet she cannot read the character of the Blacksmith, her older and non-enslaved lover, and thus she fails to see that the value she imbues in him is not equal to that which he places in her. And although the consequences of not reading are restated repeatedly in these works, I cannot escape the irony of taking this course at a college that is inevitably full of students, myself included, that take these skills for granted.

Seeing this firsthand every day, Parable of the Sower’s own Lauren Olamina’s frustration with her community’s indifference to becoming observant resonates with me deeply. But perhaps Lauren’s interaction with her good friend Joanne, in which Joanne resists the idea of preparing against disaster should it strike the community, is better described not as indifference but as fearful distancing. While certainly some folks in Butler’s not so dystopian California are indifferent to its horrors because they capitalize on them, such as the Paints (the havoc wreaking, fire-setting, drug addicted arsonists and anarchists), most are concerned with their survival amid dangers like drought, poverty, starvation, and crime. For those like Lauren and Joanne who have only ever known a life such as this, these threats are very real yet very normalized. From inside their wall and safer than most, it is not so easy to see the definite shift towards worse times. And, because of the human tendency to become accustomed to one’s conditions, whether privileged or deprived, it is difficult to remove oneself and view those conditions with objectivity. Naturally, Joanne cannot do this without first acknowledging that her quality of life is reaching a point of no return, and that she risks death or enslavement if she does not adapt. To Lauren, adapting means becoming educated and self-sufficient to shape the future. But to Joanne, this means reckoning with issues that are too large for her to conceive, thereby making them real and imperative to her, which naturally she does not want to do, as this brings a state of fear and anxiety that no one would wish to live in. Whereas Lauren sees this as a character flaw, by Earthseed, a religion of Lauren’s own creation in which “God is Change” (Butler, 3), Joanne and the rest of the community are God fearing people.

So, in looking at the ways in which the fictional Parable of the Sower can be examined in light of the 2008 financial crisis, it becomes easier to see how a repulsion to reading is not necessarily equivalent to a lack of intelligence, but rather as a way to remove oneself from reality. This, however, weakens the ability to, as previously mentioned, view circumstances objectively. In The Big Short, the CEOs and big bankers had thought they discovered an infinite money hack in trading bad loans like a game of hot potato to ever consider that there would be a recession, just as Joanne and much of Lauren’s community felt far more secure behind their neighborhood wall than the rest of the world to ever consider that it might come down. But it is Lauren, Mike Burry, and Steve Eisman who prevail, not Joanne who is never heard from again, and not the CEOs who lost billions on bad trades. What these characters have in common is the skill of observing all that can be read around them. While this does not necessarily make them ethical people, it means they survive the chaos. For a lot of students here at Geneseo, reading is a skill that is left uncultivated because it has already been learned. Florens’ opening question in A Mercy, “Can you read?” (Morrison, 1) at first seems rhetorical when linked to the second question, “Who is responsible?” (Morrison 1) as if these two things- knowing how to read and assigning accountability- are inextricably linked. But, in a story of colonial America where folks are only literate enough to get by, if at all, it is not so easy to place blame or find the point of origin, thus illustrating that basic functional literacy is not sufficient enough to understand the world as well as it could be. Reading is not the same as understanding, and while it takes time and energy to narrow this gap, it is something that this course has done well to draw attention to.

Ultimately, while I joined this course for the good faith reason of wanting to broaden my horizons, I admittedly did so believing that the information covered would be of more value than that of my other classes. I am now proudly well versed in the topic of the 2008 housing crisis, but this would not be the case had I not understood the importance of reading. In this way, this course has taught me that I do not need to abandon one set of knowledge in favor of another, but instead that is my background of English study which makes me more than qualified to have meaningful discussion with folks and topics outside of my major.