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Yahoo
13-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
This Mom Is Scared to Let Grandma Take Her Toddler To The Zoo—Anxiety or FOMO?
Mom on Reddit expresses concerns about letting her mother-in-law take her 2-year old to the zoo. Commenters weigh in questioning whether it's her own anxiety or fear of missing out. Experts say there are ways parents can slowly learn to "let go" when it comes to their getting pregnant, I thought of 'letting go' as something far off. And, after having my first child in 2020 and working from home sans childcare, for his first two years of life, it certainly was. When my mom started caring for my then-two children in 2022, she did so in our home, so I was constantly aware of their whereabouts. She began taking them to her apartment in 2023, and I was grateful for the quiet, knowing I could trust her. However, getting sick happens, and when she came down with a cold on a workday that I couldn't take off, we enlisted the help of my father-in-law. He wanted to take the boys on a winter beach hike, which required driving them to a local spot and letting them run amok feet from the Atlantic Ocean. My stomach did the wave. But we needed help, and I let it happen. The outing remains a highlight for my kids and father-in-law almost two years later. The seashells sit on our mantle, and he remains in awe that they made it to a lighthouse on foot. Had I not told my stomach and head to pipe down, that memory would be a mere thought, and the frustration of that day would have only piled onto my chronic child care-related stresses. Instead, he offered a silver lining for all of us. Still, I empathized when I came across this post from a Reddit Mom, who said she was scared of letting her mother-in-law take her toddler to the zoo. 'It's not like my MIL is incompetent, but personally, it's just filling me with anxiety of all the bad what-ifs,' writes u/Abject_Goal_5632 in the Mommit Subreddit. 'I instantly told my husband no, but...I'm thinking that my son is losing an opportunity to have some good time with his grandparents. Thoughts?' Mental experts have a few empathetic ones. For starters? 'It's completely natural for a parent—especially one of a younger child—to feel anxious about their child being out of sight and out of their control,' says Zishan Khan, MD, a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist with Mindpath Health. 'Parenting is deeply tied to a sense of responsibility and protection, so it can be unsettling to imagine someone else, even a loving grandparent, in charge. But distinguishing between protective instinct and anxiety-driven thinking is key.' First, more context for the mom's decision-making and why she was afraid of letting her MIL take her child to the zoo. 'I don't want MIL taking my kid out without me,' the original poster (OP) starts. 'My husband informed me that my MIL is taking my 2-year-old son to the zoo this Friday when I'm at work. I'm instantly annoyed [because] I wasn't asked about this plan.' Sounds reasonable, but experts—and commenters—feel like the concerns Mom lists next fall into a grayer area. 'Mostly, though, I'm uncomfortable with my baby being out at a big public place without me,' she says. The mom shares that she keeps thinking about all the things that might go wrong, though she concedes her mother-in-law hasn't acted incompetently in the past. More than 100 commenters chimed in, often with nuanced responses. 'If she is [a] safe person, I think that you should let your kid go,' replies a top commenter. The keywords are 'if' and 'safe' here, which is where other commenters who left longer responses focused. 'It would depend on your kid [and] the grandparent,' says one. 'My mom takes my son places all the time. He's 2.5. But she can keep up with very aware of car seat safety, and he's always buckled properly. I never have any concerns because she is in good enough health to handle a toddler in public. My MIL, no. She's fabulous, and we're really close. Thankfully, she knows her limits, and she is aware that she's not in the right health to keep up with a toddler on her own in public.' This poster also added that her mother-in-law frequently accompanied the family on outings. Another commenter also respectfully challenged OP, echoing what many mental health experts that Parents spoke with pointed out. 'Being anxious is what is your biggest fear?' the person writes. 'Are you worried she won't be able to handle something, or are you more worried that it's an experience you're missing out on? It sounds like a great opportunity for your son to bond with his grandma, but obviously, I don't know if there are any specific concerns you rightfully have.' First of all, there are times when a parent's concerns are more than nerves about letting go, lack of control, or FOMO. 'These include a history of putting the child in unsafe situations or factors that could lead the grandparent to unintentionally risk the grandchild's safety,' explains Emily Guarnotta, PsyD, PMH-C, co-founder of Phoenix Health. 'For example, if a grandparent has physical limitations or is suffering from cognitive decline, this could pose risks to the grandchild's well-being. If grandparents and parents have vastly different values when it comes to safety, and grandparents do not respect parents' rules, then this poses a serious problem.' But Dr. Guarnotta doesn't see that as the case in this Reddit mother's concerns about a trip to the zoo with Grandma. 'It does appear that this mother is experiencing some understandable anxiety that may not be based on an immediate, tangible threat,' she says. 'The discomfort seems to stem from the mom not being in control or feeling left out of the plan,' shares Sanam Hafeez, PsyD, a neuropsychologist and director of Comprehend the Mind. 'That's completely understandable, especially for a parent of a toddler, where vigilance is constant and letting go, even temporarily, can feel unnatural. But that doesn't mean it's a sign she cares deeply, but it doesn't mean the outing itself is a bad idea.' However, one person had a slightly different view. 'Her anxiety around her 2-year-old going to a busy place like the zoo for the first time without her is absolutely understandable,' says Abbey Sangmeister, LPC, ACS, a therapist and founder of Evolving Whole. 'To clarify, she is not saying that Grandma is unsafe; the reframe is 'this specific milestone feels big,' and wanting to be a part of it or at least consulted first is completely valid.' That said, she agrees that sometimes it's important for parents to get curious about the 'why' behind the 'no.' 'If the child's safety is in question—a grandparent has cognitive issues, ignores safety rules, or has previously lost track of your child— listen to your gut and hold that line,' Sangmeister says. 'But if the concern is more about 'what ifs,' it might be time to explore what's coming up for them. This allows the parent to honor and decide how to work with their anxiety, not dismiss it.' In the end, I was happy I didn't lean into my anxious self when my father-in-law wanted to take my sons to the beach. Doing so would have robbed my kids of a fun outing (and me of the quiet I needed to plow through work-related tasks). But I understand that it's hard, so I asked experts: What would you say to a parent like me—and this Reddit Mom—with nerves and mixed feelings about solo outings with capable grandparents? They shared many useful tips. Feelings happen, whether you ask them to or not. That's part of being human. But Dr. Hafeez shares that letting anxiety dictate choices can become problematic. 'Practice noticing the feeling—tight chest, racing thoughts, that 'what if' loop—and name it,' Dr. Hafeez says. For instance, Dr. Hafeez says you might start by saying, 'This is my anxiety talking.' Then ask yourself, 'What would I do if I weren't anxious?' 'This creates just enough distance for you to choose based on values, not fear,' Dr. Hafeez explains. 'Over time, the more you act from that calmer space, the more trust you build in your child's world—and in yourself.' Baby steps aren't just for older infants and toddlers. 'Start by letting your child go on lower-stakes outings with the grandparent—like a short walk to the park or lunch out—before progressing to larger trips like the zoo or going out of town,' Dr. Khan says. 'Gradual exposure helps train your brain to tolerate discomfort and see that things can go well. This is based on cognitive behavioral therapy principles, where facing fears in incremental steps helps build confidence and reduce anxiety over time.' Dr. Guarnotta points out that clear communication about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences can help you claim a sense of control. 'You can share some tips that have worked for you when out with your child, so the grandparent feels prepared,' Dr. Guarnotta says. 'Also, focus on other things that are within your control, such as preparing a snack bag and a change of clothes. These acts can help set the outing up for success.' Experts agree that solo outings with grandparents benefit whole families. 'Grandparents can provide another set of role models and can introduce the child to activities that their parents may not have,' Dr. Guarnotta says. 'Grandparents also may pass down cultural traditions and customs and provide another source of healthy attachment and safety for children.' And, as I have learned, 'For parents, it also offers a much-needed break and the chance to see their child loved and cared for by others—something that strengthens the whole family unit,' Dr. Khan says. 'Letting go isn't easy, but it's part of raising a resilient child—and giving yourself room to breathe as a parent.' Whether you're just not there yet or the grandparents' health or history has raised flags about whether they're up for a task like taking a child to the zoo, it's OK to say no. "Instead of apologizing or over-explaining, speak your boundary clearly,' Sangmeister says. 'You also have the option to offer alternatives so you are still inviting connection, but in a way that feels good for you.' Sangmeister would suggest telling Grandma, "This is something I'd really like to do with him the first time. I'm not comfortable with the zoo yet, but I'd love for you to take him to something smaller, like story time at the library or a neighborhood walk." Read the original article on Parents
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Yahoo
What Silicon Valley Knew About Tech-Bro Paternalism
Last fall, the consumer-electronics company LG announced new branding for the artificial intelligence powering many of its home appliances. Out: the 'smart home.' In: 'Affectionate Intelligence.' This 'empathetic and caring' AI, as LG describes it, is here to serve. It might switch off your appliances and dim your lights at bedtime. It might, like its sisters Alexa and Siri, select a soundtrack to soothe you to sleep. The technology awaits your summons and then, unquestioningly, answers. It will make subservience environmental. It will surround you with care—and ask for nothing in return. Affectionate AI, trading the paternalism of typical techspeak for a softer—or, to put it bluntly, more feminine—framing, is pretty transparent as a branding play: It is an act of anxiety management. It aims to assure the consumer that 'the coming Humanity-Plus-AI future,' as a recent report from Elon University called it, will be one not of threat but of promise. Yes, AI overall has the potential to become, as Elon Musk said in 2023, the 'most disruptive force in history.' It could be, as he put it in 2014, 'potentially more dangerous than nukes.' It is a force like 'an immortal dictator from which we can never escape,' he suggested in 2018. And yet, AI is coming. It is inevitable. We have, as consumers with human-level intelligence, very little choice in the matter. The people building the future are not asking for our permission; they are expecting our gratitude. It takes a very specific strain of paternalism to believe that you can create something that both eclipses humanity and serves it at the same time. The belief is ripe for satire. That might be why I've lately been thinking back to a comment posted last year to a Subreddit about HBO's satire Silicon Valley: 'It's a shame this show didn't last into the AI craze phase.' It really is! Silicon Valley premiered in 2014, a year before Musk, Sam Altman, and a group of fellow engineers founded OpenAI to ensure that, as their mission statement put it, 'artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.' The show ended its run in 2019, before AI's wide adoption. It would have had a field day with some of the events that have transpired since, among them Musk's rebrand as a T-shirt-clad oligarch and Altman's bot-based mimicry of the 2013 movie Her. Silicon Valley reads, at times, more as parody than as satire: Sharp as it is in its specific observations about tech culture, the show sometimes seems like a series of jokes in search of a punch line. It shines, though, when it casts its gaze on the gendered dynamics of tech—when it considers the consequential absurdities of tech's arrogance. The show doesn't spend much time directly tackling artificial intelligence as a moral problem—not until its final few episodes. But it still offers a shrewd parody of AI, as a consumer technology and as a future being foisted on us. That is because Silicon Valley is highly attuned to the way power is exchanged and distributed in the industry, and to tech bros' hubristic inclination to cast the public in a stereotypically feminine role. Corporations act; the rest of humanity reacts. They decide; we comply. They are the creators, driven by competition, conquest, and a conviction that the future is theirs to shape. We are the ones who will live with their decisions. Silicon Valley does not explicitly predict a world of AI made 'affectionate.' In a certain way, though, it does. It studies the men who make AI. It parodies their paternalism. The feminist philosopher Kate Manne argues that masculinity, at its extreme, is a self-ratifying form of entitlement. Silicon Valley knows that there's no greater claim to entitlement than an attempt to build the future. [Read: The rise of techno-authoritarianism] The series focuses on the evolving fortunes of the fictional start-up Pied Piper, a company with an aggressively boring product—a data-compression algorithm—and an aggressively ambitious mission. The algorithm could lead, eventually, to the realization of a long-standing dream: a decentralized internet, its data stored not on corporately owned servers but on the individual devices of the network. Richard Hendricks, Pied Piper's founder and the primary author of that algorithm, is a coder by profession but an idealist by nature. Over the seasons, he battles with billionaires who are driven by ego, pettiness, and greed. But he is not Manichean; he does not hew to Manne's sense of masculine entitlement. He merely wants to build his tech. He is surrounded, however, by characters who do fit Manne's definition, to different degrees. There's Erlich Bachman, the funder who sold an app he built for a modest profit and who regularly confuses luck with merit; Bertram Gilfoyle, the coder who has turned irony poisoning into a personality; Dinesh Chugtai, the coder who craves women's company as much as he fears it; Jared Dunn, the business manager whose competence is belied by his meekness. Even as the show pokes fun at the guys' personal failings, it elevates their efforts. Silicon Valley, throughout, is a David and Goliath story. Pied Piper is a tiny company trying to hold its own against the Googles of the world. The show, co-created by Mike Judge, can be giddily adolescent about its own bro-ness (many of its jokes refer to penises). But it is also, often, insightful about the absurdities that can arise when men are treated like gods. The show mocks the tech executive who brandishes his Buddhist prayer beads and engages in animal cruelty. It skewers Valley denizens' conspicuous consumption. (Several B plots revolve around the introduction of the early Tesla roadsters.) Most of all, the show pokes fun at the myopia displayed by men who are, in the Valley and beyond, revered as 'visionaries.' All they can see and care about are their own interests. In that sense, the titans of tech are unabashedly masculine. They are callous. They are impetuous. They are reckless. [Read: Elon Musk can't stop talking about penises] Their failings cause chaos, and Silicon Valley spends its seasons writing whiplash into its story line. The show swings, with melodramatic ease, between success and failure. Richard and his growing team—fellow engineers, investors, business managers—seem to move forward, getting a big new round of funding or good publicity. Then, as if on cue, they are brought low again: Defeats are snatched from the jaws of victory. The whiplash can make the show hard to watch. You get invested in the fate of this scrappy start-up. You hope. You feel a bit of preemptive catharsis until the next disappointment comes. That, in itself, is resonant. AI can hurtle its users along similar swings. It is a product to be marketed and a future to be accepted. It is something to be controlled (OpenAI's Altman appeared before Congress in 2023 asking for government regulation) and something that must not be contained (OpenAI this year, along with other tech giants, asked the federal government to prevent state-level regulation). Altman's public comments paint a picture of AI that evokes both Skynet ('I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,' he said at the 2023 congressional hearing) and—as he said in a 2023 interview—a 'magic intelligence in the sky.' [Read: OpenAI goes MAGA] The dissonance is part of the broader experience of tech—a field that, for the consumer, can feel less affectionate than addling. People adapted to Twitter, coming to rely on it for news and conversation; then Musk bought it, turned it into X, tweaked the algorithms, and, in the process, ruined the platform. People who have made investments in TikTok operate under the assumption that, as has happened before, it could go dark with the push of a button. To depend on technology, to trust it at all, in many instances means to be betrayed by it. And AI makes that vulnerability ever more consequential. Humans are at risk, always, of the machines' swaggering entitlements. Siri and Alexa and their fellow feminized bots are flourishes of marketing. They perform meekness and cheer—and they are roughly as capable of becoming an 'immortal dictator' as their male-coded counterparts. By the end of Silicon Valley's run, Pied Piper seems poised for an epic victory. The company has a deal with AT&T to run its algorithm over the larger company's massive network. It is about to launch on millions of people's phones. It is about to become a household name. And then: the twist. Pied Piper's algorithm uses AI to maximize its own efficiency; through a fluke, Richard realizes that the algorithm works too well. It will keep maximizing. It will make its own definitions of efficiency. Pied Piper has created a decentralized network in the name of 'freedom'; it has created a machine, you might say, meant to benefit all of humanity. Now that network might mean humanity's destruction. It could come for the power grid. It could come for the apps installed in self-driving cars. It could come for bank accounts and refrigerators and satellites. It could come for the nuclear codes. Suddenly, we're watching not just comedy but also an action-adventure drama. The guys will have to make hard choices on behalf of everyone else. This is an accidental kind of paternalism, a power they neither asked for nor, really, deserve. And the show asks whether they will be wise enough to abandon their ambitions—to sacrifice the trappings of tech-bro success—in favor of more stereotypically feminine goals: protection, self-sacrifice, compassion, care. I won't spoil things by saying how the show answers the question. I'll simply say that, if you haven't seen the finale, in which all of this plays out, it's worth watching. Silicon Valley presents a version of the conundrum that real-world coders are navigating as they build machines that have the potential to double as monsters. The stakes are melodramatic. That is the point. Concerns about humanity—even the word humanity—have become so common in discussions of AI that they risk becoming clichés. But humanity is at stake, the show suggests, when human intelligence becomes an option rather than a given. At some point, the twists will have to end. In 'the coming Humanity-Plus-AI future,' we will have to find new ways of considering what it means to be human—and what we want to preserve and defend. Coders will have to come to grips with what they've created. Is AI a tool or a weapon? Is it a choice, or is it inevitable? Do we want our machines to be affectionate? Or can we settle for ones that leave the work of trying to be good humans to the humans? When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
16-04-2025
- Atlantic
Knew About Tech-Bro Paternalism
Last fall, the consumer-electronics company LG announced new branding for the artificial intelligence powering many of its home appliances. Out: the 'smart home.' In: 'Affectionate Intelligence.' This 'empathetic and caring' AI, as LG describes it, is here to serve. It might switch off your appliances and dim your lights at bedtime. It might, like its sisters Alexa and Siri, select a soundtrack to soothe you to sleep. The technology awaits your summons and then, unquestioningly, answers. It will make subservience environmental. It will surround you with care—and ask for nothing in return. Affectionate AI, trading the paternalism of typical techspeak for a softer—or, to put it bluntly, more feminine—framing, is pretty transparent as a branding play: It is an act of anxiety management. It aims to assure the consumer that 'the coming Humanity-Plus-AI future,' as a recent report from Elon University called it, will be one not of threat but of promise. Yes, AI overall has the potential to become, as Elon Musk said in 2023, the 'most disruptive force in history.' It could be, as he put it in 2014, 'potentially more dangerous than nukes.' It is a force like 'an immortal dictator from which we can never escape,' he suggested in 2018. And yet, AI is coming. It is inevitable. We have, as consumers with human-level intelligence, very little choice in the matter. The people building the future are not asking for our permission; they are expecting our gratitude. It takes a very specific strain of paternalism to believe that you can create something that both eclipses humanity and serves it at the same time. The belief is ripe for satire. That might be why I've lately been thinking back to a comment posted last year to a Subreddit about HBO's satire Silicon Valley: 'It's a shame this show didn't last into the AI craze phase.' It really is! Silicon Valley premiered in 2014, a year before Musk, Sam Altman, and a group of fellow engineers founded OpenAI to ensure that, as their mission statement put it, 'artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.' The show ended its run in 2019, before AI's wide adoption. It would have had a field day with some of the events that have transpired since, among them Musk's rebrand as a T-shirt-clad oligarch and Altman's bot-based mimicry of the 2013 movie Her. Silicon Valley reads, at times, more as parody than as satire: Sharp as it is in its specific observations about tech culture, the show sometimes seems like a series of jokes in search of a punch line. It shines, though, when it casts its gaze on the gendered dynamics of tech—when it considers the consequential absurdities of tech's arrogance. The show doesn't spend much time directly tackling artificial intelligence as a moral problem—not until its final few episodes. But it still offers a shrewd parody of AI, as a consumer technology and as a future being foisted on us. That is because Silicon Valley is highly attuned to the way power is exchanged and distributed in the industry, and to tech bros' hubristic inclination to cast the public in a stereotypically feminine role. Corporations act; the rest of humanity reacts. They decide; we comply. They are the creators, driven by competition, conquest, and a conviction that the future is theirs to shape. We are the ones who will live with their decisions. Silicon Valley does not explicitly predict a world of AI made 'affectionate.' In a certain way, though, it does. It studies the men who make AI. It parodies their paternalism. The feminist philosopher Kate Manne argues that masculinity, at its extreme, is a self-ratifying form of entitlement. Silicon Valley knows that there's no greater claim to entitlement than an attempt to build the future. The series focuses on the evolving fortunes of the fictional start-up Pied Piper, a company with an aggressively boring product—a data-compression algorithm—and an aggressively ambitious mission. The algorithm could lead, eventually, to the realization of a long-standing dream: a decentralized internet, its data stored not on corporately owned servers but on the individual devices of the network. Richard Hendricks, Pied Piper's founder and the primary author of that algorithm, is a coder by profession but an idealist by nature. Over the seasons, he battles with billionaires who are driven by ego, pettiness, and greed. But he is not Manichean; he does not hew to Manne's sense of masculine entitlement. He merely wants to build his tech. He is surrounded, however, by characters who do fit Manne's definition, to different degrees. There's Erlich Bachman, the funder who sold an app he built for a modest profit and who regularly confuses luck with merit; Bertram Gilfoyle, the coder who has turned irony poisoning into a personality; Dinesh Chugtai, the coder who craves women's company as much as he fears it; Jared Dunn, the business manager whose competence is belied by his meekness. Even as the show pokes fun at the guys' personal failings, it elevates their efforts. Silicon Valley, throughout, is a David and Goliath story. Pied Piper is a tiny company trying to hold its own against the Googles of the world. The show, co-created by Mike Judge, can be giddily adolescent about its own bro-ness (many of its jokes refer to penises). But it is also, often, insightful about the absurdities that can arise when men are treated like gods. The show mocks the tech executive who brandishes his Buddhist prayer beads and engages in animal cruelty. It skewers Valley denizens' conspicuous consumption. (Several B plots revolve around the introduction of the early Tesla roadsters.) Most of all, the show pokes fun at the myopia displayed by men who are, in the Valley and beyond, revered as 'visionaries.' All they can see and care about are their own interests. In that sense, the titans of tech are unabashedly masculine. They are callous. They are impetuous. They are reckless. Their failings cause chaos, and Silicon Valley spends its seasons writing whiplash into its story line. The show swings, with melodramatic ease, between success and failure. Richard and his growing team—fellow engineers, investors, business managers—seem to move forward, getting a big new round of funding or good publicity. Then, as if on cue, they are brought low again: Defeats are snatched from the jaws of victory. The whiplash can make the show hard to watch. You get invested in the fate of this scrappy start-up. You hope. You feel a bit of preemptive catharsis until the next disappointment comes. That, in itself, is resonant. AI can hurtle its users along similar swings. It is a product to be marketed and a future to be accepted. It is something to be controlled (OpenAI's Altman appeared before Congress in 2023 asking for government regulation) and something that must not be contained (OpenAI this year, along with other tech giants, asked the federal government to prevent state-level regulation). Altman's public comments paint a picture of AI that evokes both Skynet ('I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,' he said at the 2023 congressional hearing) and—as he said in a 2023 interview—a ' magic intelligence in the sky.' The dissonance is part of the broader experience of tech—a field that, for the consumer, can feel less affectionate than addling. People adapted to Twitter, coming to rely on it for news and conversation; then Musk bought it, turned it into X, tweaked the algorithms, and, in the process, ruined the platform. People who have made investments in TikTok operate under the assumption that, as has happened before, it could go dark with the push of a button. To depend on technology, to trust it at all, in many instances means to be betrayed by it. And AI makes that vulnerability ever more consequential. Humans are at risk, always, of the machines' swaggering entitlements. Siri and Alexa and their fellow feminized bots are flourishes of marketing. They perform meekness and cheer— and they are roughly as capable of becoming an 'immortal dictator' as their male-coded counterparts. By the end of Silicon Valley 's run, Pied Piper seems poised for an epic victory. The company has a deal with AT&T to run its algorithm over the larger company's massive network. It is about to launch on millions of people's phones. It is about to become a household name. And then: the twist. Pied Piper's algorithm uses AI to maximize its own efficiency; through a fluke, Richard realizes that the algorithm works too well. It will keep maximizing. It will make its own definitions of efficiency. Pied Piper has created a decentralized network in the name of 'freedom'; it has created a machine, you might say, meant to benefit all of humanity. Now that network might mean humanity's destruction. It could come for the power grid. It could come for the apps installed in self-driving cars. It could come for bank accounts and refrigerators and satellites. It could come for the nuclear codes. Suddenly, we're watching not just comedy but also an action-adventure drama. The guys will have to make hard choices on behalf of everyone else. This is an accidental kind of paternalism, a power they neither asked for nor, really, deserve. And the show asks whether they will be wise enough to abandon their ambitions—to sacrifice the trappings of tech-bro success—in favor of more stereotypically feminine goals: protection, self-sacrifice, compassion, care. I won't spoil things by saying how the show answers the question. I'll simply say that, if you haven't seen the finale, in which all of this plays out, it's worth watching. Silicon Valley presents a version of the conundrum that real-world coders are navigating as they build machines that have the potential to double as monsters. The stakes are melodramatic. That is the point. Concerns about humanity—even the word humanity —have become so common in discussions of AI that they risk becoming clichés. But humanity is at stake, the show suggests, when human intelligence becomes an option rather than a given. At some point, the twists will have to end. In 'the coming Humanity-Plus-AI future,' we will have to find new ways of considering what it means to be human —and what we want to preserve and defend. Coders will have to come to grips with what they've created. Is AI a tool or a weapon? Is it a choice, or is it inevitable? Do we want our machines to be affectionate? Or can we settle for ones that leave the work of trying to be good humans to the humans?
