Jennifer Frey

There Is Already a Word for the Deep Moral Failures of AI

For the past few years, I’ve been troubled by a word, and that word is sin. I keep reaching for it, because it seems to be the only term strong enough to describe the new forms of dehumanization that artificial intelligence has introduced—even though calling something a sin sounds embarrassing to me, like throwing salt over your shoulder or stowing a lucky penny in your pocket. The problem is, I don’t know what else to call it when companies market digital girlfriends to the heartsick and young.