A self-driving car is a robotic chauffeur. Human chauffeurs are not our bosses but our servants. There are many other examples of devices replacing servants and other underlings. I wouldn’t offhand consider any of these to be examples of “surrendering our freedom to an external agent”. I would, instead, consider becoming a servant or underling to be an example of surrendering (part of) our freedom to an external agent, who tells us what to do.
It’s a question of who is telling whom what to do. Are you telling the device to do something, or is the device telling you? We mostly tell our devices what to do.
There are, of course, devices that tell us what to do or otherwise oversee us. For example, a cash register that calculates change in effect tells us what to do in the trivial sense of telling us how much change to return. This is fairly trivial and we welcome the help. More ominously, a modern cash register keeps tabs on cashiers because it keeps a perfect record of what was sold and exactly how much money should be in the tray. This is the sort of oversight that a human manager used to do. So in this case the machine acts as a kind of immediate supervisor.
Are you telling the device to do something, or is the device telling you? We mostly tell our devices what to do.
I’d point out that a lot of powerful people have advisors whose job is, more or less, telling powerful people what to do.It seems less about telling and more about being able to actually compel via some form of force—when the cash register gains the ability to auto-issue disciplinary actions, then I think it’s “telling us what to do”. When it’s simply reporting information, it’s still subordinate, just not necessarily to you personally.
A self-driving car is a robotic chauffeur. Human chauffeurs are not our bosses but our servants. There are many other examples of devices replacing servants and other underlings. I wouldn’t offhand consider any of these to be examples of “surrendering our freedom to an external agent”. I would, instead, consider becoming a servant or underling to be an example of surrendering (part of) our freedom to an external agent, who tells us what to do.
It’s a question of who is telling whom what to do. Are you telling the device to do something, or is the device telling you? We mostly tell our devices what to do.
There are, of course, devices that tell us what to do or otherwise oversee us. For example, a cash register that calculates change in effect tells us what to do in the trivial sense of telling us how much change to return. This is fairly trivial and we welcome the help. More ominously, a modern cash register keeps tabs on cashiers because it keeps a perfect record of what was sold and exactly how much money should be in the tray. This is the sort of oversight that a human manager used to do. So in this case the machine acts as a kind of immediate supervisor.
I’d point out that a lot of powerful people have advisors whose job is, more or less, telling powerful people what to do.It seems less about telling and more about being able to actually compel via some form of force—when the cash register gains the ability to auto-issue disciplinary actions, then I think it’s “telling us what to do”. When it’s simply reporting information, it’s still subordinate, just not necessarily to you personally.