A Machine Would Never Be Bitter
I sometimes wonder if the flipside of the AI campaign to make machines more humanlike is a pharmacological campaign to make humans as quiescent as machines. As global competition increases the value of productivity, an underground world of neuro-enhancing drugs is a growing part of campus life. But what about “emotional enhancements?” Christopher Lane, whose work I’ve discussed before, foresees a new market, and new perils:
[T]he American Psychiatric Association . . . has generated untold amounts of publicity and incredulity . . . by debating at its convention whether bitterness should become a bona fide mental disorder. Bitterness is “so common and so deeply destructive,” writes Shari Roan at the Los Angeles Times, “that some psychiatrists are urging it be identified as a mental illness under the name post-traumatic embitterment disorder.” “The disorder is modeled after post-traumatic stress disorder,” she continues, “because it too is a response to a trauma that endures. People with PTSD are left fearful and anxious. Embittered people are left seething for revenge.”