{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://unnecessary.tech/posts/we-are-not-machines",
  "path": "/posts/we-are-not-machines",
  "publishedAt": "2025-09-14T23:34:36.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:jx54v4rmscfwzit7fmgz24ba/site.standard.publication/3mnrsqmzz3w2e",
  "textContent": "From determining who gets a job interview to who receives critical healthcare,\nopaque computational algorithms are increasingly making life-altering decisions\nabout us, not with us. The dispassionate logic of code is replacing human\njudgment, and it is incumbent upon us to ensure that compassion and empathy\nremain at the heart of our systems, especially when human lives are at stake.\nComputers should make our lives better, not reduce us to cogs trapped in a\nmachine of our own making.\n\nAI has the potential to make things worse. The decisions guided by AI are harder\nto understand and detangle from bias that those of human-created algorithms.\nThey have the potential to codify historical bias into future decision making\nas they are trained on our historical data.\nWe need to maintain constant vigilence against algorithmic thinking.\nBias needs to be countered by increasing the diversity of the teams that create\nthese algorithms. The potential harms of algorithms need to be statistically\nmeasured and prevented. The impact of algorithms on human lives need to be\nconsidered individually with empathy and with an eye toward harm reduction.\nUnfortunately empathy,\ncompassion, and support for diversity seem to be in short supply. I really hope\nwe can come together as a society to protect those most at risk from the\nalgorithms that increasingly control their lives, however many\npeople seem to applaud the marginalization and suffering of\nothers who are not like them. We cannot counter the harms of mechanized thinking\nif we are unwilling to see one another as deserving of empaty and compassion.\nSearching for injustice is useless if we are unwilling to banish injustices from\nour society. We are not machines and should resist those who would let machines\ncontrol us.",
  "title": "We Are Not Machines"
}