Of late, I’ve been getting a lot of requests to meet with journalists, both in person and online. I always accept these requests. After all, academics are in the business of educating, and sharing our expertise is important.
That said, it has never been professionally valuable to me to be interviewed. I don’t magically sell a bunch of books when I’m mentioned in some newspaper and, frequently, I’m quoted for literally the most milquetoast thing I said. It’s not exactly a point of pride to have my parents read that I said something like “people sure do like religion.” Not that I’ve been quoted saying this; but you get my point.
Now you might be inclined to think that if I got quoted saying something boring it’s because all I said were boring things. To this, I respond (1) if I were boring the journalists wouldn’t be asking for my time in the first place and, anyway, (2) if my answers are boring we should be asking about the quality of questions also.
[arrogant academic mode] I’ve been at the forefront of academic discussions about religion and technology (esp. robotics, AI, and videogames) for a couple of decades. I’ve been critical to the public and academic understanding of mythical and apocalyptic visions of artificial intelligence and other digital tech. Most everyone who goes looking at why Silicon Valley has a religion of longtermism, immortality, infinite progress, and godlike machine intelligence knows my work. That’s why journalists call me from time to time. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Markoff — author of a bunch of good books (What the Dormouse Said and Machines of Loving Grace and Whole Earth), affiliate of Stanford’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence group, and general brilliant fellow — once said to me “I got your note just after I’d been telling anyone who would listen that to understand what was going on around OpenAI they needed to read your book!” He gave me permission to quote him on that. 🙂
Okay. So, after this paragraph I’m done touting my qualifications or whatever. Just pointing out that I’ve been a relevant, perhaps even reasonably important, participant in a conversation that is now pervasive in our culture from well before that was the case. All the conversations about AI gurus, religious AI, robots in religious ritual, and conscious machines (not to mention superintelligence, artificial general intelligence, and mind uploading) have emerged in the context of work that I’ve conducted. After a few years of publishing essays, I published my first book, Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality (Oxford 2010), which launched or accelerated conversations on everything from the civic rights of robots to the transhumanist visions of intelligent machines and mind uploading. I wasn’t the prophet of those things, I was the one trying to understand the futurists and technologists trying to make them reality, and in doing so I helped create a cottage industry in academia and beyond. Once upon a time, my books were even reasonably affordable and people could read them. Thanks to academic publishers, they’re more expensive now. Thanks, Oxford University Press. [/arrogant academic mode]
So journalists call and I give them my time. Conversations go an hour or more. And keep in mind: I don’t magically sell books or anything. I just give my time. Then, I’m quoted saying something boring or, worse yet, I’m not quoted at all. If folks at The Atlantic and The New York Times want my effort, they probably should offer something in return for it. In this case, I just want to be asked interesting questions and to be in the public space as part of the public conversation. Maybe someone will actually buy one of my books as a result. But at least I have a chance to expand the reach of my work beyond the printed books.
In his classic work, The Gift, anthropologist Marcel Mauss argues there are no gifts as we typically define them. There are no free sacrifices of Thing X to Person B. Rather, the giving of Thing X comes with the expectation of Thing Y being given to Person A. The better the gift you give, the more prestigious you show yourself to be. So, in the case of giving my time and expertise to someone else who gets paid for the work they write, technically I’m the one giving the better gift. That’s cool with me. 😉
But one way or another, I still expect some version of reciprocity.
In a world devoid of Thing Y, however, I’m simply being asked to do something socially and economically self-destructive. The journalists who’ve used my time are, literally, undermining the social fabric that undergirds our mutual work. They receive (1) time I could have spent on other activities plus (2) decades of hard work devoted now to helping them understand their subject; but they offer nothing in return.
Mauss points out that gifting is always gift exchange.
Of late, I’ve become disenchanted with the odds that my time will be compensated with the inferior return that I habitually received (i.e., that milquetoast quote that makes me sound like your boring uncle at Thanksgiving dinner). Several times of late I’ve given my time to journalists who – despite publishing essays that clearly benefit from the context I was able to give them – do not quote me. I kinda hit my limit on that this week with the latest such essay, which appeared in a rather prestigious news medium.
So, here’s my new approach. Barring some really compelling reason why I should donate my time to journalists, I will expect their publishers to compensate me for it. I will retain my privilege at the upper hand of exchange: $50 for an hour of my time. My time is, frankly, worth a lot more than that. But if I go low then I ensure the exchange isn’t even and I retain my position of superiority in the exchange of gifts.
I’m a teacher and I love to teach. I wish I didn’t feel this way about being interviewed — I didn’t used to.
p.s. the image above came from ChatGPT. Mostly, I like to pay people for artwork. See my thoughts on generative AI art here.
Robert M Geraci 