The G.R.R. Martin bit struck me too and I commented about it. I think ModernMech captured the situation really well in that thread: many of the people in the AI industry seem to only understand the logic of commodities and to reason about everything in terms of commoditization. All that matters to them is outputs, not process, not social relationship, not human experience. They understand everything in terms of before and after states, and they don't see any value in the "in between" (that is, they are "destination" not "journey" people). They believe that basically everything is fungible.

This kind of perspective is insanely crude, pathetic, and foreign to me, and to be honest I'd feel kind of bad for these people who clearly don't understand a really crucial and basic part of human existence, if it wasn't for the fact that this ignorance is powering further devaluation of these things, and further reduction of humanity to a kind of technocratic, flat, hyper capitalist, existence.