Utopia Is No Place: The Inability of AI to Know a Place

The Greek roots of the word Utopia literally translate to “not place.” Tech leaders have argued that AI will introduce a chance for a more utopian society that requires less work for humans. While AI may create an environment where human work is less important, the cost may be the reduction of places to a form that does not represent the human experience of them. This essay draws on philosophy and leisure scholarship to argue that AI is incapable of knowing a place. Places are socially constructed based on culture, lived experience, and history, and cannot remain themselves and retain their meanings as they are flattened, consumed, and re-presented by AI. AI may well create space for more leisure time, but it may also create spaces that are no place at all.