Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski*
Tesla Optimus robot doing housework (from “Can the Tesla robot do the dishes?”) Source: https://www.sparklymaidmiami.com/blog/can-the-tesla-robot-do-dishes
Precautions
1
Wes Davis: “The Optimus robot at Tesla’s CyberCab event was a human in disguise” The VergeOctober 13, 2024 →.
2
Boone Ashworth: “Hang this AI friend around your neck.” wiredJuly 30, 2024 →.
3
Amy X. Wang “Everyone hates AI necklace ‘friends’. But AI isn’t the problem.” new york timesNovember 3, 2025, emphasis added.
4
Walter Benjamin “Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” illuminationed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn (Schocken Books, 1969).
5
karl marx Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,transformer. Rev. Martin Milligan Dirk J. Struik (Progress Publishers, 1959).
6
A recent ICI Berlin workshop on operativism connected the lineage of operativism (from the materialist vision of the Soviet Union to later practices such as Harun Farocki’s focus on machine vision) with the optimization of the working body and automation as a social rather than merely technological phenomenon →.
7
Benjamin “Works of Art” 4.
8
Matteo Pasqunelli “Automation of General Intelligence” e-flux journalno. 141 (December 2023) →.
9
look Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora, Surrogate humanity: Race, robots, and the future politics of technology. (Duke University Press, 2019).
10
Jess Weatherbed: “Tesla is hiring people to build robots” The VergeAugust 19, 2024 →.
11
Saidiya Hartman Landscapes of Subjection: Terrorism, Slavery, and Self-Made in Nineteenth-Century America (WW Norton & Company, 1997), 7.
12
Angela Y. Davis “Reflections on the Role of Black Women in a Slave Society” Angela Y. Davis Readered. Joy James (Blackwell, 1998); Sylvia Federici Caliban and the Witches: Women, Bodies, and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia, 2004); Grace Hong, “Existential Surplus: Women of Color, Feminism, and the New Crisis of Capitalism.” G.L.Q.: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studiesno. 18 (2012);Jennifer Morgan Working Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
13
In this sense, “style” reflects a map of the division of labor. See Matteo Pasqunelli Eyes of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (Verso, 2023).
14
Ashworth, “Wear this AI Friend.” As of February 16, 2026, the company’s website states: “Friends is a digital entity hosted by friend.com. You can chat with your friends from anywhere using your phone or laptop. And with their superior memory, your friends will remember everything you say.”
15
King: “Everyone hates ‘friends’.”
16
Benjamin, “Works of Art,” 19.
17
Mateo Wong: The CEO of New York’s most maligned tech company confronts the people who hate him. atlantic oceanOctober 6, 2025 →.
18
Clio Chan “The Year of Subway Slop” curvedDecember 29, 2025 →.
19
Boone Ashworth and Kylie Robison: “I Hate Friends” wiredSeptember 8, 2025 →.
20
“OpenAI’s use of Scarlett Johansson-like voice on ChatGPT exposes gaps in the law.” American Bar AssociationNovember 21, 2024 →.
twenty one
“OpenAI vs. Scarlett Johansson? Georgetown law professor answers legal questions about AI-generated content,” News, Georgetown University, June 4, 2024 →.
twenty two
Roland Barthes “Grains of Voice” images, music, text,transformer. Stephen Heath (Hill and Wang, 1977), 188.
26
Click here for more information on “Body Mind”. eli clare Glorious imperfections: Struggles with cures (Duke University Press, 2017); and Margaret Price “Body-Mind Problems and the Possibility of Pain” Hypatia 30, no. 1 (2015).
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