The Cheerful Robot

The cheerful robot is Mills's name for the endpoint of a trajectory rather than a type of person. It is what happens when the increasing rationalization of every facet of life proceeds far enough that the capacity for reason — the critical and reflexive thought that questions purposes rather than merely optimizing procedures — has atrophied without producing any felt sense of loss. The cheerful robot lives in a world of total rationality and zero reason. Every process is optimized. No one asks what the optimization is for. The question Mills posed — not whether we can be turned into robots, but whether we can be made to want to become cheerful and willing ones — remains the question the AI transition has made most acute.