Pentland ignores the role of empathy in emulation because empathy is a felt experience that is not subject to the observable metrics required for computational governance. Instead, Pentland subscribes to the label Homo imitans to convey that it is mimicry, not empathy, and certainly not politics, which defines human existence. The term itself derives from studies of infant learning, but for Pentland it is a fitting explanation of all human behavior all the time: an assertion, like Skinner’s, that control always rests with society. “The largest single factor driving adoption of new behaviors,” he writes, is “the behavior of peers.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1392