ABSTRACT
This chapter claims that clones offer insights into tensions surrounding the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into everyday life, providing a vocabulary and set of metaphors for thinking about complexities of automation, duplication, and mimicry. It argues that mimicry underlies core anxieties around AI, even as AI technologies are assessed in terms of their ability to duplicate humans. The cyborg as it has been imagined has been unable to keep ahead of technological change, to provide a framework that can help negotiate the tangles of AI ethics. Contemporary fascination with twins and clones may be tied to latent sensemaking of assisted fertility or medical advances in genetic replacement of body party. Also, themes of duplication, especially around labor and individuality, may stem from developments in automation, AI, and outsourcing labor to machines. Mimicry is more than an occasional tragedy of evolution for Caillois. Caillois defines schizophrenia as the ability to distinguish oneself from one's surroundings.
