What tribute to one’s transformative brilliance could be more thrillling than the warning that your inventions threaten to attain consciousness and reduce human beings to patronized pets? The Asilomar Statement of AI Principles, signed by eight thousand scientists, representing a 97 percent consensus—including a passel of Nobel laureates and Hawking—echoed the billowy affirmations of Google’s own “Do No Evil” precepts and the statement of principles of Burning Man. “Superintelligence should only be developed in the service of widely shared ethical ideals, and for the benefit of all humanity rather than one state or organization. . . . An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided.” One wonders what the 3 percent of dissenters had to say.
Gilder, George. Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy. Gateway Editions. 2018, kindle location 1442/5072, Kindle edition.
